!!WARNING FOR GORE, BODY HORROR, BODY DYSMORPHIA, AND OUT OF CHARACTER BURN AND SCARLET!! Burn would say she has a high pain tolerance. She has been scarred over and over from the war, markings littered all over her dark beige scales from battles. They even looked like battles: Overlapping scars of varying depths, all fighting to look the most gruesome. So far her favorite was a gnarly burn scar right under her wing that took up most of her underbelly. But she had never felt anything like this: it was not the burning she was used to. Comforted by, even. No, the flames that have licked her scales time and time again had been a familiar pain. But the acid that had exploded out of Rainwing's mouth and hit her was unlike the fires. It didn't burn, but it felt like her own scales were being taken away. Oh, wait, they were. By her own claws. Burn had unconsciously started doing exactly what she had wanted to do the rainwing: She was ripping her own scales off, peeling them into little bits on the floor. Scarlet was screaming- No, wait, that was the rainwing. Or maybe herself. Someone was screaming. After her scales were mostly a shredded pile on the floor, she felt herself crumple to meet them. Her darling Scarlet came to her shoulder, holding her face. What was left of it. “Oh, no, darling. No no no. Your face…” Burn didn’t care about beauty. But now, once her ally, her friend, had said something? Now she wanted to take the face off the Rainwing, that beautiful face, and put it where hers used to be. She didn’t want to look like one of the freaks in her weirdling tower. She wanted to be beautiful. “It’s thrilling, right?” said Burn, her sharp teeth forming a grin with what was left of her lips. Forcing a smile made her hurt so much, but it felt good as well. No, it didn’t feel good. It felt familiar to her, the feeling of bleeding out. She thought the taste of blood was a metallic pang of nostalgia, times in the war when she felt alive. Battles she participated in where blood got into her mouth, She didn’t feel alive right now; she felt weak. Burn hated feeling weak. A few medics came over, holding her without a hearable word. She had taken a few big chunks off, noticeably around her eyes and jaw where the venom had hit her. Scarlet hadn’t even turned around to watch her beautiful Rainwing or her favorite plaything run away. Her eyes were trained on Burn, watching as her subjects put mixed-up plants on her wounds. Burn had never seen Scarlet act this way before. She was always so focused on what was the most fun, the most thrilling, but right now, she seemed focused on Burn. A few days later, Burn was still recovering. The medics had told her a few things, even though she could have figured those out by herself very easily. "You won't be able to fight anymore." said a medic named Warbler. "The venom had soaked in further than your claws, and it had gotten into your skull. There, it started burrowing in and got stuck, making that part of your skull susceptible to breaks or fractures." Burn had heard this already. For the last few days, she's heard a sizzling in her skull as well as immense pain. She's gotten better at managing it, but the non-stop hissing reminds her of the sound the Skywings had made to her as she had arrived. “Okay” she said. Her eyes darted over the unusual yellow spots on his wings, and a small part of her wanted to rip them off and study them. But she knew better: if she wanted to take unusual body parts off, why not start with her own face? Again, that is. Warbler looked up at her before leaving, almost bumping into the queen as does. Scarlet had been watching her almost nonstop for a few hours, from the sunrise until now, when the sun was almost at it’s peak in the sky. “Need anything?” Scarlet asked, straightening her crown on the floor. It had been there, where Scarlet had picked a few gems out and put those gems in a neat pile to the side. “How bad is it really?” Burn asked again. Everyone had been dancing around the answer to that question, not letting her see her reflection in the mirrors Scarlet had all around her rooms. She had kept in one of the few places without a reflection. “You look great.” Scarlet said, avoiding eye contact. She had been saying the same thing every time Burn asked. “I should be out on the battlefield,” Burn said offhandedly. “My army thinks I am being weak.” “You’re not being weak,” Scarlet shut down immediantly. “You just got your face melted off.” “I have had worse.” “No you haven’t.” “Yes I have.” “When?” “The time I got burned on my underbelly,” Burn says matter-of-factly. “That was pretty bad.” "Oh, yeah. Sure. A big burn is worse than destroying your face." "So my face is destroyed." Burn clarified. "No, your face is fine." Scarlet corrected. "Then let me see it." "You're being a dragonet." "You're being difficult." (continued below)
"I'm not letting you see it," Scarlet said in a tone that Burn could decipher as annoyance. Burn moved her face as much as she could, attempting to make a frown. She ended up cracking the scabs a bit, and made an annoyed noise. "I want to dance." Scarlet crinkles her brow, her wings flaring slightly. "What?" Burn is Yeah! So Burn and Scarlet don't make out, but it's very Burnlet coded. Also, I got the idea for Burn's solution by getting my hand gently grazed by a cheese grater. So yeah, Burn and I have the same amount of battle experience.
