[Gift] 2024 Scavenger Hunt - Light

After Quake and Flash’s escapade where Quake mistook an Earth dragon for a fish, and Flash managed to finally get some of that pumpkin stew after what felt like hours in line, they were both exhausted and agreed to rest a while at the farm before they went back to their Flight. It wasn’t too far away from their Flight, after all, and it was still not even midday yet. Walking together side by side, with Flash complaining about the heat and Quake telling him to suck it up because her wings are not free umbrellas for him, they found a nice patch of trees to rest under.

Said trees were, to no one’s surprise of course, large patches of apple trees, planted in dense rows and ready for harvest. Quake briefly pointed out to Flash that they probably shouldn’t be sitting in the orchard since they technically didn’t pay to be picking apples or whatever, but he said that the patch here isn’t technically the paid section of the orchard, either, so she relented. Settling down and resting her wings on either side of her, Quake looked out across the field in front of her- large expanses of grass had started to turn golden-brown due to the autumn weather, wind sweeping and rolling through them and turning them into crests and troughs of ocean waves. Rabbits foraged amongst the grass, and Quake swore she saw a fox dart past by, but it was so fast that even her eyes had a hard time catching it. Horses grazed on the grass, too, a few of them in blankets of various shades, presumably to protect them against the cold of the night. It was quite a pleasing sight, Quake thought, now that they were out of the direct burn of the midday sun.

With a gentle crack, the plastic lid of the container was popped open by Flash. Quake turned around to watch him in curiosity- she wasn’t hungry, and besides, stew would probably just slip right out between her teeth anyway. She watched as he rummaged in their backpack for a spoon- aha, found it!- and dipped the spoon in for a taste of the stew.

“Is it good?” Quake inquired more out of boredom than anything else, since her two choices were watch her rider eat or watch horses eat, and her rider was objectively more interesting than horses. Flash nodded his assent, throwing a thumbs up in her direction, and then-

He spat out the stew with a ppmph!

“There’s a clump of fur in here!” Flash exclaimed, holding up a small tuft that looked so small she thought it was a feather. The actual fur tuft was a creamy yellow-white, just a few shades lighter than the actual broth of the food that Flash had. It also was very much not a piece of pumpkin, which means that the soup might’ve been contaminated. That’s not good.

“Give me that,” Quake demanded, her instinct to protect her rider kicking in, and grabbed the clump of fur to inspect it more closely. There didn’t seem to be anything suspicious, nothing that smelled like poison, but Flash is still not a dragon by any means and he could easily get food poisoning if-

“Uhh… Quake? You might want to take a look at this,” Flash ventured. She turned around.

A small dragon was slithering in the stew that he was holding.

What.

Why.

Apparently Quake must’ve been standing there blinking long enough for the situation to get awkward. 

“Hi!” The small dragon chirped happily. “My name is Leviathan!” He said.

Still confused, she waved a talon at him. “Why… Why were you in our stew?” She asked, to which he happily curled around a pumpkin slice and shook off the stew droplets from his neck fur.

“Well, I was swimming, and then I ended up here!” He replied, which explained absolutely nothing as far as Quake was concerned.

“...Yeah ok, we should probably return him back to the stall, I have no clue if he’s one of the farm’s dragons or a visitor but we should definitely not eat him by accident.”

Quake sighed. “Yeah, and we should get a refund while we’re at it. Leviathan pretty much shook half the bowl away.”