Meeting Fate
#1 of The Last Dragons, Revisited
Alrighty, so for those of you who haven't read my most recent journal, I decided that, for my five year anniversary on this site, I would do a rewrite of the first series I wrote, as a sort of 'what has changed in five years' sort of thing. I encourage everybody to read the original and compare the two. The original series can be found here http://www.sofurry.com/browse/folder/stories?by=28804&folder=7363
So here we, go the first chapter of the new version.
As always, comments are apprecaited and requested.
I was truly bored this particular day. I can hear you all scoffing at that from here. I guess that response is to be expected, second only to 'so what?' Well I suppose to understand that statement, to get just what I mean when I say I was bored, you would have to know some more about me. You see, I have a very gifted imagination, I always have. It is the sort of imagination that, simply by closing my eyes, I could visit whole other worlds, fantastic, incredible worlds, filled with creatures more varied and wonderful than the humans that filled ours. And, if that wasn't enough to keep me occupied, I had quite a library of video games as well, especially RPGs and RTS's that had involving stories; basically, anything in which it was easy to lose one's self, even for a short time. As one might expect, I was an avid reader of fantasy and sci-fi novels, reading book after book for hours on end, finding endless joy in them even after re-reading them several times. Knowing that, I am sure it would come as no surprise that I adore the sciences, and, among other intellectual pursuits, I am a skilled chess player. Ah, I know the next question you are going to ask already. 'Do I play DnD?' Well, duh, of course I do. So, you will probably have written me off as an incurable nerd by now, right? Well, I guess I am, a bit. But not a normal nerd, not by a long shot.
You see, most people think of nerds as being sort of pale, out of shape people, socially awkward and wearing glasses, perpetually at the mercy of bullies. I, on the other hand, had always had a certain connection to nature, a consequence of spending a great deal of time wandering around in the mountains of Colorado, which had resulted in an almost permanent tan and a fair level of physical fitness. Of course, I had never been very impressive to look at, being of only average height and a slight build in my childhood. That had changed recently of course, but I will get to that in a moment. What truly set me apart was that when I was little, I had begun training at a martial arts school renowned for the difficulty and overall excellence of its training. It was primarily a school teaching Korean Tae Kwon Do, but it also incorporated almost a dozen other martial disciplines from all over the world into its curriculum. I had discovered early on that I had a talent for it, placing high in tournaments as I climbed the ranks. The point where things had really changed for me was when I earned my black belt, almost three years ago. The intensive, year-long training program meant to prepare one for the test, coupled with my starting puberty, had changed me in a big way.
Growth spurts had made me taller, and the hard training had filled out my body. That made the bullies that had bothered me since I had started school take notice, and when one of them, who was enrolled at another martial arts school of much less reputation, saw me fight in a tournament, and win against a much larger opponent, things really changed. Word of my performance got around, and from then on they started to leave me alone. Hmmm...I seem to have strayed from the story. Where was I?
Right. So, this particular day, I was bored. And I am not just talking normal 'Lets see what's on TV' bored. I am talking SO bored that you feel as if you are going to go out of your mind unless you find something to do. Let me see if I can set the stage for you. It was about mid June, the time of year when it was starting to get really hot. I had finished up my sophomore year back in May and was part of the way through my summer vacation, something that every kid looked forward to all year long. That particular morning, I had been woken up earlier than usual, in the grey hour before dawn by a dream, a very strange dream. Vivid dreams like this one were nothing new, my imagination seeming to enjoy working overtime while the rest of me was sleeping. But this one had felt different than others like it, as if it was important somehow.
In the dream, I remember that I was standing on a ridge, high up above tree line. It had been near sunset, the sky going gold and red as the sun sank behind me. Then, I had looked to the east, and saw shapes flying high in the distance. They were not birds, for the sun seemed to glint from them, and not planes, for their wings were flapping. With startling speed, they flew towards me, growing larger and larger until I could make out what they were. They were dragons, western dragons to be exact, and they were so beautiful, more beautiful than any drawing I had ever seen. The seemingly endless flight was of all different colors, but it was led by one dragon in particular, an ever-familiar dragon whose scales were white and silver, shining bright in the dying sunlight. Just when the dragons flew over head, and I felt the downdraft of their wings, my eyes opened to find the ceiling of my room above me.
I had been enjoying the dream so much that I had actually been upset to wake up from it. Maybe it was because this hadn't been the first time that I had had a dream about dragons. The first time had actually been during my black belt test, during the one and only break long enough to drop off in (I will talk more about that later). I hadn't intended to sleep then, and it had lasted only moments. But nonetheless, I had dreamed, and for the first time, I had seen the white dragon. In that short dream, I had dreamed that I stood before it as it slept curled up in a heap, but then, it had opened its eyes, raising its head until its gaze met mine. Its eyes had been blue, the exact shade of those that looked back at me from the mirror, and they had seemed to get larger and larger, until they had seemed to be about to swallow me entirely. That had been when I had woken up, and ever since that day, I had felt sort of different. Oh dear, there I go again, off topic. I do apologize.
Anyway...there I was, awake before my alarm, staring off into space, pondering the dream and the few I had had before that had been like it. After a few moments of running it back and forth through my mind, I finally let it go, allowing my thoughts to drift as they would, trying to get back to sleep, but all the same knowing that was going to be impossible. Finally, my mind found a topic it liked, starting off down another familiar, and recently frustrating, road. Shaking my head, I resisted the urge to shuck my boxers and have some fun, or at least try. The problem was that for the last month and a half, despite my talented and vivid imagination, every fantasy I had come up with had failed to satisfy my urges. And despite being a non-target for the bullies, and being physically fit, I had long ago been branded with the pariah-inducing status of 'nerd', which hadn't been changed in the eyes of the girls at my high school. Well, not in a meaningful way at any rate. Really, I was more 'that un-nerdy, nerd kid' now. The problem was that because I had already explored so many of the arousing avenues that existed with my imagination, nothing fazed me anymore. My older brother had a collection of porn that would put Hugh Hefner to shame, and when I had gotten to look through it, I had found nothing new.
Instead of dwelling on that frustrating situation, I had gotten out of bed, but I had still been stumped on things to do. I had already played and beaten every video game in the house, and no new ones had come out that I wanted to play. I had read all the books several times already, and my D and D group was on hiatus because the DM was out of town with his dad for a few weeks. My usual morning workout and a three mile run shed no more light on the subject. It was time for breakfast by the time I had decided on a temporary stopgap.
Logging onto the internet using my laptop, intending as I always did only to go to Reddit and the other science forums I belonged to and see what there was to see. I spent about an hour browsing my favorite sites before the familiar, almost giddy feeling started to well up in my heart. I tried to shake it off, but as always, it came back again. Sighing to myself in resignation, I signed off the forum I was browsing and walked away from the computer. The only thing that helped in any small way these days was a skill that I had developed while studying Tai chi, the skill of meditation. Kneeling on the cloth mat before the window that looked out towards the mountains, I used a match to light the candle I kept on the table under the window, then laid my hands on my knees, palm up. Staring at the dancing flame, I allowed myself to sink into the familiar trance of meditation, letting my thoughts drain away into tranquil nothingness, taking the giddy feeling with them.
You are probably royally confused at this point. Allow me to clarify. About, oh...eight months or so prior to this, I had been well and truly out of ideas for fantasies, and, as we were hanging out after our DnD game, I happened to mention it to Eric, a good friend I had known for most of my life. He in turn had pointed me in the direction of the furry community. Curious, I had gone where he had told me to go and, well, I had to hand it to him, there was no shortage of new fantasies there. Over the next couple of months, as I had gotten more comfortable among my new community, though I of course enjoyed the artwork, I found myself gravitating to stories more than pictures, especially those that involved dragons, my imagination taking over within moments of starting most of them. Eventually, I even got into writing my own stories. As it turns out, devouring literature the way I did had given me a lot of inborn talent with writing and lots of people seemed to enjoy the stories I had written. But the problem was, I was already starting to run out of ideas for new fantasies and that worried me. So I was trying to draw out the ones I had left, make them last longer as it were. But denying myself the satisfaction that they would give me was getting harder and harder as time went on.
And despite the calming effect of the meditative trance, that day it just wasn't enough. After a few minutes, the giddy sort of feeling came creeping back and I sighed, blowing the candle out. 'Well...one look isn't going to hurt anything.' I thought and locked my door before going back onto the internet and to my favorite site. I browsed the latest artwork for a few minutes before ultimately deciding not to log into the chat rooms, though there were numerous invitations from friends and so on in my inbox. Though, as usual, there were good pictures here and there, I was soon bored and logged off in frustration. After sitting in silence, staring off into space, I finally decided that what I needed was to get away for a while. A change of scenery usually helped these sorts of things. Scooping up my laptop and backpack, I asked my parents for permission to head out to my little slice of paradise, as I called it. My parents owned a cabin in the high country and it was about as perfect a place as I could imagine. Knowing how easy it was to get bored this time of year, they said it was fine with them. It took about an hour to get up there and when I pushed open the car door, bringing the scent of sun warmed pine, I smiled. This was the perfect place to get away.
Nestled deep in the mountains, on the edge of an impassible wilderness that stretched for hundreds of miles westward, it was my definition of perfection. When I had settled in, I set up my laptop and, with my favorite playlist of music playing, I opened up the story I had been working on most recently and re-read what I had written before. But, an hour later, I was still staring at the last sentence of what I had already written; the inspiration just wasn't coming. The old story ideas had been done already, and I couldn't seem to come up with anything new. I needed to be inspired to write at my usual quality of work and it just wouldn't do to disappoint my loyal readers.
Heaving an irritated sigh, I shut my computer down and wandered out onto the deck, sitting down on the edge that looked out into the valley. The pine trees that filled the slopes across the way, from the edge of the meadow off to the peaks in the distance were not quite silent, but near enough. It was so quiet that I could clearly hear the sound of the creek on the valley floor as it flowed its meandering path out of the mountains. Only the aspens whispered in the faint breeze and I felt a familiar feeling coming over me. It was a distant sort of feeling, like I was pulling away from the world, or rather that I was leaving my body behind. That happened a lot up here, especially in the summers, when the days were long and warm. Whatever it was, it almost felt as if I was waiting for something, but I hadn't the faintest idea what it was I waited for.
I sat for a while, staring off into space, the sun starting to sink behind that far ridge, almost on the horizon, the sky gilding gold and red. And then, as the day ended, I found myself suddenly feeling restless, as if I had something that I should be doing, or someplace I should have been going, though again, it seemed to be a directionless feeling. Sighing, I got up from where I sat and stretched, starting to head back inside the cabin to make something for dinner. But, just as I turned my back on the wild, I stopped and looked back at one of the distant ridges. Though I had looked on this vista many times before, all through my life, something had changed. Perhaps I had never really looked closely at it before, or perhaps the light had hit it just right, but for whatever reason, in that moment, the rock formation at the top of the mountain, silhouetted by the setting sun, was unmistakably the shape of a dragon's head, much like to the ones I had seen in those strange dreams. At once, after only a moment of hesitation, I headed back inside, but not towards the cabin.
Rather, I headed for the attached garage, the space that we used for storage. By the time I realized that my pointless restlessness had suddenly focused, I had already grabbed my hiking pack from its hook on the wall and was halfway through digging through the compartments, checking to see that the usual stock of essentials were in place. Nodding in satisfaction when I saw that I had remembered to leave it stocked the last time I had used it, I strapped an old army issue web belt that I used to keep supplies that needed to be near to hand while hiking; things like a Ka-bar combat knife, a first aid kit, a navigation pack and so on. Finally, when everything was in place, I made sure to lock up and then, with my hiking staff in hand, I started off, down into the valley to the west.
If I had paused to think about this, I might have reconsidered; I had lived here all my life after all and I knew many stories of people who had gotten lost doing exactly what I was doing. But I didn't stop to think about it. Besides, I knew how to navigate in the wilderness, and it wasn't like I didn't know the area. This was sort of my backyard after all. But as I walked, I didn't even think about looking at a map, or even to take compass bearings. I just hiked, on and on into the gathering darkness, the stars coming out over my head. I hiked for hours without stopping to rest, at my usual pace, which was a tad more aggressive than most people I knew could maintain. I felt driven in those hours of night, driven with a fierce need that I knew would not abate until I reached my goal, all other needs becoming secondary to it, including sleep or even the need to sit and rest for a while.
It was like a fire had been kindled in me, a burning heat that sustained my body better than food ever could. I had actually felt this sort of thing before, once. You see, the black belt test at my martial arts school was one of the reasons that it was so respected. The test took place up in the mountains, and lasted for more than three days straight, seventy two hours of almost constant exercise, with only the briefest halts for food, and only one brief span in which one could drop off into sleep for a few minutes, if you were lucky. The test seemed to be carefully designed to push those taking it to the very limits of their endurance, and for many, beyond them as well, only the last ten or so hours devoted to actually testing what you had learned.
The point of making you so exhausted before the actual test was to make sure you had learned the material so thoroughly that you could do it perfectly without thinking about it. Only those who were strong enough, and outright stubborn enough, to make it through all three days and still pass the test were considered worthy of the rank of black belt. More than two thirds of the candidates in my group had cracked up during it, pushed so hard they had given up. Most of the rest had been brought down to tears, crying as they suffered through it. But I hadn't shed so much as a single tear, despite having an additional stress being put on me, a stress that had forced many like me to fail. The other candidates in my group had elected me to be the leader of our group, the person who coordinated our efforts during our training, and the one the others could look to as an example. Being the leader was a great honor, since it meant the others trusted me, but it was also a heavy burden. The leader of each group had to be perfect, since the masters all looked with even greater scrutiny at everything that they did. It was too much for many people, but I had born up under the strain without complaint because, from the moment the test had begun, I had felt this same fire in my heart, a fire that lent me strength, that made me unconquerable. People like me, who made it through without a tear, without uttering a single complaint, were said to have the soul of a dragon, an image that I very much enjoyed.
Finally, when the chill winds of dawn were starting to rustle the aspens, and the awakening birds were beginning their first chorus, I stopped atop a ridge to get my bearings once more. Looking back, seeing that I had covered almost half of the distance to the mountain during the night, I paused to eat a few strips of jerky from my pack, washing them down with the rest of a bottle of water. I had packed plenty of supplies, and if things kept up the way there going, I would have more than enough for the whole trip. Slipping the empty bottle back into my pack, I walked on down the ridge and into the next valley, not feeling the slightest bit tired. Though the day was long and hotter than usual, it didn't even slow me down, though my legs were getting awfully sore by the time I set my booted foot on the base of the rock formation I had spied from so far off, just as the sun was setting for a second time. The rock formation wasn't that impressive up close, merely a jumble of rather large boulders that didn't look like anything in particular. And finally, as I stood there, looking at the lichen covered boulders, I felt the fire within me die and I sat down on the nearest boulder with a heavy sigh, finally taking my weight off my feet.
Last time, when the fire had died away, I had felt so exhausted I had slept for a solid eighteen hours straight and still felt wiped out for a couple of days after that. But this time, though my legs were aching and my feet protested when they touched anything, I felt merely contented, as if I had done nothing more than my usual workout. Sitting there in the late afternoon heat, munching another strip of jerky, I no longer felt restless. Instead, I felt as if this was where I should be and that moving in any direction would be a pointless waste of effort. So, I removed my backpack and sat still. And I waited, listening to the woodlands around me, appreciating the quiet. Then, a strange thought worked its way into my brain, a thought that was so obvious I instantly wondered why I had noticed it sooner. It was indeed quiet, unusually so, in fact, nearly silent. It never got this quiet in the mountains except in the depths of winter, when all the animals were either hibernating or gone south. In the height of summer, there should have been some sign of birds and squirrels and the other small denizens of the wild at twilight. But there was nothing,
Then, suddenly, there came a sound, a sound so deep that it was more felt than heard. It was a heavy thud, like the sound of something huge impacting stone. There was another soon after it, and more, striking a rhythm that meant something to my mind, though I didn't recognize it at first. The thuds were getting louder, or perhaps nearer by the moment, and I got to my feet, the ache in my legs forgotten. And then, as the little pebbles and fallen pile needles began to jump all over the place with each impact, I suddenly recognized what it sounded like. It sounded like footsteps, but the footfalls of something genuinely huge, bigger than any creature that I knew of. And then, all of a sudden, the thuds stopped and I instinctually gripped the hilt of the knife at my side.
If whatever-it-was was as big as it sounded like it was, a full size Scottish claymore wouldn't have been enough of a weapon against it, but it felt comforting to have a blade in hand, my stance opening into fighting position in anticipation. Then, the most startling and amazing thing I had ever seen happened right before my eyes. The cliff side that stretched halfway around the mountain top, the sheer wall of rock that looked like it went all the way through to the other side of the mountain suddenly seemed to become like water, melting like ice into nothingness. But that wasn't the most amazing thing. No, what made me forget all about my knife, my aching legs, even my own name and what I was doing here was what the melting rock face revealed. Standing in the tunnel that had been concealed by the cliff was a creature that I had only seen in my imagination, or in fanciful pictures.
It was a dragon, a real, larger than life, dragon. But what made my arms go slack, my mouth dropping open in surprise, was that it was perhaps the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Nothing, no picture or painting or even my imagination, compared to it. A strange, otherworldly scent came to my nose as we stood in silence, looking at one another and at once, my author's instinct made words come to mind, poetic phrases and impressions, as my mind tried to describe what it saw. While people were sometimes likened to beautiful things, recalling in faint echoes the flowering blossom and the stars, fair and remote, the dragon before me was the beauty of the wild world, long forgotten by most humans in the midst of their modern lives. For a few moments more, we stood in silence, and then, the dragon laughed at my expression of shock and I immediately understood the beauty it held. It was a female, with a voice that was richer and more beautiful than the purest of honey.
"Why do you look so surprised, little one?" She asked, her lips pulling back to reveal her long teeth. It took me a moment, but I finally realized that the expression was not a prelude to eating me, which had been my obvious first thought, but was in fact, a smile. When I didn't answer, she leaned her great head closer to me, her warm breath filling the air around me. "Well? Can you not speak?" The tone of the question was teasing, but it none the less loosed a response from me. Before I had fully formed what I was going to say, I heard my voice speaking.
"You...You are..." I began, and then, to my horror, I found my mouth forming the phrases that had come to mind earlier, my words tumbling from me like a stream of unfettered thought before I could stop myself. "You are...as beautiful as the dawn after the long night, the swift flowing mountain stream, the light of the summer sun, the wild blossoms in the meadow. You are the endless splendor of spring, the warmth of summer and the colors of autumn, beyond the reach of winter's frost. The stars on high themselves are but a pale mockery. Your scales the color of the shining rose, the gilded leaf of aspen in fall; your eyes the shade of the pale northern sky, the waters of the boundless sea, the deepest hue of the fairest sapphire..."
The dragoness' head jerked back in surprise as I spoke, her eyes widening as the eloquent words slipped off the tip of my tongue as if I had prepared them months in advance, her head cocking to the side as if not sure how to take what I was saying. I finally trailed off into silence and felt myself blushing scarlet, urging myself to look away, but finding that strangely impossible. Never in all my life had I ever said anything of the sort to anyone, and here I was, babbling away like a fool to somebody I had only just met, a dragon of all things. For the second time in a minute, we were silent for a while and then, she cleared her throat, her smile returning, though to my utter surprise and lasting delight, she seemed almost bashful in the face of my flattery. Incredible as the thought was, my words had impressed her.
"Well..." She began, sounding suddenly uncertain, "I guess that answers my question. I am sorry for doubting you, silvertongue." Putting one large paw to her collarbone and dipping her head forward, she made a sort of bow, the fine scarlet scales on her cheeks seeming almost to be glowing, an effect that, if I was a betting man, I would have said was the draconian equivalent of a blush. "Please allow me to start over. I am very glad that you have come at last. Until this moment, I did not know if my fellows had done their work well enough or not."
"Huh?" I said, so surprised at her words that my tongue untied itself. "What do you mean 'your fellows?' Do you mean that there are more of you? And, if you don't mind me saying so, it sounds almost as if you were expecting me."
"Oh, forgive me, spending so many years alone has a tendency to make one talk to one's self." She said, a rather odd smile appearing on her lips as she walked out of the tunnel a little ways and settled down, lounging on the golden scales of her belly so her chin was on her front paws, her eyes regarding me thoughtfully. And though I had always thought it rude to stare, I found myself unable to look away from those blue orbs. They had a definite reptilian cast to them and they were deep, like looking into a lake that had no bottom. And yet, as wise and mysterious as her gaze was, there was something in it, some quality that I could not describe that seemed so young, recalling the eyes of a girl just grown to womanhood. "To answer one of your questions, no, there are no more of me, at least, not as you would understand it. As for the other, well, that will take a bit of explaining to make clear. But first, may I ask one question of you?"
"Anything." I replied, feeling a little embarrassed that such a powerful creature would be so polite.
"Have you ever felt that what you were on the outside didn't match what lies within you?" She asked, idly fingering the earth before her with one talon. "That you were supposed to be more than what you are?"
"Yes, I have." I replied, wondering where she was going with this. "Doesn't every teenager? Its a normal part of growing up." When a hint of a smile tugged at her lips once more, I suddenly didn't feel so sure about that. "Isn't it?"
"For humans, it is." She said, her short answer seeming unnecessarily cryptic to me.
"Well, the last time I looked, I was a human." I said, looking at her with a perplexed expression as her smile widened. Looking down at myself, I spread my arms to the side with a little shrug. "I mean...I am human, aren't I? I didn't just sprout horns in the last few minutes or anything, did I?"
"Wouldn't that be something?" She asked, chuckling a little. "No, you certainly appear to be human, and to just about anyone else, you would be. But I can see it in you, the mark of something else." When I raised an eyebrow at her, her grin widened and she spoke once again. "You might as well have a seat while I explain, it will take a while." Seeing no other choice, I took a seat on the boulder and listened as she began to speak...