Ghost of Deserter's Dune

I have this idea for a SandWing who fought in the war.
A quiet, awkward, meek dragon. They fought on Burn's side, right beside a good friend who wanted to be honored and treated them like few would.
They were pale-skinned, almost white.
Others would mock them for having "ice blood" in their veins.
(Whether she did have ice blood... eh, I don't think it really matters. Maybe, maybe not. It's not like it was that strong.)
But yeah, this dragon fought in the war, made new friends, slowly came out of their shell.
And became a sort of emotional center for their small band of friends.
Giving a lot to them, the dragons would acknowledge them as a person and not a source of mockery.

And their best friend didn't like that they gave so much of themselves for others.
She wanted them to live their life FOR themself.
She wanted the meek dragon to live life and be friends with them because... they liked them and vice-versa.
She didn't want her best friend to be so tied up in what others wanted.
And have no life of their own.

The meek dragon didn't listen to their best friend though.
Because what else did they have other than them.
And, as the war grew on, she grew more steel.
They fought and trained hard to protect their friends, injuring and killing a few enemy soldiers to keep them from killing their friends.

And they did the same for them!
Because the meek dragon did a lot for the group of friends.
And encouraged them that they'd live peacefully.
After the war was over.
(Whether they'd drift away after the war... I don't think the meek dragon ever considered that.)
But, as the war went on, more and more of the meek dragon's friends got cut down.
Because they couldn't be everywhere.
They couldn't protect everyone.
They were just grunt soldiers, caught up in the vanguard of the fighting.
No honors for them.

Something happened at the end though, one battle between the IceWings and the SandWings.
The meek dragon's best friend had fought for 16-18 years by now and gotten no distinguishing service in that time.
She wanted to take down an IceWing general.
So she and the meek dragon rode to find the IceWing general.
And the general was guarded by his guards.
And the duo fought them off as best as they could until it was just the general and one last.
One for each of them.
And, this was after a relatively long battle.
So they were both tired.
And the meek dragon was never the most strongest or enduring of SandWings.
So when the best friend took down the general, pinned him to the ground and was about to stab down the finishing blow with a spear...
The meek friend was pinned down too.
And facing the exact same situation.
So the best friend had to choose between her last chance at military honor... or a close friend.
She made her choice.
She lunged at her friend's attacker and plunged the spear deep into their chest.
Picked her friend up from the ground...
Asked them if she was alright...
... when a sharpened IceWing spear erupted out her chest from behind.
The general hadn't died.
The meek friend, caught between a scream and a howl as their best friend fell, picked up the spear that they stabbed into their attacker and drove the spearpoint through the general's brain, finishing that one off.
The battle was coming to a close when the two of them laid on the battlefield, the best friend bleeding out and the meek dragon trying so hard to stop the bleeding, oh god, the bleeding...
And they looked at each other.
And the best friend just breathed her last words as she cupped her meek friend's cheek.
"No honors for... u-us..."

And she died.
And the meek dragon... vanished.
From Burn's soldier count.
And that best friend's corpse was unaccounted for.
By, in the area where that battle took place, it's said there's a dune where a ghostly dragon appears by night to haunt the land that spilled so much blood in the sands.
Ghost-pale and a howling fright to behold if you intrude on the sands of that certain dune.
By day, you can even catch glimpses of them and, if any are ever so brave to approach them, you can give them alcohol or drug-leaf for a beautiful song.
They're a PTSD-ridden former soldier who saw friends clubbed to death without a word, others hold entrails in their guts while they clung to life and their best friend dead because they were too weak to help themself.
They need something to drown out the guilt and grief and taste of memories.
And they started calling them the Ghost of Deserter's Dune.
Because it's a dune where two SandWings fled like cowards after the battle was done.
But the Ghost would say it's a place of mourning. It's a graveyard of honoring the dead. Because who sings for the common soldiers?
If Burn's camp would not give them the honors they deserved, the Ghost would give them the highest of honors.
The acknowledgment that their best friend did what a good soldier did: protect her dragons, fight for her kingdom, give her life for someone weaker than her.
And fuck any army that would tell them otherwise.

The Ghost is basically my spin on a supernatural legend in WoF: instead of a supernatural ghost that haunts a land, it's, instead, a mundane PTSD-ridden drug-using, former soldier who gorged in grief and drowns in tears nowadays honoring the poor souls lost in war.
The Ghost is a contrast to Sotol.
Another way of grieving for your losses post-war.
Reckoning with the costs of war when the vultures peck at corpses.
And it's a terrible way of coping... but in the Ghost's mind, it's all their fault. They should've been better, faster, stronger.
They failed them.

Ghost's a condemnation of this dehumanization, this idea that you shouldn't care for the individual soldiers because more soldiers will replace them.
They mattered.
Their friends mattered. Their best friend most of all to them.
And they're here to haunt the Kingdom of Sand with their story.