[Gift] Color the World!

The Sparknest was alive, dark, craggy stone and small, trickling springs reflecting the radiant display lighting up the night sky. With some cracks and pops and the occasional shrill whistle, bright colors leaped into the air and bloomed like flowers, flashes that seared the eye and were gone as soon as they appeared, leaving thin, brimstone-smelling smoke in a haze that made the distant stars blurry, hard to see.

Below, dragons gathered to witness the rainbow geysers.

The first was Áedh, whose glowing spots of orange and red on the wrists of his wings and down the sides of his body sparked and fizzed as if he were made from the Sparknest himself. He pawed the ground with impatient hooves, tossing his heavy head as he turned his fire-light eyes skyward. His crown was a thing to behold; his horns framed the top and back of his eyes before swooping down and curving back up into sharp points. A second pair sat just forward of the hinge of his jaw, sweeping elegantly backwards. Both had short but sharp branches, thorned, dangerous. On the tip of his reptilian snout was a forward-facing horn, curved like a talon, made to rip.

Down his body, more thorny protrusions grew, the hard keratin and bone contrasting to the soft velvet of his white scales, dappled with blue-green spots. Áedh tossed his head, exposing the thick red scales that covered the bottom left side of his neck and ran down over the front of his shoulder and chest. He stretched his great, leathery wings, where the white scales faded to show the skin beneath at the very extremity, softly pink. Down his back ruffled a trail of spines, all the way to the base of his whip-like, spaded tail, which he cracked through the air, startling the dragon nearest him.

Rhea hopped away from Áedh’s impatient stomping, her thin, dragonfly-like wings a silent blur in the air as she puts some distance between them. As she landed, all four amphibious feet on the ground — though her hind legs remained tight and ready to jump — she turned her white-splashed face towards Áedh and stuck out her tongue petulantly. Satisfied, she nodded to herself, fluffy white antennae falling forward into her face before being swept back, then returned to gazing up at the sky.

She was a rainbow herself. Not her scales; she was mostly red and black, her coloring darker on her back and the thorns on her jaw, the spots heavier and bolder even when they trickled off down her limbs or onto her face. Her toes, nose, belly, and the tips of her wings were smudged with a lighter touch, loving strokes of charcoal. The bib at her throat and the wings at her back were white, and even her tail, with all its feathers, only managed to add stripes of yellow to the existing color scheme.

But the flowers that grew in the greenery woven around her head, her hind limbs, the base of her tail were as bright and many-colored as the lights overhead. They lived and breathed with her, a part of her, and with every flash overhead, their petals seemed to shimmer.

Literally glowing and not very far away was Sol. She shone like a star in the dark night and smoky haze. It would not be enough to call her orange and yellow, how the colors mixed in her scales and with the light that overflowed from within her. Sol was molten, like liquid glass waiting to be blown into a shape; the warning-bright colors blended and blurred into each other, as if, at any moment, they might shift again. Only the end of her horse-like muzzle and the very ends of her legs before her hooves seemed as though they might stay lighter.

All over her body swirled and curved heavy white stripes, around a bullseye on her side. It streaked through the mane on her head and all the way down to the two long tufted tails, where multiple flowing tufts interrupted the thin, constant march down to the ends. More tufts flowed from her ankles, sweeping behind her white hooves as she moved.

Sol looked upwards, triangular ears pointing upwards, though her long, plume-like antennae lay back like her thin spines against her mane. She blinked her large, golden eyes, and the gills on her neck fluttered, gleaming.

Next to her came a displeased huff.

Nora had not come to this spectacle to have it outshone by another dragon. He stalked some distance away from Sol, his whip tail with its long velvet scales and the fall of yellow flowers growing from the tip fairly lashing behind him.

When he found a suitably dark-ish area, Nora came to stop, tapping his clawed feet across the stone wondering if anyone would follow him. He was easy to spot, even in the shadows. His scales were a bright canary yellow save for the darker stockings that came up over his knees. Nora’s face, the tips of his feet, and the end of his tail were even lighter. The few scales that weren’t yellow were cyan, neon green, or bright red like the glittery heart on his flank. He impatiently clacked his dully-colored beak, the tuft of scales on the end of his jaw swinging in the air as his blue eyes turned skyward, golden halo spinning above his head.

Yet, Nora wasn’t watching the fireworks. His leather wings spread behind him, and his third eye opened just below the base of his tail, whirling around wildly until it fixed on a dragon too comfortably near and started to glare as Nora growled slightly.

Juan took that as her cue to skedaddle. She wheeled around on one spike-toed foot, her mantis-bladed forelimbs flailing in the air as she pivoted. Once she got her long tail behind her, she got both feet on the ground and scurried off, the rattle on her tail making noise with every bounding step.

She was mostly a light green dragon, all the way from her newt-like snoot to the end of her tail. She had thick spots and bands of black all over his body, and the odd dash of yellow. On the end of the dorsal fin on her mid-back, and on her beetle-like wings, it was thick but veined with green. On her legs, where her scales grew strangely thick and curly below the knee, it made the outline of connected, uneven circles, the ends fading into her flanks. She even had a bit of darker green, brushed like watercolor along her thighs and the underside of her tail. The white on her stood out most: the falling spots in columns from her spine and the drippy marking that made her tail look as if someone had started painting her then wandered off.

Juan jumped in place, the fins on the sides of her face fluttering in excitement, and the short feathers on the backs of her shoulders ruffling in the air before she turned and came face to face with Spearmint.

Spearmint opened her long, toothed maw, making a noise similar to a young crocodile as Juan turned and scampered off. Spearmint blinked after her, her red eyes not quite in sync, before she waddled on her belly and four flippers to a nicely-flowing spring and slipped easily into the water. Idly, she opened her massive jaws and began gnawing at a rock, one eye on the sky.

Spearmint was largely a blue dragon, from the base coat of her scales to the slightly-darker spots that flecked her body and tipped her hind limbs. The end of her maw and the underside of her body were covered in a soft looking blue, shot through with threads of cloudy white. On her back were two proportionate leather wings, an ocean-sort of blue marking with bumpy, irregular edges covering most of them, inlaid with a lighter, powder blue.

The very tips of her wings were dipped in white, much like her thick tail and her foreflippers. A marking covered her back, like sun playing over water, leaving white ripples from the base of her neck, skirting the marking on her wings, all the way down to join the white on her tail. The ends of her forelimbs were splattered with red and black scales, and she moved with single-minded determination as she paddled through the small pool.

Spearmint dropped her rock as another, more inviting snack twitched, pale on the dark rock near her. She floated slowly closer, silently menacing, clambered out of the water, and opened her mouth to bite down on the delectable piece of webbing—

Carmilla whipped the end of her tail out of Spearmint’s mouth with a fierce and horrible shriek. Baring her teeth, the indigo and white dragon propelled herself into the sky on feathered wings, heedless of the explosions of light, sound, and color happening around her. Six eyes that gleamed like stars turned on the dragons below, long ears swiveled forward as she observed them.

White scales covered the center of her body, from the crestless head down to the vee of webbing that whipped at the end of her long tail. But this color barely touched her extremities. Her wings, which were her forelimbs, were a dark, desaturated indigo all the way up to her shoulders. The same color covered her ears, formed dark circles where her eyes sat, and covered her hind legs up to her thighs on the interior and over her hips on the exterior.

A lighter, more saturated indigo formed sparse patches and flecks of color in the white on her body and a mask that covered her face. Hanging from her neck was a dewlap, marked with indigo triangles that fit closely together. Where her scales were thinnest — on the ends of her five-toed feet and their claws, at the end of her snarling muzzle, on the inside of her elongated ears — the indigo color faded and paled even further.

Yet the white was not to be overtaken without fighting back. The indigo parts of Carmilla were covered in white spots, thickest towards the top of her, as if she’d just stepped out of heavy snowfall.

Carmilla turned her ire on the nearest dragon, the gills on the side of her neck flaring in agitation, but Tricky simply watched her calmly with bright golden eyes, his head tipped to the side, and she settled down, out of reach of Spearmint’s teeth.

Tricky puffed up happily, his large feathered crest that ran the full length of his neck rising and fluffing its tri-tone feathers. He settled his bird-like form now that he was no longer in imminent danger, preening at his feathered scales and nibbling at his feathered wings with his yellow beak as the long blue plumes that attached over his eyes waved with each movement.

He was mostly a purple dragon, save for the plumes and the feathers of his crest, all four wings, and both tails. These were banded: a light forest green closest to his body, then a band of cyan, then tipped with dark, luxurious emerald. But they held, still, another surprise, for the undersides of his feathers were the same blue as his plumes, soft as a clear morning sky.

Tricky did have four wings: the two that served as his forelimbs, and two growing out of his hind limbs on which he could stand. He also had two raptor tails, feathers shaped like the leaf of a palm tree. His hind feet were shaped like paws. He had an underbelly of metallic silver scales, the top disappearing under a ruff of longer scales that fluffed around the base of his neck, streaked with lavender. Down the length of his body played a delicate pattern of thin, curving lines and specks of white.

Up Tricky’s neck, the purple of his scales shifted from desaturated to light to the color of the rest of his body, the seams covered in stitch-like markings made of darker purples. At the very tip of his crest and below his knees, he had rolling, uneven white markings that made him blend in with the clouds when he took to the sky. The undersides of his wings sported rosettes like a jaguar, while the tops had a pattern of elegant, white swoops, swirls, and dots.

The next firework overhead revealed Tricky’s shadow, stretching along the rocks, oblivious to a slinking, stalking darkness that crept closer to it, three white eyes blinking as it bared many sharp, silhouetted teeth. Tricky shook his body, a loose feather falling from one wing, and the shadow paused, changed direction, and swept it up, carrying it like a breeze back to Amore.

Amore’s split jaw opened in delight, dangerous maw and sharp teeth bared in a grin. She pinned the feather with one scaly forefoot, her bone-colored claws digging into the earth — and her shadow — below, then tipped her head, observing the feather with many magenta eyes. Pleased with their find, she moved forward a half step, covering the entire feather with her foremost foot as she craned her head around on her long neck, making sure no one had seen her shadow take it nor intended to make her give it back.

Though not as dark as her shadow, Amore was largely a black dragon. Her scales grew soft, sloughed, and regrew in a constant dance of death and rebirth. She had six limbs: two sets of forelimbs, the second set smaller than the first, and a powerful set of hind legs with large, velociraptor talons on one toe of each. Her body was sturdy but agile, and her tail was a long whip. Across her body were thin, black marks with parallel lines, as if her limbs, neck, jaw, the tip of her tail, and so on had been stitched onto her.

Patches of blood red scales splattered on her maw, her right knee, and the left reptilian foot on her second forefront limb. Down her neck, back, sides, and some length of her tail was a textured marking in various shades of red, streaks and patches of dark and light blending and fading together, dotted with small white flecks like stars. Her front left foot had been dipped in the same sort of paint.

Perhaps the most striking marks on her were the twelve false eyes that ran in a line down from the base of her tail. They were a deep, rich brown, inlaid with a pupil as black as Amore’s shadow, and the smallest circle of white, like a gleam of light. It was these eyes that had caught the attention of the last dragon.

Meelo’s cold gray eyes stared into Amore’s false eyes. She lifted her long, curved head haughtily, her small nose twitching and her ears perked forward as she waited for the other dragon to make a move.

Meelo was a sight to behold. She had a thick neck with four currently-closed gills, and a long, thin body. Her limbs were lithe and short, with rodent-like feet made for digging, quickly moving, and manipulating anything she picked up. Her tail, almost as long as her body, was made of segments that got bigger towards the middle before growing smaller again. The end was tipped with four thick spikes on each side, and a final one joining them at the very end. Behind her shoulders were two wings shaped like crescent moons that seemed made of gold, just like the short thorned horns that sat forward of her ears.

Her scales were smooth and mostly the same light gray as her eyes. Behind her ears was short pattern of black and white stripes that were neither longer than and ended before her gills. Behind her wings and to her hips, the scales on her back were washed in a faint burnished gold. Down the entire length of her body were black spots, heavier towards her spine. They weren’t circles but stretched long, horizontal, making her body seem lengthier than it was. Among them was the occasional golden scale. The very tip of her tail was a darker blue-gray, though it was cut off from the rest of her by the white marking that encased the rest of her tail and her hind legs before wrapping around her waist and washing up the underside of her ribs. It continued to cover her forelegs like gloves and up to her chest where it tapered off. Following the path, though, would find another taper below Meelo’s throat, and the white covered her face like a mask, ending behind her ears. Around the white marking was a faint white halo.

These were the dragons gathered at the Sparknest, a rainbow in their own right.