Sahara shrieked and ducked. Citrine's swipe missed her face and instead clawed a bit of ear. 

Sahara tossed her head an tried to gore Citrine with her horns. Citrine dodged and slithered underneath Sahara. 

The SandWing swiped downwards. Unexpectedly, her sharpened claws shredded the SkyWing's underbelly.

Citrine roared and blew out a tongue of flame, singeing Sahara's snout. She bellowed in pain. Sahara clawed at her face, damaging the snout. Citrine's wings flew up and battered Sahara's arms.

Citrine twisted out of Sahara's grasp and slithered away. Sahara stood in place for a moment, thinking that the fight was over. 

Citrine had crept behind her. Springing a surprise attack, she launched herself onto Sahara's back. 

Sahara twisted around and blasted flames in Citrine's face. The SkyWing roared and swiped at Sahara's eyes..

Claws dug into Sahara's snout. Spikes of jagged pain ran through her body as she closed her eyes. This was enough. 

Sahara raised her tail around the back of Citrine's spine. A gasp rippled through the crowd as Sahara daringly dipped her barb near the mark on Citrine's back.

This was taking too long. Citrine had noticed the shock in the crowd and whipped her head around. Snarling, she roared and leaped off, allowing Sahara to scramble up.

Mosquito was whispering to Desert. The SandWing immediately strode forward to hold Citrine back as she lunged forwards to attack Sahara.

Desert hissed.

"I think that's enough out of the two of you. Sahara, I'm disappointed. Didn't we specify no tails or flames?"

"But-but she blew fire at me first!" Sahara protested. Desert shook her head.

"I thought you would have enough maturity not to retaliate with the same behavior."

"Well," spoke a different voice, "on the battlefield no one cares about rules or maturity. Right?"

Sahara looked around to see Peppermint shredding a lilac flower between her claws. Sahara recognized that it was Peppermint who was speaking. 

The IceWing hybrid had her wings slightly open, displaying the red-tinged white. But one thing that was slightly disturbing was a twisting black scar, winding down the inside of her wing.

What has that poor dragon been through? Sahara thought.

Desert regarded this for a moment, then pried Citrine away. The angry SkyWing stormed away to sit regally by Raptor. 

"Okay, well, that's enough of that. Let's have... Seafoam and Hibiscus. Then we'll have Squish versus Peppermint, Conch versus Blindsight-er, actually, Conch versus Iceberg, and then Squelch versus Scar.

Sahara returned to her fetal position by Starmind, watching the play-battle continue. She tuned it out mostly, falling asleep at her spot until Mosquito yelled for everyone to listen up. 

Jolting awake, she dazedly heard Desert hiss something about tomorrow classes. 

Sahara ran awkwardly to catch up with Starmind, who had a slightly bleeding cut and bit of a torn membrane on her wing. 

One look from the NightWing and Sahara knew something was up. Gingerly, she touched her pained snout. She felt three cuts healing over.

"Oh dear, " said Starmind, "Your snout is like...boiled. It's super red."

"What?" Sahara cried, wincing as she tapped her face. 

"It's okay, calm down." Starmind pushed her talons away from her face.

-----------

Starmind pulled  a scroll from the ebony rack that hung by her stone ledge. One wouldn't have noticed it, it didn't stand out other than a maroon ribbon that tied it up.

She pried open the scroll and pulled an ink bottle down from the shelf.

Sahara noticed that there was already slanted green scribbles on the page. She peered over it and noticed things like, mind of stars = starmind? and seashell sings = conch? She then realized that Starmind was trying to puzzle out the prophecy.

Starmind tapped her talons, smearing the scroll with ink. She sighed in frustration.

"Grrr! What could desert rose possibly mean?" she asked. Something clicked in Sahara's head.

"Er, I think this could." Sahara reached her claw up to the locket by her neck. She clicked open the dragon shaped body and revealed the multicolored gem carving.

Starmind inhaled sharply and held out her palm. Sahara lifted the necklace over her head and placed it in Starmind's claw, golden chain dangling.

"Desert rose..." Starmind murmured. "This is it. It has to be. Your father gave this to you, right?" She asked suddenly. Sahara nodded.

"SandWing craftsmanship. Desert dragons-oh, this chases everything!"

Starmind clenched the locket with one claw and scribbled furiously on the scroll with the other. She then looked it over, scrutinizing it.

"What gem is this? It seems like a blend of four or five... but how? Did fire meld it together or something?" She looked up at Sahara expectantly.

"I-I'm sorry, my dad just had it among his little gathering of trinkets. I don't know anything about it." She explained.

Starmind frowned.

"Sorry, my parents were jewelers, so I had to learn to recognize and memorize each and every one there is." the NightWing said, "But of the ones that I can recognize it seems to be carved from amethyst, jade, emerald and sapphire, and gilt with gold. Wow, this must've been expensive to collect." She said, turning it over in her talons.

She then held it out. Sahara plucked it up and set it around her neck. The red-and-black stone that was surrounded with gold set off Sahara's golden underbelly.

"Well, that sort of explains one thing," Starmind said, tapping her talons on the stone.

A clash of noise echoed through the halls. Two familiar voices rang out- Citrine and Hibiscus.

"Watch where you're going, you lazy RainWing!"

"I'm watching everything, maybe you should be careful where you put that tail of yours. And also be watchful of that attitude, it won't get you anywhere but dead." Hibiscus hissed lowly.

Sahara peeked out of the cave to see Citrine almost shrink back. The SkyWing's face was one of puzzlement as Hibiscus bared his fangs and leaned forward.

Citrine thwacked him on 'accident' with her orange tail.

"Geez, freak-ball." was all she could muster as she elbowed past Hibiscus, who seemed to be pressing back splotches of bright red.

Hibiscus swung his head around to see Sahara peering out of the cave. He hissed on eye contact and Sahara yelped, pulling her head back into the cave.

"What's up with Hibiscus? That was pretty creepy, I'm watching everything."

Starmind sighed, ruffling her wings.

"I grew up around him. He was abandoned in the rainforest when he was very young, and dragons tended to avoid him. He could only change his scales through a certain spectrum of colors, he couldn't camouflage himself, and he can't shoot venom from his fangs. He's also missing his typical spine-spikes. Even I admit that I wasn't innocent for avoiding him. His behavior is, well, odd to say the least." Starmind explained.

"Huh, yeah. What about that whole thing that happened about a week ago? You know, when we, ah, snuck out?"

Starmind cocked her head.

"Yeah, what about it?"

Sahara ruffled her wings uncomfortably.

"You know, Hibiscus had that weird dream, where some dragon was visiting him and like telling him off for something?"

Starmind coughed embarrassedly.

"Well, did you find out what that was about?"

There was a large crash from the hallways. Sahara whipped her neck through the cave entrance but all that was really suspicious was a little blob of black that overwhelmed a shadow. She paid no mind to it, though, and returned to Starmind's story.

"Actually, no. Even poking around in his head won't really do anything. He has this quiet fuzz where his thoughts should be."

Sahara thought back to a couple minutes ago. Had Hibiscus worn anything notable? She puzzled over his image, recalling every piece of jewelery on his person.

"He had this earring, actually." Sahara started, "It was a pretty thick silver hoop studded with this gray rock."

Starmind gasped.

"Skyfire! Of course! But why would he need that? Oh, if only there was a way to get him to remove it." Starmind fumed.

"Hey-slow down! What's skyfire?" Sahara asked. Starmind whapped her tail on the stone floor, almost upsetting the ink bottle.

"Skyfire is a precious rock that I learned to identify when I was young. It has properties that will shield your mind and replace it with quiet fuzz. How could I not realize?"

The NightWing dragonet suddenly rose and started pacing the floor, tail lashing.

"It all makes sense now! Well- no it doesn't, but his strangeness does. But what is he planning? Argh, I need a night to sleep on this."

"Whoa, calm down. We're four year old dragonets. Let's leave the world saving to the adults."

Starmind turned to stare Sahara in the face. For the first time, Sahara realized that Starmind's eyes were actually a deep brown. In the corner of one was a freckle of cool blue.

Starmind's crazed rant was interrupted by the gong, signaling bed time. Starmind slithered into her ledge and sat with her eyes open and claws over ears.

There was a stamp and a hiss outside the cave. Sahara went to investigate and saw a small, bright red dragonet muttering to himself while he slithered away. A silver hoop gleamed on his ear.

Sahara bit her tongue nervously. What had he heard?

Returning to her sand pit, she closed her heavy eyes and try to wipe the pile of confused thoughts from her head.

Sleep blessed her. It was only when a loud scraping noise by her ears woke her and she blurredly black tail disappear around the corner of the cave entrance. Convinced it was just a dream, she went back to sleep and woke up early the next morning.

It was only then that she realized Starmind was truly missing.