Ok guys here's a little back story for this tale that I'm about to weave for you. It's the first of 5 or possibly 6 stories that I have planned.. the only problem is that I have had them planned for years now. I can never seem to finish them, never find the right place to stop writing and transition to the next one. Also a problem lies with the time lines, because each story is on a different one, they kinda work backwards instead of forward in time, until the last one, which sums them all up and brings it to a close. Ah well... I'll let you guys see what I have so far and hopefully, maybe, possibly, someone can give me an idea or two or a suggestion that can help me get out of this nearly 10 year rut! It's quite annoying! But without further ado, here is my story, written by me ^^

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Chapter One

The moisture in the air lingered and formed a mist that hung 12 feet above the ground. The first night of summer and it was already warm. The mist clung to Zephyr’s skin and cooled her down as she floated just above the young trees in the forest. Every once in a while a taller tree would spring up in front of her so the would playfully cling to it’s side, climb to the top and then push herself away from it spreading her wings wide and diving back towards the ground.
She weaved through the trees, nearly grazing their trunks at every turn. Each second brought her closer to a collision, a very painful one, but she still flew faster. It wouldn’t be fun otherwise, she smiled to herself.
Nearing a small clearing the trees grew larger and farther apart. Seeing a large branch she reached out for it with both claws and swung herself up and over, like an acrobat would, landing softly in a squatting position so she could gage the distance to the next large branch. About 20 feet she guessed, give or take a foot.
Closing her eyes she inhaled deeply, the smells of the forest filled her lungs. The green leaves, the moist earth far beneath her and the soft scent of a deer not too far away. It was a perfect night for a flight and the quarter moon gave just the right amount of illumination. Zephyr opened her eyes and leapt for the large branch, coming to a stand and climbing quickly up the side of the tree.
When she reached the top she stopped and listened intently for any sounds that would let her know that she was being followed.
Nothing seemed to be out there. It was silent apart from the slight breeze that rustled the leaves in the trees. After a few more moments she was satisfied that no one was following her. She smiled to herself thinking how much trouble she would be in if she were caught on the earth. It wouldn’t be the first time but things were different now. She jumped out of the tree and floated down, low to to ground coming up to the clearing and walking as she passed the last tree.
A Peace Talker could never be on the ground, especially without an escort, but the land called to her as much as the sky did. Both places felt like home to her; especially here at her favorite spot. Walking out farther she could see the edge of the pond through the tall grasses that surrounded it. On the far side of the pond was an ancient willow tree whose branches hung low grazing the top of the water when the wind blew hard enough.
The wet ground squished under her claws as she wriggled her right foot, three claws scratching into the earth. It felt good to have something soft under her feet. Looking down a young but slightly tired face peered back up at her, the lines under her eyes told tales of restless nights that she had been experiencing recently. You would expect to see a face with that much stress on someone three times her age, but being only fifty-seven she had a lot of responsibility lately. And it wasn’t going to get better any time soon.

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She moved her ears up then down and grinned into the pond. If there has been any creature hiding just under the surface of the water it would have shrank back in fear of the rows of sharp teeth that glimmered white in the night. The shirt she wore was a tanned piece of hide that tied behind her neck and under her wings in the back. She relaxed her wings and they fell to the backs of her bare calves as she pulled them towards her shoulders. The black cotton pants she wore had been cut just below the knee and fit tight to her thighs. Her tail protruded out the back and moved slowly from side to side behind her. A small pouch made of leather was tied to the side of her pants and hung at her left hip.
Zephyr sighed deeply. The water looked welcoming to a wary stranger, but she knew better than to try her luck twice. The only time she had been in the water would have been her last if it wasn’t for her friend, Oscoro. Most winglies couldn’t swim, unless they had been trained to rescue, or if they were part water dragon. Zephyr was all fire dragon, to her knowledge anyway. She hadn’t known her father long enough to learn his heritage considering he was killed near the beginning of the Dragon Revolution by a pack of rogue wild dragons. He was the very first Peace Talker.
The job of the Peace Talker was to find a way to calm both sides of an argument with their words, working on a solution that would help both parties. The goal was to end the fighting, but some people are not easily appeased and would kill to have their way unchallenged and compromised. She hoped that one day she could be half as brave and skilled as her father had been.
Hypnotized by the way the wind made the water lap at the shore she sat on her haunches, crossing her arms over her knees, and rested her chin on her wrists. Her mind was miles away from all the responsibilities of her new mission. She was the newly appointed Peace Talker of the Triad and it was her job to find a way to end the power struggle between the Winglies and the barbarians known as the Hirsuits. There had been a silent power struggle since the end of the Dragon Revolution thirty-four years ago and to make matters worse, there was still no word from the last winglie that took the job. He was supposed to host a talk for a bilateral stand down last month and never showed up. The Hirsuits had been upset and called it an insult to their nation threatening to blow the whole truce off and declare war right then and there. The Winglie diplomats that had been present in the Hirsuit capital city, Dromm, became worried that they might be taken hostage or become casualties of the hushed war that was growing louder with every growl from the Hirsuits.
Possibly the only way they had managed to get out of Dromm alive was by the way that Senator Kinison had handled the situation. Calmly and very smoothly. The way he worked his words made the Hirsuits think that it was their idea to let the diplomats go. Kinison had assured the Hirsuits that they would get a new, more adept Peace Talker and reschedule the meeting for the coming month. The Hirsuit Peace Talker had agreed to this idea and the Winglies were released, unharmed.
As soon as the diplomats returned to Pacifios they dove into the matter of who was to be appointed the next Peace Talker and arranged a military search party to be sent into Moirai and the neighboring cities to look for the missing Peace Talker. They still haven’t found any clues as to where he might be.

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A few names came up for the new Peace Talker, including Zephyrs. Her name had been mentioned a few times in the past but quickly dismissed with the reason that she might not be up to the challenge at such a young age. This last time though, it came down to her and one other winglie. She had never heard who the other one was considering all of the meetings were very secretive and the general public was never allowed to enter the building when there was a meeting in progress. There was a vote and Zephyr was appointed the newest Peace Talker and told to begin working on her speech at the break of dawn the next morning. Despite the early hour, she eagerly accepted the job.
Zephyr stood and spread her wings. In one swift movement she was off the ground and sitting on a branch that hung precariously over the water. The branch bowed slightly from her weight but made no sound of objection. For more than two weeks she had been wracking her brain on how to word the speech correctly. She tried to think of how her father would have said it and wished that she had been able to spend more time with him. He was known as a charismatic winglie that could have sold salt to a thirsty man in the desert.
She took a quill and a folded piece of parchment out of her pouch and poised to write down her ideas. This would be the most important thing that she had yet to write for the Triad, maybe the most important thing ever. This speech would determine the mood of the treaty that was yet to be written. There was to be a meeting in Pacifios tomorrow morning where she would inform the senators of her progress. She didn’t think they’d get the joke if she told them that she was planning to just “wing it.”
The scratching of her quill to paper accompanied the sounds of the night. Zephyr read as she wrote. “My fellow-,” she paused, “fellow what? We aren’t Hirsuits and they aren’t Winglies.”
Hirsuits were dominantly earth walkers and the Winglies ruled the skies. There used to be peace all over the land until the humans began to die out from disease and their own petty wars. Some think that a few might still be located somewhere at the far end of the earth, but none have been seen since Zephyr was a hatchling. After they disappeared smaller races began to quarrel for the freed territory and grow in size along the way. The great human cities became ruins and nature began to take back what it had lost. The forests grew thicker and stronger with each passing year.
The Hirsuits and the wild dragons wanted to take all the land that the humans had claimed but the Winglies had the same idea. They would use the land to nest on the ground where there was plenty of room to raise a family unlike the floating cities in the sky that had become over populated in the last century. The wild dragons had been the first to fall being the less developed of the three races. After the Dragon Revolution the few survivors made for the farthest point of the Yahto Mountains and never made so much as a growl in objection. That left only the Hirsuits.
The period of time right after the Dragon Revolution is known as the War of the Sun. Both sides would fight from the moment the sun touched the sky until it retreated for the night as if the daily bloodshed was an offering to the sun to rise again the next day. Without it the world would remain in darkness. Some had hoped that it would have so that the soldiers might come home and stop their fighting. It was a terrible time to live in the sky, there were countless losses for everyone. Fathers and brothers would go to battle and return a fraction of what they used to be or maybe not at all. The battle grounds were strewn with the corpses of Winglies and Hirsuits alike. The ones too wounded to fight or flee could only cry out in pain until someone came by, hopefully ally, possibly enemy.

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Then one day the sunrise turned blood red and the worst skirmish of all began. Both sides fought with all the remaining strength they had, until there was no one left moving on the field spare two bodies; One Winglie and one Hirsuit. They looked around when they noticed that it had grown quiet and stared in shock at the destruction they had caused. It was then that the war was put to end with one simple act, they met and exchanged a few words followed by a strong handshake. With that they both turned to their fallen comrades to look for any survivors and to begin working on the plans for a peace treaty. It was the shortest war in Winglie history lasting only three years, but taking the lives of over one million.
The gears of peace were quickly set in motion and a rough treaty was made the next day. The clean up of the battle was long and painful. Although the treaty was agreed on both sides the deaths of their family members haunted the ones that were still living, seeing their bodies only made the pain a fraction less. The fallen cried out to them in their sleep for revenge, and the only way to do that was with more bloodshed. So with the night came the fear of the Raids. Mostly the younger Hirsuits and winglies would partake in these horrible deeds, the ones that were too young to be in the war.
Parents guarded their children more than ever; they were the main targets in the Raids. They would come with the cover of darkness and snatch young children out of their beds as they slept. What they did to them after that could only be considered torture. There was no pity even for them. Many were killed quickly and only once a child escaped the Hirsuits. If he was purposely freed as a message or managed to get away on his own is still unsure. Zephyr was glad that she was no longer a hatchling and did a good job fending for herself but her mother still worried about her. It wasn’t until an official meeting between the Head Senator and the High Wolf was arranged to stop the Raids that Zephyr was even permitted to go to school by herself even though the sun was high in the sky during the hours of her studies. Her mother sighed deeply once the Raids came to a stop but they have been working on a more effective peace treaty ever since; one that could divide the lands equally and satisfy both sides.
Fifty years later they are still trying the find the perfect solution. Things have been much quieter but there are still spats from time to time.
Zephyr put the feathered end of her quill to her chin as she shook her head and groaned. “Why exactly did I take this job?” she sighed.
She put the quill and the paper back in her pouch and sat on the branch, only her tail moved, barely touching the water. She had thought that if she were the Peace Talker she could help put an end to the stupid politics going on between the land and the sky.
No, she thought, that wasn’t the reason.
The real reason was that she wanted to try to follow in the footsteps that had been lain out for her. By doing this she might be able to live up to her father’s name and clear it at the same time. She didn’t like to think about it but, he had become a fugitive from the military only hours before he had been killed by the rogue dragons. They said that he was working with them to intentionally destroy the triad, but she knew better than to believe that. If he was working with them, why would they kill him. She had hoped to stumble over some kind of truth being able to work so close with the military and the Triad.

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With one last look at the water she climbed up the tree, grabbing the next branch above her head and pulling herself up easily within reach of the next. Within seconds she had reached the top of the tree and burst into the sky opening her wings wide to the rushing air. With a few powerful beats, she was moving upward in a wide spiraling motion. She was above the trees and soon the distant mountains came into view. Continuing her upward climb she surpassed the highest mountain peak easily and disappeared into the white clouds that dotted the sky.
Inside the cloud her visibility was near zero. The vapors stuck to her scales and slid off them like dew as she came through the top. She floated above the cloud for a minute and shook off what she could before continuing upward. That night, the sky was as if it never ended, like it could go on until the end of time. She felt like a small grain of sand in a huge desert with the stars greatly outnumbering her. Up here, between the ground and the sky, there was no war or difference of appearance. Up here, everyone looked like a grain of sand.
She pushed all her thoughts of the meeting to the back of her mind and closing her eyes, took a deep breath. When she let it out she dropped all her troubles and slowly opened her eyes. She felt instantly lighter as if problems had a real physical weight. She pulled her wings close to her body and felt gravity take hold of her.
Falling towards the clouds she smiled and let out a yell as she dove through them. Up and down, in and out of the clouds she flew as if she were swimming in them. The sky was her playground once again. There was no one else out tonight, not from her part of the world anyway. Far to the ground she saw a Hirsuit moving towards a little camp in the woods. She wondered what it would be like to be stuck on the ground forever, though some Hirsuits could fly, they were only half-lings.
Half-lings used to be frowned upon and shunned from all societies. Since the war though, they had been welcomed and become an important part of the Hirsuit community. Their entire air force relied on these half-lings for mobility. One of her best friends happened to be a half-ling. Oainix was his name, his mother was a wild one in her younger days but being a winglie she took control of their children and raised them as winglies. He never really knew his father either but his mother said he was like a lion if he had to be described.
Up ahead there was a faint glow in the sky, but brighter and larger than a far off star. A small grin spread across her face. Home, she thought. Moirai, one of the three cities in the sky. The city had been named after the founding dragon almost 3000 years ago, not that long since most dragons could easily live to be eight-hundred years-old.
As she came in closer she saw the Winglie standing on guard was Grio, this made her smile. He always made her smile when he was working on his inventions. He would try to sell any one of them for a few extra Talons too. Not to say that many of them worked, but sometimes he could come up with something useful. Talons had been the only form of money that Winglies had used since dragons had taken to the sky. They were small rectangular pieces of silver with a golden talon branded onto it. This brand was not able to be copied by anyone unless they had access to high powered magic. The only Winglie that knew the secret to magic was the senator for the city and the only way he would tell anyone else would be on his death bed, before he passed his title.

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( So I'll type it up and post chapter 2 tomorrow. Hope it's not too wordy so far @_@ )