The Dragon Princess Will Stay Alive!

//Finals week is over, and I'm back from my eighteen hour trip of planes and airports back home. It's stressful, toiling, and frustrating at times, but I miss my school already. Please enjoy another chapter of our main characters being cute <3

Sonata led Sophia by the sleeve of her brown dress as they made their way into the forest, wary of the thought of losing the little one in the dim twilight and uneven terrain. The faint patter of water could be heard from somewhere beyond the trees, their destination not too far away. Sophia would often look up and peer around at her strange surroundings as she walked, occasionally tugging at her sister's arm to slow down. Sonata's eyes barely left the forest floor. If she had the brainpower to wonder, she'd much rather use it getting out of the mud and sticky pine needles.

Sophia tugged back on her arm for about the third time. "Sis, slow down! My feet hurt!" She w.h.i.n.ed, her voice still a little horse from sleepiness.

Sonata stopped immediately, turning around in almost paranoid worry. "Are you hurt? Can you show me?"

Sophia shook her head, her small brows furrowed. "It's sore."

Sonata readjusted the bundle of clothes in her arm. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"It didn't hurt earlier." The little one pouted, looking at Sonata as though she were the a.d.u.l.t being pestered in this situation.

Sonata looked from her sister and back towards the trees. It was far either way, if they went back or kept going it was still quite a bit of walking. She huffed. They'd done quite a lot of walking yesterday, though Sonata herself was used to it. If she'd known this earlier, she could have left Sophia in the cave. "Can you keep going? We can take a rest at the brook."

Sophia looked down at her legs, internally debating that question now that the idea that her soreness could be that bad had been brought up. She slowly shrugged.

Sonata frowned, tilting her head. "If we go any slower than this, it's going to take forever to get anywhere."

She took the jug out of Sophia's hands, setting it on the forest floor with the clothes on top of it. She reached out her hands. "Come, you can ride on my back."

Sophia hesitated. "Are you sure?"

"I'd rather this than walk at your snail's speed, you silly drake."

Sophia frowned, though she walked up to her sister and climbed on when Sonata bent down for her, wrapping her arms around Sonata'a neck for support. "You're the drake."

"You're the drake."

"You're the drake." Sonata had picked up their stuff and begun walking, Sophia tightly flinging to her back.

"No you." She resisted.

Sonata smirked. "Only a drake would be the size of a lizard by nature."

Sophia scrunched her nose. "You're mean."

"And you're heavy."

"I-" Sophia grew a little fl.u.s.tered. "You're kidding."

Sonata smirked.

Sophia tapped at her shoulder continuously. "Sis? Sis, you were kidding, right?"

It was entertaining to watch her freak out about nothing. Sophia looked worriedly over her body, particularly at her stomach and t.h.i.g.hs, where there was still the slightest bit of baby fat in her humanoid form that hadn't gone away. "Am I chubby?" She was murmuring to herself.

If not slightly concerning, it was cute. "You're fine," Sonata finally assured her. "But it would be easier for me if you just used gravity manipulation."

Sophia was understandably confused.

Sonata mildly uno reversed her. "You do it when you take your dragon form. You become much lighter."

"I do..? ...But smaller things are supposed to be lighter?" Sophia asked.

Sonata didn't think she'd be able to grasp the concept of mass if she explained it. Even she didn't really get it. It was only something she felt, and something that made sense. "Just try. You don't have anything better to do while I'm walking, anyways."

Sophia rested her forehead against her sister's shoulder, concentrating to try and make herself lighter. Before she knew it, her head was dizzy and she was queasy from concentrating so hard, and she gave up in way of just glancing up at the trees and the shrubbery around them. Every so often she hear something move, and she would stare with wide eyes in hopes of catching the things that hid in the underbrush.

RUSTLE

Sophia's head flicked to the right. "A cat!"

"A cat?" Sonata turned in confusion to where her sister was facing in time to see a small rabbit dash across her sight. Her walking slowed to a stop to see more, but the rabbit didn't show itself again. "That's not a cat, Sophia. It's a rabbit."

"Rabitt!" Sophia echoes excitedly, bouncing up and down. Another rustle in the woods, and this time it was Sonata who spun around to see it.

"Another one!" Sophia squeaked.

"Shh! You'll scare them!"

"Oh-" Sophia buried her mouth against her sister's shoulder.

Sonata slowly started to walk again, soundless as she could be.

CRACK

They froze, the blur of a small brown creature in the distance, munching a white clover in the grass.

Slowly, Sonata set her sister and their things down. A mischievous grin was on Sophia's cheeks. They met eyes.

Three, she jestured. Three, two, one.

"Aaaaaaaa!" They bound across the forest after the rabbit, scaring a few out of hiding in the process. It was a wild rabbit chase as the two ran one way and then another, nearly tripping over roots and leaping recklessly from one dirt hill to the next to try and catch the agile creatures. There was one rabbit, and then five, and then three that came and went from view. One was pure white with specks of black, another was a more beige color, and then there was the brown one from before and some rabbits with variants of the other colors. Both children were too wrapped up in the rush of the chase to realize how exhausted they were until all the rabbits were well out of their sight and thoroughly escaped, and Sonata let herself drop to the grass at the edge of a steep incline, catching her breath and huffing and weakly laughing as Sophia wandered up to her and slowly sat down, her body shaky and stiff in the last moments before exhastion would give way completely.

Sonata turned her head up from the grass, still gasping for air. "That...that was fun."

Sophia smiled weakly, her cheeks pink from exertion and her eyes drippy from tiredness. She swallowed, then nodded her tiny head. Some of her ringlets had tangled up while flipped over from running, and nearly stood straight up from her oblivious form. Sonata chuckled into her hand, and quickly brushed it back from with her fingers.

She turned herself over on the ground so she could breathe easier, and noticed the sky above, exposed by the absence of trees around this upper segment of land, in what appeared to be, from her awkward viewpoint on the ground, a small peak poking up above a cliff. The trees bordered the sky like a delicate frame, and for the first time in a while she felt the warm embrace of the golden-orange rays of light on her scales. It was vast and colorful, open and freeing. Her eyes wandered up and around the sky she could barely see from their low vantage point at the front of the cave, the tethering disk of the sun and the colorful brushstrokes of blue, pink, orange, and yellow on the clouds.

"That one looks like a baby goat, a kid." Sonata pointed.

Sophia strained to try and see it, but instead her eyes settled upon a cloud that looked like something else. "I see a pair of shoes."

"Where?"

Sophia pointed.

"...I see a castle.." Sonata's eyes wandered, "it all just looks like a giant city."

"...That one looks like a dragon, though."

A lot of them looked like dragons. She could vaguely make out heads, wings curled up, bodies curled up or soaring through the sky. They didn't look like any dragons in particular, their features weren't that decipherable. In the end they were just clouds.

>Do not stray far from the cave.

>Don't let anyone see you, let alone on your dragon form.

A chill ran down Sonata's shoulders as those words came back to her. She wondered if people were searching for them, dangerous people. Suddenly, that open sky left them exposed. Sonata stood herself up, brushing off her knees and her skirt and taking her little sister's hand.

"We should go."

She helped a slightly confused, understandably worried Sophia up, carrying her back to the partial seclusion of the shadowy forest and to their things.