Howling Echoes - A How to Train Your Dragon Story, The Echoes, Book 1

Prologue: Frost

   I was running through the forest.  My maroon boots kicked up big lumps of snow that I kept stumbling on.  My light brown hair kept whipping into my face, dappled with snow from the cold, snowy, windy storm.  My dark brown gloves grasped the snow below me as I stumbled on.  But it wasn't the storm I was running from.  It was the creature behind it.

   I was stopped by an icy, light blue winged creature.  Snow-white frost streaks painted her bat wings.  I turned around to run the other way, but the creature quickly interfered, placing her face in front of mine.

   I could feel a cold, icy gaze barrel straight through my soul. Actual crystal shapes frosted white marked the edges of the creature's vision. A long, thin tail with a thin frost layer gently wrapped around me.

   Normally I would've run, escape through the trees to the best of my abilities. But I couldn't. The icy blue gaze was hypnotizing. The dragon gently puffed frost in my face. Small, gleaming white teeth caught the snow. No matter how brilliant this dragon looked, however, I couldn't fight back the only other thought that was running through my head.   I'm gonna die.

   But I didn't.  The dragon sniffed at me, then pulled her tail back.  She started to back away with a piercing light blue gaze.  I didn't know dragons well, but this was definitely a dragon of some sort.  I turned my head away and reached out my hand, praying that it wouldn't get bitten off.

   A moment later I felt strangely warm, smooth scales brush my hand.  I relaxed and tentatively looked at the dragon.  The dragon opened her eyes and relaxed as well.

   But everything went downhill from there.  Actually, my whole life was downhill, this was one of the few upsides in my life.

   Let me rephrase that:  Everything went back to being downhill, but maybe so downhill that I was pretty sure I could bet everything good in the world that I was gonna die.