Featherflit’s outstretched claws closed on the dragonfruit. The squishy flesh gave beneath her talons, and she sucked in a breath. It was perfectly ripe. Saliva flooded her mouth as she looked at the pink and green rind, and her pale tongue touched the outside of her beak just once. Once she plucked it, there was no going back. She narrowed her eyes for a moment in thought, then shut her eyes and huffed air out through her nostrils. No. There was no way she was giving up now. She needed this dragonfruit. Her artistic career — no, her very self-respect — depended on it. She had come too far, invested too much, to turn back now. And she couldn’t wait any longer; she was all out of food. It was now or never.

Keeping one clawed hand on the fruit, Featherflit widened her stance. She bunched her hind legs and tensed her hooves so she would be ready to leap. She glanced up at the sky; it was a muted purple-blue today, with a few clouds scudding across the distant horizon. Clear weather. No wind to interfere with her flight. She spread her creamy-white wings as wide and as high as she could, all her power focused in her shoulder blades. She was as ready as she’d ever be. Time to pull the plug.

In one fast motion, Featherflit snatched the dragonfruit from its stalk. She shoved down as hard as she could with her hind legs, propelling herself into the air, and at the same moment she snapped her wings down. She was up! She beat her wings frantically, trying to push herself away from the earth beneath her as quickly as she could.

For a moment it seemed that everything was going well, that nopony had noticed. The dragonfruit was safe in her claws, she was gaining altitude rapidly — might she actually get away with this?
A tremor ran across the ground where Featherflit had stood a heartbeat before. The soil split and the earth groaned.

Featherflit was high enough now to see the whole island beneath her; not a large island, but grassy and round, with boulders scattered on the turf and a profusion of dragonfruit trees spreading their feathery fronds everywhere she looked. But the island was shaking, and the waves were growing in size. The water to the north of the island heaved and then a huge head smashed through the surface. The creature blinked its small black eyes for half a second. Then that monstrous head tipped back, its blunt muzzle was cracked almost in two by its gaping jaws, and it began to bellow.

Featherflit flinched at the sound and began to flap faster. “Oh, horseapples.”

The screaming roar of the monster below nearly knocked her sideways with its force, but worse still was the reaction it produced on the island. The trees below began to shiver. Featherflit bit her lower beak and flapped with all her might. One glance down showed her all she needed to know. Those graceful palm-like fronds were unfolding to reveal the scaly little beasts sleeping beneath, hideous dragon-insect hybrids with sharp little teeth that Featherflit knew were much stronger than thin hippogriff hide. As one, the dragonflies spread their translucent green wings. Featherflit felt the stinging glare of dozens of slitted emerald eyes and then the air filled with the dreadful buzz of their wings.

Featherflit threw herself westwards, praying that her head start would be enough to save her. But the bugle of the earth monster was still ringing out below her, and to her horror, she heard the crunching sound of rock on rock. That could only mean one thing. The earth dragon was getting up.

She tried to increase her speed again, but the wind was roaring in her face and tears were beginning to sting her eyes. There were limits to how fast even fear could make you.

The drone of the dragonflies grew louder behind her, and Featherflit’s breath hitched in her throat. She clamped the dragonfruit to her chest and tried to make her body a straight line. Aerodynamics would make her faster, right? Right? Something had to!

The earth dragon below her finally paused for breath, and Featherflit clearly heard the drag of it inhaling. Her mind racing, her eyes widened in recognition of the beast’s intentions, and she flung herself to the left. Not a second later, a blast of blue-green fire screamed past her, close enough to scorch the tips of her primary feathers. Featherflit’s jaw gaped as she watched the stream of fire die away. She hadn’t known they could breath fire! That wasn’t fair play at all — they lived underwater, for Novo’s sake!

The hum of dragonfly wings grew closer than ever. Featherflit risked a glance over one shoulder and immediately wished she hadn’t. The first of the repulsive brown creatures was almost upon her, its clawed forepaw reaching for her tail. With a small cry of alarm, she whisked it away from the outstretched talons and banked hard to the right to try and shake it. But she lost precious meters of her lead and then the others were surrounding her.

Desperately, she kicked the grasping claws away from her. She clamped her wings to her sides and tried to barrel roll, but the dreadful sight of the horizon spiralling in front of her filled her throat with the acrid tang of vomit and she hastily flattened out again. “Leave me alone!” she howled, plunging to avoid another one as it came in for the kill. “It was just one fruit! Surely you can’t need every single one?”

The dragonfly’s only response was a howl, a shrill counterpoint to the receding roars of the earth dragon behind them. The other beasts behind it took up the cry, and the hum of their wings was almost deafening.

Featherflit tightened her fist around the dragonfruit and tried to focus. Think, Featherflit, think! At least she was now out of reach and out of range for the earth dragons. They had no wings and in any case were far too cumbersome to become airborne. But the dragonflies remained a significant problem. They were still hot on her tail and showing no signs of tiring. She had been planning for weeks, just skulking around the islands trying to learn anything that might help her in her theft. There had to be something that she had picked up.

She tried to list her knowledge rationally. She had flown due east from Mount Aris. It had been a long flight, over three days, and she had been forced to snatch what sleep she could while aloft. The earth dragon islands had been the first land she saw, clustered together on the blue water like apple pips scattered on the ground. The earth dragons dwelt together in the shallow sandbanks where the water was warm, feeding on the tropical fish that dwelt there. After seeing them sun themselves every day, moving when the sky was overcast, she was pretty sure they also fed on the sunlight picked up by all those leaves. She had not known they could breathe fire, but that was useful knowledge; file it away for later, Featherflit.

And the other factor: the dragonflies. They were the islands’ only inhabitants. Featherflit had seen a few ungainly teenage earth dragons with the gauzy remnants of gossamer wings hanging in tattered strips from their calcifying scales. If they were anything to judge by, it seemed that if the dragonflies would become earth dragons themselves if they survived long enough.

In the three weeks she had been here, she had been largely ignored by the inhabitants of the islands.The earth dragons took almost no notice of anything above the water, of course, but she had expected more hostility from the dragonflies after first seeing them. But they seemed to grow used to her, and as long as she kept to herself, they hadn’t bothered her. They were more focused on sunning their long gilttering wings and squabbling with each other. The only times they had taken notice of her was when she ventured too close to the dragonfruits; she had tried several times to pluck one, and all the dragonflies nearby had lifted their heads and hissed at her until she nervously sidled away.

The dragonflies fed on the dragonfruits, which seemed to grow almost indefinitely, turning from pink to green to black. When they were almost the size of Featherflit herself, they would fall from the tree and break open on the soil, full of crunchy seeds. Every time this happened the dragonflies swarmed over the fruit, fighting for the round black seeds, each one as big as a fist. Featherflit had never seen the dragonflies show interest in any of the smaller, ripe ones that she had recognised from the illustration the librarian had shown her.

“The dragonfruit,” he had announced in that papery voice of his, white beard swinging underneath his beak with ever word. “Very rare, extremely valuable, found in only one place on the planet. But I believe that would achieve the intensity of colour that you say you’re looking for.”

Eyes narrowed, Featherflit spiralled left to avoid the fangs of two more dragonflies and turned her mind at last to her painting; her beautiful, indescribable masterpiece. Featherflit had been painting since she was a hatchling, and she almost exclusively painted her one great love: the sky. Featherflit firmly believed that the sky was the perfect subject; it had so many faces, one could never get bored of it. Hippogriffs were dull in comparison — each had only one hue in their coats. But the sky had hundreds; every day it would show her a different palette, and every day she would strive to capture its beauty. Sometimes she would give her paintings accents, little touches to further emphasise the beauty of the heavens. Mount Aris, the sea, a soaring hippogriff; each were only details designed to set off the glory of her beloved stratosphere. Her home was stuffed to the brim with hundreds upon hundreds of her paintings, each showing a different variant of the sky’s endlessly variable expressions. There were stormy paintings filled with heavy grey clouds and wind-tossed rain. There were blazing orange sunsets and glorious blue afternoons, moody purple twilights and gentle yellow mornings. Hippogriffs often came to buy her work, and she nearly always let them choose the ones they wanted.

But Featherflit’s current project was different. She remembered the morning she had seen it as clearly as if it was still before her. She had gotten up extra early, before anyone else in the city was awake. She had gathered her brushes and paints, and settled herself on a particularly comfortable cloud facing the east. There she had waited for almost an hour, shivering and sipping from her flask, but when the light broke over the eastern horizon, she knew at once that every second had been worth it. The dawn spread gentle rosy talons over the mountains of the ocean, an orange glow spread across the sky, and Featherflit had readied her palette. But then the sun had risen a little more, and the most wonderful unearthly pink had flooded the sky, a hundred shades of it colouring the air and the clouds, and Featherflit had stared in horror at her inadequate paints. She had nothing that could make the colours she saw! The beautiful pink sky only lasted a few minutes, but Featherflit had remained transfixed, staring in mute anger at her paltry collection of colours. They would not do. She had to commit the beauty of that morning to canvas, she knew it. Even if it cost her hundreds of bits, even if it took her months of searching, she had to do it. And once she had done it, she would put the painting on the wall in her own bedroom, safely away from the art gallery where buyers came to browse, and she would never sell it, even if she lived to be a thousand.

Another claw gouging across her flank snapped Featherflit uncomfortably back to the present and she gritted her teeth and upped her pace again. “Oh, go get the dragonfruit,” she rasped, trying to mimic the librarian’s aged voice. “Young thing like you, it shouldn’t be too hard.”

The dragonfly behind her sank its teeth into her tail hair and Featherflit hissed in frustration. “It shouldn’t be too hard. Yeah, right.”

She tried once more to think of what she had observed on the islands. The ugly dragonflies sunbathing and buzzing from island to island in search of warmer sleeping spots and ripe fruit. The ponderous earth dragons, wingless and rocky; hardly dragons at all in the traditional sense. The parents lived in the sea; the hatchlings lived on the parents. There was no crossover. A thrill of recognition as the pieces clicked into place. That was it. Excitement bloomed hot in her stomach and her breath came faster. Here goes.

She snapped her wings inward and plunged towards the ocean. She had to squeeze her eyes almost entirely closed against the howling wind, and she heard the scream of the dragonflies as they tore after her.

Her teal mane-feathers were whipping almost painfully in the gale. Featherflit’s heart thudded in her chest as the sea loomed larger, larger, until it entirely filled her vision, but she held her nerve. Just a little longer, just a little more.

Then at last, finally, when she was within claw’s reach of the surface, she flared her wings out as wide as they would go. The force nearly pulled her bones from their sockets, but she stayed aloft and just managed to level out. Her hooves skimmed the surface of the water and she held her breath as she pumped her wings, trying to regain a little altitude.

Behind her, she heard the garbled shrieks of the dragonflies as they tried to pull up, but chitin is less dextrous than feathers, and just as Featherflit had hoped, the dragonflies weren’t able to make it out of the dive in time. She heard the wet plops as they hit the water, and her grin was wide and fierce. She looked back once more, to see them paddling miserably in the choppy water, their wings too heavy for flight. In the distance, their parent earth dragon began its ponderous way across the ocean to collect them.

Featherflit beamed and turned her beak towards home. She could hardly believe her luck. She had done it!

Author's Note

This is my first fanfiction published on fimfic, so I would love to hear any feedback or if you enjoyed it!