Modern Dragons: Ash

Ch. 2

Rays of light punched through the canopy above and reached the ground where I was sitting. A breeze rustled the leaves above. For a second it felt like I was back home, sitting under an apple tree, looking at the clouds. Now the clouds are always gray, thickened with the ash that swirls around the globe.

All around me trees rustle in the breeze. Their limbs swinging back and forth. Here and there I can see the undergrowth shiver as creatures move about through their life.

I hear a low whistling noise coming from my left. The sound steadily grows louder as the trees start to shake. I stand up leaning against the tree ready to run. The whistling turns to screams and a roar.

A dragon burst through the trees, failing every attempt to dodge the incoming trees. Riding on said dragon was a young woman, her brunette hair in tangles. In her hands she gripped a hilt, the rest vanished into the beasts scales.

As quick as they appeared they disappeared back into the trees, leaving behind a path of destruction. Branches and limbs snapped off, a rut in the ground was left from their pass. I can hear a loud moan in the distance.

I begin walking along the trail, my steps unsteady from blood loss. Pain enters my head like a knife. My left hand reaches up as a reaction to the pain. I feel my heart increase rapidly and return to normal. After a few minutes the pain subsides.

I continued on along the trail and came to a clearing. In the middle of the grass stood a dragon, and standing in its shadow was the girl. She stood defiantly with her bloodied machete in hand. Her weight was on one leg, cuts, bruises and burns scattered across her body. The dragon stood no better with its own share of wounds.

The beast was poised to finish her off. It lunged forward to bite her, but the woman countered with a gun. She jumped up onto the dragon's lowered head. Using the machete, she cut a small hole in the animal's armor. Now with the open path, she unloaded her sidearm into the beast brain.

The defeated dragon went limp, its body slumped to the ground. The girl slid off the dead dragons head. She looked up and saw me standing at the edge of the clearing. She mouthed a word that I could not hear or read what she said.

Our eyes locked and her body went limp. I ran toward her falling frame to catch her. Her blood-covered body hit the ground before I could intervene. I lift her up off the ground and away from the lifeless beast and into the woods. The last rays of light make their way through the leaves. Walking with the girl in my arms I find a small cave and set her against the hard wall. I use the last glimpse of sun to start a fire.

The fire burns bright in the nighttime darkness. I lean back against a tree and slip into a realm of greater darkness, my mind.

*****

Shapes and shadows flood my vision, no discernible difference between the two. Voices float and scatter, whisper and yell. Colors flash and mix, spiral and swirl. I find myself floating through an abyss of darkness. Images blur and fade below me, I float across memories, some I remember some I don't. I see my mother cooking lunch. The next image shows my mother again, only this time she's bald in a bed, the monitor next to her flatlined.

Next is my father sitting in a chair, liquor bottles scattered around, a gun in his hand and blood on the wall. The next scene is one of myself, my reflection in the mirror, a gun to my head. It was same gun my father used only minutes before. Tears streaming down my cheeks. I couldn't pull the trigger that day.

The next few minutes are photographs through the rest of my life. Laughter and friends, college dorm and parties. Disappointment when I didn't have enough money for flight school. Friends dying from a car accident, one I would have been in if I hadn't started my farm. The last few photographs lead to where I am now, the dragon, the girl. When the last image shows of the fire, it burns away.

The entirety of what I see shatters with a giant crack. The pieces fall away, far below me. When all went black, I too fell. The never ending darkness swallowed me whole. I lost all notion of direction. A hand reached out to catch me, but missed. Out of the darkness a long slender finger reached out and touched my forehead. From its tip a faint light glowed.

The finger slipped back into the darkness and I felt control. I stopped the free fall and began to ascend. I felt so free. But even freedom has it's limits. I hit a wall, or a ceiling. I kept pushing against this limit, increasing my speed against it. It began to give. The entire roof began to a ascend with me, light penetrated the darkness. The wall I was pushing collapsed into a small ball in my hands.

I looked around to see I was floating above grassy plains, a river broke the infinite grass. A voice boomed out from all around me. "In your hands you hold a wall you have overcome. This is just the first of many. Find me."

The land faded to white, then to black.