Born in Fire: The Awakening

There weren’t always dragons in the valley.

In fact, at one point in time dragons were nothing more than fantasy. Mythical creatures who appeared in fairytales and fiction, breathing fire out of long sinewy necks as they soared through the sky.

Carter Elliot snorted at the idea, shaking his head as he moved swiftly down the path. He’d seen the strange and colorful images in history books and couldn’t think of anything further from reality. Dragons had likely been nothing more than glorified lizards, he thought as he flipped his long stick through the grass in front of him. He was a hell of a lot more worried about snakes than any damn dragon. Last week John Taylor had caught a rattler by surprise walking in this same meadow.

Carter had seen JT’s face when they’d carried his body back down the trail, eyes bulging and the hue of his skin a dark, blueish-purple. He shuddered, whacking the brush a little harder as he walked. Nope, he had no desire to run into any snakes. If he was being honest he didn’t want to be out tramping through the woods at all, but it was either checking the traps or helping his mother and sister do laundry and to sixteen-year-old Carter that was no choice at all.

His father had been gone for three days, making the long trek to the city. Once upon a time, the trip would have taken hours at most. Now, the roads were cracked and crumbling, large roots and weeds slowly overtaking the old concrete. The majority of cars and trucks had been stripped down after El Terra, used for weapons and scrap metal.

The giant solar storm had hit fifty years prior, generating currents that ripped through the electric grid and resulted in mass global power outages. Communication and navigation systems had gone down and any existing satellites were completely wiped out. The storm had been followed by a barrage of disasters, with volcanic eruptions in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere and earth-shaking quakes sending massive waves of water crashing over entire cities.

Carter had heard stories of people breaking into stores to steal food and cash. Unable to access bank accounts and records, people no longer had any proof of ownership over their money. Riots had broken out and in less than two years almost three-quarters of the world’s population had been wiped out—either by the events themselves or the chaos that followed.

Many of those who were left had formed small communities, preferring to live entirely off the grid rather than rebuild and risk a similar situation. Carter’s own village was made up of around two hundred people. The closest place that could be considered a town was Westburne, which was over three hundred kilometers to the south and where his father was currently traveling to.

More relieved than he was willing to admit, Carter came to the edge of the meadow and stepped out from the snake-hiding long grass and into the canopy of trees. The air was cooler there and the sweat dried on his brow as he moved deeper into the woods.

His mind began to drift as he followed the familiar route, cutting to the left when he came to the bramble of raspberry bushes. If he got lucky with the first couple of traps he might even be able to sneak off for an hour or two before dinner. He was in the middle of contemplating just how to convince the lovely Aspen Hill to join him for a sunset swim when a vague sense of unease broke into his daydreams.

The birds, Carter realized. They’d stopped singing. He was well into the trees now, and almost no sunlight filtered through the dense foliage. He stopped, cocking his head to one side as he strained to listen. An explosion of wings in a nearby brush had him leaping sideways, letting out a muttered curse.

“Damnit,” he hissed, squinting through the deep shadows in an attempt to see what had startled the flock. Nothing seemed amiss and the forest around him was once more silent. Eerily silent, he thought, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

It wasn’t just the birdsong missing; there was no rustling of little creatures in the grass. No whirring of insects. Instead, the still air felt hot and somehow heavy.

Glancing warily about, Carter estimated he had at least another five minutes to go until he got to the first trap. He sent up a mental prayer that he’d get lucky enough to avoid going any further. As he continued down the path he couldn’t keep his eyes from flitting back and forth, searching for an unknown danger he sensed but couldn’t see or explain.

Stick gripped tightly in his hand, he slowed to catch his breath as he approached the last turn. Then he frowned. Sniffing the air, Carter felt a sudden flash of panic as he recognized the scent of smoke. Terrified he would see the telltale haze in the sky signaling a forest fire, he exhaled with relief when he looked up and saw nothing but glimmers of blue.

Quickly rounding the final corner he found himself stop short as confusion briefly overtook unease. Where his snare had once been set among a large section of trees and ferns, nothing remained but ash. Puzzled, he poked at the charred ground with his stick, estimating the area that had been burned had to be at least twenty square feet.

For a brief moment, Carter allowed himself to wonder if he was somehow in the wrong place, but even as he had the thought he uncovered the thin metal wire his father had used to create a trap. Crouching down to look at it, he tried to speculate what might have happened. There hadn’t been a storm in weeks so the fire must have been started by someone, either by accident or on purpose. But who? And how had it not spread? This time of year the forest was dry as kindling.

As he got slowly to his feet, he considered his options. If he turned back now, his mother would likely send him out to trade for something to make up for the lack of meat. Still...he could always use that as an excuse to stop by Aspen’s place…and it would mean he could get the hell out of the woods.

Decision made, Carter turned back the way he’d come. Before he could take even a step in the direction of home, an ear-piercing screech had him throwing his hands over his ears in agony. Heart racing, he looked wildly around for the source of the sound. The sharp crackle of breaking branches had his neck whipping to the right.

As he watched in growing horror a creature stepped into the clearing, visible even in the dim light. Every single part of Carter screamed to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction, but instinct had him frozen in place.

So tall he had to tilt his head back to look up at it, the reptile had thick scales covering its body all the way down to sharp, curving talons. Peridot-colored eyes stared down at him, wide and unblinking. Swallowing hard, Carter took a cautious step backward. The creature snorted, and to his amazement a curl of smoke wisped out of its nostrils. Stretching out its long neck, its head bobbed slightly as it sniffed the air around Carter’s face.

“Please don’t eat me,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. At the sound of his voice, the dragon—because there was no denying this was anything other than a dragon—let out another one of those ear-piercing shrieks.

As his vision went black around the edges, the last thought Carter had was that he would have liked to have taken his chances with the snake after all.