DorkFish 4: The Ruthless Scheme

Still Mine....Always Yours

Monday

12:01 A.M.

Jared listened for a presence in the darkness.

He'd been running. If he stood perfectly still, he could feel his body rocking with the force of his heartbeat. The sound of his shaking breath seemed to come back to him, almost as if he were facing a mirror, and he reached out a tentative hand to touch it.

His friendships brushed nothing but the cool mist curling smooth and heavy in the air like fog moving across an icy moor. He felt the cold vapor caress his cheeks, but he couldn't see it in the pitch blackness any more than he could see his own hand in front of his face.

Jared closed his useless eyes and let his heart guide him through the blinding dark, imagining a golden light beaming from his chest to illuminate his path. His swift feet scraped and swished over the wet rocks, and he willed himself warm to combat the coldness creeping through the thin leather soles of his turnsoles.

Soon he began to hear sounds other than his own quick footsteps. The startled scurry of tiny feet, the frenzied flap of leathery wings, and the desolate drip of water echoing through the cavernous silence, mocking his solitude.

Jared burrowed deeper into the thick white cloak he wore to protect himself against the damp chill. He'd lost something. Something vital to his existence had been taken from him, but some clever charm blocked all memory of what it was or how he'd been stripped of it. He'd followed it here, all the way to the gaping black mouth in the mountains ringing the village, and now he questioned the sagacity of his insistence to make this search alone.

'My insistence.' His brow furrowed as he tried to pierce the black veil shrouding his mind. Yes, there had been some kind of argument. Someone had wanted to come to this cold, dark hell with him. He'd wanted to help him find what he... no, what they had lost, but he'd pushed him away.

"Yes, Jared," hissed a serpentine voice in the darkness. "You did."

Fire exploded in an arc across the cave and Jared screamed at the sudden light's revelation. The dragon towered over him, red scales glistening like embers, and when its huge head lowered down to his, he saw flames glowing in its sky-blue eyes. Black smoke purled from its nostrils, making him choke as it wreathed a hazy ring around him, and the sweetly sour stench of carrion brought vomit to the back of his throat.

Jared blamed his prickling tears on smoke and nausea, not his terror. This thing had stolen something more precious to him than air and then summoned him here to ransom it....

The spell broke and he remembered. He remembered everything, and his fear ignited into furry.

"What have you done with my son!" he hollered, his hands balling into fists.

A sound like sandpaper rubbing on obsidian, and Jared realized the dragon was laughing at him. A curling lash of its thick tail laid him out on the wet stones, throwing him down to the floor in a tangle of fiery tresses and snowy cloak. Enraged, he whipped his hair out of his face and made to rise and fight the beast, but when he moved, the white wool fell from his shoulders and he suddenly lay naked at its feet.

'At his feet,' Jared corrected, horrified as it became obscenely clear the dragon was most definitely a he.

Jared snatched at his cloak but he pinned his nude body to the cold stones with a taloned foot, the span of it covering his entire torso, the sharp claws grazing the tender skin of his chest, his arms, his sides. The thing seemed to smile cruelly down at him, his forked tongue flicking along his mouth with unmistakable lewdness as he bent over Jared. Slowly it extended one of his short arms toward him, like it was holding something in his scaly palm, and Jared gasped when he caught a glimpse of the tiny bundle imprisoned behind its glinting claws.