She had many thoughts about that but no idea how to sort them out.
“He gave me this,” Thorn said, touching the moonstone around her neck. “I asked him why he was here, and he said he was trying to save his tribe. I liked that, too,” she went on. “He really, really cared about saving his tribe. I’d never seen loyalty before, because there was nothing like the Outclaws back then, not in the Scorpion Den. He said he was doing something essential that nobody else could do.”
“Oh!” Sunny gasped. “The tunnels! He must be the animus who built the tunnels!”
Thorn looked at her curiously. “You know about that? Wait, tunnels, as in multiple tunnels?”
“Two of them,” Sunny said, “as far as I know. Those are the only ones I’ve been through anyway.”
“You have been around,” Thorn said with a hint of admiration in her voice. “I only knew about one tunnel. He was here every day for a while, trying to pick the right spot and working up the energy to create it. So I kept coming back to bother him, and finally I guess he fell for me, too.”
Who wouldn’t? Sunny thought. “But,” she said, “didn’t anyone care that you were from two different tribes?” If Burn thinks it’s wrong, I’m guessing she’s not the only dragon who feels that way.
What if it were me and Starflight? She realized she didn’t really know what dragons in the outside world thought about inter-tribe relationships. It had never come up in any scrolls, and the guardians under the mountain had never talked about it — but they never talked about families or love at all.
“No one knew except Six-Claws and my friend Armadillo,” Thorn admitted. “Stonemover was my secret. Of course, I didn’t have a whole lot of other friends back then.”
“If they knew now,” Sunny said slowly, “would you lose the Outclaws?”
Thorn stepped in front of Sunny and put up her wings to stop her in place. “Listen to me,” she said. “I don’t tell everyone about my past because I like my privacy, and there isn’t much of that when you lead a band of outlaws. But I’m not ashamed of you or of where you came from. If other dragons have a problem with it, that’s their problem. It’s not against the law to be with a dragon from another tribe. It just … hardly ever happens, that’s all. Usually each tribe keeps to itself. Which makes you rare but not illegal or taboo or horrifying or anything like that. Don’t ever let any dragon make you feel like you shouldn’t exist. You understand?”
Sunny nodded. She thought dragons should be allowed to love whoever they fell in love with, but at the same time, she couldn’t help thinking, Look at me, though … no natural weapons, no powers, scales that mean I don’t fit into any tribe … I’m kind of a walking argument for avoiding inter-tribe relationships, aren’t I?
Her mother looked as if she could read Sunny’s thoughts on her face. She brushed her front talons over Sunny’s head and horns and cupped her snout. “Sunny, you are perfect the way you are.”
“So what happened to Stonemover?” Sunny asked. She didn’t want to think about her weird looks anymore, at least for a little while.
“He disappeared.” Thorn let go of her and blew out a breath with hints of fire in it. “I came back one day and he was gone. Morrowseer was there instead. He said it was my fault, whatever had happened to Stonemover, and never to look for him or try to speak to him again. Pompous worm-faced snob-head camel turd.”
“Mother!” Sunny said, nearly shocked into laughing.
“That’s what he was,” Thorn growled. “Morrowseer. I dream about wringing his neck all the time.” She sighed, and her claws scratched across the stone as if they were frustrated, too.
“We didn’t like him much either,” Sunny admitted. “So that was it? Didn’t you ever see Stonemover again?”
“No, but of course that wasn’t it,” Thorn said, turning to walk on again. “I looked for him everywhere. I went through the tunnel, but it led to the rainforest — isn’t that odd? I thought it would lead to their hidden kingdom, but no. I searched the whole place, but there were no NightWings there, only some very sweet, rather bewildered RainWings. Very confusing. I never understood how that would save his tribe.”
“I’ll explain it to you later,” Sunny said. “Did he know about me?”
“No,” Thorn said. “We were fighting, a little bit, when I found out I was with egg. I planned to tell him once he apologized. But he’d gotten very strange and cold, so maybe he wasn’t going to.”
“That’s what happens to animus dragons,” Sunny said. “Whenever they use their magic, they lose a little bit of their soul, or something like that. They get meaner and colder and a little more crazy. From what I’ve heard anyway.”