Category: Dragon Flight

As she gathered will to
Launch into bright light

Shadowed doubt clung
And fear caused pause

For she did not want
To leave solid ground

Yet as she tentatively
Tried again to attempt

To her surprise he lept
His own wings spread

Joining to accompany
Her efforts protecting

Seething hatred
Eyes on fire ire

Casting blasting
Counterspells

Desperately
Exploding

Eroding
Traction

To free wings
For flight again

“Just let me fly, da** it!”

Was it ambition?

Or the desire to fly high and soar?

“A beloved has proposed that I might have magnetic energy.

If this is so, I would say that it is very selective to what my soul is seeking.

And luckily, my nature is honorable.

I think this keeps me out of trouble.”

Observing the others while perched upon a cliff’s ledge at distance, she mused over the riddle of recovering one’s true-born, innate sense of identity and flourishing.

Attacked within and kicked out from her birth nest prematurely, she had never had a solid “home,” and the skyways loomed too large where competition and predation seemed prevalent.

“I AM the Air…!”

She did not understand these earth dwellers, and her own kind had long ago flown away.

She tried to find happiness on solid ground, but finding there was only illusion, took again to the air.

They learn to leave the injured behind so that they can keep soaring great heights.

The young hunter knew that he had come upon a creature that was special, magical…
Though she tried to keep to the shadows, masking her limp to move as if she were a natural-born ground dweller, he could see the shape of her proud, injured wings tucked tightly against her back in the dark, and marveled at the bright glint of stars in her whirling, green-blue opalescent eyes.

It is unrelenting when you cannot fly, for claws can only scale cliff faces for so long…

I must take to the sky…

“I generally do not like traveling across swampy midlands, as there is no safe place to rest when tired from flying.”

Maybe, perhaps, I will garner a portion of my precious weekend hours to paint my toes dragon-scale green with blue stardust overtones and at last plant my waiting snow pea-lings, nasturtiums, and peacock violas.

For come Monday, I must ready for the fight.

As thickening dust clouds billowed around her and the ground trembled mightily underneath their feet from her bucking leaps, the other dragons feared to approach and help as they dodged sudden blasts of explosive fire from her desperate attempts to somehow burn off the parasite.

But one dragon better assesed the situation and acted.

Recognizing a type of pattern evolving in her erratic struggle, he lept high and seized an opening to land upon her back and grip her torso tightly, wrapping his limbs around her long enough to bite the cursed thing and rip it off from her head, sending it flipping.

He then pushed hard against and away from her in time to prevent her fear’s response from flipping them both backward – and as she recovered from being flung forward into the ground with a smothered “oof!” he hovered majestically above the scene and set the being’s carcass on fire with a victory cry.

Desperately wanting to belong but sending the other landed dragons scatterimg, she floundered about roaring while flapping barely healing wings and stomping wildly scrabbling claws as she blindly shook and tossed her head in attempts to get the controlling head crab to let go of it.

“It’s been a grueling road
Nurturing precious load

Of a youngling half drake
Growing wings to partake

I could fly only so high into
Azure-deep beckoning skies

Held earthbound for kit
Who learned how to flit

First in smallest circles –
Now loop de loop tricks

Looking back now years fleeting
Our valiant hearts kept beating

Among foes while protecting
Our dreams feeling neglected

Of wide open viridescent lands
Giving grace to gentler humans

Whereupon once we found
Praised as hallowed ground.”

During one such scrabbling venture, she happened upon an old man in a cave who seemed unafraid of her and beckoned her closer.

Careful to not accidentally singe him with her huffing breath, she cocked her head and focused one whirling, rainbow-hued eye upon his visage.

She knew that he must be an illusion created by her oxygen-starved brain after navigating the higher altitudes for the first time in her life because there where no paths which led there.

“But that’s just it, you see,” he told her conspiratorily, “we are all a part of this great, big illusion.”

She blinked and clambered backward, regaining a solid foothold just in time to avoid falling off from the cliff’s edge backwards.

“What do you think you will find once you get to the upper regions, my dear?” he asked her candidly.

“They are as flawed as you have always thought yourself to be – but more so – for they have not endured your trials, nor had to overcome such obstacles to gain the positions that they were born into.

You have the strength to become one of their queens, if you wanted to. But be warned that you may find yourself feeling even more lonely at the top than ever before.

No longer will you dwell in anonymity’s succor, nor so easily will you be able to retreat back into your beloved forest’s camoflage.”