Chroma

Colourful things seem to congregate around this dragon. This was once especially true for his mate, Shia — though lacking in vibrant colours, her personality more than made up for it. Quite the contrast, Chroma was happy to remain the colourless shape at the edges of others' vision's, interacting with them only when necessary. This habit of silent steps and a wordless mouth earned him the nickname, "The Silent General" but he is not silent, he chooses his words carefully and offers them selectively only to those who he knows will listen. His words are reserved for the inhabitants of his small butterfly garden, his matriarch, and once... his mate.

There was not a day went by that Chroma didn't think of Shia. He had come to this clan fresh from his egg, from a shrouded place far from Adavar, but despite her clan's distrust of outsiders she had welcomed him, not long from an egg herself. She was the daughter of a princess, part of Adavar's small royal lineage that now stretched far, and she certainly did her family proud as she grew beautiful and head-strong.
Since he was a fledgling, he had been made part of a whole. A half that couldn't be complete without her; everything they did, they did together. She was the only one that did not cheer or praise him when he returned from training or battles and did not smile when he became a general, for she said, 'I will not celebrate your torture, I will not encourage for something that causes you grief. I will only accept the Keeper's judgement, and thank you for returning to me.'

She was the only drake but Cabrra, his friend and their matriarch, whom stood up for him when the council of leaders criticised his lack of drive or input. Shia spoke on his behalf, her weapon her sharp-witted tongue and her place along the royal tree a favour to them both. When mothers looked upon their nests and their hatchlings with a tilted stare and questions of why they were so small, so weak, it was Shia who drove them off and defended their young with the ferocity of a wildfire.

It wasn't until everything changed in their clan that he saw how deeply he needed his mate and her vibrant presence:
He once conversed at length with Cabrra, and often, her fading hearing did not stop her listening intently to the Imperial's soft words, and every dragon that passed by to bend an ear always seemed to leave their presence full of awe. She changed when she left and returned to Adavar as Umbra, a drake who neither thinks or speaks the same as Cabrra once did, her stance now so aggressive that Chroma can not be sure they're even the same drake. But it doesn't matter, he remains her friend even if he doesn't want to, even if he can't escape her.
In returning to power and cursing the monarchy to an indefinite slumber, she has tipped the balance in Adavar, the whole clan has changed and a shift in the atmosphere has taken place. The monarchs were his mate's grandparents, how could she not be loyal to them? Blood runs thick in Adavar.

Because of Umbra, Shia is gone.
In her absence, he is a ghost waiting to be made whole again. When she left she took his heart with her and now he mourns it– mourns her.

Adavar is not as lively as it once was.