Sand-snorting Loser

by Mirage

You were the first to call me real,

before I’d earned the right to feel.

A name half-whispered in the shade

the first not armed, the first who stayed

when I was all sharp edges.

We met where rules forgot to tread,

where even moonlight feared to spread.

I warned you once, or maybe three

but you just smiled and said,

“You’ll see.”

(And moons, I did. Just not on my own.)

You learned my silences by tone,

each shrug, each glance—a different code.

You never knocked. You never owed.

You simply sat beside the load

I wouldn't name aloud.

We lit the fireflies with breath,

like stolen sparks defying death.

You held them gently, one by one,

said, “Even borrowed light can run

and still return again.”

You were the king of not quite there,

of secret paths and midnight air.

We danced through halls we didn’t own

two ghosts in search of something known

only in the dark.

The world grew louder. So did I.

I snapped my wings. I lit the sky.

But you stayed quiet, soft and true,

and gods above, I envied you

for knowing how to stay.

You loved me not in perfect days,

but through the storms I set ablaze.

When I was ruin, wrath, and ash

you touched my cheek like none had

and whispered, “You're still here.”

So if this finds your careful hands,

between the books or in the sands

where once we carved our foolish names

know I remember. Know the flames

still flicker when you smile.

--------------------------------------------------

They didn’t whisper it quietly enough.

I am a half-breed. That alone was enough to get me sidelined, too much of one thing, not enough of the other. Whatever I was, it made people uncomfortable. They never said it directly. They just spoke like I wasn’t there. Or worse... like I didn’t matter.

No real family. No clean name. No one took me in. No dragon claimed me. I was an orphan living in Scorpion’s Den—just heat, dust, and whatever I could steal to get by.

The settlement smelled of dry stone and burnt herbs, a harsh place that didn’t forgive weakness. I learned fast to hide, to be smaller than the whispers, to move like a shadow nobody wanted to see.

And yet there was Qibli.

One of the few faces in Scorpion’s Den that didn’t turn away when he saw me. His voice was calm, clever, warm like dusk. He caught me once hiding behind hanging herbs and didn’t flinch. He smiled.

Not the fake pity smile. An honest one. Like he saw something worth noticing.

I didn’t trust it at first. Thought he’d vanish, like all good things do. But he didn’t. He came back. He asked questions. Called me clever. Let me speak like I had something worth saying.

He wasn’t just kind. He believed in me.

If I ever had something close to a father, it was him.

And I never said it to his face, but moons—did I want to make him proud.