The Girl Is Hope

The Girl's Hope

Oculus was a mighty dragon, indeed. He towered over Niensis like a giant. His muscles ripe and defined under his heavy coat of sharp, golden red scales. His wings, large and tattered, relaxed and cramping in the small chamber of the Dragon's eye. His talons, moon crescents glinting red and sharp in the light of the four candles. And his yellow eyes, trying to dig deeper than Niensis's skin, deeper than his heart. Perhaps to his soul.

It was obvious intimidation. Most every dragon prided themselves and towered over other, smaller dragons like Niensis to prove their might and power, or to gain approval of higher, wiser dragons. But Niensis was not intimidated or impressed by Oculus. It was a silly practice for young dragons to him. Nothing more.

"Why have you brought me to the chamber of the Dragon's eye? It has not activated in over 50 years. Why should it now?" He demanded with no hesitation from whence he was brought there, gesturing to the large, yellow-green orb.

Oculus relaxed his stance as though he knew that he was not going to intimidate nor impress the smaller, yet older dragon. "Niensis, I understand you are upset with the Dragon eye's failure to point us back to a revolution of our destroyed world, but I insist you look. A guard has claimed to see a yellow flicker from the eye, and he persists that it was not a fragment of his imagination." For his large and fearsome figure, Oculus's voice was always that of a soft and caring father.

Niensis sighed. Many guards passing the chamber of the Dragon's eye had said those exact words, and many times they had been wrong, but he peered into the abyss of the slitted pupil, anyhow. He was startled to find the eye flickered in response and the pupil dilated, reflecting back an image of wonder.

It was a small, square box of a room, most likely a metal walled bunker to protect from the consistent, heavy sandstorms, but what it withheld could've fit more easily into a different world. Or perhaps, a world of the past. Sheets of paper ranging from tiny ripped squares to large canvases blanketed the walls, almost concealing the steel walls beneath their prideful canvases. Millions of wondrous inked creatures inhabited these papers, including phantom like horses to multiple tailed beasts, and Niensis recognized all of them, they were creatures of the world that was now gone and destroyed.

Oculus must've saw the startlement on his face or the gaping jaw.

"Do you recognize them?" He asked with a look of patience emblazoned on his face, but the slightest quirk of a grin peeked his lizard lips.

Niensis stared at the Dragon's eye in bedazzlement and wonder for a few moments before answering. "Oculus, why is it that you have shown me this? They are just silly drawings." Despite the starstruck look upon his face, his words stood hard and stern.

Niensis knew why Oculus had brought him to the Dragon's eye. The drawings were a sign, a symbol of hope of the olden lands. The lands when they were still lush with grass and trees and wildlife, instead of gushing with the draining heat and sand. But the drawings were also a sign of something other than hope. Of an evil Niensis had hoped was deprived of the world.

"Do not act so pessimistically, Niensis. I believe the artist of those drawings shall take your place as the bringer of peace and hope."

Niensis dug his claws in the fabric of the cloth beneath the Dragon eye's pedestal in anger, and a small kinder started to form in the back of his throat. Did Oculus not understand of what the drawings could also mean.

"The bringer?" He snarled in a burst of outrage, smoke curling from his nostrils. "Oculus, you know as well as I do that ink was one of the many materials that had frayed along with the rest of the earth, except for the small portions that humans huddled over in corners! Humans, Oculus! A human cannot and will never be the next bringer! It's udder foolishness to even think of such idea!" His small wings fluttered and flapped in fury as he hovered close to the large, red dragons face, peering into his yellow slits.