The Dragonfly & The Ivy

Beith looked down at this small, fumbling disgrace of a humanoid being, disgust written in every black, writhing vine along her nature-made scales. She stood as still as the forest around her as she watched this creature that she despised, every part of her wanting to jump out and swallow the child whole. She wanted to hear her screams as she terrorized the squishy child, just to take the rage of the past war-ravaged years of what the two-legged creatures had done to her and her kind. She wanted to so much so that the foliage around her began to respond to her desires, but for whatever reason, she found something stopping her and soothing her rage, if only just for a moment.

The child that was, unknowingly, the current target of Beith’s rage was following a leaf on the wind of all things. She laughed and giggled and shrieked in delight every time the dancing leaf would get just a little closer to her jumping fingertips. Her hair fell around her shoulders in tight, wild curls and reflected the color of the bark on the cedar trees in the forest. It was apparent that this disgusting humanoid had been unkept for quite some time as her hair was filled with bits of fall foliage splayed about in differing directions, and the pointed tips of her elven ears played peek-a-boo every time she jumped.

Beith felt a hot poison burning in her stomach each and every time that humanoid giggled or laughed, slowly it was moving up toward her chest. The decaying leaves on her body rustled and burned as the tips slowly changed color into a deep, heart-aching red. How dare this child be able to wander these woods so carefree, so happy, so joyous without knowing its history! The sheer impertinence of how this thing walked around her forest, the forest where she fought alongside so many friends for peace, only to have to watch them die or be captured and tortured. The fact that these humanoids could even be raised to have such innocence after the atrocity they committed sparked an infuriating wrath that felt as though it would never be quenched

Slowly and quietly Beith rose, as the trees silently bent and swayed to make room for her, she prowled low to the ground like a lioness hunting her prey. The child had stopped following the leaf around in the sky and was now distracted by something on the ground. She looked as if she was bending over and making a pile of something. Creeping closer Beith began to rise to strike, her decayed and burnt twig and leaf wings now fully outstretched, speckling the ground in shadows that mimicked the forest floor. As she opened her maw wide, a burning poisonous gas building up in her stomach and throat, the child turned to face her with her jaw dropped and shock on her face, and without one moment of hesitation she breathed out one word in an exclamation.

“Pretty!” The child’s face held shock and awe in the purest form it could take. It did not take deciphering to know that this child was stunned just by the beauty of the beast that she beheld.

Beith halted.

Pretty? Beith had considered herself many things, fierce, strong, a protector, a guardian, a warrior, but pretty had most definitely not been one of them. Her once fresh green foliage that bloomed in beautiful flowers and had covered her from nose to tail was permanently burnt to a

cinder, her bark, once lush and brown, was cracked and broken, chips slowly flaking away, all

from war and suffering that this child’s people created. She had experienced a wide array of

reactions from young and old humanoids alike, from fear to tears, to pleading, and even running

after seeing her full form, but this...in all of her years something like this had never happened.

While Beith took a moment to process this untimed compliment, the child ran at her, not

in fear or violence, but in the awe of needing to touch something so beautiful, as if by touching it

she could express the wonder she felt brimming her with happiness. The child hesitated a moment

at the feet of Beith before throwing her tiny child arms onto her leg in a hug. Even the full span of

her arms did not reach a quarter of the way around Beith’s leg.

The poison in her chest dwindled and receded in the moments of shock that Beith

experienced. This child was a type of fearless without knowing it. Where so many before her saw

horror and terror, she chose to see something great, something beautiful. After a minute the child

moved away from the hug, and a chip of burnt bark fell from Beith’s leg. This of course was

nothing new to Beith, she had experienced this many times before. It was not painful in the

slightest, rather it was much like a snake shedding its skin, but seeing this, the small humanoid

burst into tears. The child, still sniveling and crying, picked up the burnt bark as if it was a

cherished treasure that needed the utmost care and attention, and tried to gently place it back onto

Beith’s leg.

“I sorry, I sorry!” The child kept frantically trying to put the bark back onto Beith’s leg,

while she stood there in shock, still not knowing how to respond or how she felt about this situation.

After a moment Beith let out a deep sigh, one that came from deep within, one that, for this

moment in time, for this situation, would give up her crusade of vengeance. She knew that she

could not torment this child even if she truly wanted to. Slowly, and hesitantly, Beith lowered her

face to nudge the small child that had now descended into a huddle, a full bawling mess, while

gripping Beith’s leg and repeating, “It hurt? It hurt? I sorry!”

The child was bawling with deep, wailing cries, a crying generally reserved for when the

child itself was gravely injured. Snot and tears mixed as they ran freely down her face, the snot

bubbling up at times when the child did not allow enough time between wails to breathe. The child

dug her hands into Beith’s legs, as though if she could just hug Beith hard enough it would make

whatever pain the child imagined she was in go away.

When gently nudging the crying child did not seem to console her or make her release

Beith’s leg, she let out a gentle huff of air through her nose over the child’s body. At this, the

child’s sobbing slowly came to a sniveling stop. Wiping the tears and snot from her cherubic face

with the bottom of the tattered dress she wore, she looked up at Beith. Upon seeing that Beith was

just staring at her expectantly, and not in any pain, her sobs settled into a hiccupping breathing

rhythm as she tried to catch her breath again.

“You - no - hurt?” she asked, hiccupping between words, she looked up with blue eyes that

looked as deep as her concern for this beast she just met.

Beith shook her head “no”, still unsure of how she felt about this situation, so instead of

making any move to either scare the child or befriend her, she sat back down with a bit of a huff.

Being frustrated that she was feeling so conflicted was not a feeling Beith was too familiar with, so instead of doing anything at all, she opted to do nothing. Beith defaulted back to her position of sitting upright and as still as the trees, like a decrepit sentinel in the middle of the flourishing forest, as she continued to watch the child.

The child kept staring back at Beith just for a little while longer, making sure she was okay, before patting the area where the bark had fallen off gently and then running back to where she had been crouching before Beith appeared. Beith could not see what she was doing, but the child kept looking back at Beith and then back at whatever she was fumbling about with. The wild-haired child finally picked something up gently, with both hands covering it so that Beith could not see what it was. Reluctantly, Beith was overcome with curiosity, huffing a disgruntled breath and rolling her eyes, only to glance sideways at the child again.

This curiosity was doubled when a set of four iridescent dragonfly-like wings sheepishly unfolded from the child’s back. Beith now looked at the child with full curiosity. She had seen many humanoids, short, round, animal-like, even ones with bird wings, but none that had wings like this child’s. It reminded her of a time when she used to chase dragonflies that would wander into her hatchery. She shook her head. This wasn’t the hatchery, and this wasn’t a dragonfly. It was a humanoid that would eventually grow to be destructive against the nature that Beith was sworn to protect.

The child clumsily fluttered her developing wings. At first, she only hovered unsteadily a few feet off the ground, wobbling this way and that. Beith made no moves toward the child, refusing to move from her sentinel posting. After several long minutes, the dragonfly girl fluttered her wobbling wings up to Beith’s muzzle, the whole time clutching her secret treasure to her chest, securely, but gently. When she reached the top of Beith’s muzzle, there was a moment during which she almost stopped fluttering to rest her feet on Beith, but she stopped herself. Instead, she gently placed the treasure onto her muzzle so Beith could see it.

“I sorry.” The dragonfly girl said with finality. It was clear this was her last apology.

Beith looked, going a little cross-eyed, at the new treasure that was bestowed upon her. On her muzzle sat a large oak leaf, and piled on top of that oak leaf were some berries, acorns, twigs, and a sprig of ivy. These were random, everyday items that could be found in her forest, yet this child coveted them so dearly she would not let them drop in flight, even when it would have been more convenient to do so. The dragonfly child continued to hover, waiting on Beith’s response. Still feeling a little angry and frustrated, Beith did not answer right away, instead, she waited, and waited, until she saw the dragonfly girl start to struggle with keeping her flight. It was only then that Beith blinked at the child, and gave the smallest of nods, ensuring that her new-found treasures would not carelessly fall.

The dragonfly girl gave a bubbly, happy laugh of acceptance, swaying back and forth in the air, her small iridescent wings glistening in the sunlight. It was then that Beith noticed her wings were slowing a breath before they completely stopped. There was the briefest moment of shock on the dragonfly girl’s face before she started to fall. Vines sprung from trees nearby, quickly braiding themselves and wrapping around the child’s waist. Once she was secure they began growing and folding into themselves and springing fresh green leaves on the surface with just the

slightest bit of dew to create a slide for the child down to the ground. The child, quickly forgetting all about the danger she had just been in a heartbeat ago, now laughed with glee as she slid down the vine-twisted slide. Upon getting to the bottom, she ran back to Beith, giving her another hug and reaching her arms up toward her.

“More?” She asked smiling and laughing.

Beith just shook her head. She could have just let her fall, but she didn’t, and as much as she hated to admit it to herself, she knew she had come to like this child...just a little bit. Gently Beith lowered her head down to the ground, the dragonfly child quickly trying to clamber on, only to be met with Beith blowing her off with a quick hard exhale out her nose. The girl looked puzzled for a moment before realizing that Beith’s treasure was still sitting perfectly atop her muzzle. The dragonfly girl carefully fluttered up to grab it and placed the treasure gently down at Beith’s feet. Before she turned to go back to Beith she picked up the sprig of ivy and weakly fluttered her way back up to Beith, this time gently letting her bare feet touch her black bark-covered muzzle.

Beith raised her head to bring her back up to the top of the slide she had created for her, and as she did so the dragonfly girl walked up to her forehead and placed the sprig of ivy squarely between her two eyes.

“Pretty ivy, you princess,” the dragonfly girl stated promptly before quickly hurrying off to go down the slide again. This time though, as she slid down, the vines ever so slowly started to go back to their hiding place among the trees. When the child got to the bottom and saw the slide had disappeared, she let out a small disappointed “awe.”

“Neyha!” Echoing through the forest a slightly older female voice could be heard resounding off the tree trunks. Alarm speckled the face of the dragonfly girl before she started pushing on Beith with ferocity.

“Hide! Hide!” she kept telling Beith over and over, but Beith just shook her head ‘no’.

“Neyha, where are you? You have to stop running off into the woods like this!” The voice was slowly getting closer, and the dragonfly girl’s eyes started to brim with tears again as Beith refused to listen to her.

“Hide!” she told Beith again, Beith in response just curled up into a ball, resting her head on her forearms and looked at the small child defiantly. The dragonfly girl huffed and stopped her foot at Beith before crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes.

“Neyha!” The voice was even closer now. The child turned to start looking for the direction the voice was coming from, just as a stout female figure, maybe just a bit taller than her came bumbling through the trees, quickly followed by a second stout male figure.

“Neyha!” The child exclaimed, running up and engulfing the girl in a big hug. “You have got to stop running off like that. You have Grandma and Grandpa and the whole family out here looking for you!” The new female figure seemed older than her stature. Looking closely Beith noticed she could see just the beginning hairs of a beard forming around her chin and cheeks.

“What are you doing out here?” The male figure asked, looking around. It was then that the dragonfly girl, now known as Neyha, started to look around confused as she could still clearly see Beith.

“Uh,” she said immediately looking to the ground, to not give Beith away. “Playing?”

“You need to learn to play closer to the house! Come on, Grandma is going to be so worried about you.” The two figures started to lead her away. Beith hesitated for a moment, but she was curious. She had to see where this fearless dragonfly girl came from and why she wasn’t like the other humans, so she did the only thing she could to satiate her curiosity, she followed them.

Beith did not hide in the shadows or creep around, she openly followed these figures leading away the little dragonfly girl. They would not notice her, because there was something Beith knew that her little dragonfly didn’t, a horror unknown to her, that she would learn much later in life. Unfortunately, the reason the child could see Beith was connected to this atrocity.

Walking through the forest, the figures called out, and as they did so more humanoid figures joined in the celebration of finding Beith’s dragonfly. Each one embraced her with hugs or kisses and sometimes both, and looks of anger and fear were washed away by relief. Just when Beith thought that all her family had greeted her, more joined the party. Beith was astonished, there were humanoids of all different shapes, sizes, textures, and colors. In all her years, she saw every kingdom was ruled by a dominant race, yet here there was none, and they all appeared to be part of this same family that the female figure had talked about.

Now and then her dragonfly would look back to make sure she was still there. At this point, she had noticed that no one else seemed to notice or see her. Many people asked her the same question over and over “Where were you?” “What were you doing?” Her answer was the same every time.

“Playing with Ivy.”

I think Ivy is a very pretty name, Beith thought to herself and did something she had not done in many years, she smiled.

Beith also knew, just as she did from the moment she spotted her dragonfly in the forest, and that dragonfly stared back, they were bound by an unbreakable thread. Beith's rage and anger at this tiny humanoid race was still there, ever-boiling just below the surface, but she also knew she didn’t want to live that way. She didn’t want to be angry at the world for what they did to her and her druidic brothers and sisters She wanted to see the beauty just as her dragonfly girl who looked at horror, at death, and broken things, and said they were pretty.

Just like in the hatchery so many years ago, when she was still filled with curiosity and wonderment, she followed her little dragonfly in hopes of a better world.