Thornmover

Thorn x Stonemover is a ship between Sunny's parents. Sunny is the protagonist of the fifth book of the Wings of Fire series. It has officially sunk in canon.

Thorn x Stonemover in TBN

...

''It really does look like Morrowseer. Morrowseer, Dune, and a NightWing I’ve never seen before. But why? And who’s looking for them?''

There was small print below the pictures, but Sunny didn’t get to read it before her guard hurried her on.

...

Thorn walked around Sunny one more time, her talons sending up small clouds of sand between the gaps in the carpets, and then stopped beside her, frowning at the NightWings. “One more question for you cowardly lizards. Can you tell me anything about a NightWing named Stonemover?”

Strongwings snorted. “He took off six or seven years ago and no one’s heard from him since. The queen was furious.”

...

REWARD REWARD REWARD

  For any information leading to the whereabouts of two NightWings once seen around the Scorpion Den, known as Morrowseer and Stonemover.

...

“Mother,” Sunny said as they walked. “What’s going on? I thought you hated NightWings. Why did you think you might care about that one?”

Thorn stopped and waited until Smolder was far ahead, picking through his keys with a bright, brassy jingling sound.

“I don’t hate all NightWings,” Thorn said quietly. “I mean, I’m not fond of them, and I don’t trust them, as a rule. But I’m looking for one in particular, an animus dragon named Stonemover.”

“Because he did something to my egg?” Sunny guessed. “Is that why?”

“Not exactly. Well, ha — I guess in a manner of speaking,” Thorn said, glancing up at the skylights with an odd half smile.

Sunny stared at her. She had a pretty good idea what that look meant. “He isn’t,” she whispered.

“You wondered why you don’t look like a regular SandWing,” Thorn said.

“So it’s because —” Sunny’s claws trembled with shock. Of all the theories she’d ever imagined … yes, this one had crossed her mind, but of all the tribes she’d wondered about, never this one, never, never this one.

“Yes, Sunny,” said Thorn, her voice falling like drops of water into the stillness between them. “It’s because you’re half NightWing.”

“But the NightWings are awful!” Sunny cried. “I don’t want to be anything like them!”

“So don’t be,” her mother said. She started walking again, and Sunny hurried to keep up. “No one’s making you be awful. And didn’t you say you’re friends with one?”

“Starflight is different,” Sunny said.

“So was Stonemover,” said Thorn. “At least, I thought so. It’s been a long time.”

Sunny’s scales seemed suddenly too large, or maybe too small. Everything felt wrong, as if she was wearing someone else’s wings. Half NightWing, by all the moons. “Please tell me about him. I want to know everything. I mean, I think I do. Do I? How did you fall in love with a NightWing, of all the tribes?”

Thorn folded her wings back and ducked under a low archway. “Eight years ago, I met a dragon, out in the sands not far from here, actually. His scales were like the desert sky at night and he was always nervous, in a sweet, worried way, like no other dragon I’d ever met. Remember, I grew up in the Scorpion Den. There you have to be tough and cutthroat all the time, or you’re dead. I liked the way Stonemover fidgeted and the questions he was always asking, and I liked that he wasn’t pretending to be scarier and meaner than he really was. He was just himself. And he was very smart.”

“He sounds a lot like Starflight,” Sunny said. She wondered if that meant anything. If she was like her mother, did that mean she would end up in love with a dragon who was like her father? Was that her type? Was that her destiny, her and Starflight together?

She had many thoughts about that but no idea how to sort them out.

“He gave me this,” Thorn said, touching the moonstone around her neck. “I asked him why he was here, and he said he was trying to save his tribe. I liked that, too,” she went on. “He really, really cared about saving his tribe. I’d never seen loyalty before, because there was nothing like the Outclaws back then, not in the Scorpion Den. He said he was doing something essential that nobody else could do.”

...

“So what happened to Stonemover?” Sunny asked. She didn’t want to think about her weird looks anymore, at least for a little while.

“He disappeared.” Thorn let go of her and blew out a breath with hints of fire in it. “I came back one day and he was gone. Morrowseer was there instead. He said it was my fault, whatever had happened to Stonemover, and never to look for him or try to speak to him again. Pompous worm-faced snob-head camel turd.”

...

"... Didn't you ever see Stonemover again?"

"No, but of course that wasn't it," Thorn said, turning to walk on again. "I looked for him everywhere. I went through the tunnel, but it led to the rainforest— isn't that odd? I thought it would lead to their hidden kingdom, but no. I searched the whole place, but there were no NightWings there, only some very sweet, rather bewildered RainWings. Very confusing. I never understood how that would save his tribe."

"I'll explain it to you later," Sunny said. "Did he know about me?"

"No," Thorn said. "We were fighting, a little bit, when I found out I was with egg. I planned to tell him once he apologized. But he'd gotten very strange and cold, so maybe he wasn't going to."

...

Sunny turned and found her mother holding a folded square of thick papyrus paper, with the word Thorn scrawled across the front in black ink.

"There is a letter for me," said Thorn curiously. "He [Smolder] wasn't lying about that part. How odd." She flipped it over and opened it.

"Mother, we really have to go," Sunny said, but her voice trailed off as she saw the expression on her mother's face. "Mother? Thorn?"

"It's from him," Thorn said, glancing up at Sunny. "From your father. Listen: 'Dearest Thorn. I can't keep doing this. I can't use my powers for the NightWings any longer, or I'll lose myself completely. So I'm running away, and I'd like you to come, too. Meet me at Jade Mountain. I'll wait for you as long as I have to. I love you. Stonemover.'" Her voice trailed off.

"Jade Mountain!" Sunny cried. "There's supposed to be a dragon who lives there— maybe it's Stonemover! Oh, maybe he's still waiting for you, after all these years! Isn't that romantic?"

“That frog-faced blob of camel spit!” Thorn shouted abruptly, making Sunny jump. She crumpled the paper in her front talons, threw it to the ground, and smashed it with one of her feet. “All these years? He’s alive, he’s not a prisoner, and he’s known exactly where I was this whole time, but he never once came to look for me or tried to contact me?”

“Well,” Sunny faltered, “maybe he thought you got his letter but didn’t want to be with him.”

“So send me another letter!” Thorn cried. “Try a little harder! Don’t be a jerboa-head!”

...

She [Thorn] nodded at the line of mountains, where the jagged peak of Jade Mountain towered darkly over the rest. “Be careful with Stonemover. If all that is true about being an animus … well, I saw him do a lot of magic. We don’t know how much soul he has left.”

“Are you going to go see him?” Sunny asked.

“Someday,” Thorn said with a small flicker of anger in her eyes. “Apparently he’s in no hurry, so I’ll take care of my dragons first.”

...

“I’m —” Well, this felt awkward, just throwing it out there midconversation. But how else could she tell him? Was there an easy, not shocking way to break this kind of news? “OK. The truth is, I’m your daughter. Thorn is my mother. I only just found her, just — wow, just yesterday — no, two days ago — and she told me about you and —” Sunny talked on, not sure what to think of the expressions darting across Stonemover’s face: confusion, suspicion, hope, dismay, maybe anger? “And I wanted to meet you — I hope that’s — I hope you — well, I know it’s weird, because she never got a chance to tell you about me, so —”

“We had eggs?” he rasped.

“You had me,” Sunny said. “An egg, one dragonet. Just me.” She looked down at her talons. “Mother wanted to tell you. But she never got your note. She didn’t know you were here until she found it yesterday. She’s been looking everywhere for you.”

Her father sighed through his nose and closed his eyes. “I thought she’d given up on me.”

“She might have now,” Sunny said, trying to prompt more of a response. Why didn’t he care more? Why hadn’t he tried harder? She felt a wave of sympathy for her mother. “Why didn’t you go look for her?”

“I’m not the right dragon for Thorn,” he said. “Perhaps I never was.”

“She obviously thought you were,” Sunny pointed out. “She really worried about you.”

He sighed again. He sighs a lot, Sunny thought, wishing she could poke something into his nose to make him stop. “There’s nothing I can do. I did all the wrong things … a long, long time ago … and nothing can change that.”

...

Below them, in the caves, Sunny knew her mother was having an awkward reunion with Stonemover. They’d both changed so much over the last seven years; there wasn’t much in common between the new queen of the SandWings and the partly stone enchanter hermit of Jade Mountain.

Sunny had been with them for the first few moments, but it had been way too strange, so she’d fled out here to her friends instead.

Thorn x Stonemover in MR

Moon shivered. That was the same thing her mother had always said. But this dragon was different. He knew what he was talking about, because now she could see his own curse in his mind.

He was an animus dragon. A miserable one who wished he had never been hatched; a dragon whose power had stolen his one love, his hope for a family, his home, and, in the end, his very scales, which were turning to stone around him.