The Dragon's Soulmate

Dragged In

There’s no way to know where she is, but knows she’s landed. Her uncertainty drains her surrounding shell from the protective layer it once had, and in turn it makes her weaker than she was. 

Here, the star could only decipher light, dark and time as if she was reborn.

Time.

What a tragic thing being the ability to track how long the dreaded darkness had taken over, she thought as she came to her senses. 

Her light inside, now just a speck of her once radiant self, decided it was time to break free. It doesn’t take much. Just a prick with her last remaining shards of blue light to the weakest layer of her shell worked fine. It surprised her due to how thick it had felt when it was being made that it could be so thin but she supposes the pull must have done it… that and hitting the surface at the speed she did. 

As the shell began to c***k, she watched as the crystals flickered her light around her space before falling completely apart. It was awe I spiring, she thought. Beautiful had been another one that came to mind, naming what she felt too had become a thing of inspiration. The star found that as her energy had dwindled it was easier to see such things. While her light continued to flicker around her, the shell continued to weaken, more and more until it was nothing; gone at the slightest touch.

Part of the thought had been damning being the fact that she was now stranded in this place with no way to return to the universe’s depth if she needed to. The thought alone was foolish as it was. Her self proclaimed mission had been to follow the darkness to destroy it, not wallow in it. 

Now, smaller than the pebbles below her in size, she takes in her surroundings. The ground looks as tortured as she is. Plant life is hardly what she’d call alive since it looked as if it was all tortured pieces of a once thriving land.

Darkness and decay flitted around her in the form of ash which she felt as though it was suffocating her. The ash itself felt heavy, weighing her and the carbon she needed to survive, down as it fell. Her worry continued to push her thoughts forward, well past anxiety, as she realized death could be upon her soon. 

Again she remembered time. She remembered what it could affect and how in an instant life could be over.

Time.

That bastard.

While she stewed in her depressed consciousness of an inability to see past the endless death upon her, it would then push her to become one with this world or she would have no chance to stop it. Again, leading with the core of her being, the celestial took one determined leap forward to give a chance to the new life she’s been expecting to try.

What’s left of the star’s blue haze reaches the ground, copying the wasteland around her onto her core as the shell once did, finding heat beyond the surface.

Curiosity is new.

Perhaps it comes with this place.

She feels down deeper into the layers of the ground, searching for its heat, but just as she does, that same promise chases her back to the surface. It’s unrelenting. Just like the darkness.

Her core flies back into a pile of rotting plant flesh, sticks, shattered pieces of her shell, pebbles from which she measured herself up against, and ash. She shrieks in pain as her form burns the pieces to her.

That sound. Did she make that? There’s no time to think about it as the pieces of the land mark her, making her into a beast instead of the guardian she once was.

What used to be bright billowing colors of her nebula were now multiple extremities of flesh that makes her wonder about their importance.

All at once she has senses. Where once she felt the madness in her core and followed it, she now could see specifically in front of her. What she could make out was more of what covered her but sparse throughout the land. Another new sense was smell which put her off of this place completely. An effort to stop the scent from filling in had her gagging herself. The action made her very aware that there were some involuntary things like breathing, another new action, that she should not get in the way of for the pursuit of this new life.

Disappointingly, smell ran alongside taste, which landed heavily on her tongue. Her mouth, another new concept to deal with, wouldn’t stop picking up her surroundings either. It was an information overload, one she wish she could quit, but while she desperately moved to control how much ash and dirt she swallowed, sound took over again.

This time it was more of the whistling wind that took her focus from her. Debris below her swirled around, crinkling here and there and by the time she believed she could be okay with them, she remembers the ones she made. She’s made it several times as her new body formed. What was that? Could she now make a sound? What if the thoughts she could hear in her being could be out loud too?

Were there more beings like her that could express such things, she wondered. While she leans heavily on the fantasies her question brings and looks back at the land before her, and again back to her body which was now fully covered in it. 

Her thoughts fart back to the pain she felt and dealing with identifying with what happened and how it created such discomfort to begin with. All the while, the heat inside her began to build. It reached an unbearable temperature for the new form which made standing nearly impossible and was quickly followed but a cold snap that threatened to shatter her center.

The air around her, while still warm, is far cooler than what she’s been. The cold registered slightly in space but while she moved, she could only feel the friction of her own movement which was warming in its own right. Here, the ash barely kept her warm and the coolness of it all made her seek out the warmth she required to keep living.

Her search is short lived as she realizes the heat just under the land, deep within the soil. It was warm, so warm, she couldn’t help the way she let her energy search down deep into the layers below her. Her body lays lowly onto it, seeking more, making sounds unlike the ones she’d made before. While she listens, her brow furrows at the sound of something different. Something that isn’t her. It’s… new.

She moves her body as a whole toward it. Pieces that are bound to it float and grind into each other, stirring her need to howl at the feel, but something inside her tells her otherwise. This new sound, not her own, plants a cold dread down within her core. It may be the darkness she’s looking to heal…Her innocence is called to the land. Every moment she stayed on it the warmth would creep on her, winding through the layers of her decay, promising a better life deep down under the soil.

It’s now when she develops her ability to adapt. It’s not the telling message so much as the feel and need to change her course that has her ready for this new aspect. Not only that but what seemed to call her sounds needy, wretched… so awful it scared her. Her body recoils back to the surface while she tries to make sense of what she’d just heard.

A luring promise for care just chased her from the depths of a heat she thought she needed. It threw her  back into a pile of leaves and debris behind her. Her fear, she mused, made her who she is now—into whatever she could classify herself as too. She takes a moment to look over herself missing the way that her light would stretch across the night. She’s no star. Not anymore. So, what is she now?