It was unnerving to be the one left behind in the darkness of the room.
The cold stone walls, shadowed blocks of massive grey boulders, looked so small and far away. And everything between her and the door was a chilling sea of icy air and darkness; threatening to swallow her up if she moved, to seep into her insides and explode if she dared to breathe.
It was still settling into her conscience, how suddenly her little sister could pop out from thin air, like that. How quickly and soundlessly the little thing could follow her.
—She hoped she hadn't seen something scary. She was so mysterious, except in those small bursts of questions or grown-up like actions that would suddenly bring Sonata to the realization there were thoughts going on in that tiny baby head that she'd vastly underestimated her of being capable of, that there was knowledge and experiences she had that Sonata wasn't there to share.
And that was what made it scarier; that she couldn't entirely protect her. Because she couldn't entirely see everything that went on in that frisky little battle lizard head. She wasn't supposed to.
>You've done enough.
Sonata's breath hitched, a queasy, sour feeling rising up from her chest. She tightened her fists, staring wide eyed at the door.
She hoped she hadn't spoken to her too harshly. She hadn't meant to hurt her. She'd never mean to hurt her.
She hoped it hadn't affected her too much. She hoped it wouldn't be too late by the time she returned to their room to apologize. But even if it wasn't, she couldn't go after her to take care of it right now. Her arms stiffened, sending blood into the muscles of her shoulder blades. She had something else to do.
The little dragon's emerald green eyes reluctantly moved upwards to meet the cold blue eyes of her mother. Two gemlike, dark crystalline spheres that were larger than her head, streaked with lighter, translucent wisps, illuminated an eerie orange from the side by the torchlight.
Sonata opened and clenched her hands into fists, gathering up her courage. She swallowed. The thin strands of her hair followed the motion as her body slightly swayed.
"She's gone now."
The minute noises from outside that had just barely seeped through the stone walls before had long since disappeared. It was only a guess, but it was a guess that felt worth taking; that fuzzy haired, curious little baby sprite she had for a sister had given up and gone back to bed.
It was a large, seldom used hall, spacious enough to comfortably fit one adult dragon, maybe two. It was old; the rudimentary patterns carved on the stone molding around the entrance of the door and the tops of the columns had never been updated to suit the rest of the castle. Unlike her room and the majority of the castle, the walls hadn't ever been painted, standing bare and exposed in their dark, uneven surface. Torch lights, not candles, lined the wall near the door, just going down far enough that the small bubble of space by the entrance was visibly lit, casting deep shadows in the cracks between the stone floors and the imperfections in the rocks that sabotaged her imagination.
The pressure weighing down on her was ever present, like an invisible hand slowly crushing the breath out of her, making it hard to breathe, hard to stand. It was the pressure of so close to a dragon, a dragon that was angry enough to allow a small portion of her commanding presence to seep through into her surroundings.
A massive talon trailed along the side of Sonata's face, gently brushing a lock of hair away.
She winced.
It would be over soon, whatever would happen. It was just scary was all. It would all be over soon; she just had to stay strong. She wouldn't actually hurt her—probably. It would be scary, but she would just have to stomach it. And it would be over.
The small dragon's body trembled uncontrollably, a small shiver, but there.
"Are you going to keep your eyes closed like that, little thing?"
The dragon's voice mused.
Sonata slowly opened her eyes, looking up at the dragon. Again, the claw stroked her cheek, almost like it was caressing it. But it was too cold. It was too sharp and powerful. It was too close to her vulnerable eyes and her protruding ears—She hoped the talon's owner hadn't forgotten those existed. Sonata's eyes winced and twitched to stay open.
It was hard not to flinch her head away altogether. But if she moved too much, the dragon in front of her may just try to pick her up to keep her from frisking away. Fate forbid, she was picked up by those claws.
The princess looked up pleadingly towards the large black entity.
Were her eyes mistaken, or did she catch a twinge of amusement in the corners of her large, crescent, blue eyes?
....Of course, it was amusement. What was amusement if not putting your offspring in mortal danger? Of course, fun stuff. Entirely adorable.
Sonata glowered amidst her struggle to keep from separating herself from the cold touch, and keeping her subsequent yelps and squeaks from coming out. Occasionally, she could feel the threatening scratch of the tip of a sharp claw just barely stroking the vulnerable skin of her neck. Too close. Too close! This wasn't affection at all. What was this? What was wrong with her?
Her chest rose and fell in breaths she didn't take, her shoulders moving up and up in protectiveness.
Finally, Sonata's hands reached up to hold the claw in place as she ducked away. "M-Ma-Mamà" she stuttered out.
"Hm?" The dragon's voice rumbled, cold eyes calmly watching her struggle.
The small dragon took a retake. 'You're too close to my neck,' she'd almost said, her mouth left open a second more. 'You'll accidentally hurt me.'
But she got the feeling there lurked passive malice in her affectionate gesture; And she didn't want to incite the dragon to make her displeasure any better known.
"I...I'm sorry. About earlier." Sonata offered. She lost her grip on the claw as it moved too far from her comfortable range of grasping. She felt the dragon's talons stroke her hair, more than one of those nails, just playing with it. Her shoulders shivered, but she kept them down. Being defensive wouldn't save her, anyways. Not with claws that big.
Luckily, the adult dragon's expression still seemed relatively calm. Her head had moved to rest on one of her claws, slightly tilted. At least for now, Sonata seemed to be on the right track. The queen was still listening.
"I'm sorry, Mamà." She expanded, fidgeting with her dress. "It was my fault. So...please don't send Sophia away."
Don't threaten to send Sophia away, she meant. Don't even make that an option. Don't say it in front of her.
The dragon's voice broke the silence, unimpressed. "Strand properly." Its talons lowered from playing with it's small spawn's hair. "You're hunching like an old beggar."
Sonata quickly stood up.
It was a threadbare balance between what she said first and how tactfully she said it, wether she started with her defense or started with her argument.
She stared into the magnanimous blue eyes that met hers back, half closed in boredom, but still looking.
She needed to hurry it along. Before her mother cut her off. Before she stopped listening entirely and her cause was lost.
"It wasn't her fault." Sonata tried to say something. She opened and closed her palms. Familiar warmth spread though her chest, bringing her back to reality. It gave her strength. "Sophia's just four, shes a just baby. She doesn't know any better." She defended. But the warmth just kept rising. Bitter, almost burning, small clouds slipping past her lips as she talked.
The dragon continued to regard her coldly, staring for her to finish her futile arguing. As though anything she'd said just amounted to the stupidity of hundred years' lacking understanding of the world. As though even giving her the acknowledgement to argue against her statements would be a pain.
"And...but..." Sonata tried to pick her words back up, but there was nothing more to say. It dawned on her how the dragon was barely even listening, hardly even getting through to her words. The clouds of smoke were increasing in density. Sonata could feel the unstable heat fight against her choice to keep it in. But her it wasn't exactly anger, and she was more scared for Sophia than angry, so what was it? "She didn't know what she was doing—It wasn't her fault."
The adult's large eyes thinned to crescents. Slowly, menacingly, she turned her head. "It wasn't her fault." Its deep, soft voice echoed against the walls. Cold, colder than it had been before, sharp and menacingly calm.
"Naïve of you, to believe I'd tolerate temper." Her cold stare weighed down on the child who was mere feet away, now.
"She...just didn't know where to stop." Sonata intercepted.
The dragon almost soundlessly scoffed. A small, empty smile touched her lips, spreading chills down Sonata's spine. "Didn't know where to stop. And how long would you have expected me to tolerate that?" Her smile flashed just the smallest bit of those large, sharp teeth. "Dragons aren't known for their patience, little one."
"You can forget this ever happened. I'll make sure she doesn't bother you again. Please. Mamà?"
The dragon's voice turned deceptively softer. "And how nicely that worked the first time." Sonata instinctively inched away.
"It's no wonder. I should have not expected more." The dragon lifted her head just to stare down at the tiny humanoid, still cornered by her large, taloned claws. "And I don't blame you. You are only a child, yourself." A talon traced up and down her back playfully, or maybe threateningly. Sonata struggled not to shiver.
"She'll be better, I promise."
The dragon's eyes thinned. "You're so well behaved when you want to be..." It scoffed. "Not glued to you like a second wild animal running around the castle, the sprite won't."
"I can be well behaved." The small dragon tried to reason. "I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'll be good all the time. I'll be really good." She pleaded.
The dragon looked down at her smugly. "If I truly wanted something of you, do you really think you'd be able to defy me?"
Sonata could feel her scales stand up from their skin-like formation. Her throat was hot, keeping down the heat from her lungs. "Why? Why do care so much how she acts? It's me you need, so why are you so strict on Sophia, too?"
The dragon was unfazed, her cold, slitted blue eyes staring down at her frazzled offspring as emotionlessly as ever. "It's unsightly."
"But I'm the only one you need, right? So you can just leave her be. You can be as strict on me as you want. Mamà."
The dragon once again toyed with her hair, lightly lifting the long ringlets up with her claw. "S-so...l-leave Sophia alone"
"What a stubborn little drake." The dragon absentmindedly twirled a stream of her child's straight hair at the edge of her claw, parts of it falling free time and time again. "I've told you before, it would do well not to be so attached." Her claw once again drifted down to stoke Sonata's cheek. "As quaint as it is to see you stand by your own sense of virtue, the type of heartbreak you're setting yourself up to is quite different from your past eccentricities."
Sonata shot her a murderous glare. "She's my sister."
The dragon considered the angry little being staring up at her. "I know." She sighed, a trail of smoke drifting across the floor like mist, causing sonata to cough. "Affection is a sticky thing, tiny one. Swallow more than you can gulp, and once the sweetness is gone, you'll find you're choking to death." Her claw trailed down to brush Sonata's hair out of her contorted face. "As much as you may want to stay true to that tender little heart of yours, hundreds of years of choking to death is a harsh price to pay."
Sonata held her angry glare, jerking her head away from the claw. "I'll choke if you send Sophia away."
"Oh...?"
The dragon rose. It couldn't rise all the way, in the proportionally small and yet generally gigantic room, but just the act of doing so made it more intimidating. Sonata stumbled back.
"What an arrogant child."
The dragon scooped Sonata forwards with her claw, half-dragging her nearer, keeping the once-again-shivering small dragon from escaping.
One of her dragon's talons rose to trail across Sonata's neck, almost ticklishly, cold, so cold.
"I don't want to hurt you, little one. I really don't."
The talon stopped just blow her chin, nipping it upward, the gesture's recipient too scared to look at the sight in front of her. The dragon's voice was poisonously warm, unremorseful of the distress it was causing, "But sometimes," a trace of mock sympathy ebbed along the corners of her voice, so obviously fraudulent it did more to terrify than soothe, "you make it so hard..."
Cold tremors possessed Sonata's arms, half lifted to clasp at the air just short of the talon, to pull it away, to shield herself, something. The air was so cold, it was so cold.
Hic.
Hestia tilted her head, one massive claw rising to stroke the line of tears off Sonata's cheek, the movement slow and calculated. But the tears just kept coming.
Hic.
The shivering just wouldn't stop.
The dragon paused in contemplation, and settled down, releasing its hold on its small crying child, but she wouldn't stop crying.
Hicc.
Hic.
"Compose yourself, small one." The dragon finally interrupted. "If I truly intended to hurt you, you would already be harmed," she tried to reassure.
Hic.
But scared princess kept shivering, her arms shielding her face. The anger had scared out of her, but in its place all of the fear and helplessness of being in an extended life or death situation had come crashing down.
"If you break down this easily, the real world will devour you alive." The dragon softly warned.
But contrary to her expectation, her words weren't having an affect, and her tiny heir just kept uncontrollably crying, crocodile tears streaming down her hidden face.
"Haa..." Hestia turned away from the pitiable sight, resigning to wait for her spawn to recompose herself.
Hic.
Sonata wiped her face with trembling arms.
Hicc.
She covered her mouth, trying to regain of the muscles responsible for her hiccups. Somehow, she managed to regain control of her lungs. Eventually, the new tears stopped coming.
Her head looked up, tears dribbling down her face, relatively composed again. The dragon resumed their conversation.
"I hope you know why I'm hard on you, little one." Her talon brushed her chin up. "One day, these lands and all the people within it will be solely yours. Not one, but two peoples together. Two kingdoms that spent most of history fighting each other, at that..."
Sonata blinked away the straggler tears lingering in her eyes.
"...It won't be an easy task. And there will be those who will want you to fail. But still, it's only you that can take on that role. You are an irreplaceable existence." The dragon tilted its head. "What a pity it would be if you grew up unprepared for it and perished, just like that."
The small dragon child was looking up at her helplessly, her face still flustered from crying, stray tears still leaking down her pale cheeks. Hestia rubbed the side of her talon against her cheek.
"Poor little thing, your eyes are swollen from crying."
Sonata winced away, ducking her head to wipe it dry, sniffling the moisture back up her nose so she could breathe. The dragon wordlessly watched the tiny life it had brought into the world as it tried to tend to itself. Tiny hands, a tiny bobbling head, and petite, little movements. And then it looked up.
"Don't take my sister away."
Hestia's expression bored. Perhaps she should stop teasing the child, here. At the end of the day, she wasn't going to gain anything from drawing it out so long. She could afford to humor her eccentricities for a couple more years, until the light in those eyes died on its own, after all.
She had to wonder, how long did she expect that child to last, with a faulty core? Ten years, twenty? Even fifty would be a menial blink in the lifespan of a dragon—And that, too, was only if some sort of menial stumble didn't take her out first. Perhaps her child truly didn't understand. Perhaps she was yet too small. Nonetheless, she couldn't say she hadn't warned her. She would give her another chance to rethink her decision, in a few years, when she was a little older.
The dragon rested her head on her claws, settling down to level with the smaller one. "You'll be 'really well behaved,' you said?" She smirked.
Sonata broke out of her trance and nodded.
The dragon didn't say anything more.
"I'm..." Sonata inched backwards "gonna go."
The large, black scaled dragon nodded with a blink.
Sonata stepped backwards, her gaze lingering on the dragon as she began to turn. Suddenly, her head snapped away, and she dashed towards the door.
The dragon inwardly scoffed.
***
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Sonata bound up the stairs to her room, roughly wiping trails of her crying off her face.
Clap!
She jumped up the final set of spiral steps and opened the door.
"Sophia?"
She looked about the half-dark circular room, curtains clearly partway drawn inexperienced tiny fingers that had given up halfway, only a few of the candles that lined the shadowy areas of the room lit.
She easily spotted a small hump among the flatness of her bed, like a slightly heavy upright egg wrapped in sheets.
Sonata's movements softened to a gentle walk, then abruptly doubled down into a rushed gait. She knocked the egg-shaped bundle of flesh over, sending them both down onto the bed.
The figure beneath the sheets squeaked. Sonata remained lying there for a few moments, the weight of her arm draped across the form beneath the blankets in a lazy hug, her eyes closed. Just lying there, breathing.
Until sulky bundle of flesh beneath the sheets decided she'd had enough and tried to find and bite her arm through the thick sheets, that was.
Muffling a scoff, the green haired girl peeled the sheets away from her sister's face. What met her vision was a teeth-baring, eye-dilated little monster that immediately calmed as though exorcized by making contact with the light. Baby tears littered her reddened apple cheeks, some of the ringlets around her face damp and soggy.
"Are you angry?"
Her itty bitty sister frowned and shook her head, her now unpossessed green eyes still twinkle with new tears.
Relieved what she said hadn't affected her, Sonata sighed, plopping back down onto the bed. Sophia propped herself up by her arms, her quivering mouth opening and closing around the word "um."
"Sis... owie?" She barely made out, eyes wide with concern, another scared baby tear making a way down her cheek.
Sonata's eyes widened. She quickly sat up, wordlessly staring at the worried little blonde who was awaiting an answer.
She hugged her.
"Sis?" Sophia worriedly squeaked.
Sonata's arms wrapped tightly around her, trapping her small body to come tumbling down alongside her as she laid back onto the bed, holding her there.
Sophia softly whined, weakly wiggling against her limby bindings and the general absence of an answer, but then the warmth of her sister's hug began to grow on her, the steady thump of her sister's heart that didn't seem alarmed at all put her at ease. Calming down, the small child tucked herself into her sister's chest, accepting the mischievous tackle of an answer for the snuggle of a bribe, and let herself be held there for a little bit longer.