Startide  reached the base of the mountain, hot tears dripping down his face. He knew that would happen.

As the hyrbid walked steadily along, not knowing exactly where to go, he felt an uneasy wind creep up his dark blue scales. There was a dragon behind him, he could tell. But it didn't matter. They and heir little posse were only following him to make fun of him.

Startide kept walking. Ivan woke up, and hissed a good morning to his companion. Seeing that the dragon was in no mood, Ivan's skin faded into a dismal, dreary blue to match Startide's.

"Sorry, bud. It's just the same old thing. I'll be fine by lunch, promise." Startide smiled weakly at Ivan, and bumped his snout with his pet's. Ivan seemed to smile in his own weird, reptilian way.

After hours of walking through a seemingly empty world, Startide got too tired to move anymore. He laid down in the dirt, and sighed. Ivan slithered off to find a mouse or whatever he ate, to eat. The dragon, meanwhile, started a low fire in the brush and laid down next to the warm blaze.

The fire's warmth reminded Startide of his mother. She was the only dragon who loved him, the abnormal junkpile. After his dad left, so long ago he couldn't even remember, Startide and his mother tried to live a happy life. They lived on the beaches of the Sea Kingdom, where mom could easily get to work and hunt, and remote enough where Startide wasn't made fun of by the other dragonets.

There was this one time, however, that Mom had to take her son along to the Summer Palace. She had to guard the front entrance for a few days, and she couldn't leave Startide alone for that long.

When they'd arrived in the villages outside the palace itself, the young hybrid felt for the first time the hot stares in his scales that soon he would become so accustomed to feeling. The tidal wave of whispers, the puzzled expressions of disgust. Startide spent the next two days in one of the palace's small rooms, crying. He didn't leave that room until leaving the palace, his mother came every so once in a while to bring him food, and to sing her sobbing son to sleep.

Mom's song. The night they had arrived at the palace, she had walked into his little sleeping cave, laid down next to him, and sang that song to him, as Startide cried into her chest. For the first time that day, he truly felt safe, felt warm, felt happy.

https://youtu.be/Ztg2HhSjUwg

The hybrid snapped out of his memories, finding that not only was he crying, he was singing mom's song. Ivan had returned, full from his dinner, and was sitting close to the warm fire. It was dark now, surprisingly. Startide felt the low, cold winds of the meadows at nighttime. He shivered, and curled closer to the flames, the warmth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Starfire saw a fleeting glimpse of bright aqua glowing scales. His own scales began to glow as well, the only ones that DO glow, that is. The tear-drop scales studding his eyebrows and along the length of his neck and tail gave off a faint blue glow. He stood to his feet, checked to insure that Ivan still slept, and then dashed into the trees.