The Dragon Princess Will Stay Alive!

//Hey guys, double upload today because I felt motivated. Sophia can be such a doll when she's not a wild chicken set free range. Sonata's cute too though. <3

Sophia held a large wooden bowl in her arms, following close behind her sister as they wandered through the spotches of dark shadows and blinking light the trees cast upon the ground of the forest. Every so often Sophia would slow down not to trip over a hill or protruding rock, but she did a pretty good job of keeping the small blackberries inside the container and not spilling them to the floor, considering her age. Every so often they would find a bushel and pluck it clean, but there were only a few berries that were just ready to eat. Most of them were mere cl.u.s.ters of seeds, overripe and decomposing at the stem, or stiff raw. Sonata hadn't found much of anything else. It would be nice if they could find an apple tree, or bread, yes, it would be nice if bread grew on trees, but, alas, blackberries would have to make do.

Chirp chirp chirp.

"Look sis, a blue bird!"

No matter where you went, there were birds, but there were a lot more different kinds of birds here then there were in Sonata's home. There were birds of brighter colors, and always chirping. Their throaty singing could be heard wherever she went, through they kept their distance.

"Here, bring the bowl." Sonata called, spotting some more berries. This time it was just a measly four. The rest were half pecked off the stems, probably by birds.

"Can I eat them now?" Sophia asked.

"Can you wait a bit longer?" Sonata slid down a steeper hill, searching. Sophia stood waiting at the top. "I thought you wanted to act like a proper princess? A proper princess sits peacefully to eat her snacks."

Sophia pouted, looking down at the bowl. But she wordlessly agreed.

Sonata wrestled her way back up the slope with the slippery, dry dirt. When she extended her arm, she dropped six more berries into the bowl, two of them particularly juicy looking. Sophia began fidgeting with her legs in anxiousness. Sonata kept walking again. "Patience. They'll taste a lot better when you're sitting somewhere nice to eat."

"...I think they'd taste a lot better now."

Sonata looked questionably back at Sophia. Sophia looked back pretty confidently.

"If you're that confident, you can have a few right now."

Sophia's walking slowed down as she considered that.

"...But then those berries will go from your share later."

Sophia frowned again, staring down at the bowl and no longer walking. "I'll..have one?" She asked.

Sonata shrugged.

Sophia's anxiety reached new levels. She didn't want to make this decision right now. "I'll wait." She announced, and caught up to her sister.

Sonata stifled a snort.

As they kept walking, Sophia felt the loss of her decision sink in.

The bowl was slowly but surely filling up. Sonata patted her head. "A couple more, just a couple more and we'll be done."

Sophia combination smile-frowned.

Sonata didn't hold in this second chortle.

Before long, they'd filled up the container and found an open field on the edge of a slight inline, just large enough for four or five children Sonata's size to lie side by side with their arms and legs sprawled out. There were a couple of white dandelions among the weeds, like little wizard's orbs of white. Both of them pretty full of berries, Sonata plucked a dandelion and bright it up to her face, twinkling it gently in her hands.

"You know, you can make a wish on these. People say if you blow all the feathers away in one blow, it might come true. I don't know how many you need to blow, though."

Sophia held her hands out without hesitating. "I wanna make a wish." Sonata handed her the dandelion.

Sophia squeezed her eyes shut. "I hope to wake up and have wings so I can fly like a bird...blue wings." She added.

Sonata grinned onwards as Sophia took a deep breath and tried to blow all of the petals off in a single huff, failing to more than graze a couple at the side. She tried again, but either her breaths were really weak, or she had zero ability to aim.

"Do you want to try again? I don't think anything after that first blow is going to count."

Sophia frowned down at her dandelion, then shook her head. "I only wanted to try," she admitted.

Sonata looked up at a bird that had perched on a branch not too far away, looking wearily at them. "You want to fly?"

Sophia looked at Sonata and nodded. "It would be faster than running." Sophia laid her head down, stretching out her arms. "And I could go waay up high." Sophia smiled faintly. "It would be so pretty."

Sonata looked up at the sky. If she could fly, could she see her home from there? She could imagine the sensation of wind bearing against her scales. It sounded freeing.

Sonata stood up. She pulled the sleeves of one arm back as much as she could, and extended her arm outwards. She concentrated on it, Sophia watching as her scales became more visible and jutted outwards, except she couldn't keep them thin while making them grow outwards enough to make feathers, and she ended up with something akin to spikes jutting out from her arm. Sonata tried to concentrate harder, putting more force into separating the layers of her scales and condemning them down and spreading them out like feathers, all the while pushing them to grow outwards, like the wings of a bird. The colors became denser, hardened like metallic rocks and then ripples through to be so transparent the red veins were visible, and then they frayed like long nails tearing apart and the strands of skin that came off from the corners of nails and their cuticles. She was brought to a sudden stop when blood suddenly started to run down from the edges of her scales and where they judged out from her arm though. She quickly backtracked to getting them back to normal.

Sophia squeaked.

"It's okay—I'm okay!" Sonata quickly added in, squeezing her arm as it reformed to a humanoid one to stop the blood and, mostly, to hide the blood as Sophia watched on in worry. "I just-messed up.." she tried to reason. Soon enough, her arm was back to a normal arm covered with pointy scales partially more noticeable than they'd been before. She wiped the blood off on her dress.

Sophia stared silently.

Sonata smiled softly. "You make feathers out of your scales so easily when you take otherndragon form."

Sophia thought about that, then smirked softly. "I'm good at that?"

"Yeah, you are."