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Writing Challenge: This Week's Writing Challenge: Listen to a song, and then write a story and included at least three lines from that song.

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A vicious tremor through cracked concrete trips Gabriel, and he grabs at the leaning telephone pole behind him. The air is unnaturally warm from the missile explosions. The sky a deep red from chemicals pouring into the atmosphere. The golden lion felt fear for the first time in a long while. "I think they're dying down." Gabriel coughed hoarsely, barely able to breathe through the thick air.

He and the dragon stood in the lower neighborhoods overlooking the city, and Altan for his part stood straight with his knees locked and arms folded. The majestic black dragon sneered at the world burning around him. Screams and sirens filled the background with traumatic pain.

"Altan." There was a softness to the lion's voice Altan hadn't heard before. Always harsh and stern, Gabriel found himself in a world drastically changed. "Altan, your brothers are down there. We need to get them and ..."

"Gabe." Altan spoke for the first time to him in several months. The words of spite once shared between them eclipsed by the oncoming war. "Gabriel ... When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city to see a marching band."

The lion looked confused at first, but nodded. "You ... I get that you're not like them. I know that now. I didn't mean to .... I did but I ...." The lion tripped over his words, not used to admitting faults.

Altan hushed with a sudden rough glare, but then the dragon softened his eyes. "We're too much alike. And I know that you're ... sorry." He looked down at the city. "My father took me into that city to see the marching band, all five of us. I didn't know what he was doing at the time, but we were fascinated by the crowd of fur and feathers even if many sneered at us."

Gabriel stood there listening, wind picking up his mane and drying it from the dust and water caked in. The soot of the war painted all over his face and blood dripping down his muscular arms. Altan looked at him with defeat in his worn out eyes.

"I'm a dragon. He tried to give me the chance to see the world differently though ... and for the longest time I just ... couldn't." Altan turned back to the burning city. "I remember his words to my brothers. He asked if they would be the savior of the broken .. the beaten ... the damned ..."

"Your father put you on a path that was unfair. You can't expect to save the wo--"

"And neither can you!" Altan screamed. "My people don't know what they're doing, and I blindly followed them for years thinking they did! I convinced myself saving the world was putting the weight of it on my shoulders. To save dragonkin meant to purge ... to ... pur--" The spines on his neck folded down as he clenched his teeth. "If it weren't for my father I'd be dead now with the symbol of the Twin Dragons clutched in my right fist and a gun in my left."

The white hair of the dragon starts to dance just like Gabriel's mane. The sounds dying down as the mass exodus of survivors got further away. "He wanted us to see the world as it is ... not from the perspective of dragon ideology. Not from your perspective either ... but from the damned. From those in pain. The troubled souls. The scared. The .... the ..."

"From your perspective" Gabriel sighed. Altan looked up with confusion. "From the perspective of those in pain and scared and unable to break through a survival instinct that creates hatred out of fear. This is what we've both been doing for a long time, and your brothers easily saw it and convinced us to lay down our arms. We aren't bad people. We survived when the world told us that we wouldn't."

Altan sighed, looking down. "Sometimes I get the feelin' she's watching over me."

"Your ... ? I ... didn't know you felt so troubled. It was long ago and ... " Gabriel closed his mouth, realizing he spoke too much again.

"I only have one memory of her, but it's enough to make me feel so ..." Altan's face scrunched up and he brought up his hands, unable to control the sudden onslaught of emotions. Gabriel reached over and grabbed his friend, hugging him. "I was so MAD. So mad at the world and at you that I would've sacrificed brothers just to get BACK at ..."

Gabriel only knew these feelings too well. And the sudden regret flooded his being. Tears drained down his cheeks. "We just have to move on. We'll carry on... we have to."

"No ... I ... don't know if I ha--"

"Your brothers!" Gabriel pointed down the street at a group of people running toward them. Two dragons with one holding the hand of a young lioness. A raccoon and wolf following behind.

"I see your sister too." Altan sniffled.

"Yeah, I'll thank Dilan later." Gabriel sighed, smiling at the blue dragon who wasn't letting go of his sister's hand. "... You have them here still. All of them. All four brothers." Gabriel smiled as he pointed to the wolf and racoon following the rear of the party and watching their backs.

"Four ..."

"He raised you all when no one else would." Gabriel chuckled. "And they're alive because they're together. That's all they ever wanted from you too."

"I wanted them dead .... all because I couldn't understand why my father would take them in as sons. Why he'd choose them over ..." Tears continued to stream down the dragon's face.

"He chose you! You were his son by blood, and he brought them into your family out of the kindness of his heart and to give you the chance to grow beyond the confines of pain and hate. To be a better dragon for a world full of scared people on all sides."

Altan laughed as he wiped his eyes. "I didn't think you'd find a dragon to be kind."

"I never would've ..."

The sounds of the brothers started to get louder, and they were almost upon them.

"Until I met you." Gabriel breathed. Altan looked at him incredulously, and instantly years of fighting meant nothing at all. Pain melted away and healing set in despite the horrific world born that day from others who could never experience what they just did.

As the two dragon grabbed their biological brother, and the other two adopted ones latched on, Altan relaxed into an embrace he missed all this life. He watched Gabriel comfort his sobbing sister.

The lion and the dragon both caught sight of each other and both blushed when Gabriel nodded. After all those months apart he finally agreed to sit down and have a drink with him.

... that is if there were any more bars to find after this.