A/N: My imagination created this story based on one of my favorite songs (written and performed by John Lennon). It is set in a world created by Crystal Scherer in her work, 'Upon Wings of Change'. This wonderful and talented author has permitted me to use the book and her characters!

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"Mom, I'm going over to see if Amanda needs help feeding the hatchlings!"

I was so excited the eggs finally hatched. I couldn't wait to see the new silver and gold dragonets!

"Clover, her nest is close to the ground, so be careful. Don't be a bother to her," my mom said through the mindlink. All dragonets could talk through the main group link, but she was speaking just to me.

"I promise," I responded as I flew through the trees, dodging low-hanging branches.

I was only four months old, a second-generation dragonet; she and my dad were from the original lab that created us. You see, scientists kidnapped and experimented on my parents when this world was still human, creating a species that looked like a miniature winged dragon. My parents overheard the scientists say if the new creatures were sentient, they would kill them, so my parents acted like animals with catlike traits, since they were that size. Well, cats that could fly!

The scientists continued to create more dragonets, and they kept them in cages so small the dragonets could barely spread their wings open. A few years into that experiment, an alien race called the Votaks attacked the planet. Those invaders killed all the humans. The dragonets escaped the lab during the initial attack and hid in the denser part of the Amazon rainforest, which was where the scientists had set the lab up. Within days, the Votaks released animals onto the planet from all over the galaxy. Over half of all native creatures died because of that.

The dragonets learned a few things about themselves in those first few weeks in the wild. The first big thing was that they could breathe fire like the dragons of myth and legend, and the second thing was The Morning Song. Every day as the sun rose, the need to celebrate it called to them, and they sang and danced to whatever theme the daybreak brought. They never felt that in the lab, as their cages were in a windowless room.

A few months later, another alien race, the Kymari, removed the Votaks. It appalled the Kymari that the Votaks killed intelligent beings simply to get a habitable planet near this edge of the universe. They killed any Votak who fought back, and they sent the rest back to their original region of space. Since the earth was empty, the Kymari built their own cities here, with high walls to keep dangerous animals out. They guarded those walls well.

From what we could figure out by listening to the guards' conversations, the Kymari did not tolerate other races on their planets, so we never let them know we could think and were aware. After the threat of death from the humans, we feared all races. But after a few years of living in the wild, the dragonets had lost a little over one-fourth of our population to accidents or animals that didn’t fear our fire.

So, to stay alive, we moved into a vast park in the center of a Kymari city. The park had hundreds of edible fruit trees from Earth and other galaxies. It had several small and large ponds throughout it, and it took over an hour to fly from one side to the other. We ate fruit mostly, but some of the first generation ate fish, so this park became our little utopia. The Kymari left us alone, as we weren't a threat. But they loved observing us, like human bird watchers.

And now, there were new hatchlings! I loved new hatchlings!

But a horrible smell bombarded me when I was almost to the nest, which was in a small hollow of a tree. I was suddenly so unbelievably angry but terrified, and I didn't understand why.

What was going on?

I stopped on a branch and looked at the ground, shaking in fear. I saw a Kymari child playing alone right where the street and grass met at the entrance to the park, about a block away.

That wasn’t right. Kymari NEVER left their children unattended.

But why did I feel like this, and what was that God-awful smell?

Suddenly, I saw Tasha, a friend of my parents, leap into the air and shoot a fireball at something I couldn't see. She moved toward the meadow behind where I was hiding, and I jumped branches to see what was happening. We only breathed fire if we were under attack. What was going on?

Oh no! It was a shadow creature, like the one we killed on the other side of the park about a month ago. It was right by the nest with the hatchlings!

Several more adult dragonets arrived and shot fire at it, trying to get it to back away from the nest. I felt myself growling low, deep in my throat, but at the same time, I was frozen in fear. I couldn't breathe fire yet, as I was still a kid.

There was nothing I could do but watch in horror.

Tasha dive-bombed it and bit the back of its neck. That didn't seem to do anything but make it madder. After several rounds of tossing fireballs and streaming fire at it with the others, she bit it again. She got a good bite that time, but at a considerable cost. Its tail got her good, and she slammed into the tree where I was hiding. Her wing was broken and sitting at a weird angle. The shadow creature was seizing. We saw that when we killed the last one, too. Something in our bite made them spasm and die.

My eyes left the creature when I saw a flash of blue from an energy weapon and five Kymari guards surrounding it. The dragonets scattered, and Amanda and her mate took the hatchlings in their mouths and flew away. I was still too terrified to move.

A Kymari guard approached Tasha as she cried and tried to get away, but she was too severely injured. He picked her up gently and walked away with her. I sent my mom a picture of what I saw through the mindlink.

We had just lost Tasha.

*******

It had been about a week since the Kymari took Tasha. We tried for days to mindlink her, but it just echoed back, meaning she was either unconscious or dead. We mourned our friend, and I planted some flower seeds around the tree where she had been hurt.

The Morning Song lifted our spirits, though, as it always did. It called to us deep in our souls every day with the rising sun. We sang and danced to the music only we could hear until the sun had risen and the song stopped. When we felt it, we had to respond. The only time it was absent was if we were in a burrow underground or somewhere where we couldn't see the sunrise, but it came every morning, assuring us that a new day was dawning and we should celebrate it. If we went too long without it, we got depressed and sick.

Since the attack, we'd noticed the Kymari actively searching for us around the park. We changed the location of our Morning Song every day, but they still seemed to find us. However, they were just watching. It scared us, though, as they now knew we could breathe fire.

We overheard several conversations saying they would leave us alone, as we had never attacked a Kymari, and we appeared to be the only animal that could kill a Sicora, which we now knew was the monster's name. I knew some dragonets were terrified of the fallout from that encounter, though. We never wanted attention; we just wanted to live in a safe environment.

My friend suddenly yelled through the mindlink. "Tasha is alive! They fixed her wing, but she is in a cage! Just like the scientists did to Mom and Dad. Tasha said that as soon as she heals and can fly again, she will try to escape and return to us."

I didn't know how to feel about that. I was glad that she was alive—but in a cage! The Blood Memories I got from my parents showed some of their time in cages. No one knew why newborn dragonets had these memories, as they belonged to our parents as humans and dragonets. They also told us about all the different races in the galaxies and their languages. The original dragonets awoke with them, and somehow, they passed down to their offspring, too.

I always avoided the memories of my parents in cages and didn't look too clearly at them.

I hoped she got away.

*******

It had been about a month since Tasha left us. The updates I'd gotten were conflicting, and I was still trying to figure out what to think.

One dragonet would say that she was in a cage, and the Kymari were doing tests on her, like the scientists did to our parents. Another said she was only in the cage for the first week, and she was now being treated well. She had a heat lamp, and she was getting Sunburst berries every day!

But that meant the Kymari had figured out Sunburst berries were our all-time favorite treat, and we would go to great lengths to get them. Some dragonets warned the rest of us we shouldn't eat any berries we found, because the Kymari might have drugged them so they could catch us.

I'd never had one, as they grew in the planters outside the park, and I was too scared to go there. But I'd seen more and more Kymari in the less popular areas of the park, and I always hid until I could get away.

My parents were siding with the dragonets who thought Tasha was being caged and tortured.

I hoped they were wrong. I hope she was okay.

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A/N:
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