Writing Challenge 2014, Days 1 & 2. This snippet: 2591 . Total word count: 2591. Total Goal: 1667/2222.
I was born in the mid-fourteenth century. The world has a word for people like me now: albino. But at the time, having silver eyes and skin white as marble that burned in sunlight meant only one thing. Vampire. A bastard child is always a slave to his circumstances, and more so when everyone around him assumes he has been cursed by a member of the undead.
My birth mother feared and hated me. Even as a toddler, I knew this. I forgave her for it, so many times. What child wouldn’t? Some of the other villagers felt pity rather than hate, but they feared me also. When the seemingly endless baptisms proved futile and the priests eventually gave up trying to “save” me, everyone looked the other way when my birth mother began trying to beat the supposed demons out of me.
The fear and hatred grew as I did. I learned to speak at a very young age, and I knew things no child should. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was sharing my mind with those who came near me. Feeling their fears, angers, griefs, and unconsciously forcing them to feel mine. I knew when men no longer loved their wives, when children lied to their parents, when people were hungry or in pain. Sometimes I carried memories not my own for weeks before my mind learned to separate them, and people knew because at that time, I didn’t know better than to speak of them. I believed them to be dreams or odd thoughts, nothing more. The ones who had experienced what I spoke of, knew better. It was yet another thing about me that no one understood, and it is in human nature to fear what one does not understand. Many explanations were offered up for my strange magics, most of which involved demons, witch curses, or holy punishment. The beatings got worse.
Eventually, things reached a peak. I don’t know if it was just a normal beating that went wrong, or if she intended to kill me with that knife. It doesn’t matter, really, anyway. Regardless, I was bleeding badly, in too much pain to sort through everything I was feeling, and the woman who bore me was standing over me with the blade that cut me. I don’t know who was more afraid, myself or her; I was only aware of one great mass of mixed fear and anger, clouded by anguish.
She came to a decision, after a short eternity. She picked me up and carried me out of the house, ignoring the blood on her clothes. Most people ignored the sight as she strode through the village toward the outskirts. When a priest finally stopped her to ask what she was doing, she gave an answer that I didn’t understand at the time. I understand now.
With the priest’s approval and suggestion, she took me out into the jungle wilderness. She set me down and told me to stay put, that she would come get me in a short while. I knew she was lying, but I believed her anyway. I cried for as long as I had the energy to, waiting for her.
Her plan was thus: If a wild creature came for me, the demons would pass on to it as it fed, thus releasing my soul. If the possessed animal came to the village, they could kill it and burn the body, sending the demons back from whence they came. No one wanted the blame for killing me outright themselves, but if a predator did so, it would be acting within its own nature, and the gods could not smite them for it. She left me to die out there, to either bleed out, or have the blood attract something to kill me for her.
A predator did find me, but not to eat me. The white and blue tiger shifted from one false form to another, taking the guise of a silver haired human woman in a pinstripe Victorian dress. Even in her disguise, her eyes burned with crystal light as she picked me up and stared in the direction my mother had gone. Pale blue light that shifted in brightness and color, like the inside of a sea shell that had been cleaned out for jewelry, poured from her hands into my skin. The ache became far more intense, unbearable I thought, but it did not last forever. The bleeding stopped, the wound squeezed shut and scabbed over. I didn’t count the time it took for her to heal me then, but my now I can guess she made it take about ten minutes. I was underfed, so anything faster or more complete than that might have killed me. As it was, I was too exhausted to move when she was done. She quickly tore off a piece from the hem of her fancy dress, and fashioned a bandage to wrap around me until I was finished healing naturally.
Once I was no longer in danger of bleeding out, she bit her hand until it bled, and held the injury over a round grey stone set in a leather bracelet on her other wrist. I later learned that this is how her people, now mine, communicate over long distances. The blood bond prevents anyone else from using her stone without her permission.
When she finished her call, she shifted into her true form. A few inches shy of ten feet at the shoulder, and at least twenty feet from nose to rear hip, with another eighteen feet of tail. Her bat-like wings were folded, but massive; they began just behind the shoulders of her front legs, and ended halfway down her tail. Her head was reminiscent of a pony, but with sharp forward facing eyes. It was almost as long as I was tall, at about three feet. Her scales were smooth, and patterned like a leopard python, pale blue and silver splotches over a pearly white base. She had two small horns at the crown of her head, and a short, fine mane that went all the way down her tail and ended in a tuft that was fluffy and soft like puppy down.
Her name was Naemeŝsu’ukovu, Diamondeyes, and I felt safe with her. It was a strange feeling; I had never experienced it, for myself or from the people around me. She held me and comforted me, but I could also feel a boiling rage inside her. Safe, but afraid. I didn’t understand.
Something that anyone living in a dragon’s territory must be aware of: To such people, there is no crime more abhorrent than the intentional, willing harm of a child, whether one’s own or someone else’s. And to a dragon, there is no such thing as an innocent bystander.
My protector picked me up in the crook of one arm and tucked me to her chest, then took off. It hadn’t taken long for her family to receive her message and take action. From above the trees, the distance to my village seemed a short one, and I could see what was happening. Five winged creatures, in various sizes and colors, stormed through the village, smashing buildings and setting them on fire, and slaughtering the adults as they ran about in a panic. The children were being separated from their parents and herded into a group, which was guarded and protected by two more dragons.
As we passed over on the way to where Diamoneyes was taking me, I looked down at the place where I had been born, and felt the fear and excruciating pain. I saw what looked to me like fire with legs, sometimes running, sometimes rolling around on the ground. Always screaming. I didn’t understand what was happening. I started screaming from the pain and panic, tearing at my hair, digging my fingernails into my skin until I bled. It wasn’t helping, but I didn’t know what to do. I was more afraid and hurt than any one of the villagers, because I was feeling everything from all of the villagers.
Eventually, I just passed out in the dragon’s arms. I didn’t have the energy left to do anything else. When I awoke, I found myself in a nest of glowing moss in a cave of black stone and dirt, with a relatively small dragon curled up around me. Unlike Diamondeyes, this one was not patterned like a snake; she simply blended from red at her back, to purple at her belly. Her mane was a dark purple in contrast to her bright scales in that area, and her legs were a deep red all the down. Her wings blended to purple toward the tips, as well. Her mane was wider at her head, but the hairs shorter and more fine. It grew in a thin line where her head met her neck, and remained thin all the way down her spine. It thinned even more as it traveled down her back, disappearing altogether before it reached the tip of her tail; she had no tuft. Her scales had a tiny layer of peach fuzz that made her soft to the touch.
Silkscale nuzzled me when she noticed I had stirred, and spoke gently in a language I didn’t recognize. Her voice had the sound of one who was barely an adult. She was sad, lonely, and a little afraid, but not afraid of me.. Her presence was comforting. I went back to sleep.
I stayed in the cave for what I estimate to be about two months, as my injuries healed and the dragons made sure I was well fed. My temporary bandages were removed immediately and replaced with real ones after a dragon medic applied medicine to the wound. Smaller amounts of medicine were smeared over the scratches and cuts I had given myself, and I was made to drink a potion every day to build my strength and keep my malnourished stomach from refusing the food I was given. I was surprised my stomach did not refuse the potion itself; my throat did, every time. It’s a general rule that the more useful a dragon potion is, the more foul it tastes. It took me a week before I gave up trying to get my caretakers to stop making me drink it. It did help, though.
When I was healthy and brave enough to venture outside the caverns, I discovered that I was much farther from home than I had first imagined. Diamondeyes had not taken me to her lair in the jungle; she had taken me to a kin lair far from the warmth and wetness of my home. Here, the mountains were tall and black, the plants sparse and coarse and dully colored almost entirely in shades of brown and green. I didn’t recognize any of the animals that roamed the mountainside. Big furry brown bears, pale horned balls of wool called mountain goats, bald headed condor birds, and strange creatures call llamas that resembled shaggy haired goats mixed with fanged donkeys. The frost that formed on the grass in the mornings, the winds that was dry and cold and bit my skin if I didn’t wear the right clothes. A place so open and clear of large trees and bushes. Everything was strange to me.
The mountain dragons of this lair were different than the jungle dragons who had saved me. Whereas Diamondeyes and Silkscale were colorful and had hair, the mountain dragons were mostly black mottled with dull, dark colors, and had no fur at all. They were much bigger and bulkier, with thicker, rougher scales and much more prominent horns. I learned later that mountain dragons are masters of disguise, with the ability to change their colors to make the forms they take more realistic and even match their surroundings; a mountain dragon hunts by disguising himself as a boulder and waiting for prey to come along that he can ambush. Jungle dragons are limited to what forms that can take that still utilize their natural coloring.
The Blackstone Mountain kin had turned their valley kin Lair into a refuge; while the dragons kept mostly to the caverns and the outer rim, the valley floor was dotted with small villages. Every human there had either been removed from human custody due to child abuse, or was descended from others who had. It was intended that I would be adopted by a family in one of the villages, but we quickly found a problem with that. I was still sharing my mind without control; it was not only my memories I was suffering from. I could not be in the presence of so many fosterlings for long without breaking down. The dragons could teach me control, but I couldn’t be “fixed” without much time and study. As I couldn’t adjust to a life in that valley until I had spent so many years learning to deal with my natural magics, it was decided I would not remain there.
The Jungle of Colors kin took me home with them. Others questioned if Silkscale was mature enough to raise a kit, but she was determined, and so they allowed her to adopt me. I was raised as a dragon, spoke the dragon language, lived under dragon law, and learned not only my own magics but the science behind the dragon magics as well. I learned to heal, to make things grow, to send pieces of my spirit outside of my physical body to travel where I could not. I learned to make fire, in so many different ways. I learned to expand my own life by slowing down my aging process. I learned enough shifting to gain wings. I learned to move and fight as a dragon. I covered my pale skin with markings of dragon scales, in a snake pattern of blue and green, and wove magic into the ink too protect myself from sunburn. And when Silkscale eventually took a mate and gave me a younger sister, I cherished Gracewing the way any big brother would.
When I was almost an adult, but still young and foolish, I became curious about my human roots, and ventured out into the human world. I did not ask permission to do so, nor did I ask advice on how to survive and hide myself from those who would be considered “normal”. I was stupid. The tattoos hide my skin color, but not my culture. The way I speak, the way I think… The fact I had forgotten that humans see magic as evil and dangerous, so I did not consider it necessary to hide it, at first. The first time I was accused of witchcraft and demon worship, I fought off my attackers. The second time, they used the first as evidence against me. Even when I hid my magic, I was strange enough that people feared me, and soon accused me of it anyway. And so began a long life of people trying to kill me, because I am different.
Soon enough, I grew tired of fighting the angry mobs, and instead chose to run and hide. Caught on a dock once, I stowed away on a ship. It left harbor before it was safe for me to come out of hiding, and when I was discovered on board a week later, I was simply chained up and added to the merchandise. I had found myself on a slave ship.
Procrastinating In Public 