[Wings of Fire] Talons stained with gold

Creatures adapt to their environments, exploiting all of Mother Nature's gifts for their own advantage. One of the most common exploitations, being found on both predator and prey, was the art of camouflage.  For the weak, it was armor, one of the few gifts of life; a gift that would be far more generous had life not handed the weak such a shit hand, or if life had not also provided the strong with the very same advantage. For the strong, camouflage was just another tool in their arsenal of weapons. If talons, poisons, size, or even flight weren't enough, there was always camouflage.

With every scale, pelt, or feather, another mass of beast is bound to disappear into its environment or risk dying. It was hard to say for sure what the point of camouflage was. Maybe, camouflage was just an excuse to weed out the unexceptional middle children between the likes of predator and prey.

For Puffin, all his camouflage had ever done was get him ignored, glazed over, forgotten, dismissed, anything but recognized. Being a point of interest in any person's mind was all but completely foreign to him. Life was all about letting the snowstorms pass and relishing in the quiet nights that covered your soul in downy quilts. Disappearing into the snow was almost the intention, standing out would only disturb the peace. It was an unshakeable truth, a law of nature almost, that one had to blend in to live the best parts of life. Oddities often caused weakness, and with weakness came dependence, and dependence left you with nothing but a slow rot.

It was a truth that faltered the same as any other, unraveled at the seams slowly at first, then all at once, all because of one small contradiction.  Puffin's contradiction came in the form of unabashed exuberance, adorned with glittering trinkets. The well-kept secret of the icewing queen, with blush-tinted scales and perfectly spiked fur that looked like porcupine quills dipped in twilight pink skies. He was one of the few things that stood out in the icewing kingdom, and yet, he was kept secret, buried under years of seclusion and selective candor. He was the treasure, yet somehow, the world lost his map.  

Puffin took pride in his knowledge of such a secret beauty, after all, it was the only gift he was ever given for blending in. Horizon could visit him whenever and tell him things because someone like Puffin would never be suspected of knowing something so important. The very nature of their relationship was a promise to secrecy, trust that Horizon had placed in Puffin, and trust Puffin would be sure to uphold.

Sometimes, he did wonder what he could have done to earn the hidden prince's secret, but he never could work up the courage to ask. Running through alternate scenarios in his mind didn't seem to stir up much more bravery, so patience was the excuse Puffin had settled on. Waiting until his secluded friend could experience the world before asking him to reflect on his trust in others felt like the right call. If someone had asked Puffin to evaluate the only relationship he'd ever had, and maybe have the realization that entrusting everything to some blue-white phantom with a knack for depressing other dragons might not be the wisest idea, then Puffin would probably find himself isolated from that person.

In the end, Puffin did decide to ask one thing. It was something he had thought up in the heat of the moment, an idea that struck him like lighting. Puffin and Horizon had already become closer than the average companions, Horizon had even expressed times when he wished he could feel safe even touching another dragon. Most subtleties went under Puffin's nose but *this* was not one of them. Perhaps a storm was brewing between the two, and they could flourish into a thunderous relationship together. Maybe even find love in one another?

Love was always such a strange concept to Puffin. He wasn't even sure what it felt like. There were different kinds of love, according to what some of his elders told him, but specifics varied so much from person to person that the finer concepts simply dissolved in his mind. Perhaps the pull he felt was love, and if so, wouldn't that be worth asking for?

The sun crept down into the distant snowy hills, beginning to tuck itself in so that Puffin and Horizon could sit in another quiet snowfall together. Puffin had expected Horizon to be arriving soon, he was usually late for their meetings, always getting caught up in another unbelievable story. The wait was always worth it though, Puffin was always happy being able to get away into Horizon's clashing, color-filled land.