He looks back on his life at his younger self, Canyon, and all the events that led to where he was now. All the dragons he’s met have shaped his life, but not always for the better. Through each and every day, he always asks himself, Who am I really? What is my destiny?

Now, through a series of bizarre events, his questions begin to reveal answers and even more about himself than he knew. Finally, through his tragic past and his assigned-destiny, he can find out who he really is. Not Scarface, but Canyon, the dragon who will change the world.

Canyon, a tiny dragonet, made his presence known. Sqirble!!! He squeaked one more time, to be sure that he had been heard.

He lifted his head up and peered around.

Desert and spindly trees.

All around.

He took a deep breath. Dust.

Dust.

And…..more…dust. Achhh-oooo.

He sneezed, blinking several times to clear his eyes.

He sat up and looked over the top of the stone nest, down at the ground. Far, far, far away.

He heard a roar and looked up as a shadow passed over him. A familiar sandy colored dragon swooped towards him, landing on a rock next to the carved nest.

“Hello, little one,” it said.

Canyon soon learned that this dragon was Mother. He studied her all the time, whenever she stopped by to bring him food. She would sit down next to him for a while, tell him a story, and then all too soon, she would leave again, to the World Beyond the Nest.

One day, though, when she came at the usual time of day, she picked him up, and put him in the space on her back, just between her wings.

“Hold on tight,” she replied, jumping into the air. Canyon grabbed a neck spine and held on tight, the wind whooshing past his face.

Soon, the sound of roaring could be heard coming from all directions. Canyon tried to peek around his Mothers wings, trying to find the source of the commotion.

Mother landed on a wide stone balcony, in front of another pale, sandy colored dragon.

Except this one was huge, way bigger than Mother, and along with the pale scales, she had several black splotches on her as well.

Mother reached around and pulled Canyon off her back, and set him down in front of her.

The strange dragon walked over to them, and crouched down to Canyon. The dragon smiled, a smile full of glinting teeth.

“Hello, Canyon,” she said. “Are you ready to change the world?”

Canyon huffed and sat down in the sand, frustrated. He swished his tail back and forth, flicking sand in all directions. “It’s not fair!” he whined, “I tried and tried and tried and I can’t catch it!” He buried his head in his talons and sulked.

He looked up as Mirage, the dragonet teacher, landed in the sand next to him.

“Well, did you stay quiet for 10 heartbeats?” she asked.

Canyon thought. “Yup.”

“And did you wait for it to look away before you pounced?”

“Yup.”

“Ah, but did you remember to stay quiet the whole time?” she chuckled, giving him a knowing look.

Canyon thought, and then looked down. “Nope,” he said, sadly.

“And there’s your mistake,” she said. “You don’t have to feel bad, every dragonet makes mistakes,” she said gently.

“Ah, yes, well that is true,” a new voice said.

The two dragons whirled around as a third dragon landed on the sand behind them.

­Canyon recognized her as the dragon who was the leader. She had a name that was a plant in the desert, but he couldn’t remember.

Catdust? No that wasn’t it. Catear? No. He glanced sideways at a spindly plant that was towering next to them.

Green with pointy needles on it...aha!

Cactus, his inner voice reminded him. That was it!

He sent a silent thank-you to himself and the bristling tree-plant next to them and then focused his attention back to the other dragons.

“I remember quite well some… mistakes a certain little ruffian made, not the least of which was spilling FireCactus seeds all over my courtyard,” Cactus was saying.

She emphasized "courtyard" with a great sigh. “The that certain dragonet buried them with sand to cover up the mess!” 

She gave a stern look to Mirage, then continued. “So, after about a month, everyone was confused as to why there were little tiny spike-plants all over the courtyard. By the time we finally found out what they were, they had established a root system among each other.” She frowned, giving a palm tree a disapproving frown, before continuing. “It took my gardeners weeks to dig them up and carefully dispose of them. It would have been way easier if a certain dragonet would have just come clean and told us,” she said ruefully, shaking her head.

“Who that was?” Canyon ask, curious.

“Who was that,” Cactus corrected. 

“Who was’iz that?” Canyon repeated.

Cactus laughed. “You want to know?” 

Canyon nodded eagerly.

Next to him, he thought he heard Mirage stiffen, and then his focus was directed towards Cactus as he saw the older dragon start shaking. After a moment, he realized she was laughing.

“You really don’t know who?” she said as she looked up, her eyes twinkling. She walked toward them and crouched down to Canyons level. “That michievious little scoundrel is now your teacher,” she said in a loud whisper.

“Really?” he said, wonder in his voice as he looked back and forth between his Queen and his teacher. “You was a miz-chivy-us liddle skowndrul?” he asked in equal parts awe and disbelief.

Mirage sighed and cleared her throat. “There were times I went against the rules, yes.”

Cactus laughed. Mirage gave her a reproachful look and then sniffed. Cactus wiped her watery eyes and then looked down at Canyon, the hint of a smile still visible on her face.

“Now, I wanted to ask, how is your hunting going?”

Canyon grumbled. 

  His scar above his eye stung, and he winced as a bolt of pain shot through his head. His smile faded as he remembered that painful day, the day when he got this scar. The day when he first proved himself worthy of the position he was in now… 

Canyon jumped and then ducked, slashing his claws at the attacking dragon. He rolled under and slashed the dragons' underbelly before leaping to his feet and biting down on the tail. 

A yelp of pain emitted from the white dragon, as she whipped around and snarled, claws slicing through the air. 

Canyon felt a sharp pain lance across his face as he paid for letting his guard down. The dragon’s serrated claws had dug furrows in his snout, almost directly above his eye. 

Canyon shrieked as pain went through his head. He growled and leaped at the DiamondDragon, sending them to the edge of the chasm that ripped through the ground of the IceRealm, leading to a continuous tunnel of darkness down into the earth. 

Scarface snarled and slashed at his opponent, and then shoved her forward. 

She froze, hung in midair, then a scream tore from her throat as she plummeted down, down, down into the cavernous maw of the ground. 

Scarface watched as she slowly grew smaller and smaller until there was only a wink of silver, a small teardrop, and then there was nothing. She was gone.

Gone, was his last thought as he shuddered and then collapsed.

“CANYON!” 

A voice ripped through the silence. He spun around and saw Iguana, his chosen partner, approaching. She looked quizzically at their surroundings and then her gaze settled on his talons, buried in the salty waves. She tsked, and then reached for them.

“You know, it’s not necessary to hide your injuries,” she said, taking a mixture of healing ointment out of a pouch on her back.

“It just shows that you have been through a lot and survived. And you have the scars to prove it,” she said, but then froze as she realized what she said. “I’m sorry—”, she started.

“No,” he growled. “I know you didn’t mean it that way, its fine.”

“Canyon—”

“It’s fine,” he said sternly.

Iguana sighed, and then went back to work, spreading the salve over the scars. Canyon hissed as a stinging sensation resulted from the medicine coming in contact with the wound. It only lasted a few seconds, however, and then a soothing numbness took over, and the pain subsided.

He sighed gratefully and Iguana gave him an amused look.

“Let me guess, Moonglow didn’t go down without a fight?”

He nodded, a weird feeling forming a pit in his stomach. He couldn’t figure out what it was. It only happened after he completed an assignment. He thought, but no, it couldn’t be….it couldn’t be…pity?

The only time he’d ever felt pity, Scarface thought, was the time when he’d found the wounded hawk out in the desert. It had fallen into a thicket of cacti and broke its wing, and now it was nearly dead. He’d considered killing it all the way, and then eating it, but thought that would be heartless. Ha. Cactus would’ve loved to hear that. “Assassins don’t feel pity,” he heard her voice say in his head. “They move quickly, ruthlessly. There’s no time to feel any emotions.”

But he hadn’t eaten it. He had just studied its injuries, and as gently as he could, he had tried his best to heal it. Ok, yes, fine he got help from Sage. He and Sage, his pet human, had nursed the hawk back to health, and with a little more help from Sage, the hawk (which was now named Feather) was fully healed and completely tame.

He couldn’t tell anyone of course. He was a little—OK, a lot afraid that if he let slip that he had a tame meal for a friend then someone might find Feather and eat him.

            So that was why, whenever he had to go on a mission or was in the dragon palace, Feather stayed with Sage. 

Only one other dragon knew about both Feather and Sage, and that was Iguana.

 

But apparently, that was about to change.

It was actually Quicksand’s fault that they found out about Sage. The tiny human was watching the dragon palace, hidden in a thick nest of cacti near the outer perimeter of the palace grounds. Waiting for her dragon was entirely boring, especially when Iguana had to go on a mission too. Now she had to wait alone for both of them to come back.

But Sage and waiting did not match. Obviously. Now she regretted as the dragon stared at her from a tail-length away. The scales flickered from totally sand-tan to pale with drops of white and yellow scatter all over. What in the moons is that dragon? A hybrid? Of what? Hmm. The sand-tan was definitely pure SandDragon, but why were the scales shifting colors? Maybe it was part TreeDragon? 

Sage was pulled from her thoughts by a startled squeak, which she later realized was her own. Perhaps the reason for it was because of the scaled talon that reached for her, lifting her off the ground and closer to the face of the strange dragon.

“What in the moons are you?” the dragon whispered, its breath blowing into her face.

I could say the same about you, Sage thought. She didn’t know if she should reply and reveal that she could speak Dragon or just play the tiny little human that only squeaks. She decided that the latter would only get her eaten faster. She straightened up, and stared into the eyes of the dragon.

“I am a human. Or a scavenger, is what you call us,” she growled in Dragon.

The eyes widened as big as the moons and the dragon almost dropped her in shock.

“But— how…how can….that can’t be right…I must be dreaming…Quicksand, snap out of it,” she told herself sternly. Sage watched with amusement as the dragon rubbed its eyes as if wiping the sleep out of them. But Sage knew that it was not a dream. She waited patiently (or what she thought was patiently) and then saw the dragon look back at her.

“Well? Are you done?” Sage said, again in the dragon’s language.

“Ohmymoons, I’m not dreaming, and you really just spoke to me, and I understood you.” Quicksand gently put Sage down onto the sand. “But…how?”

Sage dusted herself off, shaking sand from her hair. “Easy. I spoke to you in Dragon,” she replied matter-of-factly. “It’s not that hard.”

“Ohhh…I see. But how did you learn Dragon?” Quicksand queried curiously.

“Uhm…I…” Sage hesitated, wondering if she should tell this complete stranger about her Dragonly friend. Then she realized that this dragon might not even know Canyon. But, how could she not? Don’t all SandDragons know each other? She pondered this for a moment more then looked back into the eyes of the dragon before her. “Well, you see, it’s a long story…”

  Sage.

           Sage was in danger.

“—so then I would be like ‘yeah, I met a scavenger—‘”

“—human,” Sage corrected.

Quicksand nodded distractedly, “Right. So ‘yeah, I met a human and it can talk and so now I am so excited so now I wonder if all the little humans can talk…’ and so, yeah,” she finished breathlessly. “Can you? Can you all talk? Or are you just special? Do you know? Maybe you don’t know…Hmm”

Sage waited for the dragon to catch her breath before answering. “No, I don’t know if any others can talk Dragon. I just learned it from Canyon. Who, by the way, should be here any moment now—”

They both looked up at the sound of wingbeats. Sage squinted and saw Canyon, winging his way down towards them.