June 4, 2013 by

And the last installment of my dragon dream!


The red dragon sat down at the front of what had been the living room, watching the scared, very terrified people cowered in front of it and took a deep breath; he almost seemed not only to be "drinking" in the fear and the terror, but actually growing just a bit, from it. As though he was taking up more space with every shiver of fear. Casually the orange one opened his mouth, and another woosh of flame went whirling around the room, shooting out from the edge of the chair in front of where I was crouched, sparks jumping around and dancing from floor to ceiling. Something that looked like a luna moth came in one of the open windows in the living area, and the yellow zapped it. It left a blackened silhouette in the air for a second, and then the ashes just kind of...dropped. It landed over someone curled up on the floor, someone who hadn't been able to find anything to hide behind, and made him sneeze.

I could feel the little black's entire body shaking against me. The red had moved, I guess to the front of the living room, and it sounded like he'd sat down or something, with the two others boredly sitting to either side. Right behind me was the glass sliding door I'd only just come in, that led to the porch. As the red began talking, I slowly reached my foot back and, millimeter by painful millimeter, I slid it open with my toe. Every now and again, the orange one would send fire blasting against the front of whatever people were hiding behind, to keep them pinned and unable to move from fear. I finally got the glass open about the width of my shoulders, and started working on the screen. I was doing it so very achingly slowly that not even the people huddled with me behind the lazyboy noticed, let alone either of the three dragons holding "court" over the room. I caught snatches of the red dragon's words as I worked at opening the door with the toe of my shoe.

"Where is it? ----- If you give it up, it will go much easier for you, you know. I may even let you live if you give it to me. ----- know you came here. We felt you in the deserts. We felt the direction you had ----- only human settlement on this side of the sea ----- I will ----- Come now, be reasona ----- if we have to search ----- will not like it if I have ----"

I got the screen opened too, just as the yellow yawned, letting go of more lightning. This time though, the sharp zap bounced off of the piece of artwork over the mantle that he'd apparently been trying to destroy... and stung the orange's back flank. The two immediately began quarreling with each other, and as they got angrier with each other, the red seemed to get more and more amused.... and bigger. Much, MUCH bigger. I could now see the curve of his neck and his mantled wings over the top of the chair, though he never once lifted his head high enough to see once he'd sat at the front of the room. When the red paused talking long enough to finally put a temporary end to the minor argument between the other two, I took advantage of the distraction and backed out the door onto the porch. Because of the way the lazyboy had sat, as soon as I started to crawl for the stairs, I was blocked from view by the wall.

I somehow managed to silently get to my feet and also somehow managed to get down the flight of stairs without making any noise that anyone noticed. As soon as I hit the grass, I took off running, leaping the neighbor's hedge, cutting through back yards, down to the rather packed tavern that was on the corner of my street, overlooking the ocean from it's backside, and that had actually been built in about 5 stories; 3 above-ground, and two down into the cliff, with huge window-expanses to show the view on the water-side walls. I burst into the tavern, but all was as if nothing at all was going on, even just 5-6 houses down the row. I went upstairs, wandering around as though looking for someone or something... but I had no idea what I was looking for. I decided to go down into the below-ground levels, the ones that let out onto the switch-backed terraces going down the side of the cliff. Rather than take the "usual" stair-route, I kind of... treated it like a set of playground monkey-bars. I swung through the railing and caught the bar, then dangled a moment, then swung my body so that I dropped down onto the floor.

A younger woman, a very petite, very lithe little asian woman, who appeared to be about my age or younger, possibly in her mid 20's, saw me and gave a low whistle of appreciation. I winked at her, and moved off further into the lower level, into the areas dug into a rock. The tavern had originally been a very wealthy man's home, and so the lower levels had been carved into a "living-space" in the main area overlooking the ocean, and then further back, bedrooms and private areas. I slipped into an unoccupied room, and coaxed the little black out of the lining of my jacket.

I held her and stroked her head, soothed my fingertips over her wings, and settled her down in my lap. She finally stopped trembling long enough to take a few deep breaths, and she nipped at my finger in thanks. She walked off my lap and along the edge of the bed I'd sat on, sitting at the bottom corner, her tail curling around her much like a cat's. Her wings drooped for a moment, and she closed her eyes, humming softly. She swayed for several minutes, an almost inaudible song trilling from her little throat, and she gave another sigh. "Good. You picked a place full of people. He can find you wherever you go... He'll be drawn to you... but he can't find YOU. You have to come to him. Otherwise he just knows you are near, not which you that you are. Well done, for a human."

She turned to face me, and with the total absence of light, I realized that every single one of her black, onyx scales were almost silver-gilt, as though outlined in mother-of-pearl. The largest scales were no larger than the nail on my pinky; the tiniest looked like nothing more than grains of glowing sand around her face. "You can rest here for a very short time. He's..... very occupied with.... It will take him time to feel that you are no longer in the immediate vicinity, while he's looking...."

I nodded at her and immediately curled up on my side in a ball on the bed. I felt her curl up as well, against the small of my back, and that was the last thing I knew before I went to sleep. I woke to the little dragon's frenzied whispers, nipping at my ears, the tip of my nose, her tiny, sharp little claws dancing on my chest, her wings gusting air into my face as she flapped them with alarm. "He's figured it out. He's.... oh, he's angry.... come. Get up. Get UP, human. You can't stay here. You have to be with others. It's the only way....!"

I got to my feet and she flew to my shoulders and disappeared once more into the lining of my coat, laying across my shoulders and down the front of my chest. I got out of the room; no more than an hour or two had passed, though. The lovely little asian woman was still there, along with many others playing pool, drinking, watching some kind of sporting game on the TV that featured the aliens I had been watching earlier in the night at the bar. I quickly went running up the spiraling stairs to the ground level; all seemed normal. So up I went to the 2nd level, and about halfway up the staircase to the 3rd level. The staircase formed what appeared to be a "tower" on the side of the house, and the tower was lined with windows, alternating amazing art-pieces of stained glass of the varying landscapes of the planet, with clear glass.

Reaching a piece of clear glass on the side of the tower that faced the house I'd run from, I stopped to look out. A roar split the air at the same time, and what I saw from the window stopped me cold. What had been a dragon roughly the size of a well-bread racehorse, no more than 16 hands high, was now about the size of a mack truck. His wings spread out to either side of the house, each one extending past the length of the house next to it. Another angry roar, and I watched as the red dragon began to thrash his head back and forth, tearing the house apart from the inside. Now people had stopped to notice; doors on the street opened and people came out... only for them to scurry back inside and (very quietly) shut and bolt their doors.

As the house started to come apart, pieces of wood being flung everywhere, the orange and yellow, who had both also grown, though not nearly as much (each were now about the size of an elephant), began blasting away at the remains of the house; all the screams died about 10 heartbeats later, and the red sat back on his haunches, and bellowed at the sky. I felt the stairs I was standing on rattle a bit with the low bass rumbling as he shouted. "I WILL FIND YOU! RUN, AND I WILL FOLLOW. HIDE, AND I WILL HUNT YOU OUT. YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE. I WILL HAVE IT!"

I started fleeing down the stairs, and got to the ground-level, where I started racing around closing all the blinds, as though somehow that might make it harder for either of the dragons to see in, but quickly gave up when I saw too many of the windows had no blinds to draw.

The black was right, though - he seemed almost drawn to me, now that he'd figured out that I wasn't in the house and the group of humans as he'd thought. He dropped back down onto his legs, and started very slowly walking down the middle of the street, pausing at each house, as though testing the contents of each. Each dwelling took him almost half an hour to check, and I began to get more and more panicked as he came closer and closer. Finally he reached the tavern... but apparently he didn't realize the dwelling continued down the back side of the cliff, or didn't know how I had escaped the last time, because he didn't send either the orange or the yellow to the back side of the house. I again fled down to the lower levels, this time acrobating my way down the spiral stairs to the very bottom level.

I started running for the entrance to the terrace; the lovely asian woman had been peering up the stairs, and saw me come leaping down. She reached out and grabbed me. "What is it? What is going on? Tell me!"

Shaking my head, I gave her an almost heartbroken glance. "Just... run....!" I grabbed her hand and pulled her along with me; we were about the same height, so she kept up with me easily. We went through the door to the terrace, and began making our way down the beautifully-sculpted terrace, past vines and trellised plants, making our way down toward the shore...

But suddenly there were people running the opposite direction. More screams... this time from below, not above in the tavern we'd just fled. I stopped at a landing about 3/4 of the way down the cliff to the beach, and looked out to the ocean..... to see another dragon. This one was almost as large as the red, and seemed almost to be riding the waves. Waves which were rushing toward us, and crashing against the base of the cliff as the ocean seemed to swell, the waters flooding inland and rising up the side of the cliff, washing away the dwellings and buildings, switchback path, and decorative plant-life in its wake. The salt-spray crashed upwards as it slammed against the cliff, and I got a facefull of mist. More fear, anger, and desperation-filled people came like waves themselves, rushing past us... And the plant-life that had been so beautiful and decorative almost seemed to have turned against the inhabitants of the settlement.

It did not trip or delay any of the people; in several cases it almost seemed to lift those who'd fallen to their feet... as though it was herding the humas away from the water - forcing them all upward. Up to where the red and his two cronies waited. I heard a soft trill of desperation from inside the collar of my jacket, and the asian woman had crumpled as she stared at the sight of the blue dragon seemingly playing in the crashing waves of the ocean. Watching as it leaped and dove and spun through the waters, every shade of blue glittered off its scales and its wings, and it seemed to glitter in the moonlight as it... sang. It seemed to be singing, urging the water on, coaxing it, guiding it higher and higher up the sides of the cliff with every crashing wave.

That soft trill though, the one from inside my jacket from the little black, was suddenly echoed out of the trees and hills that hadn't yet been inundated with water... and out of the tops of the tree canopy that we could see from the terrace, another serpent's head rose, this one with scales of every shade of green ever imagined. The fauna of the area responded to the questioning trill of the green, vines wrapping around several humans and lifting them close to the green, where it looked them over, searchingly, before setting them back down again, not seeming to care whether it set them down closer to the top of the cliff, or off to one side. One of the vines near us suddenly writhed, slithering around the waist of the asian woman.

I barely had time to fling my own arms around her before she was lifted up, and toward the sparkling green head peeking out from the tops of the trees. Sharp scratches against my neck before my feet left the ground, and the comforting presence against my shoulders was gone. The fines that had grabbed the girl lifted us both, clinging to each other, toward the green dragon; held us in front of it as it once more seemed to search. This one had no malice in it, as though it were simply on a single-minded mission that would not or could not be deferred or forgotten. It searched us both intently, and with another soft trill, we were suddenly being carried along the tops of the trees, before we were almost gently set down about mid-way down the street, almost underneath the house I'd left earlier that had been destroyed, in fact.

In terror, I started looking around frantically, but I never even saw the little black; another scratch along my shoulder and suddenly the slight weight and presence were back, shaking violently against my skin. The water continued to rise, the sound of dragon song interspersed with angry roars from above, as the ocean inched closer and closer. I grabbed the hand of the other woman again, and we began to run once more, this time away from the tavern, slowly keeping ahead of the rising tide of water, but steadily moving away from the corner tavern and the three dragons at the top, and their uncaring, incessant, relentless search of the humans cornered and trapped there.

The sounds of the red's angry roaring finally faded and we got far enough away that only the water chased us, now... though we were still surrounded by a sea of humanity as well, all of them fleeing upwards towards the top of the cliff, away from the water that kept rising, slowly and inexorably upward. (Oddly enough, one of the people running that I recall vividly seeing was the actor who played Malfoy in Harry Potter. o.O He was being dragged along by a heavy-set brunette woman, with a yappy dog in his arms.... lol.)

Finally the woman and I reached the top of the cliff. I quickly found what looked to be an abandoned vehicle; most of the "cars" here were just like my jeep. Fast, efficient, deceptively small, for they had a strength in the material that made them one of the hardest to destroy substances known to any of the planets. I... for lack of a better term at the moment, I hotwired it, we both got in, and I began driving once more, this time back out into the desert. I didn't know where to go or what to do... and I knew eventually he'd make it through the entire town searching for me, if he had to.... though searching all the flood of humans that were also fleeing this way would take him days, if not weeks, assuming he could catch them.

As the girl I'd escaped with began to drift off to sleep, the little onyx dragon once more poked her head out of the collar of my jacket, on the side facing away from where the girl sat to my left. (yes, left - these were like european vehicles, apparently.) She stuck the tip of her snout against my ear and began whispering softly. "Yes. Good. You have it. He has many to hunt through. It will take him much time. Now we must get to.... he needs what you... yes. Good. Go. Fast. Go, human. Go! Maybe... maybe we will make it in time, after all....!"

With that, I finally started yawning, and one yawn seemed to wake the girl who'd been dozing in the passenger seat. She sat up with a yawn of her own and, stretching, turned to smile at me. "I am Reika. You stop. We switch. I drive. You sleep." I nodded gratefully at her and we did just that. As I started to drift off, the almost-inaudible sound of singing once more reached my ears; the little black dragon had once more come up out of my collar, her little snout at my ear, and was crooning to me. As I yawned, I seemed to hear words in the music.

"You carry the stone. I have given it to you, human, to keep safe and carry to him. He must have it, and have it soon, for without it he cannot grow, cannot become adult, and will never be able to act as the balance to Ruari; without Corcair, Ruari will rule, and with cruel Oraistte and Grianne at his side, we will never escape... never... you must get it to him, human. Corcair must have the stone. I will stay with you human, I will remain. Now sleep, for Nyxia guards your sleep....."

And then I woke up.

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