May 7, 2015
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
He slipped out at lunch. He escaped the classroom, swiped his food according to witness testimony (the lunch lady), and escaped.
“Just give up on him,” the teacher said.
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BEFORE THE BEGINNING
He slipped out at lunch. He escaped the classroom, swiped his food according to witness testimony (the lunch lady), and escaped.
“Just give up on him,” the teacher said.
((itwillbeover-probably wanted to see that screenplay I mentioned, so here is what I have so far, the outline and the first five pages of the script (or first five minutes of the movie)
Dragon's Prince
Outline
Inside a castle, in a large sitting room with a roaring fire and hunting trophies on the walls, a young Prince Cederic de Bellemare and his elder brother Prince Brom runs up to an old man, their grandfather, King Col of Stonegate. Prince Cederic begs the king to tell him stories. The king obliges, picking Cederic up and telling him about how he used to be the greatest hunter in the land. Cederic asks about the only empty pedestal and King Col explains how he once hunted a dragon, only to make friends with it instead.
Several years later, Cederic leads a hunting party. He messes up, causing confusion among his men and allowing a stag to escape. Brom tries to encourage Cederic, but they end up arguing. Cederic needs to become a capable military leader before the impending war with another kingdom breaks out. Cederic heads off alone. Two men watch him and comment, one positive and one negative. Both are generals who trained and mentored Cederic.
Along a beach, Cederic mumbles angrily about needing to prove himself, wishing he could just take down a dragon and gain the same trust and respect his brother commands. A dragon rises up as if in answer, tumbling angrily out of the ocean. Cederic battles the dragon, noticing that it is injured. The first time his sword connects with it, it turns into a woman who collapses, naked. Cederic wraps the woman in his cloak and brings her back to his men, telling Brom they need to go back to the castle.
Later in the evening, Cederic enters a guest room in his castle where the woman is sleeping. A nurse tells him how the woman is doing before excusing herself. Cederic wonders aloud who the woman is and where she came from, and then, suddenly, the woman awakens. She leaps to her feet and demands to know where she is, who Cederic is, and what is going on. They talk. Her name is Rametta and she came to the mainland from the island of her people to look for a wizard to break a curse that has been placed upon them. He agrees to help her gain audience with the king to ask for his help if her people will become their allies. He gets some maids to help dress Rametta up to look presentable. When they try to add jewelry, Rametta stops them because it is metal that causes her to turn into a dragon.
Before King Fendrel, Rametta repeats her request for aid in finding a wizard, offering the alliance of her people. The king questions her, but before she can answer properly, she runs into metal and reverts to the form of a dragon. She wrecks the room and moves out over the town until Cederic is able to turn her back.
Cederic is only just able to stop the king from having Rametta executed on the spot and it is instead determined that she will be thrown in the dungeons and executed properly the next day. The king and Cederic argue until the king screams that there are no wizards, but after the king has left Brom reminds Cederic that their grandfather was good friends with a wizard, perhaps the last in the kingdom.
That night, Cederic frees Rametta from the dungeons and they escape together. He found clues to the possible location of the wizard his grandfather knew in old letters, pointing them in the direction of a mountain.
When the king finds his son and the prisoner gone the next day, he sends out a search party and sets up a reward for any information on the two of them, treating it as if Rametta kidnapped Cederic. Brom questions him about this, but the king evades his questions and dismisses him in order to write a letter. He attaches the letter to a flacon and sends it off to the wizard at the mountain.
Cederic and Rametta wake up in an inn in the next town over from the capital. One of the king’s search parties arrives just as they are leaving, forcing them to make a run out the back door. Cederic is able to outmaneuver them because he knows how they work. Rametta comments on this and Cederic complains as the second prince, he is expected to be a military leader, but he is no good at it. He works better alone. Rametta scoffs at him, purporting that one cannot do everything alone. Even she needs his help on her quest.
Later that day, Cederic and Rametta realize that they have been going in circles in a forest. Cederic knows his tracking skills are better than that, and Rametta realizes they are caught in a magic trap. Cederic hopes this means there really is a wizard, but Rametta cautions that magic can live on even after a wizard dies the same way parts of magical creatures are used in spells, and they might have stumbled upon an old trap. They wander and struggle to figure out how to break out with no magic of their own. Cederic laments that Rametta cannot control her dragon form and fly them out. Rametta lashes out at him for having no idea what it is like for her, to be such a powerful beast when she has no control and only remember when she is a weak human. They use Rametta’s dragon form to break free, risking death and madness. When they make it out, Rametta hugs Cederic before pulling away awkwardly.
Just outside the forest, the king’s men are waiting for them. The appearance of a dragon caused some panic, but they rally to rescue their prince, capturing Rametta with ropes and wooden weapons to keep her from transforming. They keep her tied up far from any metal.
One of the leading generals is Cederic’s old mentor. Cederic tells him what is really going on, and he agrees to help them escape and continue their quest. Just as they reach the edge of the camp and grab horses, the other general, a man who also trained Cederic and has always looked down on him, appears. He and Cederic duel. When the prince turns to leave, the man rises and aims to stab Cederic in the back, but Rametta knocks the man out with one punch. She and Cederic escape laughing on horseback while the rest of the knights start to awaken and head over.
In the foothills of the mountain, Cederic and Rametta stop to rest near a lake. Cederic's shirt was ripped in the duel, and Rametta finally notices the necklace he wears with a dragon scale for a pendent. Cederic tells Rametta about his grandfather and the stories he told about how noble and intelligent dragons were. He brushes them off as just stories, but Rametta encourages him to hold onto those memories because not everything is as it seems.
A faerie under contract with the magician tries to trap them in the lake. They defeat it, nullifying the contract, and out of gratitude and for its own amusement, it offers them a lift on the wind to the top of the mountain, where the wizard lives.
At the top of the mountain, they realize they do not know how to find the wizard. In frustration, Rametta yells for the wizard to come out from wherever he is hiding. The wizard pops up behind them on top of a tree, commenting that appearing before people who want to kill you is generally a bad idea. Cederic asks what he is talking about and the wizard asks if they are there to kill the wizard who cursed Rametta’s people. Rametta is stonily silent while Cederic explains they are looking to break the curse, and killing the only known wizard would be counterproductive.
The wizard invites them inside his hidden home to talk where they meet the wizard’s father — the one who cast the curse on the dragons. Rametta reveals she wants to kill him. They have his son, so he can go ahead and die for what he did. However, it is revealed that the curse was a mistake. It was supposed to be a spell to help Rametta’s people because they were being hunted. They were never supposed to lose their minds, but the wizard was not good enough. Rametta storms out to clear her head and break things while Cederic talks to the wizards. After years of research, they are close to a spell to fix the curse so that Rametta’s people can retain both their true forms and their minds, but they are missing a final piece: something from a dragon. Cederic offers his scale, but solid items like that won't work. They need something malleable, like an organ, to put in a potion. It turns out the string the scale was on was made of dragon heartstring.
The spell completed, they test it on Rametta, who turns into a dragon to Cederic’s shock and dismay. It is revealed that this is Rametta’s true form — her people are dragons. Cederic is upset she lied to him, but she never said she was human. She adds that it is not her fault he did not get it. Although she does wish she could be a princess for him, they both have duties to their own people. They explain to the wizards, who are rather out of the loop, about the looming war. The younger wizard suggests an alternative plan.
At a meeting with the kingdom threatening war, Rametta kidnaps the princess of that kingdom. Her father offers half the kingdom to whoever can rescue her. Cederic offers his services.
And the beginning of the script (apologies for what is probably going to end up as a lot of awkward spacing -- it's all in proper format on Word):
FADE IN
INT. CASTLE - EVENING
A roaring fire fills the screen. Pulling back, a fireplace is revealed, followed by a chair, bookcases, and the rest of a warm study. It is filled with hunting trophies ‑- stag heads and antlers, a stuffed bear, etc. Two boys, YOUNG PRINCES CEDERIC and BROM, run up to an old man, KING COL, their grandfather, sitting in a chair by the fire.
YOUNG CEDERIC
Your Majesty, Your Majesty!
KING COL
What is it, child, what is it?
King Col stands and picks up Cederic while Brom hangs onto his leg.
YOUNG CEDERIC
Tell me a story, Your Majesty!
KING COL
A story! What kind of story?
YOUNG BROM
A true story.
KING COL
Well then! How about a story about one of these?
King Col draws the princes' attentions to the hunting trophies. Cederic and Brom nod excitedly.
KING COL
Alright, then. You see this bear here? Probably my finest--
YOUNG CEDERIC
What about that?
Cederic points to an empty pedestal set to the side.
KING COL
That? Why it's an empty pedestal for a creature I'll never catch.
YOUNG BROM
There's an animal you cannot catch?
KING COL
Oh, yes. I hunted that beast for years, you know, as did my father before me, and his father before him.
YOUNG CEDERIC
But you didn't catch it?
KING COL
Oh, I caught it. But I did not kill it. You see, I was hunting a dragon.
YOUNG BROM
Father says there's no such thing.
KING COL
Your father has cabbages for brains.
King Col and Cederic share a laugh while Brom pouts.
KING COL (CONT'D)
No, no. There used to be dragons all over the kingdom. You could hardly step outside town without running into one! But somebody found out that dragon scales made good armor. Then somebody else found out that the horns -- Well, that's all a bit complicated for you, isn't it? Suffice to say that many people hunted the dragons until they were almost all gone.
Cederic and Brom gasp and King Col nods solemnly.
KING COL (CONT'D)
I hunted them, too. I was sure the one I caught was the last in the whole kingdom.
YOUNG BROM
Is that why you didn't kill it?
KING COL
A little. But more importantly, I didn't kill it because...
King Col pauses dramatically and the princes hold their breath.
KING COL (CONT'D)
It became my friend.
The princes gasp in disbelief.
YOUNG CEDERIC
How do you make friends with a dragon?
KING COL
It helps if you talk to them. Dragons aren't like other beasts. They have a touch of magic to them. Always remember, my child: Not all is what it seems.
EXT. FOREST - MORNING
A stag strolls through the foliage. CEDERIC, a young man on horseback, signals to his HUNTING PARTY. A few of them exchange glances, but follow orders. They go too close and the stag is scared off. Cederic leads the hunting party after it, but gives bad directions and the prey is lost.
CEDERIC
Blast it!
Another man on horseback, Cederic's elder brother and the heir prince, BROM, rides up alongside Cederic, clapping him on the shoulder.
BROM
Worry not, brother. We'll catch the next one.
Cederic roughly shrugs off Brom's hand.
CEDERIC
Or we'll lose the next one like we've lost the last three! I told you this was a bad idea.
BROM
And I told you it was necessary. You'll never learn to lead the knights into war if you cannot even lead them through the woods.
CEDERIC
And we'll all starve if we leave this up to me.
BROM
Cederic --
CEDERIC
Just stop, Brom. I'm going for a ride.
Cederic rides away. Two KNIGHTS, generals of the army, watch him go.
KNIGHT 1
We'll be doomed if he leads us into war.
KNIGHT 2
Careful. We're not even sure there will be a war.
KNIGHT 1
That war is as obvious as Prince Cederic's complete lack of military skills.
KNIGHT 2
So as obvious as young Borin's beard.
A squire, BORIN, looks up from watering the horses. His beard is all but nonexistent.
EXT. BEACH ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST - SAME MORNING
Cederic walks along the beach, his horse tied to a tree.
CEDERIC
(muttering)
Blasted stag. Just because King John doesn't know how to say "no" to his daughter, I have to prove myself a military leader and lead the knights into battle, to their deaths...
A dragon rises out of the ocean with a roar, showering Cederic with water. Cederic fumbles out his sword as the dragon draws closer, snarling and smoking.
CEDERIC
Dragon. You're supposed to be extinct.
Cederic barely dodges as the dragon exhales fire at him. Rolling back to his feet, Cederic swings his sword as the dragon lunges at him, but misses. They move back into the forest as they fight. The first time Cederic's sword makes contact with it, the dragon disappears, replaced by a naked woman.
CEDERIC
A witch? What just happened?
Cederic approaches carefully, poking the woman with his foot. When she does not wake, Cederic wraps his cloak around her and picks her up. He lifts her onto his horse with him and rides back to his men.
EXT. THE KNIGHTS' CAMP IN THE FOREST - SAME MORNING
Cederic rides into the camp. Brom rises to greet him.
BROM
There you are, Cederic. I was beginning to fear you had returned home.
CEDERIC
You were wrong. But we are going home now.
BROM
You cannot just abandon the hunt.
CEDERIC
We've got something else to deal with.
"Captive Angel," a play based on nova-dragon's song "Just a Decoration"
by dragontameroutoftime
This is a 10-minute play I wrote inspired by this song written and sung by nova-dragon. It does not perfectly follow the story in the song because 10-minute plays are really hard to write and it's for a class. This is unedited, but I'm pretty happy with it, I think? Miracle of miracles.
Under a cut because yeah this is 12 pages long.
((coughsohere'smydumbshortstoryaboutnottwinsincludingafairyboybye
Brother, Brother, Not
They say that sometimes fairies steal human babies. So as not to raise suspicion, they will leave something else in its place: an enchanted log or an old fairy looking to live out the last of its days being coddled by humans. Back in the days when babies died easily, perhaps it gave parents hope that the sick, dying thing in the crib was not really their child. Perhaps it gave them hope that their child was still alive somewhere else, even being raised by mischievous fairies.
"Gabe, where are we going?"
No answer, just like the first five times Daniel asked.
"Gabe! We've been driving for hours. Isn't this the way home? Did something happen to Mom or Dad?"
"No."
He speaks! Daniel thought. The first word in four hours. "Are you going to tell me what's going on? A clue?"
Abruptly, Gabriel jerked the wheel, skidding onto the side of the road. Daniel threw a hand out to keep himself from slamming into the dashboard. He turned to yell at Gabriel, but stopped. Gabriel was shaking, knuckles white.
Daniel asked softly, "Why won't you tell me-"
"You're not my brother."
The words, spat out like venom, hung in the air.
"What?"
"Your fingerprints. Remember when I got robbed a few months ago? And they gathered all the fingerprints in my house to see if the robber's might be there, so they had to check everybody else's."
Daniel nodded. He remembered the police taking his fingerprints. He had not thought much of it at the time, assured he was not the one who had robbed Gabriel and more concerned with catching the actual culprit, which they had.
"I found our birth certificates. 'Bout a week after that. I was just messing around and I compared them."
Daniel felt cold, despite the summer heat beating down and the sweat on the back of his neck. There was nothing around them save for empty highway, still dusty and pale with newness, and endless flat fields. The sun shone dully through the clouds. He tried to say something, but Gabriel beat him to it.
"You were switched at birth."
When Daniel said nothing, Gabriel glanced over at him. Something about his expression was weird. There were no lines of confusion on his forehead, no disbelief in the shape of his mouth.
"Dan?"
The name fell from Gabriel's lips unbidden and Daniel inhaled sharply, as if he had not been breathing.
Gabriel continued, "You understand, right? We've been together, all this time. I was there when you fell out of a tree when we were four. You were there when my first girlfriend broke up with me freshman year of high school. We went to the same college for Christ's sake. Can't get much more inseparable than us."
Silence reigned when Gabriel paused for breath. "All these years, and there was another person, someone else who came from the same mother, someone else who was there from the beginning. What happened to him? What is he like? You get it, right? I need to know."
Daniel's voice came out shaky when he asked, "You still haven't answered: where are we going?"
"To see your birth parents."
Daniel's head shot up, more surprised than he had looked at the earlier revelation. "What? You found-" His jaw worked soundlessly and Gabriel nodded.
"It was surprisingly easy, actually," Gabriel said, pulling back onto the road with jerky movements. "But they- It may not be easy. That's why..."
"How on Earth could it ever be easy?" Daniel asked, quiet and distant, a sharp edge of disbelief in his tone.
Gabriel answered quickly, hardly drawing breath, "Your mom's in a mental hospital."
The building was white, flat, and sickeningly bright.
"Right this way," said a nurse who led them down a hall.
As they entered the room, a man stood up. He wore a brown jacket that hung loosely over his thin frame and glasses slightly too big for his face. Dark hair, square face, long nose, late forties maybe. He doesn't look like Daniel at all, Gabriel thought.
"Are you Gabriel Gibb?" the man asked.
"Henry Oakman, I take it." Gabriel shook his hand, but Henry's attention was already on Daniel. Belatedly, Henry reached out to shake his hand, fingers shaking almost imperceptibly.
"Daniel," Henry said before Daniel could introduce himself. "I heard, that is, I'm glad to meet you."
He looked more afraid than happy to Gabriel.
"Honey, who's there?"
Gabriel jumped. He had not even noticed the woman slouched in a chair facing the window. She stood up slowly, as if she had to build herself up from slipper-clad feet to knobby knees to loose white gown to scraggly hair. Honestly, he couldn't see her face at first; she looked like a Japanese horror story. Then she flipped her hair back and her whole being lit up. She did not look like Daniel either.
"Is he here?"
"Yes, dear." Henry reached for it, drawing her over. "This is my wife, Abigail. Your - if we're right of course - your mother. Abby, this is Daniel Gibb. Remember what I told you before? His brother Gabriel thinks, thinks that he might be our son."
This was not what Gabriel had envisioned. He had not known what to expect when he heard that Daniel's mom was in a mental hospital. He had almost expected her to be crazier than this. At first, before that, he had expected a happy, normal couple. Something like their own parents, his blood parents. He had expected them to be like Daniel, somehow, in looks, in personality, in their presence. But these people felt so ordinary. They were like mud next to Daniel, and Gabriel could see him leaning away from them, uncertainty in the lines of his back.
Gabriel gave Daniel a solid thump on the shoulder and jerked his head at the couple. Daniel returned with a look of his own that asked if he was serious. "Why don't we sit down?" Gabriel suggested.
They sat. Gabriel and Daniel shifted awkwardly.
"So you two are, er... Twins?" Henry asked.
"Yes. Fraternal, which is why nobody found it odd we didn't look alike. I also wanted to ask you, um, the child you brought home from the hospital..." he trailed off at the look on Henry's face. Something akin to terror.
"They didn't tell you?" he asked in a small, faint voice.
"Tell me what?"
"Tell him what?"
They spoke at the same time. Gabriel glanced at Daniel, but his eyes were fixated on Henry, looking more interested than he had thus far.
"May I see your face?"
Henry, Gabriel, and Daniel jumped, having practically forgotten the woman. She waited only a moment, a moment the men spent in stunned silence, before standing up and crawling over the coffee table between the couple and the twins.
"Abigail!"
"Hey!" Gabriel protested.
Pale fingers wrapped around Daniel's face. She practically had to climb into Daniel's lap to reach him, pressed against the back of the couch away from her.
"What is she doing?" Daniel asked stiffly.
"She's just, just trying to identify you, I think."
"Hey, what did you mean?" Gabriel interrupted. "Where's the child Daniel got switched with, my brother?"
"I'm so sorry, I thought they explained this to you," Henry started.
A sound of pain drew Gabriel's attention back to Daniel and Abigail. Daniel had his hands wrapped around Abigail's wrists while her fingers dug into his face. "Hey!"
"I don't know how to tell you this, but you can't meet your real brother." Henry spoke quickly, dropping the words like hot embers one after the other.
"What?" Gabriel was half listening, pulling on Abigail's arm. "Hey, get off of him."
"You're not my son."
Gabriel and Daniel froze, but Henry was still talking, fast and desperate, tugging distractedly at Abigail's other arm.
"That's the reason she, that's the reason Abigail is here."
"What are you talking about?" Daniel demanded. Finally, he wrenched his face free.
"She killed him."
Gabriel's world stopped.
That woman screamed.
Daniel shouted in alarm as Abigail launched herself at him, screeching, "This is not my son! You're another switch, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!"
She waved her arms like claws, like weapons, smacking and hitting and scratching.
"Abigail!" Henry shouted uselessly, pulling at the ends of her sleeves.
The taste of copper spilled through Gabriel's mouth and he grabbed Abigail, flinging her backwards. Nurses began pouring into the room, shouting for calm, for an explanation. Gabriel's tongue stung when he shouted, "You took one brother from me, you're not taking this one!" and grabbed Daniel's arm. They were out the door and next to Gabriel's car before he knew what had happened.
Gabriel made a fist and a move as if to punch his car, but stopped short.
"Sorry," Daniel said.
"S'not your fault." Just that crazy old lady's. The crazy lady who killed his real twin brother. Gabriel leaned against the car and slid to the ground.
"Gabe?"
"Just give me a minute."
Killed.
"She killed him."
"Temporary insanity. I've heard of cases like that, where a mother kills her own children," Daniel said.
"It wasn't even hers." Gabriel grabbed at his hair with one hand, pressing the heel of his palm over his eye. "She had no right. And then she tries to kill you! Even her own flesh and blood!"
Gabriel almost felt like laughing. He could feel something slipping, his sanity, himself, or the world and felt like letting go until Daniel's hand hit his shoulder.
"Gabe! I'm still here!"
Gabriel remembered how to breath.
"Yeah," he breathed softly. "Yeah, you are. Always have been. Just like always."
Daniel worried at his lip, and Gabriel remembered the last time he did that, when he had been debating telling Mom and Dad what he wanted to study in college. Not something practical for success like medicine or business, but so very Daniel. Daniel, who worried for hours over decisions and still ended up making snap decisions. He was making the same face now, the face of making a decision and acting upon it.
"I'm probably not her kid."
"Come again?"
"Remember when I fell out of that tree when we were four? You caught me and scrapped your elbows, but I wasn't hurt at all. That wasn't just because you cushioned my landing. Haven't you noticed that I never bleed?"
"Well, it's not like you get hurt that often, you were never as thickheaded as me..."
"No, Gabe, I never, ever bleed. As in, I don't have any blood."
All Gabriel could do was stare at Daniel blankly. "Nice joke, but now is so not the time."
"I'm being serious!" Daniel slammed a hand against Gabriel's car, setting off the alarm. "Sorry," he apologized quickly while Gabriel dug in his pocket for the key to turn it off.
A nurse called out to them, "Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, we're fine," Daniel returned.
"We should leave," Gabriel said, standing. He made it five miles before pulling over by slamming on the brakes and jerking the wheel to the side. The car bounced over the edge of the road and skirted the edge of a ditch.
"What were you even talking about. You don't have any blood?"
"Just what I said."
"Just what you said. What you said doesn't make any sense."
"Of course it does. I'm probably a changeling."
Gabriel stomped harder on the brake. His grip on the wheel tightened. "What? Like in your books?"
"What did you think got me so interested in mythology?"
"We've been together literally our entire lives!" Every game of make believe that Daniel could never get into; every video game fighting over who got to be the swordsman; every boring class they sat through making faces at each other. "And you didn't tell me?" Gabriel finally turned to Daniel. He was glaring at Gabriel.
"I didn't know myself until recently! Seeing that couple was the last piece of proof. You saw it, right? They don't look like me at all, and her reaction-" Daniel cut himself off.
"But how can you be sure?"
"Because!" Daniel burst out of the car, allowing the full roar of a truck passing to hit them.
"Wait, careful!" Gabriel shouted, stumbling out of the car after Daniel who was walking down the highway, head down. He squatted, then turned back to Gabriel. In his hand he held a shard of glass from some beer bottle thrown out aside on someone's drunken midnight drive.
Gabriel held up his hands. "What are you doing?"
Daniel replied, rolling his eyes. "Showing you my proof." He slashed the glass across his arm.
With a shout, Gabriel lunged forward and grabbed Daniel's arm. Another truck passed, making them sway on their feet. There was a cut, but no blood. Instead, clear liquid leaked from the wound.
"You have got to be kidding me."
"Does this look like a joke to you?"
"You just sliced your arm open, of course not! What even is that?"
"It's whatever passes for fairy blood. I don't know." Daniel wrenched his hand out of Gabriel's grip, holding it close to himself and looking away. For a minute, Gabriel could think of nothing to say.
"I know it's unbelievable," Daniel started. Gabriel but him off.
"Why fairies?"
"What?"
"Why fairies? How do you know you're not an alien or just have some kind of," he waved his hand around, "condition?"
Daniel laughed. At first it was a huff of disbelief, but then quickly grew until Daniel was bent double. Gabriel looked at him with affront, splaying his hands in a helpless manner. Another truck passed and honked at them, prompting the two to move away from the highway towards the woods bordering it.
"So? Fairies? Why?" Gabriel asked.
"That, well, let me show you this trick I figured out last week." Daniel beckoned and Gabriel followed him up to the treeline and a little ways in. When they reached an especially large tree, Daniel laid his hand on it.
"Are you going to, like, call some fairies or something?"
"No, I'm just getting an energy boost."
"You what." Even as he spoke, Daniel seemed to light up. The sound of rustling leaves came from above, but when Gabriel looked there was nothing there. There was no wind, either. Gabriel swallowed hard.
"Okay."
Jumping in surprise, Gabriel whirled back to Daniel. "Okay what?"
"I think I have enough to turn the, well," he blushed, voice falling to a mutter, "it's pretty strong since it's supposed to last a lifetime and all, but I think I have enough to turn of the glamour for a minute."
"The what?"
"Shut up." Daniel stripped off his shirt, and his face contorted into a look of intense concentration. Gabriel watched as, slowly, like peeling a stubborn sticker off a book, wings peeked over Daniel's shoulders, growing as they pulled away from his back and shooting out suddenly to their full length, some nine feet of gossamer dragonfly-like wings.
"There are different kinds. Of wings, I mean," Daniel said awkwardly, glancing over his own shoulder at them. They fluttered lightly, like shaking out numb fingers. Gabriel thought he might be crazy or there was a green tint to Daniel's skin.
"Is your skin green?" fell out of his mouth.
"Er, yeah. My eyes are, too."
"What are you talking about, they've always been- oh." Squinting at them, Gabriel could see they had gone from a gentle forest green to impossibly, human-eyes-could-never-be-that-bright bright green. Daniel's pupils were deep purple, too.
"Those are the most obvious physical changes. Obviously my whole biology is pretty different, but that's a bit harder to look at, so..." he trailed off.
Gabriel dropped into a squat, head hanging, so suddenly it made Daniel flinch.
"Gabe?" He leaned over, hesitant to see Gabriel's expression. "I'm really sorry, I-"
Just as suddenly, Gabriel threw a fistful of leaves in his face. "You have wings! You have wings and fairy magic or something and you never told me!"
"I know, I should have told you, I really am sorry!"
Gabriel surged back to his feet, capturing Daniel in a headlock and giving him a vicious noogie. Daniel yelped in pain, but also laughed.
"So you're a fairy." Gabriel pulled him upright again. "C'mon, Dan. I'm starving and you need to tell me if you can actually fly."
flying, life, hope + Hiccstrid
Fandom challenge: five sentences fic
Hiccup was at his best when he was flying. Astrid watched him when she could and knew. It gave her hope, the first time she saw him fly, clinging to his back, watching how he moved with a dragon as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He had his duties to the tribe, to the Dragon Academy, and one day, everyone said and she hoped, to her, but when he was flying… that was when he was most alive. Sometimes while flying Stormfly, she recognized the same goofy smile he wore spreading across her own face and understood why.