Moonlit Scales [rewriting]

Moonlit Scales: Excerpt

EXCERPT from Moonlit Scales

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Then came the scream.

  It was one of those loud, painful ones that snap you to life and alight all of your senses, heightening your awareness to a perceptibility that amazes you. You pick up on the slightest things, like an insect crawling towards you on the soft dirt, or a feather floating to the surface of a lake. They send a chill up your spine and your heart plummets, because it knows what you don’t want to believe. I don’t know how, but with distinct certainty I knew exactly whom this scream belonged to.

  I was darting out of the trees so fast that Papa’s clothes were being torn to shreds from the branches that threatened to snatch me like the hands of the dead and hold me in their lifeless clutches for eternity. I leaped out of the forest with my blood boiling, and my feet pounded across the ashes, sending me sliding a few times on its slippery, dust-covered coating, but never fully losing my balance. My eyes scanned the battlegrounds until they settled on the bloodied form writhing in agony under the weight of a monstrous creature, the largest dragon I had ever seen.

  It was a scarlet red, the exact shade of blood, which sickened me to the core. Its wings were webbed and tipped with thorns, and horns the length of my legs protruded from its crest. Its fangs were dripping with blood, and its hideous, leafy tongue flicked in and out of its gaping mouth as it dove in on its prey.

            Everything went black.