Work Text:
Peril wakes up to crickets chirping. No, cricket, singular, sitting on her sole windowsill. She paws quietly over to it, reaching her talons quickly, softly to brush it. She knows the resulting texture already, but she can’t help herself from trying again. Anything but ash this time, just for a second. It hops away before she can graze it. Her heart feels a little stab in it.
She turns to the doors, hearing slight gurgling sounds outside. Other dragons with big poking metal sticks. They’re like the cricket from before. They give her sharp pokes whenever she tries to leave, except when mommy… except when... Scarlet lets her. M-Scarlet always looks so disgusted with her when she calls her that. It makes Peril sick. She stopped saying the word altogether.
The metal melts and the wood catches on fire when she touches them. Scarlet looked at Peril like she was rotten meat when she did that, telling her how useless she was because she had to fix it. Then Scarlet told her she was the only one who could put up with this. Scarlet loves her. She used her wings to fly up just enough to tap the door open on the metal bit. It smokes just a little, and she slips through the opening.
Peril flies up, up onto the roof, curling around the spikes, sighing. She looks up at the moon, perfect orb it is. Then she scans the stars. They’re quiet, the night is quiet, and the kingdom is quiet.
She glided down until she saw the dining room. Burn comes here sometimes. She looks at the empty wooden table. She can’t touch this either. She peers into the kitchen, snagging a piece of chicken off the counter and swallowing it. It’s been left out for a while, evidently, but the fire burns it until she can’t taste the germs swimming in her mouth. She never quite eats enough during the day, maybe because the dragons Scarlet assigns are always so far away from her, using the sticks and poking food close to her then leaving as soon as possible.
She walks down the halls. She remembers dragons whispering about her, calling her a monster, evil. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care.
There’s an open door, so she looks through it. This is where Scarlet first called her her champion. She was so happy, she thinks. Or it made Scarlet happy. She can’t tell the two apart. Peril yawns, knowing she has to go back now. If she’s tired, she won’t be good in the arena. Scarlet wouldn’t be happy about that.
Back in her room, with a fast shut of the door, she looks outside again. She thinks about jumping out the window, and then spreading her wings out at the last moment. Her mind drones on about what Scarlet would think about her tomorrow, hopefully, good things. She drifts into dreams, where she doesn’t have firescales and can hug Scarlet, and the dragons in the hall wave at her like Osprey sometimes does. She is content, living like this.