[ WP ] When everyone turns 18 , they receive a pet which is figurative of their personality . You 're the first person to receive a dragon ...

A bit late to the party, I know. 
 
 
 It was with an odd sense of distance that I awaited the Keepers to open the Door. For my entire life, or near enough if one chooses to count the days when I was too young to understand, I had waited for today, for this hour. I had felt every emotion a hundred times over: fear, excitement, anticipation, dread, concern, confidence. I had analyzed myself beyond reason, picking at any sign I could think of that might determine what I would receive. Every small act of courage, cowardice, honesty, deceit, humor, and anger pointed me in a new direction as to what kind of man I would someday be. I would sometimes try to act certain ways to convince Fate or God or whatever it was that determines Companions that no, *this* fascination of the week was surely my destiny. Truly, good fortune had come my way and I had managed to discern my life's course at the tender age of eight, twelve, fifteen, seventeen. 
 
 Days had passed when I had been nothing short of absolute in my conviction that, when the bar would be lifted I would face the greatest of all companions to ever walk, or fly, the earth. Entire weeks at a time had been filled with the incredible fear of not only being met my nothing, something that had never happened in recorded history, but by failing to make the Bond. 
 
 As I stood, dimly aware that my entire body was trembling, I could not help but remember those poor, desperate souls kept tucked away in asylums across the world. Not even one in every hundred failed to bond properly with their Companion, but those who did were sentenced to a fate impossibly worse than death. Over the centuries, a vague picture of the experience had been cobbled together from those few among the Rejected still able to speak: bleak, dreary emptiness. A feeling of not feeling. Touch with no sensation. Sight with no vision. Smell with no scent. Taste with no flavor. Hearing the world's unending silence. If there is truth to the idea of the soul, then surely those wretched victims had been stripped of theirs. Even with the most modern techniques and medications, the record for the longest Reject kept from suicide was just shy of two years. 
 
 As the clock over the Temple door ticked closer to 11:06 p.m., I struggled to regain control over myself, but it was a futile endeavor. It felt as if gravity itself had surrendered, and only by sheer will were my feet still anchored to the floor. I felt as if I was hunched over and stretched taut simultaneously, my lungs empty and filled to bursting. From the corner of my eye, I saw my family, surrounded by their own Companions, looking between me and the clock. My mother was clutching my father's arm tightly, her bluebird nesting anxiously in the fur of my father's red fox, both of them at my parents' feet. 
 
 The clock stuck 11:06, and without hesitation the two Keepers stationed on either side of the old, weathered timber door ( all my small town of just 4,000 could afford for its own Temple ) raised the latch that held the door closed. Their white and gold robes shimmered in the candle light for only a moment before they pulled apart, bringing the doors with them. There was the groan of hinges in desperate need of oil, followed by a blinding light. Everyone present shielded their eyes, myself included. 
 
 When the light subsided, I lowered my arm, heart pounding in my chest and filling my veins with the courage to face my fate and the panic to flee before it. 
 
 And then I saw Her. 
 
 She was perfect. There was no other word I could conceive for her, and no other description I would tolerate. Her dark gray, almost black scales defied the room's dim light and their own pigmentation to shine as bright as the sun at midday. She walked on four legs steady as rock, despite it being only seconds after her emerging. Her half-spread wings were a shade lighter than her body. A ridge of scaly spikes extended up her spine from just behind her head to the tip of her tail. Her eyes, oh her eyes. Vertical slits that could pierce the veil of flesh and bone to see into my soul, which only now could I truly *feel. * Irises of dark yellow that I could tell in an instant would shine as stars in the night, heralding her magnificence to any and all she set her sight upon. 
 
 As her tail cleared the Door, she walked straight towards me, never batting an eye for the room full of people struck utterly speechless. I could not blame them, I was just as helpless before her. When she finally reached me, her head just level to my shoulders with her youth, she stopped. We looked into each other, each seeing the single thread of Fate that we would share to our dying day. I placed a steady hand on her snout and smiled.
