The Little Dragon

1

Imagine an ocean as vast as the sky, as still as a mirror and glittering with the brightness of the stars as reflected from above. A single white form lies in the middle of this infinite space. Silken cloth drapes over his sleeping form lulling into the water, but the body within rests on the surface as if it were solid. He sleeps peacefully, with the only movement being the ripples in the water his breath stirs, quickly swallowed up by the still ocean.

He lifts his head without opening his eyes. His pointed ears glitter with diamond and silver piercings, and his hair shimmers as if made of the white silk he wears. His eyes flutter open revealing colour as bright as the stars. He admires the water, then tilts his head to the sky.

Find your home, brother

The stars whisper in union. "Home?" he looks around him, at the glittering vast emptiness. "Is this not home, with you?" they do not answer, but as he looks up again he realises they are so far away, so unreachable.

"I fell." Under the surface of the water a creature swims for him, following the faint ripples his breathing makes. A great whale, glowing with the bright blue brilliance of a moon. The star gasps and stands as the whale opens its mouth as it continues to surface. He turns to run as it breaches the surface, but the water buckles under his feet and he falls into the blue brilliance. Inside the whales stomach, the water churns then calms revealing softly glowing anemone. The brightest light comes from above, the only light with a gold orange hue.

I swim up and grip the edge of the whales blowhole before sticking my head out. I thought all of the stars were people like me, but some are gateways with flickering images, others balls of burning fire with a brilliance that thrills me to my core. "Isnt it beautiful?" I ask the whale and grin. He turns to the mass, and behind it is a small orb. As we approach I realise it isn't small, but much smaller than the burning star.

The water wells up below me and I lose my grip on his skin, the water explodes around me and the planet widens to all the corners of my vision. I hit a barrier, the water is repelled but I push through and begin to fall once again. The air is hot, and whips me about. Flame erupts around me and I close my eyes as I plumet.

I don't recall hitting the ground, but I wake in a bowl of stone and ash with crater lines guiding my eyes to the edges that tower above me off in the distance.

There are people around me, talking, but I cannot hear. My ears make a terrible screeching noise that drowns them out. I bring my hand to my head where the pain is throbbing and try to not cry. I am beyond lost, and scared.

A muffled thud and roar makes it through the screeching. A dragon with blood red scales and sharp black spines snarls at us. "How dare you meet here! This is an act of war! This is my land!"

"This elf is a member of our people!" a queen figure dresses similarly to I yells at the dragon. "It was foretolf eons ago he would fall here! Here! Where the great elven city used to be, before you burned it to cinders!"

"They treated me like a feral dog!" the dragon roars back. "You have no claim here!"

A man to my right, with darker skin and a stick with a gemstone in it replies. "No they did not! You burnt the city down because they didn't treat you like a god! They wouldn't kneel to you, so you killed them all!"

The dragon snarls. "Not all, some got away." He raises his head and bares his glowing chest. "Irrelevant! This is my land, and he is my citizen. Begone."

"Are we to fight?" a man says behind me. I don't turn, I stand and begin walking towards the dragon. No one reacts for a surprisingly long time.

"Wait!" the queen yells as a wisp of white magic loops around me, it wraps around me and pulls on my waist.