Angelica

"And she smells like lemongrass and sleep
She tastes like apple juice and peach
Oh, you would find her in a Polaroid picture
And she...
Means everything to me

Oh, oh
I'd never tell
No, I'd never say a word
And oh, it aches
But it feels oddly good to hurt"

-"She" by dodie

Angelica is, to put it simply, a shuddering wreck of a dragon, shivering and trapped in a desolate life shaped by things beyond her control. Before her life was stolen from her, Angelica was a dainty flower, like the very plant she was named for, sweet and gentle and polite. Plants were what she lived for, and before she married and became a housewife she worked as an apothecary, selling everything from poisons to oils to healing poultices. It's more than likely she sold the very poisons that criminals used to kill, but she doesn't like to think about this. 

She married into wealth, born in near poverty to a former field medic and a father who succumbed to illness shortly after her hatching. Almost foreshadowing her husband's death. Her mother, at the edge of death, urged her daughter to marry rich - she was beautiful and meek, a poised ice fairy, she had said, and could easily catch the eye of any socialite - and so she met Frostbite. At first Angelica wasn't quite sure of Frostbite - he seemed arrogant and cold, only looking out for himself, but they grew closer. Their wedding was small, and so were their lives, until Angelica fell pregnant with their first clutch. Frostbite was ecstatic; he had met many girls, but he had never had a dragonet with any of them. She eventually laid their eggs, but it was difficult for her, and as a result one of the eggs was a dud, but the other one was still alive. All was perfect from then on.

That is, until the infamous Coronation. The role of IceWing queen had been long empty, the late Queen Skua having been murdered by the Talons a year before, and the IceWing monarch had been replaced by her council. The council was weak and failed to serve the people properly. But the Talons took matters into their own hands. Their leader, Lady J, and her dearest companion, an unnamed SkyWing-IceWing hybrid, blocked off the throne room, summoning all IceWings in the palace to watch their beautiful ceremony. Many things happened on that day. Lady J had garnered control over the IceWings, crowning the long-lost Princess Thistle, her puppet, as the IceWing queen, a group of rogue IceWings investigating Lady J's doings were exiled, and Frostbite was sentenced to execution. In the midst of the clamor, he had challenged Lady J and was silenced by her ladyship. And therefore, he was executed. An event that shook Angelica to her very core. Ptarmigan hatched on the very day of the coronation, shortly before Frostbite was sentenced. He had never been given the opportunity to meet her.

to be continued