Thanks so much to free_note for the cover! :D
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Prolouge
Black, boiling storm clouds chased a descending sun across the sky, and the eyes of a young boy - blue, innocent and very, very bored- followed the pursuit as he stared out his window. He held his head in his hands as he ground his teeth to nubs. He had been told multiple times by his parents not to leave the house during the day unless he was with a friend, or some other person they knew and trusted, and had called them first. But all his friends were away at various summer camps, parents were at work, and that left him alone with nothing to do. So he sighed, a deep and agitated sound originating somewhere in darkest depths of his lungs, finally slammed the window shut and turned back to his room. It was a mess, and his mother would certainly snap at him if he didn’t at least make his bed. With another, shallower sigh he set about doing that, picking up a stray sock or pair of underwear here and there as he did. He found though, half way through, that he actually didn’t care very much if she were to get mad at him. After all, how was she to expect him to do something so dull when she already left him alone here without anything to amuse him? So instead of continuing, he flopped himself down on his bed, crossed his arms over his eyes, and did exactly what he had been doing before –nothing.
“Excuse me….”
His body stiffened, and he pulled his arms away from his face, “Hello?” His voice was strained, and he squinted up at the ceiling.
“Oh good, so you can hear me…that is very unusual you know. How old are you?”
He noticed then how light the voice was, how kind and warm it was.The kind of voice that you could just trust without thinking. This fact made him smile, and as he swung his legs off the bed so that his bare feet could touch the ground, he found that his eyelids sort of fell half-way, giving him a drowsy, and yet totally content, expression. He didn’t think twice about answering the voice’s question, but he had one or two of his own, of course. “I’m eleven. Who’re you? How old are you?” Before this boy sat a creature that he’d only ever heard existed in fairy tales, a dragon. About the size of a dog, maybe a Labrador retriever would be most similar, with white-gold scales that shimmered with inner light, and unusual eyes like mirrors that reflected any and all light back at the dragon’s surroundings . Leathery wings that the boy assumed would be soft and pleasant to the touch reached outward, as though he were sunning them. This light that surrounded the creature filled the boy’s room, surrounded him, made him forget his boredom, and that smile that was already on his face grew so that his lips became taut over his gums and teeth. The dragon tilted his head, and snorted, a golden mist spilling from his nostrils
“You can see me, too? You do have some sort of powerful imagination…to answer your questions though; I am Liransut – a beast of light and nothing else. I am one who is immeasurably old, and still nothing but a hatchling. And I am here,” The dragon seemed to smile, and the warm light grew brighter, almost painfully so, “to release you into a world where there will be no boredom, no heavy sighs or cleaning rooms, and all you have to do is trust me.”
“I do…” The boy was crying now, weeping with the intense beauty and joy that surrounded Lriansut, and his smile did not falter, “Oh I really, really do!” He reached out with his left hand toward the dragon, his newest, greatest and most trusted friend, and stroked his snout. With that one simple movement, that one touch, everything snapped and changed in an instant. The light that made his room shine fell away, back towards the beast, whose form shattered not a moment later. The boy shrieked in horror and scrambled backward, slamming his body back against the wall as he shielded his face. Those sparkling shards that were left of Liransut encased the boy in a golden second skin, before melting into the boy and fading away.
The boy lowered his arms.
He smiled with long, pointed fangs.
Then he opened his eyes, and their silver mirror surface caught and reflected all light in the room.
