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The Queen of the SandWings didn’t look like a hybrid but the rumors still clung to her reign in the same way that fresh morning dew clung to the underside of a palm tree leaf. She lacked the signature poisoned tail barb of her people, her scales were a bright gold and her eyes were a particular shade of green. But it was more so the fact that she had appeared out of nowhere at the end of the War of SandWing Succession, the Eye of Onyx around her neck, and been declared the Queen by the entire Royal Court that had made the tribe as a whole uneasy about Sunny. But the whispers never reached her ears, mostly because she was never at the palace.
Signing peace treaties, conducting post-war census counts, creating trade agreements, establishing uniform schooling, Sunny — as she was still known to her friends, her mother, and no one else — had her talons-full rebuilding a nation.
But to the bejeweled SkyWing that didn’t matter. None of it did, except—
“I did not steal his sheep, Your Majesty!” the dusty SandWing shrieked, wings flared, “I have my own livestock, what use could I possibly have with his?”
“The markets don’t lie,” the red SkyWing rasped, smoke curling around his horns, “my sheeps’ wool is selling better then yours. As is my cows’ milk and my horses’ leather.”
“That is not true! Supply and demand is relatively the same in the entirety of the Scorpion Den.”
And then Alpine’s former business partner went on and on, about nothing, really, and when he finished he gave Alpine a triumphant glare, as if he had been the one to suggest an audience with the new Queen. He wasn’t.
“Under the old laws, or lack thereafter, yes. How the Den is run now — wonderful, by the way, Your Majesty, wouldn’t change a thing — not so much. You’re being edged out, Desert Fox, completely and utterly. Your business is collapsing.”
And then they went on and on again, talking in little circles, the Queen mediating all of it.
Eventually, a conclusion was reached that they could all agree on. They left. Sunny was momentarily, only momentarily, alone.
Queen Sunnyfold the Warslayer sat on her throne and controlled the lives of her subjects like a puppetmaster with an army of marionettes.
Queen Sunnyfold the Warslayer sat on her throne and reconstructed a society shattered by decades of war.
Queen Sunnyfold the Warslayer sat on her throne and was a child.