Wings of Fire: Secret of the Bushes

Chapter 1

Persevere followed the little scavenger as it traversed through the foliage on the forest floor. The rainwing's scales changed color to match his surroundings in order to keep him hidden from the watchful eyes of the scavenger before him.

Persevere crept quietly through thickets as the scavenger was rushing their steps in an attempt to get away. Having lived in the forest means Persevere knew how to stay quiet as well.

Still, Persevere can tell the little scavenger realized that it's being followed. When the scavenger stopped moving, Persevere got a bit curious. He moved closer and saw the pile of sticks on its back being carried by a slender basket of sorts that is strapped around the scavengers body. Each stick had what looks to be feathers on each end.

Persevere watched the scavenger as it knelt down on  the ground to fiddle with something before it slowly stood back up.

Then it just stood there, studying its environment and listening for something. Persevere hoped it hadn't heard him; he didn't want to lose this one.

Then the scavenger whipped around and towards him. Persevere immediately froze. Its gaze scanned his direction with suspicion as it tried looking for anything awry.

With those piercing, watchful eyes, the scavenger knew what to look for. Persevere hoped he hadn't been found out as this had been the only scavenger he had found that day. He hoped his scales were enough to hide him from the scavenger's watchful eyes. Any slight movement and Persevere would be immediately be seen as his scales would shift around making a temporary disturbance on the background.

Then a loud chirping could be heard deeper in the forest almost like a bird calling. The scavenger turned towards the noise and bolted away with haste not giving Persevere a chance to react. By the time Persevere realized what was going on, he had lost sight of it.

Great. That was the last scavenger today. Persevere cursed internally.

The scavengers were very crafty and around here they were somewhat different from what Persevere had heard about them. They like to cover themselves with leaves and mask their scent making it too hard to track through the smells of the jungle. It was like the rainforest was hiding them from any predators who would try to hunt them. They also knew how to hide well amongst the foliage of the forest and it took Persevere half a day to find the last one and now he had quickly lost it amongst the leaves.

Persevere huffed in disappointment. The sun was almost down when he looked up and saw the last signs of light in the sky; he didn't have anymore time to spend looking for another one. So for now he decided to head home. Maybe tomorrow he'll get luckier.

Persevere lived alone out in the relative middle of nowhere of the rainforest kingdom. He was looking for scavengers to study and understand their behavior. Ever since he was a dragonet, he had been obsessed with scavengers. He had spent a lot of time searching the forests for scavengers but never found any. He spent too much time looking for them that he neglected time to interacting with other rainwings. It made him an outcast and eventually the other rainwings stopped talking to him. They made fun of him for his obsessions; called him a "scavenger-brain". Persevere decided that he had enough and left to live alone outside of the village.

That had been a few years ago. Recently, Persevere had found a quiet, peaceful spot to nest in somewhere to the west of the rainwing village almost at the outskirts of the rainforest where the trees start thinning out leading towards the southern shores of the rainforest. Barely any dragons flew by this area and there was enough herbs and food to survive on.

When Persevere first arrived, he hadn't known it was crawling with scavengers. It was by pure chance that he had stumbled upon a few.

It wasn't clear at first. Persevere had been perched on a tree branch one day gazing down the forest floor and chewing on a pomelo when he swore he saw the bushes walking below him.