Phaedra tried to imagine how she arrived here. Not in the literal sense, because she could recall the dusty paths that carried her this far, and she still had to shake the sand and dirt out of her traveling clothes every time it itched. But every time she allowed herself enough time to relax, her mind inevitably worked itself back to the same question: how?
She would think of home some days, when the hunting had been good and Lucian and Schist weren’t being particularly bothersome. It was only when the day had been less dismal than usual that she let herself think of her old home. The Lightning Farm had grown familiar to her, she knew, but it would not replace what she had given up. Who she had given up.
It wasn’t just that the Carrion Canyon had been barren of life, and that the clans who lived in it’s crags were scavengers at best and bandits at worst. A life of picking at remains wasn’t hard to give up; Phaedra had always felt disgusted at how the dead were treated there. But there was a kernel of...not hope, per se, but expectation.
It had started when she found Gray.
He was a Ridgeback, Lightning born, and a member of a scavenger gang that haunted one of the cliffside cave systems in the Canyon. He was nothing, no one. He was a vulture who picked at scraps to survive. He was also Phaedra’s Charge. She despised him.
Not entirely, of course. He was her Charge, and all that came with it. She felt the expected desire to protect him and to keep him safe, but he was nothing. The only dangers he faced were ones he brought on himself, and although Phaedra didn’t want to think of herself as shallow, she felt an inner turmoil. He was no one important, he would never be. And Phaedra would be nothing alongside him.
When she was young, she hoped she would grow to protect a hero of some sort. A dragon who’s legacy could bring another renown for just having known them. The kind of dragon that didn’t just bring honor and glory, but dispensed it. And Red...Red was nothing like that.
Now, within the Farm, Phaedra knows that she was never intended for greatness either. Fate had given her a life beside Red, and she had abandoned it. Perhaps a life within the ruined city would bring her some comfort, but she knows it isn’t lucky.
And so she goes to sleep, and readies for the next day.