Never Lost

08 - Memories of a Nightmare

Sometimes the sun felt grey in Neo Neo Neo; not for any sort of melodrama or analogy of deeper thought; but the light that came down t the skin was just darker than it looked in a past life. Everyone here was running from something; they had picked up a new life yet could never really shake the old one. Or the new ones.

Maybe it was for melodrama.

Torch was struggling, her arms tired from gripping on to a set of leather reigns. Her heart was beating in a panic that set her stomach upside down on itself. A storm none the likes she'd never seen raged in a fury that cut her eyes like paper. For several long moments she was blinded, alone with her thoughts and the storm.

She leaned to vomit over the edge of a building ,only to find that she wasn't standing at all but hovering startling heights above the ground on the back of a dragon. Her head spun with nausea but she managed to bite it back as the rain drenched her to the bone.

On the ground below a young man leveled crossbow a her chest. Even through the downpour and a pair of fogged glasses, the disdain in the man's face was obvious. Before her, the mammoth neck of the beast strained against the storm, struggling to maintain their height as the wind beat down on them. Torch reached her hand forward to steady the creature only to snatch it right back with a gasp.

Her gloves were gone and the scars on her knuckles had all disappeared. She glanced down at her hands in horror. They are rough, with longer, more delicate fingers than her own.

No. She realized with a start.

Not her. Him.

Before Torch has a moment to react that she was no longer in her own female body, a quick movement stirred her attention.

Down below, several people emerged from the shadows; one was holding a semi automatic rifle and the other held what looked to be a net and an over sized cell phone. The beast below him grumbled, its wings snapping at the air like a flag in a storm. They were cornered.

Suddenly the dragon darted straight into the clouds; barely giving Torch — or whoever he was now — a chance to yell as the wind battered icicles into their faces. "Matthias!" Torch screamed; barely aware of her new abilities as he readjusted his hand grips one by one in an attempt to hang on. "We can't go up there!"

Another part of her dually noted that her voice was now suddenly a steep baritone.

She wasn't Torch anymore, but —

The dragon bellowed in agony as his grip grew weak. He couldn't hold on.  "Both of us can't make it out of here." His voice was snatched immediately in the wind, but somehow he knew that his dragon heard it. It was like the words were rehearsed, echoing through a predetermined pinpoint of space and time.

 Matthias growled and continued pounding his wings. Torch's fingers were growing weak as the storm spat an ocean of water in their faces. "Matthias," he whispered again; he tugged at his riding gear with all the strength he had. "Find my brother and go."

The dragon's hum of protest shook Torch to the core.

"You can't stop me and my dumb decisions." His hands were slicked with ice and he could feel his fingers going numb. On a normal day with only a moderate downpour, they both could have made it out, but for once the storm wasn't on their side. Oh what bitter irony.

A cold draft came down on them suddenly from above and Torch struggle to hold on.

His arms were growing weak and feeble, as was his entire body. "I love you Matthias," he whispered and pressed his eyes closed, wishing silently that he could press his face into his dragon's snout just one last time. "But you have to let me go."