Sere Valley

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Joala didn't know why they were there, but she knew that their coming changed her life to a dark, lonely despair.

Joala knew fear. It was her ninth summer when the marauders stormed through town on their huge black beasts; everyone not fortunate enough to flee was run through and trampled under the hooves of their snorting, roaring mounts. The following summer was the first time she felt the searing rains and they swept in every summer since. She knew fear and death well but that first time in the valley was terror beyond anything she'd ever known.

The burning downpour was the worst one ever and, when it finally blew away, Joala fled from the cries and pain that darkened her village in search of somewhere to hide from feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. When the screams died out of her thoughts and she took notice of her surroundings, Joala found herself deep within the woods that surrounded her home. A moment of panic seized her then she shook her fire-curled head angrily, "No. I am not lost. I don't remember these trees but I know the woods. I'll keep walking and soon enough, I'll know where I am."

Joala had never felt the kind of darkness she found herself trapped in. Her search for a way out of the enveloping gloom of the looming trees strengthened the growing, lost dread that they were no longer the friends that once greeted her when she visited. Long hours of solitude only carried her further from herself and she felt her youth slowly leaching away. Joala knew that if she ever found her way back home, life would never be the same; blackness had left an indelible mark on her soul.

The lustrous red hair, Joala's secret pride, once full and alive, hung limply over her face and her green sea-spray eyes were dull with ever-increasing despair. It wasn't only the disappearing light that filled her thoughts or the screams of fear echoing within them that were driving the desperate girl to the brink, it was a feeling of waiting… something, someone waiting for her if she ever broke free from the surrounding trees' dark grip.

Threatening shadows filling her mind spilled out to shroud the sky with their gloom. Joala stopped walking, quit searching, and dropped down in defeat to wait for what was coming. From between her trembling fingers, through the flaming red that covered her eyes, a flash of light woke a shred of Joala's remaining self. A hint of sun from obscuring clouds, crimson-gold heralding its leaving, coaxed Joala to lift her head from her hands and drew the frightened girl to her feet. A timid step, then a cautious other and, slowly, a growing determination to enter the waning light.

Joala's glimpse of hope vanished with the dying of the light. She kept walking, continued struggling to hold on to the shred of courage the last glimpse of day revived in her heavy heart. The blackness of the sky washed through her mind like inky waves on a wind-tossed shore and, once again, despair dropped the defeated girl to the ground and her face into her hands.

Something, some change, caused Joala to lift her head and part her hair from her terrified eyes. A long moment of empty thought and a slow realization; there had been no crunch of fall leaves when she sat, the ground was firm and she was wet from night-dew grass. Her whispered, "Free," rose to a shout, "I'm free!" and Joala leapt to her feet to dance her relief.

Her fiery flight of soft curls slowed to a rest and the glowing green of Joala's eyes met with the growing greens revealed by the last of the warm sunset escaping from the cold embrace of storm-dark clouds. "A meadow?" A parting orange-gold flash. “A valley…” Once again the pale girl dropped to the ground but her blaze-wreathed head stayed up and her spring-green eyes found harmonious colors that the sun, in its final retreat, showed to her. "Where did you come from?" Joala's husky whisper breaking the night silence startled her nearly as much as her question. Ink washed the sky but the dark no longer threatened the solitary girl; anticipation of the light guarded her thoughts.

Day's amber blue woke in Joala's bright spring eyes and filled them with wonder. "Paradise!" A yellow flash, an emerald glow washed into the young girl's eyes and whirled within her thoughts. Green, gold, green, gold, swirling, pulsing, claiming Joala's mind and coalescing into a confusing vision that terrified her more than the fears of the passed night.

Greens and golds blended into an obsidian blue that stared into every hidden valley of her being. The strong girl, flowering to womanhood, felt as naked as the day she was born; unseeing, unknowing, she was a creature of instinct seeking a grasp on life. A burst of bright midnight and a rush of wind carrying whispers of powerful wings swept her from the ground and drew her on their waking dawn flight. The horizon-bound sun broke free of its restraint and arced into the brightening blue with a burst of silver-yellow glory. It raced through the sky and, as it flew over Joala’s head, her blowing flame hair rose up to meet its passing. A brief moment and the blues and yellows faded to falling night. A flash of oranges and reds filled the young girl’s vision then seeped away into the darkest night Joala had ever known and a nameless terror that threatened to break the uncertain grasp she had on her mind. The darkness muted all sound, every feeling of movement and Joala lost sight of who and where she was.

A ray of pale light woke Joala from her lost isolation and dread to reveal the greens of the grass that held her in its embrace. She stared up into the lightening sky and as she set out to leave that valley of dark fear and find her way home, the young girl knew it would never leave her, that it never would again.

Joala was right, the valley had changed the once young girl so completely that her happy home of old was misery. She was an outcast among the people who had loved and accepted her; friends and family went to lengths to avoid her and fearful whispers never left her ears.

The stamp of strangeness left on her by the hidden valley showed itself the morning after her return. Joala swam out of a dark pool of dreamlessness and sat up with a scream, "Ерік!" The fearful shout drove away the remains of sleep from her troubled green eyes and, echoing over and over in her head, filled her tiny room. The door banged open and her father shouted over her, "Joala girl, what's wrong? What happened?" Joala's terror turned to deepening sadness and she burst into tears, "Epik, Father... he's fallen into the well..." "The smith's boy? I saw him but a moment ago, walking away from the square. It was only a dream, little one." "No, Father," Joala protested, "I saw him fall." "A dream, child, just a dream," her father tried to encourage her. "It's early," he told the trembling girl, "try to sleep," and left her room with a small shake of his head.

Two days passed and Joala's nightmare awakening, nearly faded from her thoughts, was forced into the light of day by shouts from outside. "Epik!" "The blacksmith's boy has fallen!" "A boy is trapped in the well."

First Epik, then the seamstress's granddaughter lost in the woods and, when Joala saw the fire in the village two nights before it started, the whispers awoke and incidents that followed soon after made her an outcast, in her village and her family. They shunned her for her strangeness and for their growing fear that the red-haired girl was influenced by a nameless evil that would bring destruction to all that crossed her path.

Joala's lonely existence drove her from home one cloudy morning to seek out the path she'd walked through the woods that were no longer her friend, to find the hellish valley she once called paradise. When Joala stepped out from the among the trees, her inner hell showed its face. The lush greens of the valley were now ashes, fires claimed the land and smoke brought the tears that were hiding in her eyes to the surface to run unnoticed down her cheeks. She stared at the face of destruction with growing dread then turned to run from the sight. She took one step then hesitated, halted by a familiar sound that awoke in that valley and had never left her ears, the strong whisper of beating wings.