Blind as a Dragon

Chapter One

A/N: Hello to anyone who reads this! This is my first published fanfic, and I hope you like it!! Please don't curse or use any inappropriate language in the comments, I really dislike it when people do. I wrote this all down yesterday, and I'm bored, so I'll try to edit and publish it all today. Hope you enjoy reading!!

The night wind blasted hard against the numerous flimsy, quickly-built viking houses.

Normal wind shouldn't have been this strong, but it made sense. This wasn't normal wind; no, this wind was amplified by the hard and fast beatings of many wings.

What creature could possibly have wings mighty enough to drive this great gale onward, you may ask?

Well, I can answer. The only fantastical beasts that could do this were those mighty, fire-breathing beast heard of only in legend, powerful enough to kill a viking in one fell swoop. Yes, these.... they were dragons.

Monstrous nightmares, deadly nadders, groncles, terrible terrors, you name it! These various beasts were all there to do one of two things: steal from vikings, or kill vikings.

Claws, scales, and teeth clashed against maces, swords, hammers, and axes. The victor of each battle, it would be impossible to predict.

Somewhere in the night, a magnificent black beast was shot down, but that's not who our story today will follow. It follows a peculiar character in a sturdy little house on the outskirts of town, out of the way of the dragon raids. Here, dragons rarely visited, uninterested by the lack of livestock around it.

Inside the house, a short five-year-old girl was observing the commotion from outside as best she could.

Observing, you ask? How is she observing? You have every right to do this, after all, the girl was facing away from her bedroom window.

This little girl was blind. Her silky, black hair shone, bright red undertones glowing in the light of hot embers, held hostage in their fireproof stone prison. Her tan hands roamed across the table she was sitting at, eventually locating her sheathed knife's handle. Her clouded, blank black eyes started straight ahead, useless.

Her ears picked up on every little noise inside and outside of the glass. She heard screaming vikings, but that was not all. She was well known to be a freak who sympathized with dragons. She could clearly hear the cries of the wounded beasts, even while being surrounded by the unnatural walls that closed in around her, falsely claiming to protect. She felt they only restricted her.

When she heard her parents' familiar sets of footsteps coming back inside, she got up to go greet them at the door. She paused, her bare feet ceasing their slow movements towards the entryway, only to jolt into a run.

She could hear the wing beats, practically feel the crackling electricity radiating off of them. As she burst out the door, she realized she was too late. The rare skrill had already killed her parents, not even using it's electricity to make things quick.

At that moment, she wished that she had moved faster. She wished that she hadn't been so cautious, and risked tripping in their tidy house. She wished that she wasn't blind, she wished that she wasn't herself.

She stayed there, sobbing, until morning. A viking came up to her.

"What happened?!" he shouted, his loud voice hurting Celia's overly-sensitive ears.

"I-," she began, only to be interrupted by the viking. She didn't know him, but she could tell that he was a big person by his heavy footfalls.

His voice commanded authority as he shouted "It was you! You must have fought with the dragon, freak! Jonas and Paula wouldn't have fallen by a single dragon!!"

"It wasn't me, it was a skrill! I lovd th-," she was, again, cut off.

"A skrill? Hah, there are no skorch marks! How could that be?!!"

The man picked her up and slung her over his shoulder, carrying her away to be judged.

She was barely able to get her side of the story out, and, when she did, no one believed the poor girl.