Dragon-Hearted 2

1,179 words

9 minute read

For the holidays, I often ask friends if they'd like me to write something for them.  My friend, Ellen, surprised me by asking for a continuation of the fairy tale I wrote back in 2014, Dragon-Hearted.

Written: October 20, 2019

[Image: A picture of Dragon, my teal stuffed dragon]

It has been twenty-eight years since I first began.  Twenty-eight years since I started secreting the children in my village away to quiet corners in the wood, so teach them everything I could remember from the first eight years of my life.  At first, they were my peers.  And then, slowly, they weren’t.

It didn’t matter.  Everything I needed to know - the important things anyway - were always inside me:

My dragon’s soft rumblings - her heart speaking so directly to my own - is a memory I will always keep:

Once upon a time, I found you.  A tiny baby locked away.  I heard you crying and I came.  I stuck my head in the window and saved you from the people who ignored you and hurt you.  I brought you here, to my home.  To my tower.  Where you would be safe.

And I was safe.  Until I wasn’t anymore.

She did protect me.  Until she couldn’t.

Until a man who calls himself my knight in shining armor - to this day - killed the only family I ever really had.  Until he stole me.  Insisted I learn his language, without ever trying to learn my own.  Made me dress the part.  Marry him.

I went along.

I did everything as instructed...but I could never fully quench the dragonishness I felt in my heart.  My human fire so different from my dragon’s - so much less effective.  I held onto pieces of my culture I remembered: How To Rumble Curiously.  How To Slit One’s Eye To Ward Off Intruders.  How To Care For Your Claws.

--

Recently, that all changed.  His mother, the queen, passed, and I am next in line.

With my newfound power, I no longer have to hide my dragon lessons to the children in the village, but I choose to.  I know the king will not be happy when he knows how I’ve been spending all of my free time.

(Two years ago, he did find out.  Enraged, he roared and cursed, looking more fearsome than my dragon ever did.)

“Don’t you know - don’t you have any idea - how everything you do reflects on me?  And that - when you make poor choices - it reflects poorly on me?”

His words nudge the child inside me.  That old fear.  Trying to see myself reflected back in his dirty armor.  Never really being able to.

“I was right to slay that loathsome dragon!  Now, you are to stay in the castle and do what I say!”

I roar.  So loud.  So sudden.  It even startles me.

I take off my crown and heave it at him.  He catches it inches before it hits the floor.

The moment he is distracted, I turn and flee as the king calls, “Guards!  Seize her!”

But the guards are our peers.  The guards have been taught to love, to think, to feel and to trust their own fire inside.

So one pretends to try and stop me while another slips me out a back exit, and gives me his horse.

I ride off into the darkness.

--

It’s taken twenty-two months to reach the place I’ve been searching for.

Sometimes, the journey is so long and arduous, I’m sure I’ve made the whole thing up, but something inside me urges me on.

I’m nodding off, atop the horse who one day, I hope, will help me find freedom, when he suddenly rears up.

I’m awake, startled back to consciousness, and I stare at the old grey bricks, in the small clearing, behind miles and miles of endless woods.  If I squint, I can see the window at the top.

Endless feet of rope dangle from the window, ending just inches above the ground.  I touch the grass hesitantly, grateful for footwear.

I take hold of the rope, and brace my feet on the stones, awkwardly inching my way up.  I don’t think I’ll make it.  Halfway up, I nearly fall.  But something keeps me going.

Finally, I reach the sil.  I haul myself inside with none of the grace and dignity taught to me.  Not a single remnant of the queen remaining.

Good.  I don’t want her.  I want to see my home.

I open one eye and glance around.  The space seems decidedly smaller.  Almost nothing definitive to tell me I’m in the right place except….

Squinting, I step forward.  I squat and cup both hands.  I find a careful pile of berries and meat resting on a bed of leaves.

I’m so distracted by the sight of it - this pile of food - so obviously left for someone - that I leave my back to the window for longer than anticipated.

I forget all about it, in fact, until a large shadow falls over me.

A familiar warning growl fills the space.

I turn slowly, and I very nearly collapse from shock.  I stagger back a few steps, and replace the food on the leaves where I found it.

It’s her!  My dragon!  (But how can it be?)

I rumble softly in my throat, a question.

After a moment’s pause, she stretches her head in closer to smell me.

I let this happen, hoping there is something left of me.  Some remnant of the child I was.  Something she can recognize.

I forget momentarily that it’s been nearly two years since I was queen of anywhere.  I forget that I smell more like the earth and sky than I do of perfumes and soaps my captors tried to accustom me to.

Her long beautiful eyelashes sweep her reddish purple face as she blinks.  Sighs.  A giant tear rolls down her leathery face.  She nuzzles me.

I do the same.

We stay close, holding onto each other.  When she tries to cover me with her wing, like when I was a child, I can see it’s been injured.

The monster...he said he killed you… I intone, mindfully avoiding her injured wing.

She shakes her head.

Nudges the pile of meat and berries toward me.  When I don’t take them immediately, she cooks them with her breath.

It’s an amazing sight to behold.

I fall asleep against her, listening to the reassuring sound of her heart.  It beats just as my own does, reminding me of our sameness.

Of our love for each other.

And that’s when I know:

A dragon’s love is stronger than a monster’s hate.

And also, that finally, I am safe.  With my dragon.

Together, as we always should have been.

***

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