Hello. I have had an interesting day, and by interesting I mean it was actually really great until I decided to put on an album I really like while I was walking home from school--you know, as one does--and got a little too into it to the point where I forgot how to walk for a moment and tripped and fell on my face, scraped my hands and bruised my cheek/side of my head area. (I used this cream that stops it from visibly bruising, so thankfully it doesn't look like I've been a fistfight, but it kinda hurts if I touch it.) And somehow my phone didn't crack (thank god it was in my pocket) and my earbuds survived the fall, and my glasses, by some miracle, are fine even though they literally fell off my face. Which is good because you know, I need them to function, and I just got my once-every-three-years-new-pair, and I love the frames I picked. Anyway, then I had to pick myself up (resisting the urge not to violently scream curse words at the sky) walk home in the cold for 20 minutes with bleeding hands and clean all the tiny bits of dirt out of the scrapes, and now I'm here. It is a cold, hard world. *sigh*

(I'm being very overdramatic about this by the way, it's not as bad as I'm making it sound.)

In conclusion: 

I am literally dying disease

Symptoms:

Scraped my hand and fell :(

***

Ok anyway just felt the need to air that one out. Here's your chapter teaser. I showed this scene to my friend and she said "the only people Arctic hurts more than the people he hates are the people he loves"

Obviously, um, content warning for the most messed up parent-child dynamic you have ever seen. I think you know what to expect at this point.

***

Whiteout

Darkstalker and I had an unspoken ritual, for after Mother and Father's fights were done. He went and talked to her, maybe yell at her a little. She felt guilty, and gave us both a hug.

But it was my job to talk our father down.

I don't think anyone else knew how.

I found him on the cliffside a few minutes from our house. I had shown him this place the week before. I gently rested my talon on his back.

The sun stained the sky a lovely shade of pink. He shoved me away.

"Go home, Whiteout," he growled. "Go work on your inane little doodles or something."

"But you're bleeding." I reached out to touch his shoulder again. Please don't make me go home.

He laughed. I wasn't sure what was funny. I still don't get the joke.

"I guess your mother sent you on this little mission," he said, rolling his eyes.

I shook my head.

He picked up a rock, and threw it over the edge. Down, down, down. Into the abyss.

"I could have been a king, crystal." He called me that sometimes. Crystal. His crystal. I never knew how to feel about it. "With a queen. I could have had normal dragonets. Power! Wealth! Respect. I should have stayed."

Normal dragonets. Ones who didn't fill up their rooms with paintings, or spend hours after school building the most beautiful inventions.  Dragons without these horrible, moons-cursed powers, who worshipped him unquestioningly.

There's a unique kind of aching that comes with the knowledge that your father wishes you hadn't hatched at all.

"I'm sorry your feathers are broken." I leaned into his shoulder. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

"Your mother has no idea what she's talking about. I can't believe I let her boss me around. I'm far higher-ranked than a lowly army commander. Pathetic." His snout twisted up. "Never get married, Whiteout. And never have stupid, snivelling dragonets."

I nodded. When he got like this, you just had to listen.  Let the bitter, vile, monster run his course. When he got like this, the way he spoke made my scales crawl.

"We should leave them. Run away, the two of us. All the way across the sea." He pointed across the horizon, then sighed. "No, who am I kidding. The Ice Kingdom is awful, and the Night Kingdom is awful, the desert temperatures are unbearable. And I'd have to--leave you if I wanted to go back."

I looked up to meet his eyes, trembling a little.

He tucked me under his wing. "I couldn't do that," he said. Bitterness lingered in his tone. "It's you and me against them all, crystal."

But I never asked for this. I never signed up to be on your side. I never signed up for there to be sides at all.

I didn't dare say that out loud, though.

***

Anyway--I'm working on the finishing touches of a Darkstalker ref, so I'll probably post that like. Tonight? Tomorrow? We'll see :)