I Want to Stand, With, You on a Moun, Tennn...
The sky is dark, and gray, like newborn ashes... are they ashes? The winds are fierce as dragons themselves, and you hold your new wings tightly tucked lest they blow you away. The gray stone clatters and crunches under your talons as you wander idly around on the top of the ridge, an island in an ocean of fog. For the first few minutes you play on the rocks, leaping to some, fluttering to others and gliding to others more, getting comfortable with your new controls.
While you do, your mind thinks to itself. A little uneasy with being a red dragon, per se, you're comforted by the fact that you have only one head and are not, in fact, the devil. You then think ahead, to the long road before you... you're here on this mountain range for a week, and then another costume awaits... 400 costumes minimum if you want to return home, 800 if you want to keep all the forms you acquire... a sentence of four to eight years.
This thought is a sobering one as you cross your arms and sit down a moment.
The air temperature drops, snow materializes and begins to swirl. Suddenly you're struck by an acute sense of loneliness. Four. To *eight.* *Years.* Sure, being a dragon is the most horizon-broadening experience you've ever had, and you'll probably be meeting one soon, even, this being (apparently) the dragons' hometown, but... what about your family/friends/pets/other people/beings you loved back home? What would they say?
They'd be worried sick, you leaving without a word, disappearing in the night... and they'd never find you. You will be declared legally dead in two years, and won't make it out for another two *minimum.*
After years of wondering and uncertainty, your loved ones are going to be putting an empty casket in the ground under a tombstone with your name on it. The grief will probably scar them all, to a lesser or greater degree, simply because they won't get answers until long after the scars have been made.
And you without so much as a cell phone.
You leap to your feet, teeth slightly bared in a sudden grimace as you try to keep control of your tear ducts. You then sit down again. There's nothing you can do to speed this up. The tides of fate are too strong. You're here for four years minimum, four hundred weeks to be precise. You can't stop thinking of their faces...
Hot and bright, a few beads of flame roll out of the corners of your eyes, your diaphragm heaves, and quiet, alien sounds rumble out of your throat--the sound of a weeping dragon.
The snow has become a blizzard when light spills out of the rock beneath you, which you see through the gaps between your arms. A blue dragon the size of a horse pokes its head over its doorway to look at you, a majestic thing with a full crop of horns and a tasteful frill. It must have heard you. You wipe the tears from your eyes, embarrassed and not embarrassed all at once, and they hiss as they hit the snow.
The dragon seems still to be trying to figure you out.
Finally it rumbles at you in what feels like a language created by a bass speaker. When you don't respond, it tries again. "Can you understand now?" it asks. Still awed by the bluey, you nod.
"Well, c'mon inside then. It's gonna get cold."
Written by Mr.Peaches on 14 November 2006
The end (for now)