Chapter 1-3
1001 Words
That tingling started up inside her head again, and something flashed across her mind: Clouds. Cold sunlight. Fear. Pain. Falling.
She braced a hand on the cave wall, struggling to breathe as terror and pain ripped through her.
What the hell was that? It felt as though she had been somewhere else, like she had been falling from the sky.
Tasha moved deeper into the back of the cave, but she skidded to a stop as something glowed in the dark. A soft blue hue pulsated on the ground next to a large pile of black rocks. There was no ice or snow near the glow, just rock. Her body moved of its own accord as she fell under the spell of the glow. She had to have it, had to reach out and take it into her hands and guard it. The desire was overwhelming, to the point that her mind’s eye saw only one thing—the object she must have at any cost.
She stopped a few inches from the glow, removed her right glove, and bent to pick up a pouch that half hid the object giving off the light. It was a stone. As big as an apple. As she peeled away the ragged cloth, her bloody fingertips caressed the surface of the sapphire, and heat seared her flesh. She tried to drop the stone, but it had fused to her skin like superglue and continued to burn. She screamed in pain and doubled over.
Thump thump—thump thump.
Something was pounding her chest, crushing against her heart and lungs. If it didn’t stop, she would die.
“H-help . . . ,” she wheezed, even though no one would hear her. She was going to die, and her mother would never know what had happened to her.
Thump thump—thump thump.
A large pile of black rocks crumbled beside her, revealing something nearly as large, but not made of stone. Tasha stared at the black thing that lay against the back wall of the cave as she tried to force herself to breathe. It looked like . . .
Scales, not rocks. What she could see resembled the pointed end of a large tail, curled around a snout with a closed eye.
A dragon. She had stumbled upon a dragon. One who’d clearly died in this cave, like she was going to.
Thump thump—thump thump.
She should run, try to flee back up the tunnel she had fallen through, but as the heat of the stone seeped into her, it compelled her to move toward the dragon. She fell to her knees by the head of the dragon and placed the stone down by its throat. Too exhausted to do more, she leaned against the frozen dragon and stroked a hand down its scaled hide.
Now she was able to let go of the stone (or did it let go of her?), and she placed her bare hand on the tip of the dragon’s snout, stroking it. There was something pitiful and sorrowful about it. She thought dragons were supposed to be frightening, but this beast in front of her was beautiful, tragically beautiful.
As she studied the dragon, she began to understand what the other half of her father’s life had been like. It was one thing to hear her mother speak of dragons, but to see one herself? It was beyond all her fairy-tale imaginings.
The dragon was both beautiful and terrifying all at once. He looked fierce, yet his snout was elegant, and his claws and tail all painted a portrait of something ancient and noble.
“How did you end up here?” she wondered aloud.
Thump thump—thump thump.
The beating against her chest was stronger now, but it hurt far less. She breathed through the pain. It felt more important to be here with this dragon, and she focused on the creature before her instead of the pain inside her.
“Who were you?” she whispered. The dragon had to have been there a very long time. She examined it, noting the frill that lay flat against its neck, and then a splash of dark black on the ice by its belly caught her eye. It looked like dried blood. Her mother had told her that all dragons in the world were dragon shifters, so whoever this was had been human too, after a fashion.
Thump thump—thump thump.
She put a hand to her chest, unable to stop a groan of pain. The stress of almost dying might’ve been enough to give her a heart attack.
Tasha examined the dragon’s stomach, or at least the side of it. Deep gashes covered the beautiful black scales and the amber-colored hide of its underbelly. Something terrible had hurt this dragon, had wounded it enough to kill it.
Overcome with exhaustion, she lay back against the dragon and closed her eyes. The heavy blue stone still generated heat, and she kept her hold on it as she tried to rest long enough to think about how to find a way out of here. Her parents had wanted to keep her away from dragons, but now here she was, dying with one.
“It’s just you and me, buddy.” She patted the frozen body of the dragon. “You, me, and a really weird glowing stone.” She tilted her head back as the cold stole over her limbs again.
Thump thump—thump thump—thump thump—thump thump.
This time, the beat came not from her own body but from behind her. Tasha’s eyes flew open, and she scrambled away from the dragon as it shook. The cave walls rumbled as a great rush of warm air puffed out of the dragon’s nostrils.
“Holy sh—”
Her words were cut off as the dragon’s eye cracked open, its golden iris gleaming in the dark, and a vertical catlike slit widened and then shrank again.
Fear and awe ricocheted through her. The eye focused on her, and her stomach plummeted as the iciness of the cavern melted away with a fresh heat.
She knew two things for certain: she would never be the same again, and this dragon was not dead.
- Writer
