She nodded "I can't really understand what family is but I still appreciate what you did, and so dose the queen." Her brain buzzed with questions *why is he nice? Why is he different like me? How did he practicly read my mind a few hours ago? Why is he not trying to kill me like everyone else?* (and so on)

Her mind was buzzing with questions that Shift barely managed not to answer. Shift shifted a bit, acting confused although he already got the answer about a minute ago. "Why don't you understand what family is? Dont you also have a family?"

Sandstorm froze in place, all of the color drained from her face. "Umm.... No, no I-i don't" her smile turned to a frown and all of the memories came rushing back.

Shift saw her memories again. He pretended to be confused again, though its was really hard. "Why? Is something wrong?"

She sighed "there were a lot of problems with my family, and its not the brightest of stories..." She looked at him, his eyes were filled with curiousity so she continued "the only dragons who know this story, are the queen, my mother, my father," she paused "a-and my sister..." She looked up at the moon and unlocked her darkest memories from her brain "when I hatched, I was hatched with a twin sister. We didn't look anything alike, she had black scales, I had gold, she had green eyes, I had violet. At first we were a happy family, until my sister went to war." She looked down at her copper necklace "when she went to war my family was torn apart, we were not whole without her. My father eventually lost his mind, and my sweet mother tried to protect me, but she eventually lost it too. I then ran away, and then I met one of Queen Thorn's royal guards, Arcie, he was the only one who was nice to me in the last 6 years, but i lost him to the war as well." Her eyes looked distant as she remembered his smile that could light up a room "he was not ment for war, and once he died, Queen Thorn found me, and she gave me a new chance at life." She looked over her shoulder at him "and that's my story, I guess"

Her mind wandered to dark places, she then locked the rest of the memories away.

He listened to her story, also listening to her thoughts. "Your sister had black scales? Does that mean your dad is a nightwing?"

She nodded

"Huh." he pretended to be amazed. "Well, my mother is a nightwing, so i guess i am kind of like you." Shift looked at his tail and scales again

Sandstorm smiled, "yeah, I guess we are" her eyes were shining in the moonlight like violet diamonds. She took something out of her camel skin pouch, it was a snake bracelet carved from jade with two small diamonds for eyes. "I want you to have it" she said, a beautiful smile appeared across her face.