The Dragon's Soulmate

Dragon Pendant

He’s not even sure what he did to make the woman react as she had but here he is regretting making her shake where she stood. He’d gone to ask her what she was doing mostly because he was sure she’d taken something, or been given it with the looks of today’s crowd, specifically the pair of brothers just down the way selling what he thinks are homemade liquors, which honestly can’t be good for anyone. 

The woman still looked as though she was in a trance while he stood behind her, his shadow swallowing her up against the darkened curtain in his shop as the day’s light flickered behind the clouds.

She’s here... she came to him, he thought. Although, his jubilation is short lived when she asks about the pendant, not once looking at him or anything else in his shop. It makes him frown deeply, his heart sinks and what’s more is, it isn’t something he can completely say he made. Maybe if he could, she’d look at him. 

Her eyes never leave the pendent and once more he’s reminded of all of those fake ladies looking for a stone.

Girls, he thinks. What is it with them? They can’t possibly understand what goes into his craft. 

Angered by this he spouts, “It’s not for sale.”

He looks away for a quick second then back to her, now pinning her with his stare. She looks around carefully as if someone would stop her from picking the item up. Brandon’s sure she’s thinking of shoplifting...at a renaissance fair... regardless of how dumb it sounds he can’t help but challenge her.

The whispers grow louder between her ears until she finally picks up the pendant. Once she does the piece grows hot in her hand, burning it as it rests there.

Raine wants to scream or cry or both at the feel of it branding the inside of her palm but she’s stuck between consciousnesses. Instead she grits her teeth and swallows her tongue, dropping the pendant in shock. Her hand trembles terribly. Barely having a chance to fully see what’s happened, there’s a flash of red scorched flesh that’s raised there, but that’s the last of her worries.

There’s a very tall, very large man beside her, shouting at her now. 

That was the shopkeeper, she realized. She spoke to him… but denied her. Why would he show a piece and do such a thing?

“Hey!” Brandon seems to yell this at the same time the strange bestial roar sounds again, sending her further into her panic. “You have to pay for that,” he growled sternly.

Brandon quickly snatched the hand that had been branded making her scream in response, finding no amulet there. She pocketed it, he processed quickly, searching her form for obvious pockets while trying to ward off how he felt about making such a beautiful shoplifter like herself cry. 

What a thing to think… can he be attracted to a theif. Morally, no, and so he tries to distance his attraction to her. Up go his walls just in time to realize she’d shoved him off of her too.

A woman’s scream is known to turn heads usually, but something was off here. No one turned. No one cared... and the cold breeze that beckoned her in the first-place swirled low around her feet.

“Let go of my hand!” she bares her teeth, growling at the shop keeper in question.

That’s odd. 

Who does that?

Without missing a beat, Brandon reminds her that she shouldn’t have tried to steal the item if she didn’t want any attention. “You need to pay for that! Or put it back!”

“I did,” she growls not bothering to specify what she means by it.

Brandon, however, takes her by the wrist instead this time, squeezing only a fraction more when she doesn’t scream this time for control of their situation. When she lifts her gaze from his large hands, his knuckles white from the force he’s using to keep her there, he realizes just how much of a mistake he’s made. 

“I didn’t take your things,” she hissed. “Now, let me go!”

Something inside her broke. Her challenge to the new man was unlike one she’d ever given. Her soul seemed to burn brightly awakening her fighting spirit. She stares at him with the same ferocity, one that looks through his soul with. 

She can feel his grip as it loosens ever so slightly, and for a moment she wonders why. 

Brandon doesn’t though. He sees a red reflective light flutter over the deep green of her irises and is taken back by it. He can feel his mouth start to drop in pure horror. It’s not what he saw. It’s not, he tries to tell himself. Animals do that, and, and people, they... they do that in photos... not, not in broad daylight. This thing he was holding can’t be just some woman… 

The more he tries to process it, the more she challenges him. It’s frightening really, and while it plays out he’s calculating his losses if he just leaves the fair today. As in, doesn’t close shop, or pack up, or clean his station—he just leaves. He struggles with the thought of it being as it is his livelihood which snaps him back to the present. 

It has him asking himself ridiculous questions like, “if she wasn’t what she portrayed, then what is she?” making him feel only stupider. 

There’s nothing. Not a thing off putting from her aside from that color he thought he saw. And so there’s nothing to pursue other than the taken pendant. The one she so adamantly believes she hadn’t taken.

Brandon feels her yank her hand from his hold with not another word uttered as she turns to leave with a scowl on her face.

Each step she took in the other direction sends tremors through him. What was so important about that trinket? Why did she need it? Why... wait, he thinks about their confrontation and then looked for the piece itself. Unable to find it, he assumes the woman still has it and that this had all been a game for him to forget that very fact. Leaving his shop and his goods on display here is the best way to be stolen from, but what choice did he have? He had to go find her. That thing, whatever it was, needed to be returned to the rightful owner and it most certainly wasn’t either of them.

Brandon stalked off in her direction completely missing the burnt grass holding the same design under his feet.