On Writing "Have you seen my brother?"

This was a nice short story to work on a Sunday, unlike my previous stories I didn't need to plan out this one as much (I often write summaries for each section I do before working on what gets uploaded), mostly because I had the idea set out in my head. Have to give some credit to QueenCold's dragon universe on DeviantART for the inspiration, particularly this one since even if Garble was forced to hug his mom, his sensitive side probably would have wanted to anyway.

I already hinted this when I wrote about Gallus a while back, but out of all the Young Six, Smolder is my absolute favourite. Others may have been right about her starting off as a younger Ember, but deep down she's also one of the more supportive and understanding characters of the six, especially towards Spike where she teaches him about molting, teaches him how to fly properly, helps him out after realising that Sludge is exploiting his naivety, and standing up when other dragons are picking on him. It's almost like if Twilight is Spike's pseudo-mom, Smolder is Spike's pseudo big sister.

While I don't like Sweet and Smokey, I did like the twist that Garble was Smolder's older brother, it was more surprising than Garble being a very reserved artist. Plus Smolder being just as supportive and caring to him as much as Spike just makes me like her more. If Garble felt down because Smolder was away for a long time at the school, I'd imagine Smolder going away felt like the worse thing in the world to him, probably worse than losing the largest prize a dragon could earn.

In hindsight, I probably could have given a better explanation as to how and why Smolder was chosen to go to the School of Friendship. Thing is that I'm not sure I could fit in a unique and elaborate story for each of them, with Sandbar I made an entire story about it, but for Ocellus, I never gave one since it would have been jarring and too simple anyway (my theory is that Thorax chose her simply because she was a passionate learner after her parents introduced her to books). Ember might have thought about it before telling all the dragons about it, but probably chose Smolder because she would be the right kind of dragon to learn about friendships, even if Smolder didn't think so herself.

At least now I can say I'm not 4/6 of doing Young Six stories, halfway done if it's just prequel stuff. Just got to figure out a story for Yona and Silverstream...