Becoming

There weren't always dragons in the valley.

A flick of an ember; its cherry dying in the frost. Ice and ore sinking together, like lithe lovers a hair breadth from a quarrel.

Deep beneath, the Being took a breath.

It had been someone once....had become less. The Being was more than something, for certain, but not by much. It took up far more space than before, but size should be no indicator of ferocity. Before, the valley had sung with the whining of relentless mosquitoes. Each maddening bite had pushed them further to warfare, incensed and unafraid. All possessions had become weapons; all focus had been directive and constant. Yet victory eluded and the bites kept appearing, the incessant itch doing its bit to up the defeat.

The supplied gossamer thin nets had helped little. In actuality, their tendency to drift into each deep inhalation was claustrophobically lethal. Nightly silence found itself cracked with wracks of cough, peppered with smothered gasps.

The attraction of those most nefarious of enemies had been the tepid, open pool at the lip of the valleys crest. Daylight had been a soundscape of gargantuan cosmic diversity confabulating within ambidextrous soil. High peaks of pitched laughter, summoned, tossed and caught on swirls of breeze. Lower murmured conversations turning to sacrament in their poignancy. Eloquent swipes of ugly words, flung too fast too soon, felt in nail-scratched palms. Affirmations and communal exhalations. Symphonic waves, whistling betwixt towering pines with bark too young to fit its fate.

Before, before, before. The purpose served in the looking glass of nostalgia bore no fruit, yet its taste was sweetest.

The overwhelming heat had forbidden movement but still they rose, faster they danced. In the Valley Temple, their own personal Vietnam down low in the bog, they met at sunset, without fail. The candles attracted the infidels, the shadows made fools of their fears. The intimacy of the individuals gathered grew with each circle. Their practice streaked the air with incense, frankincense, sandalwood, naga champa. Dragons blood sage hung over the entrance, unlit, its heavy protection corked. The roaming packs of wolves and cunning black-backed jackals had been straying. The members of the last retreat hadn't noticed the eeriness of the mountain without howls.

The Being knew where the Valley temple was. Had flexed cragged talons across the soft vaulted, rough-honed wooden floors. The Being had stood in each part of the room with each part of itself. The Being had felt true happiness stir within the broken parts of its wound up chest, felt it. Belonging. Peace. The joy of another hand in service. The lazy wink of camaraderie washing up at the same plastic bowl. Beauty. The rush that comes with borrowed trust or invitations to adventure. The transformation curled inside the permission for pleasure. The Being had danced with them, following the rhythms and beats from Nelly's sound system. Sweat became moisturizer in those steaming moments plugged with the innocence of ignorance. Ignorance asserted with each ding of a symbol, reverberating with the crash of the gongs. Pulsating in the flexing of hips, lips, flicks of split ends and air-twirled fingertips.

She had left the safety of the temple to call home. Hesitated. Where was home? Immediately, standing alone in the ominosity of the sky scraping mountain, she shivered. The pull of the temple and her newest and closest companions was dizzying. These last few weeks had created more than memories - the experience of this retreat had torn her apart. The depth of what she had learnt and felt ripped out her entrails so she might see herself from the inside. Yet the gratitude radiated from her - gratitude for the break downs and sleepless nights! For days so long it was stay-till-you-break, for food so strange it was undiscernible at all stages. The transformation had been worth it, though. She set off, tracing a path to the telephone wires strung across the apex of the valley. Her jaw ached as a mammoth beam stretched her sun-kissed cheeks. She would not return home the same.

A scream. Akin to slaughtered rabbits but too quick. A mercy killing? Her goosebumps were screaming. Her heart was screaming. Her blood rushed and ran and tried to escape and kept screaming. A scream. No movement from the temple; she spun back to the forested darkness. Two reminders; she was not alone. They hadn't heard. Two reasons to remain calm.

A shaking. Nothing to describe it to, no meaning seized in the plunging dip of her gut as her organs freefall into panic. We've got more to worry about. The adrenaline is rushing through her capillaries, her calf muscles tensing. The brain is slow to catch up, is ruminating, is wasting precious seconds. She backs towards the temple, towards safety, friends and peace and belonging. Her ego flies and clings to, reluctant to relinquish, joy, joy, extinguished too swift.

A sinister sharp sense, acid dripping down her dura, along the spine, whispers...

I will never feel joy again.

A growling. It is monstrous in its width, in its rumbling tenacity and stalking growth. It tumbles across the boulders of the mountainside and bounces up from the earth from whence it came. The breeze is a wind is a gale, gusting. Lifting soil that started solid and turned fine with the arrival of stronger foe. Flinging the crumbling clay and loam in arrowheads, random, scattergun. Caterwauling thongs of flame roaring and erupting. Random. It is too much, too soon. The train of her brainwaves are leaking rubber stuck on the tracks. The mosquitoes are dead or exiled. The bites that felt like grenades relegated in the face of this furnace of horror, this freezing fear. Her blood has turned to ice as the fire melts the telephone wires and severs the link to home.

Despair stabs through her to lodge its blade in her throat. The faces of the mother that brought her into the world and the siblings that greeted her become sprites. They plaster to the inside of her skull, taking up the reasoning she needs to get away, get back to them. Is there a knowing in her fascia that trying is futile? That escape routes lead nowhere but the maw of judgement? Does the ardency creeping across the mycellium of earth into the soles and balls of her feet speak? Teaching the finality of these last fractured seconds possible to believe -

There were never dragons in the valley.

The temple doors swing open, jazzy in investigative swagger. None of her compatriots could foresee the metallic hide that blots the moon from the sky. None but one look skyward, preferring to scan the shuddering tree-line. Another calls for the remains of our phone clutcher, martyrized in place. Useless.

"The mountains on fire!"

Another pointless confirmation. The hands on his watch are frantic in ticking; the iron-on cartoon on his t-shirt begins melting. The glare stings their eyes and they raise their hands, band closer without words. Anxious to stay in the safety of a group. It has been the mantra of their years, the culminative shared harvesting of the last two weeks. This retreat is about helping each other to survive the unrevivable. To feel the power within and unleash your inner dragon. Ease may be dead, faith and hope crumbling, but irony stays riotously alive.

The Being remembers the next part well. It wishes the opposite were true, has spent many years hiding from their own recollection. Begging their brain and body to reorganize the truth to be palatable. At the very least digestible. But still the memories infect the Being and the buzzing in its most sensitive of holes...

The Being disgusts itself. There is enough of the old to fight the urge of the new. Pleasure is no longer open to the Being, by its own decree. It has become unworthy, unloved. It is hoping to turn to waste under this frozen lake, a lake that used to be a pool before the Being burnt the concrete away.

"Wow, what is this place?"

"Some kind of indigenous burial ground I bet. We shouldn't be out here without the guide."

"Don't tell me you buy that campfire nonsense. It's to sell tickets and scare you into staying with the group. We slept in an empty forest for one extra day. It's hardly breaking the law."

The Being is awake now. How could it have missed the rolling of disturbed stones down the sloping valley, the fresh scent of them? The loathing powered inhibition slinks and acquiesces so instantaneously it's mildly embarrassing. The remnants of who the Being was before swirl, sand down an hourglass, into what it has become. There are two, a stones throw. Two. Could there be a way... No. The Being will not risk it, not with the snow so deep. The Being will need to summon all the inner strength and fire curdling in her hollow abdomen for this. Her skin has begun to eat itself, the unwilling cannibalism causing her scales to itch. Already saliva is coating her multitude of teeth, her jagged, spiky tongue. Two will have to do. It is more than none and she is more than something, but less than someone.

She used to be someone. As the Being that roams this frozen mountain stretches, icicles knock loose. Down below, the hapless humans she used to weave and soar amongst on land look up in bemusement. It is sunrise. Shriveled, her hide still manages to revolutionize the sky.

"What is that?" The words asphyxiated in the Being's bellowed wail.

"A dragon," comes the answer, whispered, smothered, offered as prayer or penance. Familiar disbelief welds them in place.

The Being who refuses the label of dragon unfurls her full wingspan, 30 feet across of pure terror. As she tilts and flies, diving and conjuring the white-hot in her throat the empathy assaults her. How can she repeat this cycle, this act of vengeance, even for survival? She has laid in this earth and wished the ice to freeze her in place much as she laid terrified and wounded, before. One whole side vaporized, she had been the most surprised when she changed. Even more than poor Nelly, who had fled from the back door of the Temple and lasted six incredible days. It had been wrenching to kill her but back then the Being was new, untrained for the blood seeking. The endless desire for satiation of hunger. It is scratching down the back of her elongated throat even now. Now. Two.

The empathy flakes and slides as she bears down upon them, her fire leaping unbidden, wanton. In the devouring there is symphony. In the destruction there is total epicaricacy. The frost melts down her ash covered flanks, the juxtaposition soothing. In a muddied pool her reflection glimmers, her colour restored. The Being stares for the first time at the monster she became, all that time ago on the quest for her inner power.

Finally, she relishes it.