Heir of the Dragon

An Impossibility

My heart clenched in my chest as the betrayed looks on the faces of my friends surfaced in my mind. The expression on Noah's face was an echo of theirs just before they had lost all trust in me. Though I'd known him less than a single day, I felt suddenly as desperate as if I were fighting to make Fennec or Aywa's understand.

"Please, before you pass judgement, I beg of you to hear me out," I said, pleading with my eyes for his mercy.

"I have never been brash in making judgements, Ellany, but if it be necessary that we part ways, please be honest with me. We will leave you with what you need to survive, and we will depart in peace." He responded pointedly, the tone of his voice stern, but only reasonably so. I was beginning to think I may be able to gain this man's trust after all.

"No, please sir, the story is long but I will spare no detail in relating it, if you just give me a chance. I swear to you my full honesty."

He cast his gaze from one of my eyes to the other and nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Then start at the beginning, my lost friend."

"Thank you." I breathed in relief, "I owe you my life twice over, good stranger,"

All the while Japheth had been sitting quietly, staring at his entwined hands. I glanced at him, and then back to Noah's gaze.

"The beginning is dreary. I will tell it as it is, but spare you the gruesome details. To be fair, I am very in the dark to much of who I am, nearly as much as you are. I do know, however, that it is somewhat frightening. I will not hold it against you if you choose to part ways with me when I have told you. All ll I ask of you is mercy."

"And mercy you shall have. Go on," Noah prodded.

I took a deep breath, and, as the sun rose higher in the sky, I told the two strangers my story.

"I was raised in a poor farmer's home, by a mother and father who actually had no part in my birth. They never talked much about how I had come to them, but I didn't care. I loved them, and knew no other mother and father. Our known world stopped at the outer walls, and was only a perpetuated lie contrived by the leaders. You seem to already know that part. I knew nothing of creatures, or races, or powers, good and evil. I was the very picture of happy naivety.

"But our walled world was attacked by Ghere. My parents were among the slaughtered. I managed to escape into the outside woods, but it was only the mercy of another kind stranger that I lived much longer after that. He found me, if you can imagine, in an even worse state than the one you found me in."

"When did this attack on your city occur?" Noah asked.

"Almost a year ago. Though it feels like yesterday," I answered.

"Interesting-- And who was this stranger?"

"His name was Ayron. He took me in and healed me of my wounds; physical and otherwise, and taught me to live in a world where my nightmares were a reality. He saw something different in me; something I wasnt ready to understand at the time, but something very real.

"It was in his care that I met a wolf like Two Eyes," I added, directing my words to Japheth. He met my eyes then, his interest perked.

"Ayron taught me to ride her; -- to hunt with her beneath me," I smiled to myself, "Now that's a feeling you never forget.

"But as my fate seems to have a habit of doing, both of my new friends were taken from me by the same horrible creatures of darkness. I was taken by them--alive, but a pitiful joyless sort of alive. They were cruel. My hatred of them and my weakened state encited further development of that --certain something-- that Ayron had seen in me. Have you heard of Isen's Well?"