The Dragon Princess Will Stay Alive!

//One thousand nine hundred and sixty words, oof. This is a longer chapter. <3

The leaves had all turned a honeyed golden, orange, red, or purple, while piles of them littered the ground.

Despite the third urging on that walk that Sophia would get tired and should just wait in the cave, the little being was stubbornly gripping her sister's arm as they made their way up the hills and drops of the woods. Sophia's argument was that she didn't like being left alone in the cave. Sonata's argument was that she didn't like carrying her sister the entire way back. Still, it was probably better for Sophia to remain where her sister could see her for as much as possible. She didn't know what could wonder into the cave and bring harm to her when she wasn't gone. But despite that possibility, nothing has actually found its way in after those first rodents that came and left while no one else was there. Sonata liked to believe it had something to do with them living in it so long that her dragon aura had spread into the walls, marking it as her territory, and that that would scared off hostile intruders. But she was still a pretty small dragon, and she didn't know how much of a dangerous aura she could emit if she tried.

They were looking for berries again. Most of them were already gone, and most of what they found was a pitiful harvest of fruit almost rotting at the stem or partially picked away by birds, but it was still better than outright starvation. She tried to walk slower this time to compensate for Sophia's much smaller gait, and she was keeping up pretty well for how exhausted she usually was at this point.

Oftentimes they would pass by mushrooms on their walks, tiny white or spread out brown protrusions coming out from the mulch. Sonata would sometimes stop and study them. She knew some of them were edible and some were not, but there was no way for her to tell which was which and in the end she always gave in to the danger of the risk over the possibility of the reward. It was the same for berries she didn't recognize. She found tiny bushes here and there with fruits that looked like tiny strawberries, though, and that was the only time she dared try something like that.

It didn't taste like anything, but it didn't poison her either. Tasteless, tiny wild strawberries were now added to their limited list of food sources.

Bump.

Sonata felt a smaller head walk into her and bump against her from behind. She looked back and noticed the telltale signs of a Sophia almost tottering back and forth, her breaths showing exhaustion.

Sonata stopped. "You can take a break now," she offered, giving her sister the bowl of berries, still barely anything to call a meal. Sophia nodded, looking around for a place to sit and then walking up to a toppled over tree.

Sonata watched her until she was sure the tree wasn't going to roll down the hill...or something. Was she being paranoid?

"I'm going to keep looking around the area, okay Sophia?" Sophia turned around and up to look at her, but didn't say anything. "I'll go around and come back if I don't find anything."

Sophia looked at her longingly, but nodded. And Sonata left.

Sonata plucked a large fallen branch from it's sheath in the bushes, brushing it off and snapping it until she got something akin to a rustic spear. Now that Sophia didn't have to keep up with her, she could try to hunt something again. She didn't know if things would be any easier this way, but she really craved meat. She was a dragon, after all. And it wouldn't hurt to try out a new strategy.

Sonata surveyed her surroundings for signs of life. She thought she could hear birds chirping in the distance. Taking one last look at the place she left Sophia at, she hurried towards her prey.

...

Sonata was a little giddy as they made their way back to the cave. It wasn't like it was enough to make up for the fact that they weren't going to be able to have a full meal again, nor was she deluded that it would fill her or Sophia's stomachs entirely, but it was a start.

A dead rabbit was being swayed from side to side by her comically bloodstained hands, the bowl of berries in her other hand. It wasn't a large hare, but it had a substantial amount of meat to it. Meat! Sonata missed meat.

Sophia had been startled a little when she first saw the pitifully scruffed up, bloody corpse. Despite the initial jump and the alarmed expression that followed when she first saw the blood and the dead rabbit, though, Sophia didn't cry or make a fuss. At least she was more m.a.t.u.r.e than a six year old Sonata. But maybe it was just that she trusted Sonata enough that she didn't break down over something like this. Sonata's mouth twitched at the memory of a stricken Sophia with blood smeared over her clothes. Maybe it was that she'd already experienced scarier.

She mentally whispered a prayer to the dead rabbit that would be giving her sustenance as the two children walked the familiar path down to the place their mother had left them to wait at. The breeze cooed through the branches of the semi-bare trees. She didn't actually want to do it. Killing something brought a churning feeling to her core, an overwhelming sense of guilt for taking something she could never take back. She's murdered a living creature that was a breathing individual that felt pain and felt hunger and had memories like she did. But for now these were demoted to being but an afterthought. She'd learned long ago she couldn't survive without that necessary evil, and right now, uneasy as she was on the inside, it was something she needed to do to save herself from the pain and suffering a slow death would be.

Sorry little rabbit, but thank you for dying for the sake of my stomach.

The two of them arrived back to the cave in one piece, Sophia surprisingly having made not a sound the entire trip back. Sonata couldn't pet her head or ruffle her hair like she wanted to, though. Her hands were a bit...colorful at the moment.

Now it was a matter of getting the fur off. She was pretty sure she was supposed to get the fur off, but to do that would she need to take the skin with it? Sonata tried to find an easy way to peel it off like one would with a fruit, but animals weren't fruits and she found, much like with the bird that felt like so long ago, she was going to just have to wing it with the small blade they had.

She made another internal prayer that this thing was already completely dead and wouldn't feel anything of what was to come.

She could feel the familiar warmth of the breath of a much shorter child standing behind her. She turned back to Sophia, knife in hand. "...Are you sure you want to see this?" She asked, voice a little shaky.

Sophia looked around, getting the hint. "Can I eat the berries yet?" She asked, pointing to it.

It barely took any contemplation before Sonata hastily nodded. Sophia hurried away to the bowl.

Sonata looked down to the animal she'd placed on the stone. Here went nothing...

...

CRUNCH, CRUNCH

CHRUNCH

Sonata crunched at a remaining bone from their meal, slurping at the marrow inside. She found that she could break bones open quite easily with her sharp teeth. It was almost dark, but she didn't like making fires inside the cave until she really had to, or else the place got filled with smoke now that they'd moved themselves further in. So they were sitting outside, the messy remains of Sonata's attempts at cooking that hadn't already been eaten scattered about that same bowl that'd held berries not too long ago, now long gone.

Sophia...she wasn't sure what Sophia was doing. She was nearby wandering from place to place, squatting down to observe one thing one moment and then moving on to something else in the next. Sonata generalized it as she was playing, and it was fine so long as Sonata could still vaguely see her in the dimming light.

"Oooh."

It was a soft expression Sonata probably wouldn't have noticed if her ears weren't practically fine tuned to the sound of her sister's voice. Her face moved up to see where Sophia was looking. Sure enough, there was a cl.u.s.ter of tiny, twinkling lights in the distance. They looked pretty harmless. Sophia was bouncing up and down like she hadn't seemed tired enough to collapse any moment, a few minutes ago. She looked at Sonata for permission.

"Sure, you can go."

"He!" A small squeak of happiness Sonata didn't expect to hear hit her ears. Sophia got swept up in the moment so easily sometimes, but Sonata willingly let it be contagious. She was too cute. She climbed down from the rocks she was perched upon on the outside of the large rocky hill outside of the cave, following towards the place Sonata was practically running to.

"Hold on- Sophia" she called, forcing herself to pick up speed. Sophia only laughed teasingly as her b.a.r.e feet battered against the slightly damp forest floor, scattered in looming shadows from the trees. Sonata bit away at the final bits of the bone in her hands, spitting out the hard inedible parts and picking up speed.

Sophia was already standing there by the time she caught up, looking around, mesmerized by the hundreds of tiny fluttering orange-yellow orbs lighting up the forest, moving in procession along a weaving bath way across the woods. Hundreds of tiny, fluttering and glowing fairies illuminated the darkening, cold hues of the forest's trees' jutting b.a.r.e branches and overgrown, shadowed underbrush. Sophia grinned in dumb awe, the hundreds of little lights reflected as twinkles in her mesmerized gemlike eyes. Sonata, too, had to admit it was pretty amazing. The moving lights incited something primitive in her, though. Before she could really process what she was doing, she walked up to a group of the lights like a sneaking cat, jumped up, and tried to clap one of them between her cupped hands.

Sophia giggled.

Sonata looked silently down at her b.a.r.e hands, shadowed and illuminated by the dancing forms. She didn't come close to dating anything, but somehow that only incited the wriggling, internal ball of her mischief even more. She hurried over to another light, clapping tactlessly, pawing her hands across the body of the slithering snake of lights that moved through her like she was barely even there among the hundreds of tiny orbs. She found herself running in circles through the glowing lights, clapping her hands, a giggling Sophia joining in and running from place to place among the parading mass.

CL.A.P. Sophia's eyes went wide, and her face went pale. She brought her hands down to her eye level slowly, her hands still clasped shut in the cupping shape she'd clapped them into, a light she could have sworn she'd caught trapped airtight within. Slowly, slowly, she opened up her hands.

The familiar glowing light blessed her with it's presence, but much dimmer than it'd been before. Unexpected to her, a tiny winged lady with beautiful red hair was curled up between her hands, only about the distance from the tip of Sophia's small pointer finger to the first joint from the nail in height. The fairy was disoriented and too scared to find her footing among Sophia's fleshy palms, trembling as she looked up at the much larger figure. Sophia tried not to breathe. The fairy's translucent wings on her back looked so fragile that Sophia was sure they'd dissolve right off her finger like those of a fly if she even accidentally touched them. She'd knocked the minuscule person right out of the air, oops.

"Tiny lady," Sophia whispered softly, her eyes still aglow with amazement from wonder of the strange being within her hands.

Carefully, gently, she crouched down and held her arm out so the pixie could climb down into the grass. Sophia watched it safely descend into the blades of green that were like a forest for the tiny being she was seeing off, and she still watched for a little while longer to make sure she was gone.'