Valley of Dreams, Delusions Death

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. It was once filled with childhood trysts and the surrealism of spring. Feelings of immortality that ran true and in abundance. Adolescence. And I would look to my mother, her chestnut curls, warm hands and a smile that beckoned for her boy. And I would go, towards that smile, as a loving child would. As a moth would a flame, as a beggar to water. But then I’d stop and watch as that sweet face would contort with pain, as the ache forced her to double over and stain her white dress in the soil. And I’d reach for her, drawn to the honey in her eyes as they oozed forth into the Valley. Desperate to ease whatever plagued her. But she never gave her hand to me, she kept them white-knuckled, tearing across that white dress, seared with agony. And my fingers left bristling, unrequited in the wind.

But now the Valley of my dreams held something far more perverse than my mother’s rejection. Something primal and heavy lurked; almost…paternal. I could feel it snaking through the grass’s blades and on the air that no longer cooled my face. And then there was that cry. A guttural cry that bubbled out that garbled throat. A cry that still haunts the corners of my mind. I would feel my body turn to find that sound. A short journey I learned to dread. My eyes grazing over the litter of massive bodies as they slept and then being arrested by the atrocity I had to behold. Colossal, herculean bodies, gleaming with impervious scales as large as my own head. Crimson canines, the length of swords spanning throughout the mouth, veined wings arching into a predatory dome and jaws that sank again and again with a sickening crunch like the jaws of a portcullis. The iron scent filling the air both sicken and excited parts of me.

At first, I believed it to be a dear or small bear of sorts – for the remnants were much larger that that of a rabbit or dog. But in the days, I spent in the waking world, outside of my head and surrounded by 3 walls and latched bars, they told me of the many men and the women and children eaten. ‘Slaughtered’ was the word they used. And at first, I denied. Naturally. I could never imagine committing such a heinous act. That it was impossible to think that I could actually devour so many innocents. But they were adamant, unwavering.

It was me.

I hear their words and I realise that its more than just visions. There was nothing for me to say – so I let them speak, let their words rake over me. A thousand cuts in a sea of sorrow. They tell me of how they hunted a dragon into the night, all of the town’s forces rallied and fears abandoned. And that at the end of its trail, there was no Dragon to be slayed amongst the throng of wood but only my sodden body and bloodied mouth in the clearing.

And that day when I awoke, cold, dirty and alone in a cell with yesterday’s sins already forgotten, committed by someone else. It sinks in. I look down to the black cracked blood on my hands and curl my fist. No longer propelled by desire to scrub them clean.

In my village, there used to be talk of the old God and his legion of Dragons that represented the virtues of humans. Dragons the people once worshiped. Revered. Stories now caught between myth and legend.

In the following days when the men returned with a bundle of questions and temptations of food, they tell me I have old blood. Bad blood. So, I let the dreams and visions remain with me, if the war taught me anything, it’s that sometimes it’s harder to sympathise with a deluded man than one with an appetite for blood.

And it was on one of those dark days that her hazel gaze pierced through the dull throb in my head. That she came with her bouncing curls of chocolate and eyes that seemed to look beyond the monster and at the man.

So, I told her. Of the blood and the horror that consumed my dreams and trailed in my wake. I told her that I didn’t want to be the villain, the enemy or a criminal and that my moral compass was shattered the moment I realised it was all true. Desperation grinding my throat raw. I told her that this all felt like a cruel game of tag, and that I am It.

Later, I realised that I said this not because she wanted to hear it, but because she would listen – Eighteen, I was when the visions began; a child who’s no longer blameless. But her eyes that were never filled with reproach or damnation, only puppy love.

She asks me for what my mother used to call me.

I tell her, "Asterion".

She says "Phoebe"

In retrospect, I don’t think she was supposed to be there, doe-eyed at my cell. But who could deny the allure of darkness – the first dragon to re-emerge in a millennium.

She says that there must be others like me – that the sleeping dragons mean something.

I ask if that’s a good or bad thing.

For some time, she doesn’t answer, then she says there’s always light where there’s darkness. Potential. She speaks of control and harmony between me and it, and that the legends can’t all be myth.

She saw everything that was me and I wanted to see her all of her ugly in return. I figured that it must be there if she’s here seated across the bars. I wanted to know it all, the reason her nails were jagged from the biting she did I my absence, the reason she kept her hair blunted at her shoulders and hadn’t grown it longer, and the person who gave her that scar on those delicate ankles. I wanted to know it all. She had a smile that would haunt me whenever she wasn’t around and it was in the darkness of that dank cell it dawned upon me. I wanted to be around her for ever.

She says we need to go – to leave, that we can’t achieve anything good locked in a room filled with ambitious men.

I ask if she trusts me.

She says she trusts me more than she should, and we share a smile.

So, I let her plan it, and she orchestrates it beautifully, finding a lapse in the guards’ surveillance and like star crossed lovers, we dash madly from the dungeons and into the moon’s skeletal glow. When it’s safe, we walk and talk for what feels hours and with each step I could feel myself healing.

I’m a moth to her flame,

I lean in,

a beggar to water.

Her lips taste like heaven.

Like poetry.

She’s bashful when tells me that her grandparents live just down that road. I tell her she has no reason to hide that smile. I’d start a war for it. And as we walk towards her childhood home, my mind is split between avoiding the large stones in my path and studying the different shades of her hair as they catch the moonlight.

We suddenly halt when a large mass of a man, darkens our path.

I look behind me to find that he’s not alone, two additional men stand behind us with gleaming identical daggers and grimaces. The first man froths at the mouth and screams for my blood, he says that it was I who sent that dragon.

She says that he’s mistaken, that that man is still chained to the dungeon floors of the Silver Castle.

He commands her to be silent and that he was there when they captured me and that he could never forget a face like mine. The face that has caused the death of so many, the love of his life included.

In a heartbeat the two men grabbed me by the shoulders, and I felt their blades sink into my back. The sound of her screams reverberating in my ears and in the next heartbeat, I am pulled under the tide, into the darkness and then into that Valley. I am on my knees; I thread my fingers through the blades of grass and squeeze as the pain falls to a dull throb. My thoughts race. Now’s not the time to be trapped within my mind. She’s out there, surrounded by dangerous men…and whatever I am.

I don’t dally, I turn to face its large scaly head. Unaware of how to end this fever dream, I watch as it lovingly begins to tear into the two men who had grabbed me, almost as if the satisfaction reached deeper than satiating that immoral appetite, that it was long awaited and justified. I slowly approached, unsure of my footing. The blood soaking into the lawn beneath, it was like wine spilt over Van Goph’s Poet’s Garden. And As I grew closer it paused to regard me, those emerald reptilian eyes meeting mine. In that moment I understood. I reached up and gently ran my fingers across its scaled body. Surprised by its warmth. It lowered itself further into the grass and I clambered on top and laid across that great back. We shared a breath and then I was thrown back into the night. Everything seemed clearer and I could see above the treeline, the skies so serene.

When I looked down, I saw the now small, mass of a man shivering in my presence. His fear, I could more than just see it. I could smell it. He managed to keep his knife pressed into her smooth slender neck, but it trembled, bringing scarlet beads to forth. I took a step forward, over the bodies of the two other men, my paw making a menacing slap into the earth.

He didn’t allow me to advance any further before he yelled.

“Ay demon!” his dark eyes glittered “eye for an eye” He buried the hilt of his knife into that neck that for so many nights I dreamed of peppering with my love.

That guttural cry erupted from within me, shaking the trees and displacing the birds. I stared at her limp body, crumpled on the ground. Her love leaking out into the soil. With a careless paw, I swatted him across the tree line. And bent my grand head to hers.

I could tell she was fading. I could hear that beautiful little heart slow down like a caged bird that has lost all hope. As I scraped her fragile body into my clawed paws, her eyes weren’t filled with reproach or damnation as I had expected. But with the tenderness of hope.

I felt the dark wings unfurl across my back and I used my hind legs to thrust us into the cool, crisp air. As we flew above the treelines, I could feel the wind stealing her warmth from beneath my claws and starkly, I realised, that it had only come out to save me. Not her.

Another coin in my well of self-loathing.