Heir of the Dragon

Dragon Blood (pt. 1)

The small fire angrily consumed it's pile of wood, It's light turning the bark of the trees and our skin and eyes a glowing orange. Aywa sat cross-legged with her face in her hands, and fennec was seated thoughtfully beside her, running his fingers in patterns over her back, comforting her.

I couldn't bring myself to sit. I paced back and forth, watching the same two trees pass my vision over and over again.  

I needed to get away..if only for a few moments. The things I'd seen that day were driving me mad with anger, fear, and disgust.

"I'm going for a walk," I announced as I halted in my well worn path. Fennec glanced up at me, then started to stand.

"I'll go with you," He said. As he was getting to his feet, I caught him throw a forlorn glance at Aywa's unmoving form.

"No...stay with her, Fennec," I said, motioning for him to sit down, "I'll be fine."  

He gave me an appreciative look and resettled himself beside her.

I offered him an emotionless, half-hearted smile.  

I needed to be alone.

Stepping between two trees and out of the fire's orange glow, I picked my way through the brush and waited for my eyes to adjust to the frigid darkness.

The cold air felt wonderful rushing in and out of my lungs. It helped clear my chest of the emotion that'd been suffocating me, but, I realized mournfully, it wasn't enough to clear my head. I had been reliving the nightmare every time I closed my eyes. The death...the betrayal. I recoiled mentally at the fresh onslaught of images. Trying unsuccessfully to veer my mind away, I bit the inside of my lip hard enough to draw blood.  

Slowly, the realization dawned on me that no matter what horror occupied my mind's eye, I could never seem to rid my thoughts of the look in his amber eyes...the pain... I didn't understand it.  

Ducking to avoid a low-hanging branch, I took a deep breath and told myself to focus on distraction.  

My eyes had adjusted well and I could see nearly every detail of the moonlit forest. The woods had slowly changed as we'd traveled nearer and nearer to the Leyth Voria. It was now much more lush and the trees were more abundant. Their proximity to one another forced my midnight trek to take a winding, snake-like path through the trees.

As I walked through the serene night, I began to notice the pale glow of little florescent mushrooms and fungi that grew among the roots and in the rutty bark of more elderly trees. With the soft blue specks lighting up like constellations, and the distant white light of the moon, the forest seemed to come alive, shining like the shrouded stars that hung above the forest roof. The damp, clover-like plants were just tall enough to reach my ankles, and left sullen drops of dew on my leather boots as I waded through them.  

Almost all of an hour passed and I slowly, steadily began to be free of the things that'd been weighing down on me, crushing me almost to the point of breaking. Fatigue and the numbing effect of the forest made it easier to forget...or easier to ignore.

My feet took me onward as the moon crept across the sky. As my eyelids gradually became too heavy to keep open, I numbly found a thick, smooth-trunked tree to curl up under, and obediently let them close.

The fact that I should have been cold faintly impressed upon my mind.

I wasn't, though. My core burned with the emotions I'd suppressed.

You shouldn't fall asleep, my mind mumbled to me, The others will worry.

I'll just shut my eyes for a moment, I reasoned.