Dragon Blaze

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley.”

The statement had often been whispered by the elders to eager children behind closed doors, trailing from house to house like a gust of hope in our dark and barren land. The words echoed in the long-quiet cavernous ears of those who had long forgotten to dream, the ears of those who no longer found purpose in eyes alight with fantasy when they had children to keep out of the ground.

People like me.

“Stop feeding the children lies,” I mumbled, as I pulled my niece closer to my side, wrapping us deeper into the dark of the night. It was unusual for those mad men who were our self-proclaimed leaders to speak of such things outside the safety of their sacred halls.

“What was that, little one?”

The words spread like ice across my back, as I turned to the man across the street. Did he hear me? His eyes met mine as if to confirm he had, and the frightened (and perhaps wise) thing inside me shriveled back at their intensity. Their startling blue chill shocked me into a full stop, pulling me away from the contrastingly dull yellow-brown of the land around me and the muddy color of every other eye that was fixed on me in that moment. Blue. His eyes were blue.

“Nothing, Hersker, not from my unworthy lips.”

“I do not wish for your groveling, child. I asked what you said.”

“But Hersker…”

“Your words. Repeat them.”

I faltered, distinctly aware of the faces turned toward me, the people who would be trying to peer under my hood, aware that I should walk away as quickly as possible. I should avoid as much attention as I could. But the more vicious beast that lived in the shadows of my angry heart roared. And before I could settle its cries, the words were past my lips.

“I told you to stop feeding the children lies, Overherre.” Dammit.

The man’s shriveled lips curled into a smile as the lines on his aging face creased into one another, and then fell quickly, as if he has never changed.

“Another afraid of the truth. I would have thought better of you, Lysets Dyr. I only tell the histories of our peoples, it should not strike such a blaze in your chest, nor such words on your tongue. You should tuck our stories into your mind. You of all people.” His features twisted again into a smile as he spoke. “Now be gone, child. And remember what I say. The beasts were not always here, nor will they always be.”

“Auntie Celestia? Mama will…” uttered the girl still tucked at my side.

“I know, Della, let’s go.”

The two of us skittered back down the road, both clearly shaken by the events that had unfurled themselves in our path.

I thought on the man’s words, and scoffed at his bold claims. If there was ever a time without the dragons, he had certainly never lived to see it. I doubt our people, who had settled here eons ago, ever had. And if the dragons left the valley, it would be long after our people starved and died.

I took one last glance at the man behind me, and found his eyes still trailing after me, even as he uttered stories to the children around him at the fire, who looked at him desperately as he told his tale. His time-worn face was the same but for his eyes. They burned into me, as I whipped my head around, to scurry even faster.

Brown.

Unmistakable. Unremarkable. Impossible.

Brown.

___________________________________________________

The small disheveled house came into view as I walked Della around the corner and onto the minuscule patch of land we call our own.

“Auntie Celestia, we’re late, mama will be soooooo mad,” came the small voice nestled comfortably with my arm around its shoulder.

“I know, darling, but that’s not your fault and not your problem to worry about.”

“But auntie…”

“No but’s,” I said firmly as we approached the door. “Now run on inside to your room. I saw it earlier, and I know it needs cleaning. Let’s not make your mama any more upset than we must.”

“Yes, auntie.” She mumbled as she pushed her way past the door and scampered off to the left, into the room she shared with her younger brother.

“Lestia, is that you? You’re two minutes late, you better have a good reason.”

My pale-faced and frail sister stumbled disjointedly into view through the door frame, and stopped at the end of the hall, pausing at the expression on my small, sharp face. I had always been an odd-looking figure. Though a thin frame was hardly uncommon in the hunger-riddled bodies of our desperate people, the bones in my face jutted sharply and awkwardly through my skin, as though they were trying to shift out of my face and transform me into something else entirely. Most of all, I drew many whispers by fault of the scar and patch held by ribbon that covered my left eye. But, despite my unfortunate features, I could tell that my familiar face was not what had caused my sister to halt.

“What is that look?”

“What look?” I said, closing the door securely behind me. I lifted my hood, letting it spill off my head and began to unfasten my cloak from around my shoulders, leaving the small swath of fabric that was tied over my face.

“I don’t know what it was, it just wasn’t good.”

I hooked my cloak on the door handle behind me with a sigh, which earned a glare from my sister, as she limped forward and snatched it from me before it could fully leave my hands. I watched as it ruffled in the air behind her gently, until she placed it with finality in its proper spot on the curved nail that peeked from the wall to my right. She turned to me again, unsatisfied by my continuing silence.

“One of the elders was telling their gibberish stories by the fire outside the blacksmith’s, that’s all.”

“Ha! Yes, that thoroughly explains your terror.” She waited a moment for my reply, but when I still failed to respond she prompted me further “Go on.”

I hesitated as I gazed at the ever more brittle woman standing there, frightened she might shatter before my eyes if I said something too startling.

“Elegance, I…”

“Go on.” She spoke firmly, seeing past the shield of my protests before they could fully be uttered from my lips.

“I… I was angry.” One of her eyebrows lifted with the beginning of a flame I was sure to only fan as I spoke further. “I grumbled under my breath and he managed to hear me across the street,” I said, stumbling through the words quickly as I could, “He called for me across the street and… I spoke back.”

“Celestia!” My sister snapped, and I pushed past her, down the hall and into the kitchen.

“He asked me to! How else was I supposed to respond, El? Besides, he let me go and we are here just fine, clearly. There is nothing else for us to worry about.”

“Yes, you had the luck of the earth and the blessings of the sky with you this time. But, Celestia, for heaven’s sake you are twenty-one! You need to stop acting like a child.”

“I was not —”

“Yes, Celestia! You were! And you had Della with you! Did you even pause to think for a moment that you had her in harm’s way? If you cannot even handle yourself now, how am I to expect you to take care of my children when I…”

She paused, and we both held our breath at the unspoken words. The fear that we had only dared to even whisper about once, several months ago, in a drunken shadow of a night swarmed in the air, crawling over our skin like insects.

“... When I can’t any more.”

“That is many many many years from now. I have much time to learn”

“It will be soon.”

“Don’t tell yourself that, El, stop—’

“Celestia.” She said with the weight of sorrow heavy upon her. “It will be soon. I feel it in my body. I cannot continue for long.”

I remembered the day she was injured. She had been hired to work the meager harvest from one of our only farms. But that was the year that one of our mines went dry, and the metal of her scythe was valuable. She was attacked so that the iron could be sold and repurposed, and one of her many assailants had left a gash in her leg by the blade of her own tool. The wound itself was ghastly, but it was the rot that came after that left her body crippled and weak. Even after it had passed, her walk never fully returned and illness became a constant companion.

We knew that she would not be long for this world, for each sickness filled her lungs and limbs, and left her more frail than the last. But I had never let this worry fill my mind, always pushing it aside into the darkest regions of my mind. Until four months ago.

I had bought wine for my sisters birthday. I had been saving what little money I set aside for myself of my wages so that I could buy her something. We had not celebrated in years, but I knew from when I was young that she had loved the taste of wine. This wine was a bitter and awful thing, another pleasure taken by the famine. But it made us drunk and jolly.

And loose-lipped.

“Lestia, for the first time in ages I do not wish I were dead,” she had slurred, “I do not have to think of how I take from our already-empty plates only to do nothing but sit and wait for you in return. I can just be drunk,” She raised her glass, “And then drink some more.”

She had forgotten her words but I had not. I may be able to work in the fields and in the house while she tired in an instant. But she could do what I could never. She had a grace and wisdom that I did not posses. Me? I —

“—cannot raise a child, Elegance.” The words tumbled forth before I could catch them in my palm. “Let alone two. I cannot. You cannot die because I have no knowledge of children and that is that.”

For a moment, my sister looked as though she might protest, but in the end her silence won and confirmed my interjection. Silence floated ghostly between us, thickening the air before she finally spoke.

“Go to bed, Lestia. You need to rest.”

I stared at her tired frame and deathly pallor before turning to go. But as soon as I approached the door a memory sparked.

“One last thing, El, something I forgot. The elder. His eyes were blue.”

“That’s impossible.”

“ I know what I saw.”

“That’s impossible…” I heard her mumble behind me as I left.

I tramped lightly toward the door to the wash room, hoping to cleanse myself of the days filth after working in the fields. I entered to find my reflection gazing back at me, projected onto the mirror above out tiny basin. My scar peeked around the edges of my patch, pelting me with memories of blood running down my face as I tried to carve into my own face, if only it would make the other children leave me alone. I removed the patch to see the result, a stark reminder in comparison to my other eye’s healthy, earthy brown. It gazed at me like the eye of a stranger.

Blue.

Blue like the elder, blue like the fire of the beasts with wings and claws that terrorized us from above.

Blue like Dragon Blaze.

My eye was blue.