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Qapkas

by Jennifer Gossoo

By Jennifer AshleyPublished about a year ago Updated about a year ago 24 min read
Top Story - November 2022
47
Qapkas
Photo by Alex Gorey on Unsplash

Everything was orange, starting with the trees that ringed the clearing: aspen, birch, cottonwood, maple, and the larches whose needles paled to gold in the Fall.

Beyond that golden eye sprawled the evergreens: fir, pine, cedar, spruce, and hemlock; conifers that swathed the Kutenai mountains in a close, dark blanket of growth, rolling down to the rivers in the valleys below. They would still be green beneath ermine coats of snow come November.

But for now, everything was orange.

In the middle of that autumnal grove, stark as a gold fleck in a dark eye, fluttered a flag of color: a shred of day-glo orange rustling in the breeze that snaked over the mountainside. Nothing else moved in the clearing save for the aspen, who inclined their golden heads and whispered amongst themselves.

Two miles skyward, another golden eye rolled towards the fleck in the clearing, bright as a beacon on the mountain’s dark shoulders.

~

A shadow filled the camp, spilling over the trees in either direction.

He watched himself as from the eye of an animal below, his sloping underbelly as long as a young pine and thick around as an old fir. His wings blotted out the sun like black clouds, darkening the earth beneath them. He was accustomed to the mad scramble that heralded his landings below.

When he was within two hundred feet of the cleft canopy, he tucked his tail beneath his belly and fanned his wings. His descent was avian in its silence, honed over three centuries of practice. He could scarcely recall the clumsy, crashing days of his whelphood, when human dwellings were unheard-of this far up from the riverbanks. Coexistence had been easier, then.

The treetops swayed wide beneath his wingbeats to admit him into their midst, and swung shut again, like a pond surface returning to stillness. He landed hindquarters-first in the soft earth. A bold magpie protested his descent from the crook of a cedar bough until he rolled his reptilian eyes up to hers. Then the clearing was silent.

First, he stretched. He felt the loose earth clump and crumble beneath his claw-tipped feet. It was hours since he’d been able to give the earth his weight, and he wanted to sag onto his belly, wings slack, limbs splayed— but humans flew now, like he did, and lower than he dared. They weren’t afraid of being plucked out of the sky by a bigger animal. It was this arrogant disregard for healthy mammalian fears which spattered the clearing.

He flexed his leathery nostrils, savoring the lungful of alpine air that he was seldom afforded anymore. For the last century, he’d only dared make land under cover of darkness, fog, or wildfire smoke. He relished the purifying sensation in his breast before expelling it in a sulphurous black breath. Left on his palate were the prickling tastes of human sweat and bright-bitter urine; of campfire smoke that still lingered, locked beneath the criss-crossed ceiling of boughs, and of cooked meat— fish that the humans had brought with them. It smelled strongly of the coastline, a place he’d seen only twice in his lifetime.

Buried beneath those commonplace human odors, he picked up the coppery tang of bloodspill.

He began to move around the clearing. A dragon had to be careful where he lay his tail; it left a distinctive line in the earth behind him. He’d been tracked this way as a whelp to his birth den in the Cordilleras. He saw, as upon a mirror-still lake, his mother’s jaws closing over the arms and necks and backs of the spear-carriers who’d followed the snaking path of his tail through the Sluqan foothills into the mountains. No tales of victory or good fortune would return to the riverbanks; their hunt ended in his mother’s jaws.

When it was done, she’d turned her bloodied snout upon him and sank her teeth into the unarmored flesh of his shoulders, deep enough that no scales would ever grow from the scars. More painful still, she’d called him Kikis for four seasons, after the skittish young deer that humans ate. The punitive stripping of his birth name— Qapkas, after the swift kingfisher— cut deeper than his mother’s teeth could reach. And so, three centuries later, Qapkas lifted his tail and carried on.

The ground should have been hard-packed in the clearing, as it was in the foothills below. That summer had been mercilessly dry, but the rain had finally come in September, laying roots and worms and leaf-rot deep underground. Here, the topsoil was as loose underfoot as it had been in August, flurried into a confusion of footprints and muddy ochre stains. Qapkas found that he could follow the events of the mauling quite easily.

Every year at Autumn's end, humans grew restless enough to crawl up from their valleys seeking open places on the mountain, far past the treeline, where their voices couldn't carry and their noisy metal steeds couldn’t bear them. They brought food, as though scavenging hibernators wouldn’t smell it, and set up cloth-walled houses, as though tokens of civilization would cast a protective spell over the wild spaces. These delusions of safety proved fruitful for the mountain-dwellers. Qapkas was sure it was a nupqu, a bear, that had done it. He recognized the broad, pronged prints from another mauling four decades past. Such grisly discoveries were commoner before the laying of the humans’ iron roads, when the first people slept outdoors beneath deer-flesh shelters. Nupqu didn’t often get desperate enough to spill human blood, anymore.

Qapkas stepped around the freshest spills, probing the soil for a glint or gleam. Sometimes, there was a silver lining to a slaughter. Humans liked to wear bits of metal bent around their necks and wrists, and occasionally those metals were inlaid with stones that kindled a ferocious jealousy in Qapkas’ heart, and made oily smoke furl from between his teeth. He had a modest hoard of his own, growing a green coat of pond-scum at the bottom of an alpine lake. But as humans had mastered flight, it seemed only a matter of time before they could breathe water, and then even mountain lakes wouldn’t be safe for a dragon’s hoard.

There was no plunder to speak of. If either of the humans had been wearing metals, those were carried off in the belly of their killer. Qapkas turned to the only unexplored aspect of the campsite: the scrap of color that had drawn him out of the sky with its fluorescence. From ten thousand feet above, it had looked like a hunk of pure garnet, as deeply and bloodily orange as grapefruit flesh.

The orange tarpaulin flapped weakly from its last standing pole. The rest of the little pop-up tent had been trampled in the fray. A three-pronged gash had nearly rent it in two at the back, and even as Qapkas snuffed disinterestedly at the wreckage, the pole gave a brave shudder and whined over backward, pulling the rest of the tent down with it. Qapkas flexed his wings impatiently and gave the heap a final snuff.

And the tent reached up to pat Qapkas squarely on the nose.

~

I don’t suppose you've ever witnessed a dragon leap into the air with fright, but a magpie or two chortled with glee as Qapkas came down out of the air onto his back, legs and wings thrashing, and rolled himself wings-over-tail to the edge of the clearing.

There, hot with embarrassment, he sneered venomously at the tent. He heard his mother’s voice, berating him for some forgotten cowardice.

A dragon cannot be blindsided. Our hearts have no room in them for fear. Unless you are only half-dragon, and half-salamander, Kikis. That may explain some of your foolishness. Are you? A wingless, earthbound salamander?

Qapkas flung his weight across the clearing and flattened the tent with a throaty roar. Beneath his dripping gums, the tent began to wail.

To Qapkas, it sounded very much like the staccato a-hup, a-hup of morning dove chatter; however, this quickly devolved to an ear-splitting killdeer-esque NA-A-A-AH! NA-A-A-AH!

Qapkas hooked a talon through the orange tatters and lifted the wailing tent into the air. The noisy thing inside was cut off as it bumped and tumbled out of the bottom of its dwelling, and landed on the forest floor in front of Qapkas.

Of all things to leave behind, the bear had left a human.

~

Qapkas regarded the little animal at his feet. It was a human, wasn’t it? He’d never seen one so small before, which surely meant that it was young, maybe only a few decades old.

Ah, but humans don’t age like dragons, he reminded himself. Maybe mere years, then.

The small human seemed too stunned by its fall to continue howling. It had dark fur on top of its head, and eyes the color of sap. All in all, it was a human like any other. Qapkas noted ruefully that it wasn’t wearing any metals.

“Why would your people bring you here?” Qapkas growled. He looked at the bloodspill near the treeline, where the bear had evidently dragged off one of the cub's guardians. Bears did that kind of thing. Qapkas thought it a needless step in the slaughter when a swift blow or bite would do. For one, fear made the meat tough. And from what Qapkas had seen of it, there was enough suffering in the world already. “Can you hunt for yourself?” he asked the cub.

The child stared up at him. When the dragon opened his mouth to speak, it heard only his guttural brogue, and saw only putrid smoke and curving teeth. It threw back its head and resumed its killdeer cry.

There, at the soft throat: a line of gleaming golden stones.

Qapkas ran a forked tongue over his snout. Here came the rabid envy, as primal a desire as hunger or copulation. He couldn't hope to explain the orelust, except, perhaps, to another dragon. But he had long ceased indulging this fantasy; there had been neither sighting nor scent to kindle his hope since the death of his mother two centuries past.

The human had stopped caterwauling. Its face was slick with the saltwater it had shed from its eyes and nose. Qapkas wondered what the evolutionary function of the seepage could be. The human's fringed eyes regarded Qapkas distrustfully from the ground. Then, it got to its hind feet and ran to where Qapkas had discarded its dwelling. Qapkas watched it crawl inside.

He just had to wait for it to die. It wasn’t so cruel, really. He was a dragon; this was the more merciful of the paths open to him. At least he wasn’t abandoning it to its parents’ fates. Next to this, Qapkas didn't see how else he might obtain the stones. His talons were each as long as one of the human's pudgy limbs; if he attempted to remove the collar himself, decapitation was a likely outcome.

Qapkas resigned himself to his role as the whelp's guardian, at least, as long as it took for it to die. From his understanding, it didn’t take long at the best of times. Humans reached full size in a matter of two decades, and then five or so decades later, their head-fur turned white, and they died. If he let it starve, Qapkas was sure he wouldn’t have to wait half so long.

There was a great deal of movement and whimpering coming from the tent. Taking a gentler approach than he thus had, Qapkas nosed the rustling mound. The cub's damp face appeared from a doorflap, capped with a woven covering. The human had covered its top-flesh, too, in a covering that looked made for a much larger specimen. Humans young and old lacked the evolutionary advantage of fur, and resorted to bundling their bodies in a variety of fibers. Qapkas found the enthusiasm with which they dyed and decorated their makeshift fur most perplexing.

“I suppose you won’t be freezing to death, then.” The child flinched when Qapkas spoke. “Do I sound terrible to you?” he asked.

The clinging scraps of the tent slid from the child’s shoulders. Qapkas saw that it held a large, flat box about the size of a birch conk. It hefted the box around in its forefeet and lifted back the top. Underneath, Qapkas saw human runes. The box was full of paper. Qapkas had seen paper before. Humans scattered it wherever they trod: along trails, staked to trees, moldering in creekbeds. Most paper bore human runes, but Qapkas had never seen such intricate ones before. The child stole a glance at Qapkas and turned the paper over. Hidden beneath, there was a lush miniature landscape. Though his sight was a match for any eagle’s, Qapkas stepped nearer to ponder the two-dimensional world that the human held.

Willow; mountain; raven; toadstool. I know this place. Qapkas stared at the pictures, mesmerized.

Then, the world was gone. The animals and vistas on the pages beneath bled into a blur as the human riffled through its box of papers, stopping at one near the centre. It turned the box to face Qapkas.

Qapkas looked at the paper. The eyes on the paper looked at him.

It wasn’t alive; he knew this. But it was him. Or, someone like him.

“Where did you find this?” There was a feeling that Qapkas scarcely recognized as hope spreading its warm fire through his body. The cub tilted the box to check that it was open to the right picture. It tapped the paper with its soft talon.

“Dwagon,” it said.

Qapkas had no idea what a dwagon was. Apparently, it had scales and teeth and a tail like his. The cub pointed at Qapkas.

“You a dwagon?” it said. It was a question. Was he a dwagon?

Qapkas thought of his mother, who only spoke in their ancestral tongue, and would never have deigned to answer the ignorant— not to mention mispronounced— questions of a juvenile spear-carrier. “I may be,” Qapkas replied.

The child bobbed its hairy head up and down. “You a dwagon,” it said. It snapped its paper box shut. “You fly?”

Qapkas was beginning to make sense of the human's lisping accent. He swung his head scornfully.

“Of course I fly. Do you know nothing? Does the dwag— does the dragon in your box fly?”

The child opened the box to a different paper than before. This paper showed the dragon in flight, wings flush with a starry sky.

“He fly to hide fwom the knight!” The human dropped its box and began to spar with an invisible enemy. Qapkas retreated a step, memories of the spear-carriers flooding back to him from his infancy. Were all humans born with a propensity for violence? He stilled the cub's antics with a snarl.

“I hide from neither night nor day,” he growled. “They are all the same to a dragon, whose home is the sky. That’s right,” he said, seeing the cub gape skywards. “A place an earth-dweller could scarcely dream of. I pity you, earthbound for all your short life.” Exceptionally short, in your case, he thought. “You speak rather poorly. How many moons have you seen?”

The human extended four of its talons.

“Four moons? That’s hardly a single season. You’re less than a whelp— you’re practically a newborn. You humans do grow at an alarming rate.”

The toddler crouched in the earth and flipped back to the first paper in the box. There were blue human runes scrawled there, different than the others.

“Mommy’s making me pwactice for Kindergawten next year.” It stared at the runes.

Qapkas suspected that mommy was human for mother, but he couldn’t begin to fathom what Kindergawten meant.

The child looked up at Qapkas.“You like stowies?”

Qapkas had liked his mother’s stories. These were usually a fantastical retelling of their bloodline, which could be traced back ten millenia to the Eternal Winter, when the white-scaled dragon Sheg awoke from his decades-long brumation to find himself one of the glacial epoch’s few survivors. Qapkas had enjoyed these stories immensely, embellished or not, if only because his mother seldom spoke so much at one time. He emitted a decisive black puff.

“Oral histories are essential to the longevity of my species. It is how we remember and honor our ancestors. It is how I know that I am descended from Numa, whose scales melted black against the stormy sky when he bore down out of a thunderhead, and of Sheut, whose wingspan was as wide across as the Nile and as dark as death’s long sleep.”

“You a good stowy teller,” the child said appreciatively.

“Not so good as my mother.”

“My mommy’s a good stowy teller too,” the human said. “She gave me this book.”

A book. Qapkas had heard of books, but if they all looked like the child’s, he was sure he’d never come across one.

“And how did a human come to possess such a book?” Qapkas gave voice to the simmering resentment that had replaced his intrigue. What birthright did a human have to the stories of his ancestors?

“Mall,” the child said. It returned to the tent and settled itself in the folds. “I wait fow mommy here,” it said. It set the book in its lap and opened to the first paper inside. “The Dwagon of the Valley,” it read. “Chaptuh one.”

~

As the cub read, Qapkas listened. There was nothing else to do while he waited for the whelp to give up its ghost, and this way, at least, he would have the contents of the tome translated to him before he took it for plunder. His wyrmish pride could fain admit that he rather enjoyed the stories. He’d only ever heard his mother’s stories, and those didn’t have pictures.

Qapkas settled himself at tail's length from the cub. It looked up from its runes, and seemed to grow calmer with Qapkas a few feet closer to eye-level.

The cub wasn’t completely fluent in its language yet. Still, Qapkas was amazed that a four-moon old could decipher runes at all. He wondered if a dragon whelp of equivalent age would have the same intellectual proficiency, and tried to remember if he'd shown any special promise at four moons.

“The dwagon with his mommy.” The child turned the book to show Qapkas, who was six inches closer than he had been at the start of the reading.

The dragon in the book was born in a mountain cave, like him. Its mother was a shadow with two yellow eyes. He saw that her “nest” was made of grasses and twigs, like a wren’s. Perhaps different species used different nesting materials? He’d been hatched in a ring of lava rock, heated by his mother’s breath.

“Dragons do not sit on their brood like fowl. No egg, dragon or otherwise, could withstand the weight.”

The child considered the illustration. “How the babies hatch then?”

“On their own. Or not at all.” Qapkas recalled the brutal winter that had killed his three unborn siblings in their shells. He sneered at the dragon eggs in the book— a large, healthy clutch.

“There awe five babies now.”

“Unlikely.”

“They all playing together.”

“Dragons do not play.”

“Yes, see, they playing. You play?”

“No.”

“I play with daddy ‘cause mommy had only one baby.”

Qapkas stared down at the child. Only one baby.

“Continue,” he said.

So the child carried on, its halting speech the only sound in the clearing, until the midday sun dropped below the treeline and pulled the temperature down with it.

Qapkas was half-asleep, his dreams richly tapestried, when he felt a dim thunking sensation. It was hard to tell where with his scales. He opened one eye to see the human crouched at arm’s length, gripping a long stick in its forefeet. As Qapkas watched, it brought the stick down over his nose with another dull whump!

“I’m quite awake,” Qapkas said, raising his head off of the ground.

“I'm cold.” The child had closed the book, and, despite its oversized coverings, was trembling from head to foot. The dragon in its book was nearly grown now. It had made its first kill (Qapkas preferred sturgeon to hare, himself), and come face-to-face with a foreign dragon in the woods. Qapkas wanted desperately to know about this second dragon (Where did it come from? Was it friend or foe?), and what the dragons would do when they encountered their first spear-carriers. He didn't want the child to die when it had so much left to tell him.

“I will take you someplace warm.”

“But mommy”—

“Your mother will find you. Come.”

Clasping the book to its shivering chest, the child inched forward, its brown eyes riveted to Qapkas’. How would he transport it? He thought of the serrated scales and horned ridge of his backside; not exactly accommodating to human flesh. Nor did he trust his powerful hind feet not to tense and crush the child by mistake. He lowered his great head.

“I can take you, but you must trust me.”

The child stared fearfully into Qapkas’ golden eyes and considered this proposition.

“Awe you a good dwagon ow a bad dwagon?”

Qapkas gazed back. Human eyes were not so different than dragon’s eyes, though their pupils were round where his were slitted. Was he a good dragon or a bad dragon?

“Get inside my mouth,” he said. He didn’t wait for consent.

~

The screaming was deafening, at first, but the wind soon drowned it out. By the time they reached his den in the Cordilleras, Qapkas was wondering whether the thinned oxygen of their altitude might not have killed the child.

He landed carefully on the outcropping that led into his den. It was the same entry his mother had defended three centuries ago, while he cowered in the darkness behind her. Qapkas deposited the whelp gently onto the cave floor. The book was still pinned to its narrow chest, which rose and fell rapidly. It was alive, if rather damp.

Qapkas used his tail to sweep the scattered stones of his old nest into a pile in the middle of the cave.

“Come,” he said, his voice booming from the walls. The cub obeyed. From the savage mouth that had borne it safely through the sky, it watched a tongue of liquid fire snake onto the stones and engulf them in living blue flame. The cub could only gawk at first, but its eyelids soon began to droop before the breathfire's blaze. As the flames swelled, shapes were illuminated in the cave's dark recesses. The cub uttered a wail.

“My mother,” Qapkas said. A dragon didn’t dig graves for its dead. His mother remained where she’d died, head, spine, and tail stretched out along the western wall. He turned to face the child.

“Continue the story.”

“Too tired.” Indeed, the cub was nearly falling over. Qapkas sighed.

“At sunup, then, you will continue where we left off."

“Too afwaid to sleep."

“My mother? She was fearsome to behold. But she is dead; her teeth cannot harm you."

“Where I sleep?”

“Where you fall.” Qapkas rose and stretched, and then he turned in a circle and lay down on the cave floor with his tail across his nose. The child whimpered anxiously in the dark, but after awhile it lay down as close to the blue fire as it dared, and glowered through the flames at Qapkas.

“You a bad dwagon,” it muttered. It was the last thing Qapkas heard before he fell asleep.

~

Qapkas listened. The child read. Slowly, and badly, but it was a better education than Qapkas had thus received. Every so often, the firelight would glance off of the gemstones at the child’s neck, reminding Qapkas of his motive in bringing it there. He seemed to be always forgetting.

When the last rune was read, Qapkas would leave for a hunt. He would part from the cub with the promise of return, and fish until his belly was full. The gems would be waiting for him at the end of his week-long scavenge, along with the cub's book and all of the knowledge it contained. They would be his. This is what Qapkas told himself as the human read, or, more often than not, stopped mid-sentence to ask Qapkas about dragons. Qapkas interjected just as often.

“There has never and will never be a dragon that breathes lightning,” he scoffed. The liberties the writer had taken with his race! He wanted to hoard the book if only to prevent his species from being injuriously misunderstood.

“Dragons wouldn't bother eating something as nutrient-poor as a squirrel. Perhaps as a hatchling, but never as an adult.”

“Do you have any bwothers ow sisters?”

“No.”

“Do you have any fwiends?”

“No.”

“Can you do magic?”

“What a stupid question.”

These were the conversations that punctuated their readings. When the child grew cold, Qapkas made a fire, or breathed over its head. At night, they slept on opposite sides of Qapkas’ breathfire, though on the second morning, Qapkas awoke to find the stones cool and the child asleep not three feet from his fire-filled breast. There was no talk or thought of food; Qapkas had eaten his fill two weeks ago, and dragons used their nutrients slowly.

~

The morning of the third day, Qapkas was awoken before sunup to an unfamiliar sound. Memories of the previous night's reading came back to him. They were on chaptuh eleven, in which the dragon encountered its first spear-carriers.

"The knight only hurt the dwagon because he was afwaid. The dwagon looks scawy, but he isn't bad."

"A dragon would never flee from a foe he could slay with ease."

"Maybe he doesn't want to hurt the knight."

"A dragon's honor"

"Maybe he a good dwagon."

This was not the heroic origin story Qapkas had hoped for. But he'd had to stifle his curiosity. The cub needed more sleep with every passing day. For his part, Qapkas had slept uneasily. He dreamt of himself nursing a spear-carrier's steel bite in his cave. He had been taught to avenge so grave an insult. But the human seemed to think there was another option. If not cowardice what?

Qapkas followed the strange sound until he came upon the whelp, curled up at the mouth of the cave. The sound was coming from its stomach.

Qapkas breathed his warmth over the child's body. Had its pelt been this color yesterday? The stones hung loose at its throat. Qapkas could have looped a talon through the gap.

“Cub,” he said.

The little body contorted as another guttural growl rolled through it.

“My tummy hurts,” it said weakly.

Qapkas retrieved the book where it lay next to the fire. He dropped it at the child's elbow.

“Surely you have strength to finish."

The cub licked its lips, but there was no saliva to wet them.

“Mommy," it said.

“You must finish!” Qapkas could hear his brogue growing wild. He'd learned too much to have those final precious pages denied him. He knew now that there were other dragons in the world besides himself, and that whole dragon broods could survive ruthless winters, and that dragon mothers could be nurturing, and that, if it came down to it, a dragon had more choices than revenge and cowardice. But the question had not been answered.

“Is he good or bad?”

The cub said nothing. The book lay open beside it.

All thought of gemstones and hoards had left Qapkas' mind. His identity hinged on the human's answer. Are you a good dragon or a bad dragon?

The final stone of Qapkas’ fire went out with a soft puff. The child had closed its eyes. Its pulse was a mothwing flutter.

No. Not dead. Qapkas couldn’t bear the thought of this. As he had in whelphood, Qapkas ran to his mother.

Her proud, horned skull still terrified him, even as an adult; even in death. Qapkas stood in front of his mother until an answer came to him. He crossed his cave, back to where the child lay curled on its side. The book had fallen open to the last page it had read to him. Qapkas saw himself coiled on the paper, a terrible lizard hunkered inside of its hiding place.

He opened his mouth to admit a tendril of flame onto the page. His likeness shrank beneath it, and then those above and below followed.

Qapkas looked away from the burning book. He stooped his head to lift the human in his jaws, taking great care with the soft limbs. He carried it out of his cave into the morning air.

~

When Qapkas entered the valley, a white winter sun was reaching its arms over the Kutenai mountains. There were no humans awake to see the shadow that detached from the dawn-dark mountainside and landed in their midst. Qapkas chose a house close to the water, removed from the others. He bent his head to deposit his breath-dampened parcel onto the shaded porch. Inside of its coverings, the cub’s belly snarled.

When he took to the air, Qapkas launched himself with such force that every human in the Slocan Valley jolted awake in their beds, and hurried out onto their front porches to see what the commotion was.

AdventureFableFantasyShort StoryYoung Adult
47

About the Creator

Jennifer Ashley

🇨🇦 Canadian Storyteller

♾️ Metis Nation

🎓 UVic Alumni 2020

Writing published by Kingston Writers Press, Young Poets of Canada, Morning Rain Publishing, & the BC Metis Federation to teach Michif in Canadian schools.

✨YA Magical Realism✨

Reader insights

Outstanding

Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!

Top insights

  1. Easy to read and follow

    Well-structured & engaging content

  2. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

  3. Compelling and original writing

    Creative use of language & vocab

  1. Heartfelt and relatable

    The story invoked strong personal emotions

  2. Masterful proofreading

    Zero grammar & spelling mistakes

  3. On-point and relevant

    Writing reflected the title & theme

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Comments (24)

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  • Carol Townendabout a year ago

    That was genius writing! I loved reading every single word of it.

  • Georgenes Medeirosabout a year ago

    Amazing. I loved it

  • Tabitha Kristy Spearsabout a year ago

    Congratulations on your win. I really enjoyed reading this story.

  • Erica Wagnerabout a year ago

    I really loved this. Intriguing and vivid — and funny! Thanks for being part of the Vocal community, and congratulations.

  • Cathy holmesabout a year ago

    Aw Jen, this is beautiful. I love the dialogue between the cub and the dwagon, and your descriptive writing is impeccable. Very deserved win.

  • Zack Grahamabout a year ago

    Hey, just wanted to say I read this one before I read the first place winner - this story is wonderful. It's very well balanced and has a seamless flow - it's also very cute! Great job! I also just wanted to say that I am so, SO impressed with you overall Vocal portfolio. Keep writing! You're killing it!

  • Sethryn Caegeabout a year ago

    Congratz! Lovely tale!

  • Shah Hussainabout a year ago

    Hy dear nice story

  • This comment has been deleted

  • Aphoticabout a year ago

    Absolutely gorgeous. Congratulations on second place, you definitely earned it! Your descriptions are so rich and vivid and your storytelling is on point. Great work!

  • M. Fritz Wunderliabout a year ago

    Beautiful prose and wonderful story! Congratulations!

  • Sieran Laneabout a year ago

    Wow what gorgeous sensory descriptions! Setting descriptions are my weak point in my writing (I kind of lack visual imagination), so I am in awe! :) I also liked how you wove in backstory about the dragon's mom...she sounded pretty abusive. :/ Also, wow, I was shocked when I realized that the kid hadn't eaten anything for I think a day or so? I hope the dragon can find some food for them soon. :( I was very worried that the child would die at the end, as that would be tragic.

  • Novel Allenabout a year ago

    Wonderful. Congrats on your win!

  • Dylan Criceabout a year ago

    Great story. Enjoyed the perspective of the dragon and the colloquialism speech was very representative of how a child that age would talk. The relationship and interactions between the child and dragon sold the story along with the character develoment over time. I also enjoyed the humor which was very common throughout the passage. The italics to emphasize thoughts was something I took away from story and helps to build background without relying on exposition. Very technically proficient, compelling, and heartwarming story.

  • Shauntelle Hemingwayabout a year ago

    Congratulations, Jen!

  • Insinq Datumabout a year ago

    A really awesome story, you probably meant 'ancestors' not 'descendants' :P Bravo!

  • Madoka Moriabout a year ago

    Congrats, Jen! You're two for two in the fantasy challenges, I hope this is inpriring you to take the leap to becoming a full-time author - you obviously have what it takes. I'm going to start keeping an eye out for your name when I'm in bookstores~

  • Melissa Ingoldsbyabout a year ago

    💕

  • Call Me Lesabout a year ago

    Way to go!

  • Raymond G. Taylorabout a year ago

    Congratulations and well done. Make the most of your meeting with Chris!

  • JBazabout a year ago

    Well deserved win. This story is very well told, and captivating.

  • Kris Griffithabout a year ago

    Congratulations! I love the imagery in your story! Very well done!

  • Kelli Sheckler-Amsdenabout a year ago

    Congratulations

  • Abigail Penhallegonabout a year ago

    Congratulations on your win! I look forward to reading this story; I don’t have time right this second, but I wanted to say good job now!

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