The Cloud School hummed above the forest, a ring of soft white puffs where young dragons carved their first fire-rings into the sky. Nox opened wide and puffed. Out came one wisp of grey smoke, thin as a spider's thread, drifting up between the proud orange rings his classmates were already drawing in the air. His wisp didn't hum. It just... dissolved.
He pressed himself flat behind the mossy boulder, wings folded tight against his sides. Cold, wet moss seeped through his thin belly scales, spreading slow and shivery. The orange rings above hummed and swirled, crackling like tiny applause. Nox's wisp was already gone. He thought: What if I'm just... smoke?
Nox puffed again, harder, grinding his teeth until they clicked together in the silent cloud. Out popped a second grey curl, limp and listless, trailing behind him like a sad little ribbon. Three classmates blasted twin orange spirals that crackled and popped like tiny popcorn against the blue. Click-click-click went his teeth. The spirals went pop-pop-pop.
A bead of cloud-dew rolled off the boulder's mossy edge. Splat. It landed cold and round on his nose, dripping down between his closed eyes. Nox hunched lower into the green, pulling his wings tighter until he was just a small, damp lump of scales. Squish went the dew on his snout. The orange rings kept crackling overhead. He kept not crackling.
A cloud-step creaked. A quiet classmate slid down the puff beside the boulder and settled cross-legged in the damp moss without a word. She opened her mouth and puffed out a spark—one pinprick of gold, no bigger than a firefly's blink. It wobbled in the air between them, trembling like a held breath. Neither dragon moved.
She leaned in, close enough that her breath tickled his ear scales. "Mine takes a whole week," she whispered. Nox stared at the tiny golden dot wobbling in the air between them—smaller than a teardrop, brighter than a star. It pulsed once, soft and patient. He thought: A whole week. Not a whole year. Not never.
Later, when the sun dropped low and the cloud ring turned tangerine, Nox uncurled and puffed one more time. The grey smoke rose, thickened, twisted—and at its very tip, the faintest thread of red caught the fading light. He stood still, mouth open, the air around his snout smelling like warm ash and cinnamon. The red tip wobbled, alive, like an ember breathing.
Nox stepped off the cloud ring onto the winding path home, chin lifted. The tangerine sky stretched long and golden over the rippling forest canopy far below. His grin stretched so wide his little ears poked out sideways. That one stubborn wisp of red smoke drifted behind him, catching the wind, catching the evening, refusing to go grey.
