Alantis

The clouds sailed by lazily, revealing the rays of the sun as it shone down upon the land in its fullest glory. With it came the warmth and its revitalizing touch, which Anabeth has grown to appreciate - despite the nasty side-effect of perspiration. She straightened her posture as she proceeded to walk out of her room and out of the little hut she was in. Outside, a detachment of guards were carrying out their usual training, some lifting heavy logs, some jogging around the field, some practicing their sword moves. All of them had something to be busy with; Anabeth could not help but sense a tiny bit of jealousy rising in her. She suppressed it, however, taking care not to show it. Instead, she smiled at the soldiers who had glanced her way.

Better to be as she was now, with nothing much to do besides taking casual strolls, than to be out there sweating buckets. At least, that was how she intended to convince herself before the words 'sour grapes' kept surfacing in her mind. Thus followed a great urge to scowl at herself, which she also managed to hide as she continued on her stroll, shifting her frustration to managing her posture and elegance as she walked.

The little 'village' that she was in was one that she and her brother had settled in many years back when they were still babies. According to history as she knows it, the Dragons and Humans were about to settle for a truce of some kind. Then, Shade came along. Shade was a Wraith, an apparently separate species of Dragons composed of an entirely different essence that Anabeth could not quite comprehend. However, one thing was certain - Shade was powerful. With his power, he sent both the Kingdoms of the Dragons and the Humans down a spiral of chaos. Fortunately, Anabeth's parents had the wisdom of sending both her brother and herself away before the situation got to its worst in the Royal Palace.

Anabeth was loathe to think about what happened subsequently. As much as she would like to feel a sense of loss and anger, she realized she could not genuinely feel it. She was far too young to know of her parents' love. Granted, they gave their lives to save her brother's and her's, but still, that feeling of sadness was almost obligatory. Perhaps it was a strength though, Anabeth thought, for it has allowed her to be less vengeful towards the Wraiths. In a sense, that was how she could have befriended a Wraith.

Mrala was the example of that. Admittedly though, sometimes, Mrala does have conversations or thoughts that are in conflict with her ideas of ideals as a Princess. Anabeth sighed as she wandered onto the edges of the village where there it was sheltered by the trees of the surrounding forest and where it was very much more quiet.

Gliding along on a sea of cotton and cream, Galiran was in a state of bliss. Whatever petty little disputations were going on beneath the layer of clouds mattered not to him, for he did not want to impede his relaxed state with such stresses. Although the air was thinner high in the sky, Galiran accepted this setback with the benefit that came with it. Being above the clouds allowed him to see far beyond the horizon, and no creature could get within twenty klicks of him without being spotted. Plus, no one on the ground would expect they had a neighbor in the sky just behind that cloudy door. With the glistening sun warming his scales, and the airy blanket of a jet stream settling gently under him, he young dragon thought that he might doze off. On the other hand, waking up in free fall did not sound quite as relaxing, and Galiran shifted his wings to get more blood flowing.

It was one of those partly cloudy days that cleverly balanced the gloom of a winter sky with the jubilee of a summer one. Having finished his morning routine, Galiran had decided to fly up to the more overcast part of the heavens and practice his gliding. While he was a proficient enough flier, it was gliding that really got one places, and learning to endure a long flight was a skill he needed to hone. After all, what would he do if he got into a situation where he couldn't land? Say, over the sea?

After a long while of travel, Galiran had completed an arbitrarily determined circuit, and he lazily searched for a break in the clouds. Finding a gap, he gazed through it, and looked down at the agrarian countryside. He sweeped his eyes to the North, and he saw the golden fields of the privileged and elite, the grains flowing in the wind looked almost more noble than their masters. The fields to the South and West looked almost the same as the fields of the nobles, but with many more breaks between plots where roads for troops had been slashed through the countryside. While these fields outwardly displayed prosperity, by the ends of the season a good portion of it would be gone to taxes, famine, and rampaging armies. Galiran then looked East, to the Moorish wasteland that had once housed the great population centers of the nation. Now with ground blackened and fields bloodied, it showed only the signs that the Wraith wanted it to. Signs of a recently crushed rebellion.

Galiran recoiled at the thought of the last revolt against Shade's power. Like he did with all revolutions, the crafty warlord sent only his weakest human armies to fight the rabble, those armies filled with conscripts from troublesome districts. Only after false confidence had been instilled in the rebels and Shade's political enemies eliminated did he crush them with his endless forces of Wraiths, ravaging the district for decades to come. It was here that Galiran headed, for it was there that he stayed with his companions in the little pocket of rebellion that still remained.

Sighing, Galiran left the protection of the clouds and descended to the ground as quick as was safe, landing in a small wooded field. It wouldn't do to have loyalist peasants seeing a dragon falling from the sky.