[Beautiful art of Khejadi by my friend @UltimateFanWing please give him a follow]

"KHEJADI! GEDDAP!" A loud yell invaded a sleeping mind, and a tail was roughly whacked into a green and yellow dragon's side.

"OI!" The victim in question yelped as she leaped awake, springing into a battle stance, haunches low and wings flared.

The bouncy camel-hide that served as her bed was shoved behind her as she kicked it instinctively. She growled at the brown walls. 

"Whoever just attacked me will get bitte – oh, hey Rattle," she nodded, regarding her brown and yellow twin, who started laughing so hard he almost launched himself onto the dirt floor. 

Khejadi rolled her eyes and smiled as she stretched out her leaf-shaped wings. The underside was a richer yellow than her SandWing ridge and speckled with green flecks. Her green body was scattered with umber scales like the yew trees back on Pantala her mother told the two about. These mirrored the brown scales that lined the top of her body, separating her SandWing ridge from her vivid green scales. Khejadi rubbed her eyes with her front paws, trying to clear the blurriness of sleep from them.

She yawned and folded her wings across her back, then took up the camel skin and gently set it back to its place in the corner of her room, which was a wide chamber decorated with straw and wood. Khejadi found herself wondering how her grandmother, Jerboa, had crafted such a masterpiece of a hut.

"Come on, sis," Rattle urged, bringing Khejadi back to the present as he bounded out of their room. "It's gonna be our first day at Jade Mountain Academy!"

The LeafWing hybrid wondered how on Pyrrhia her big brother could be so psyched about school. She struggled to keep up with Rattleweed as he disappeared behind the wood of the house's interior. 

"Wait up!" She laughed, taking off after her brother. Khejadi rounded the corner and almost bumped into a large SandWing.

"Watch it, you two," their father said jokingly. "Breakfast for the SandWing side of the family is ready."

Khejadi followed her father to the room at the front of the hut. This room was pretty large, almost like two rooms but not separated. Perched in the "second" room was a dining table built of wood, supported by beams Jerboa had built herself. Off to the side was the front door.

Once they made it, Khejadi saw her brother was already seated at the round table, awaiting their father's catch eagerly.

"Sit down, Khejadi. Maple will be here soon; she's out hunting," Armadillo explained.

The dragonet obeyed reluctantly while her father picked up the three birds he'd caught, washed and left by the brown front door.

"What's with all the grumbling?" A hardened female voice asked. Khejadi turned to see her young grandmother's pale, slim figure stretching by the entrance to the main room.

She smiled. "Morning, Jerboa!" Khejadi greeted, getting up and walking over to hug the SandWing. The dragonet found it strange how her great-grandmother had enchanted Jerboa to be immortal. The family knew that the immortal in question agreed with this opinion, as Jerboa had spent many a story lamenting about all the troubles she's had to endure as a dragon who'd never age again. 

She took a seat next to Rattle, and Khejadi wandered over to them, lingering near the main window. At present, the large glass pane was shielded by the family's orange curtains. Khejadi cast a wistful stare through the gap between the fiery capes, wanting to be outside with the wind on her scales and the sun filling her insides, spilling into her stomach once again.
Then she realised there was no sun to be seen.

"It's still dark out," Khejadi groaned.

"Very observant, sis," Rattle grinned smugly.

Armadillo lobbed a desert eagle at Rattle and struck him in the head with it, temporarily stunning him. Now it was Khejadi's turn to laugh.

"Good shot, son!" Jerboa chuckled.

Rattle burst into laughter, joining the glee of his family.

Armadillo smiled, brushing wings with his son as he passed another desert eagle to his mother. Then he took a seat on the other side of Jerboa, leaving an open space next to Khejadi for when Maple came back with her catch for the LeafWing side of the family.

"Father, why did I have to rise before the sun did?" Khejadi grumbled. She was not a morning dragon.

"We had to get up early if we want to make it to Jade Mountain on time," Armadillo informed them.

Although the family lived relatively close to Pyrrhia's largest mountain – compared to, say, the Kingdom of the Sea – their home oasis was equal distance from the Scorpion Den and Thorn's Stronghold; even though, it was about a five-minute flight from the ocean that cut off the entire continent's land. 

Jerboa had been kindly open about explaining why she decided to settle down somewhere so distant from civilisation, informing the dragonets (even when they were younger than they were now) that she had lived most of her adult life in fear of other dragons hunting her down for her animus magic.

Khejadi and Rattleweed had spent a number of late nights discussing the mystery of the strange magic. Could animus dragons really lose their sanity and their soul from casting too many spells? Were the IceWings really the first tribe to have been gifted that magic? Where had they gotten it from? 
And of course: what would happen if one of them turned out to be an animus?

Rattle had decided if he was one, he'd use his magic to make gifts for his friends and become adjacent to a superhero: fighting all the bad guys, righting all the wrongs in Pyrrhia, saving the continent! (Also, in his own words, "I'd make myself a portable snack table that could conjure any snack I want!" to which both dragonets had giggled so hard they'd had to bury their snouts under the pillows for fear of waking up their parents). 

Khejadi, on the other claw, was less sure what she'd do with that type of power. Helping dragons in need? Absolutely, since she'd seen the strife some suffered down at the Scorpion Den... a long time ago, on one of her first visits to the notorious Den, Khejadi had bumped into a dragonet born with a deformed left wing. He had been shy and sweet, which is why Khejadi was appalled when he told her he'd been disowned by his family. The two had become fast friends, and decided to pull off a pomegranate heist together. Like troubled youth, they thieved two whole burlap sacks of the delicious fruit from a rich aristocrat come to do business with a shady tumbleweed dealer under cover of the bustling Den streets. Khejadi and the dragonet, called Badlands, had donated the score to the local orphanage, which had been struggling during a food shortage.
Since then, she and Badlands had met up frequently – he had helped her during her daring escapades, and she had helped him see his own worth.

The experience had not only earned Khejadi a valued friend, but a growing empathy for unlucky dragons... and an inching, fiery indignation for dragons who judged others based on outwardly appearance.

The LeafWing hybrid knew only one thing about the hypothetical: that if she had animus magic, she would make sure dragonets like Badlands were never abandoned or mistreated again. Dragonets left for the streets, the poor misjudged faces thrown from home to home... if Khejadi could do anything about it, she would eradicate the prejudice that plagued the rough-and-rumble SandWings at the Den.

But Khejadi wasn't sure how she'd do it, how she would make the right choices every time. That was a lot of pressure.

In the end, the twins had decided to keep the status quo for now: helping the world in their own ways – Khejadi stealing from the lavishly rich to donate to the Coriander Orphanage – and Rattleweed befriending different dragons in the hopes of cheering them up ("you know, in an actually legal way?").

Rattle sank his teeth into the eagle, coming up with a mouthful of plumes and making faces. "Feathery!" He announced.

Khejadi grinned. "Very observant, bro," she said, smacking her brother in the face with his own lines.

Talons touched down just outside the hut, and the front door flew open as an auburn whirlwind with leaf-shaped wings whisked inside. The new arrival shut the door behind her as she swept in, covered in sand and carrying two capybara, brown and large, in each front paw.

"The hunt went successfully, I assume?" Khejadi stated, before Maple chucked the capybara at her daughter and rushed back outside. As Khejadi caught the coconut-furred animals, a loud splash floated up to the four pairs of ears inside. Maple returned, shutting the door. Her elm-tree brown scales dappled with autumn orange gleamed wet and shiny, and she shook, coating the front door in a layer of dew.

"No, I didn't catch anything," she playfully replied to her daughter's past question, regarding the other family members with a wing-brush each. The mother took the free seat, gratefully retrieving her capybara from Khejadi's outstretched talons.

The five family members continued to eat in silence as the occasional black sparrow or billed thrasher screeched overhead. The sun started peeking in through the orange curtains, washing the room in colours of flame as light rose just above the horizon. Khejadi looked through the window and saw through the slightly-parted curtains that the sky was painted the brilliant pink colour that comes with the early dawn, teensy strokes of orange and blue bleeding into the tapestry. 

"Everyone done?" Armadillo asked, to which his children droned back "yes".

"Are you sure we can't come?" Jerboa asked her son as she swept the bones, fur and feathers from breakfast to one side of the table. Even though the older SandWing disliked social situations, she was wary to part with her grandchildren for such a long time without accompanying them for as long as she could.

The Outclaw looked to his dragonets, who nodded in encouragement – they wanted Jerboa to see them off to school.

But Armadillo knew it was better to be over-cautious. He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, mother, but you can't," the SandWing said forlornly yet sensibly. "No one's allowed to see you. There still might be some dark-hearted dragons that would hurt anyone to take you and corrupt your power."

Jerboa nodded, relief at the prospect of staying safely inside and worry for her grandchildren clashing on her face before she masterfully hid the emotions.

"What about me?" Maple asked, brushing her maple leaf wing with Jerboa's.

Armadillo smiled at her. "Someone needs to keep mother company," he sassed, although Khejadi had a feeling he was also trying to protect her – though it had been years since the Pantalan dragons had made landfall on Pyrrhia, there were still some dragons who acted volatile towards the foreigners.

She thought back to Badlands, brow creasing in worry. If some could act so cruel to a Pyrrhian dragon just for being different... she wasn't even sure what scorn her mother might catch from close-minded dragons. Especially at Jade Mountain Academy, where all the different tribes were present.

Maple huffed sarcastically and spread her wings around her dragonets, pulling them both into hugs.

Once the dragonets said their goodbyes to Maple, Jerboa did the same.

"Remember what we talked about," Jerboa reminded the twins. "No stealing or acting hostile unless absolutely necessary." She stared pointedly at Khejadi, who smiled awkwardly. "Your father trained you for defence and good-doing, not for power and fear." She moved her eyes to Rattleweed. "I don't expect much trouble from you, Rattle, but it goes for you too, just in case. Do both of you understand?"

Khejadi, deciding to ignore the (well-deserved and rightful) sass from her grandmother, eagerly nodded alongside her brother. 

Jerboa then hugged her son goodbye, and Khejadi's dragonet's gaze once more inspected the triangle markings on her wings that never failed to intrigue the family.

Armadillo lead the hybrids outside to the oasis. Khejadi and Rattle marvelled at the gorgeous sky, a phenomenon that never ceased to amaze them.
As they did so, their father pulled back the brown tarp that protected the dragons' water source from sand and contamination, revealing a calm pool which now reflected the sky's beautiful orange colour. "Drink up," Armadillo instructed. 

Khejadi felt almost reluctant to disturb such a beautiful image, but dunked her head in nonetheless. She decided against telling her father she didn't feel the need to freshen up; being half-SandWing had its perks. For instance, the ability to go long periods of time without water.
The hybrid's LeafWing side had dulled this feature, though, so whereas pure SandWings could go up to four months with little to no food or water, Khejadi could only go two.
In hindsight, it may have been a wise choice to freshen up now. After the whole Secondcoming of the Darkstalker fiasco that happened during Jade Mountain Academy's debut year, Khejadi supposed she really had no idea what could happen once she went to school.

She rose her head so it was just above the water's surface, allowing the droplets to slide off her elegant snout. Khejadi dried it using her leaf-shaped wing.

Armadillo made sure both of his children were done drinking, then pulled the tarp back over, setting down a few large rocks to make sure the desert winds didn't whip it up later in the day.

"You guys ready?" He asked, going to stand in front of the two. Against the backdrop of the orange sky, his pale scales looked set afire.

Khejadi nodded, carefully entwining her tail with her brother's, which was shaking uncontrollably. To be honest, Khejadi was marvelling at the fact that Rattle hadn't stabbed her with his barb yet, due to the dragonet's excitement.

"Then let's go."

Armadillo back-pedalled from the water until he was six winglengths away. Then the SandWing spread his wings and kicked off from the sandy earth, the wind scattering grains of sand and making the leaves on the nearby palm trees shake.

"Try to keep up!" Rattle cheered as he took off after his father less majestically, causing Khejadi to laugh again.

The hybrid exhaled, watching her two male family members soar higher and higher, and then hover as they waited for her to come up.

She started to run.

Her paws pounded the earth, kicking up sand and making nearby beach mice chitter in alarm. Birds who had scorned her family earlier now took to the skies. Khejadi was about to join them.

She felt the wind torrent, spread her wings, and kicked off as hard as she could, flapping her leaf-shaped appendages all the time. 

She saw the earth shrink away below her, the wind-motion of her wings casted pleasureful flaps of fanning air. Then she focused on her father and brother. Khejadi angled her wings, zooming towards them. 

And then she was there, gliding just behind them as they flew. The sun glinted in her eyes, the wind crested over her scales, and she'd never felt more alive.

Flying was exhilarating.

She joined her brother, who was gliding in their father's wake.

Rattle giggled. "You're always so dramatic when you take off," he retorted, joking with her in good fun.

Khejadi smiled at him. "I always want to make the most of it!"

Armadillo laughed from ahead of them. "Come on, you two," he said. "Save your energy. We have a long flight ahead."

«◊»

Khejadi felt like she could fly forever.
And it certainly felt like the three of them had been flying for that long.

The sun was much higher than the horizon now, about a quarter of the way in the sky ahead of them. 

She flapped lazily behind her brother, Armadillo's wake making it easier to keep up with him.

The pale mounds of the Sand Kingdom soon leeched off into jagged, rocky terrain dotted with large mountains, looking like greyish, spiky dunes. 

Khejadi kept her eyes ahead, and soon the three saw the school.

Jade Mountain was the largest mountain they'd ever seen, making the past ones look puny. It loomed over everything else, huge and imposing. The cave mouth was so big it looked like it could easily fit a dragon even the Darkstalker's size. 

What surprised Khejadi the most, though, was the number of dragons just outside the cave.

Although she knew the school's classes were adjusted to take around forty or so students, the mountain's grounds seemed to be littered with dragons everywhere; most of them pure, but Khejadi could also see a pawful of intricate-looking dragonets that could only be hybrids, sprinkled in sporadically and mainly trying to avoid contact with the others.

Armadillo dove towards the ground, forcing Khejadi and Rattleweed to chase after him. He landed uniformly, joining the line spilling from the front of the entrance behind a SeaWing family of deep greens and light blues. The SeaWings were standing behind another family of SkyWings, from brilliant red to dusty yellow. In front of those SkyWings were dragons of black and dark purple with scattered silver scales on their underwings. 

Armadillo sighed and shifted his weight from paw to paw, already bored.

Khejadi decided that was enough hovering and landed next to her father, folding her wings. She glanced around, feeling sort of intimidated. A second later and her brother was in front of her, grinning and hopping from talon to talon, excited.

The hybrid glanced around, taking in the beauty of it all. The dragons laughing and cheering; the dragonets saying hello and meeting each other for the first time; the absence of pointless violence. The absence of prejudice and the feeling of ingrained unworthiness.
Slowly her anxiety ebbed away.

A stiff, feminine voice murmured an"ahem" from behind her.

Khejadi turned around to see who had made the noise. She was met with a RainWing, standing directly behind her.
Standing so close she almost bumped snouts with the RainWing, and Khejadi resisted the urge to exclaim in surprise.

This RainWing had mint green scales, sort of washed out, dotted with orange spots. The leathery underside of her wings were dark purple. This dragonet had thicker paws and a much thicker tail than normal RainWings. Her broad snout was dark green with displeasure, and her horns were those of a NightWings'.

Khejadi was excited to meet another hybrid. Hopefully this one was friendly!

"Can I h –"

"You're in my way," the dragonet interrupted.

Khejadi was so taken aback that she froze, her mouth still open, wondering if she had heard the other hybrid right. "Sorry?" She asked, trying to give the RainWing the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she thought Khejadi was someone else?

Doubtful. Khejadi was pretty sure she was the only dragon in existence who looked the way she did.

"I said," the RainWing repeated, "you're in my way."

Khejadi closed her mouth, wondering if this was a joke. "My family got here first," she pointed out.

"I am a princess. My mother is the queen of both the RainWings and the NightWings. I should go in front of you," the RainWing said.

Khejadi blinked, bewildered. When it set in that this entitled dragon was completely for real, she felt her patience running out.

"No, you shouldn't," she reasoned, bristling. "You might be a princess, but you're not my princess. Only the NightWings and RainWings have to listen to you. And to be honest, I feel bad that they have to!"

The princess gasped and blinked. She whirled around and snapped at the dragon behind her. "Father!"

A large black NightWing revealed himself to the dragonet upsetting his daughter, his wings spread regally, trying to look bigger than he was. A pouch was slung diagonally across his torso from his shoulder, no doubt filled with weapons, if what everyone said about Deathbringer being Queen Glory's bodyguard and a retired assassin was true. When the NightWing saw it was just another hybrid, he ignored his daughter's complaints and said instead, "come on, we're almost there."

The princess, who Khejadi realised wasn't used to rejection, huffed and backed off, flapping her wings.

Rattle whacked his sister's tail with the side of his own. "Come on!" He cheered. "We're up!"

Khejadi scampered after him and the two stopped next to Armadillo, who was facing a purple and black NightWing at the cave's mouth.

The hybrid peered into the cave, and when saw students from all tribes playing and laughing and cheering and sharing inside jokes and making memories, she started to feel lonely again. She was excited, but she didn't want to leave Armadillo. Plus, she had already made one enemy within minutes of being here. How many more was she going to make throughout the year?

"Hello sir! Who are you signing in?" A high voice asked, snapping Khejadi out of her thoughts. The latter cringed. There was something about the dragon's voice that rubbed her the wrong way.

"Hello, Fatespeaker. I'm here to sign in Rattleweed and Khejadi," Armadillo replied, gesturing to the dragonets on either side of him.

Fatespeaker was a black and purple NightWing with small silver teardrop scales on the side of both her eyes, which confused the curious LeafWing hybrid. I thought I read only mindreaders have that marking? 

Stealing from unsuspecting salamanders in the Scorpion Den and making friends with unlucky dragonets wasn't Khejadi's only pastime: thankfully, Jerboa had always valued reading, and so kept a large supply of scrolls in her house.
It was from that scroll supply that the twins knew all they did about Jade Mountain, including the Darkstalker's Secondcoming and how the Jade Winglet had defeated him. Khejadi's favourite scrolls were the stories about heroes, fictional like the NightWing Warender and nonfictional like the ancient SeaWings Indigo and Fathom, who stopped the SeaWing's animus Albatross from massacring the whole tribe. (Although that story also served as another reminder to the children, reinforced by Jerboa's constant important lectures, that animus magic was Very Dangerous.)

Rattleweed's favourite scrolls were about the history of the other tribes: their old trades, the abandoned NightWing Kingdom, how RainWings were like before the time of the War of SandWing Succession. Khejadi was sure her brother could recite the scroll the family had on The Scorching word for word. He was a quirky dragon, becoming entrenched in whatever historical text had fascinated him at the given moment. He'd absorb the information like a sponge, and then greet his sister with random facts such as "hey, did you know that there used to be RainWing peddlers visiting each tribe with fruit before Darkstalker's time?", or "hey, Khejadi! The Old Night Kingdom had the biggest library in Pyrrhia!"
He was like the logic to Khejadi's whimsy, the rationality to her impulsivity. 

And now we're finally attending school, Khejadi couldn't help but smile. Together.

Fatespeaker checked her scroll, scratching their names off her list. 

"Okay, here you go! These are your cave numbers and Winglets," the NightWing smiled as she handed Rattle and Khejadi each a scrap of parchment with wiggly writing on it. 

"And these are the school pouches!" Fatespeaker gave each twin a strong fabric bag to sling across their chests. "Hope you enjoy your time here!"

The three thanked her and moved to the side to let the line progress. Khejadi cast an unwary glance at Deathbringer as he signed in his daughter.

"This is where I leave you two," Armadillo said as he hugged his two dragonets. They whispered "love you"s into his ears until he pulled away.

"Be safe," Armadillo gave them both a smile bright with genuine love. "You know this isn't goodbye forever, so stay strong, okay?" He took each of their paws in his. "This is where you learn how to get along with others, where you learn that there's more to life than fighting. So have fun, okay?"

The dragonets nodded, wearing twin smiles.

Armadillo nodded back in confirmation, taking a few steps back. Then he flapped his wings, taking to the brilliant blue sky. "And stay out of trouble!" He called over his shoulder, and a moment later he was nothing more than a speck soaring gracefully on the horizon.

Khejadi and Rattle turned to the school. They inhaled. Exhaled.

"So this is Jade Mountain Academy," Khejadi whispered to her brother.

Rattle nodded, speechless for the first time she had ever seen him.

The two stepped through the cave's mouth into the school.