Cloud Nine- Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Awakening

*

As soon as she could,  Z took a candle and went to visit Moonscar, who, according to 'Ling rumor, hadn't so much as stirred since Brutus had knocked her out three days ago. The white-furred dragonling took every precaution to avoid adult observation as she didn't want to be sidetracked. It was common knowledge amongst 'Lings that adults were notorious for seeking out creatures already preoccupied with their own agendas to complete chores.

She reached the infirmary without mishap. Inside, the still form of Moonscar was huddled under the blankets of her bed, breathing deeply. Z approached quietly. She put a paw on Moonscar's shoulder and shook gently, but the black dragonling didn't so much as twitch. Z sighed and laid her candle down on the bedside table, then sat down on the end of the bed.

" Not like I expected that to work," she muttered to herself. Then, looking at Moonscar, she said: " I wish you could be awake so you could hear all the crazy stuff everyone's saying about the fight. Some people are saying you're a psychopath. Not any of our friends, mind you."

Moonscar said nothing. Z continued as if the black dragonling were awake.

" Oh, you missed it! Everyone made fun of Brent for getting beat up by a girl when he came back with stitches two days ago- you gave him six of them. They had to keep him and Chester away from each other, because they kept fighting. But, um... yeah. What else? Oh, yeah, Lemen came and talked to us, y'know, about the usual 'don't break the rules, you crazy kids'."

She sat in silence for a minute. Then she drew a breath.

" Well hey, you better wake up before I go out of my right mind with boredom. Brent and Chester are both being cooped up in their room, and no one else is any fun. So wake up soon, okay?"

She cuffed Moonscar gently on the snout. Moonscar's nose twitched involuntarily, and Z sniffed affectionately. Then she rose. Taking up her candle, she made her exit, the shadow of her four-armed form growing smaller and smaller on the wall as she made her way back into the stairwell.
    
*

Moonscar could only see mist and vague shapes. Her body felt kind of odd- like she was floating in a cool pond with only her head peering over the waterline. Her eyes, strangely enough, refused to adjust in the dim light, so she was forced to squint in her best attempt at clarifying the picture. It was an extremely annoying method, and didn't work quite as well as she had hoped it would, but it was better than nothing.

She watched the shapes moving around before her, dim outlines of creatures and beings that defied classification. Their features and fine points refused to come into focus, and the longer she remained in this odd position, the more interested the creatures seemed to be with her.

Some of the shapes drew closer, in no way affecting their outward clarity. Moonscar concentrated, trying to make out even the slightest features so she could identify them, but her vision remained stubbornly horrible. How infuriating! She suffered a pang of fright. Had she been permanently disabled from being knocked out?

Perhaps as compensation for her blurry vision, Moonscar's hearing -which up 'till now had been non-existant- sharpened. She could hear voices, as quiet as faraway murmurs, all around her. She focused on one pair that seemed to be conversing, and in due time they became clear enough to make out.

It turned out that clarity of sound didn't make a difference when it came to comprehension. She couldn't understand the conversation, not because she couldn't hear them properly, but because the light-and-dark-skinned creatures were speaking in a different language.

She listened for a while, confused and yet rapt with attention, but after fifteen minutes she became bored and cast around for another pair. She had similar results with another conversation between a group of younger creatures. Though different, the creature's alien language was somewhat similar to her own in obscure ways, and she was able to pick up on a scattering of words. Even this was not enough to justify following the topic, though, so she switched groups again.

She did this for several minutes, resulting in the same end for every conversation she tried to listen in on. Had she been completely knocked silly, so much so that none of her senses -including rationale, it seemed!- were able to function? What a scary thought! Would she recover from it? Suppose she never did? What would Lemen think, and all the other 'Lings?

Would she be granted fighting rights, after all?

*

Chester's day was going badly.

With an injured arm, he felt useless. He couldn't play as well as the other 'Lings could. Though some half-heartedly suggested holding a two-legged race or playing Momma Says -a game where you had to follow " Momma's" instructions, but only when she specified they were from "Momma"- Chester declined, leaving them to play other, more interesting games. Later he was able to shake off his shame with the thought that perhaps he needed a little time alone to feel sorry for himself anyway.
   
So he settled for wandering the gardens. It was growing increasingly humid outside, and clouds blotted out the sun in irregular patches, making it cold, but being uncomfortable outside was better than getting caught moping about and assigned chores. He had made that mistake earlier, thinking himself well out of consideration for cleaning because of his injury, but apparently even broken limbs weren't enough to solicit  pity from those hard-hearted adults!

He limped around the plots of trees and ambled by the lake, thinking about life and how suckish it was presently in discomfort, his cast itching terribly because of the humidity. He plucked apples and oranges from trees as he walked, but they were too bitter, and this additional inkblot in the journal titled " Chester's Life" added to his misery.

Then he thought of his and Z's and Moonscar's pitaya tree. Thinking of the succulent snack, he hauled himself up the hill where the prickly bush grew with a burst of renewed enthusiasm. He was surprised however when he mounted the knoll and found Z sitting beneath the bush, already halfway through a fruit of her own.

She glanced up at him, carelessly propped ears suggesting boredom. " Hey Chester. Your day as bad as mine yet?"

"Probably," he answered in a blunt tone. He didn't quite feel like company, even if it was with Z.

She didn't seem to catch wind of his reluctance, or if she did, she didn't seem to care. " Well, pick a fruit, pop a squat, and let's brood together." She patted the ground beside her absently.

Chester plucked a pitaya and sat. He peeled the skin away on one part of the fruit with an index claw and began eating.

" Why's your day so bad, then?" Z asked, considerably more chatty than moody Chester.

Chester wrinkled his snout. " Oh, no reason."

" Really. So you're just normally this moody. Everyday?"

Her scathing sarcasm would normally make him flinch, but Chester's current animosity towards life in general made him impervious. " Sure."

" And you're just gonna stay a sour-puss for the rest of your life, then, huh?"

" I guess."

" Hm." Z didn't seem too convinced or impressed by Chester's poker face, but she decided not to comment further.

An awkward lull in the failing conversation ensued. The pause made Chester increasingly uncomfortable, and despite his anti-social mood he soon found himself asking:" So why are you feeling down, then?"

Z heaved a sigh. " Oh, I'm just bored and lonely. Moonie hasn't woken up yet, so-"

" -Really?" Chester squeaked, genuine awe leaking into his previously monotone voice. " She's still asleep? Even after a week?"

" Yeah."

" Do they know why?"

" Nah. The doctor's mystified. No one really knows why she's still comatose."

Chester frowned. " She'll wake up, won't she?"

" Well, she ain't completely dead, so that's gotta be a good sign. The doctor says she'd better get a move on, though, because she can't eat when she's like this. They've been pouring small sips of fruit juice down her throat, but he says it's a very poor substitute for the real thing. Even if she could wake up months down the line, she'd probably die of starvation before then."

They fell silent again, the weight of the grim news pressing on their hearts. Chester liked Moonscar. She'd always been a friend, and he felt terrible that it had been him who had caused all of this. What a way to go, to starve to death and not be able to do anything about it! And all because he couldn't defend his own arse in a simple sparring match.

He folded his knees under him and rested his blocky, dandelion-toned head on their broad peaks. Goodness, this was just as scary as what had happened a few years ago, before they'd even known the small black dragon. A game of indoor tag during a rainy day had gone dangerously awry when Z had been trying to get away from the It, and had accidentally slipped on a wet patch and fallen down two flights of stairs. She too had been in this kind of sleeping predicament once. The likeness was almost uncanny!

Then, after a moment of thought, Chester blinked and looked up at Z. " You don't think... that maybe she's got what you got?"

Z turned her head to face her orange counterpart, chewing thoughtfully on her bite of pitaya. " You mean, Walking Sickness?"

" Sure. Remember when you fell down the stairs and fell asleep like Moonie did? You didn't wake up... but then I went to see you and accidentally knocked that tray off your table."

" The noise scared me awake. I thought we went over this already."

" Yeah, but don't you think it might work on Moonie, too?"

Comprehension dawned in Z's eyes, and new hope made her heart pound in her chest. As if a bolt of electricity had jolted her into action, the desolian stood and caught Chester by the arm, hauling him to his feet. He uttered a startled yell.

  " Great idea, Chester! It can't hurt to try! C'mon, we gotta go try it!"

Filled with renewed enthusiasm, the dragonlings forgot their pitayas and made haste for the infirmary, the exuberant Z practically hauling along a still-surprised Chester.

*

Moonscar was rapidly getting bored. In fact, she was already bored out of her skull, vertebrae, and ribs, and thoroughly convinced that she had only a few more other extremities to be bored out of before she was bored right out of her mind. If the still-blurry shapes would actually make sense once in a while, she might have something to do; but no, the universe didn't seem to love her enough, and so she sat in boredom, lonely and cold.

She had tried moving, discovering she could propel herself forward in the water-like substance. The scene had abruptly changed, as far as she could tell- at least, the shape-strangers and the backgrounds shifted. The confusing language continued throughout, though, so even this new discovery of propulsion (which felt strangely like swimming) didn't waive her boredom much.

Giving up entirely on making heads or tails of the shape-creatures' dialect, Moonscar settled on swimming around. Heck, if she was going to stay in Limbo or wherever under the sun this was, she may as well keep up her strength.

Time passed. She didn't know how much. Before long, she began to question how she would sustain herself when there seemed to be no land or food or water to be found. However, though it seemed like she had been suspended in stasis for an eternity, she didn't feel hungry, or even thirsty. Perhaps there were no basic urges here in... wherever this was.

An ugly thought suddenly gripped her with terrifying force, freezing her solid with its overwhelming logic. What if she was dead?

*

Z and Chester stood around Moonscar's bed, one on either side. They stared pensively at the black dragonling with the red moon-shaped scar before hefting pairs of heavy copper pans, nicked from the downstairs kitchen.

" Ready?" Z asked. Chester nodded solemnly.

Stuffing scraps of linen into her sensitive ears and folding the extremities back against her neck, Z gave her yellow friend a good-to-go blink and they brought their pots together with a deafening crash.

*

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Moonscar woke with a start, heart fluttering. Her crest flew erect, and her pupils contracted, exuding an aura of intense fright. Her claws punctured the bed sheets and the straw mattress beneath them, and her tail was stiffer than it had ever been in her life. The sky was falling! The world was ending! Thunder was echoing all around her, a serenade of death as the earth, drenched in saliva-like magma, opened its maw to swallow her whole!

Gah! She could feel the lava dripping down her face, running into her eyes. Moonscar threw a paw to her snout to protect herself...

And discovered that the "magma" was only sweat. She was alive, and the world wasn't ending after all!

" Sweet," Z said, grinning widely. " I was half-expecting that to fail."

" What the heck was that about?" Moonscar asked, voice weak and shrill. Adrenaline still coursed through her tough veins and she could feel her heart pounding away, as if trying to flee from the objects that had produced the frightening sound. Her muscles felt tired, and her head began to hurt. " Ow!" She reached up to rub her temples and found a linen wrapping around her head.

" We woke you up, that's what that was about," Chester told her. " You've been asleep for a week, y'know."

Moonscar stared disbelievingly. " Really?" At that moment, her stomach rumbled and growled terribly, confirming his statement.

Z nodded, removing the makeshift earplugs from her bat-like ears. " Oh yeah. I was starting to get bored of waiting for you to wake up, so we got some pots and scared you awake. Glad it worked, too. We're just two days away from the big ocean trip!"

" Ocean tri-?"

A commotion beyond the door-frame cut her off mid-sentence, making all three dragonlings start. In a flurry of dust, gravel, and sparks, Lemen slid into view, wrinkled face wrought with panic. Eyes wide and staring, he grasped each end of the door for support, his robe in disarray. Behind him, an assortment of dragons hovered in the background, quizzical looks on their faces.

" I heard a crash!" Lemen cried. " Are you alright?"

His eyes flicked nervously from dragonling to dragonling, and he gasped as he beheld the now-concious Moonscar huddled against the headboard. In an instant, his fear melted away and he was by her side, grasping her in a tight embrace.  

" Moonscar!" he breathed. Tears began to burn at the corners of his eyes, but he checked himself. " You're awake, my darling!"

" Owowow," Moonscar groaned. Lemen could be strong when he wanted to be! " Lemen, I can't breathe!"

He hastily released his death-grip on the small dragonling, settling down onto the edge of the bed with a small piffing noise. He ran his rough hand over her crest, flattening it, and traced her jaw line, tilting her head up with a light touch of his claw under her chin. " Did you just wake up, darling? How do you feel?"

Z answered for her. " She woke up just a minute ago."

Moonscar rolled her chin away from Lemen's claw. " I feel fine, but my head hurts a little." She lightly grazed the spot above her eye where Brutus had clubbed her.

Lemen grinned, his wrinkles seeming even more pronounced as the folds of skin and scales folded over on themselves. " I am so glad you're feeling better. But," -and here his expression hardened a bit- " What was all that noise? I thought something had fallen. It sounded like cymbals!"

" Pots, actually," Z said matter-of-factly. " Chester and I thought we could wake her up with a loud noise."

Lemen's brow furrowed intensely and one of his eye-ridges rose. " How on Earth did you come to that conclusion?"

" Does it matter? It worked!" Chester stated, arms folded across his flat, flaking chest.

*