I hate Mira, I would love to get her banished to a far-off place and never see her face again, but let’s get one thing straight, I never tried to kill Mira. I’m not even sure how I turned the garden ablaze to begin with. Not that Mira would ever believe me. But as I said, I never tried to kill Mira. It was just a mistake blown completely and totally out of proportion.
I hate Mira because… well that’s not important. But the point is I do hate her, not enough to do damage, just enough to want to cause her trouble, annoyance, and get into her head. Good gods do I want to get into her head!
I’m afraid though that that position has already been taken by Jaylin. I hate her too, just not in the same way. Jaylin I may actually want to kill, not exactly for who she is but for who I know she will become.
It was a relief when Mira walked out our door and slammed the door. She had to be thinking about me to do it. I must have been creeping into her head and driving her mad. The thought alone put a smile on my face.
People think I’m insane. They might be right. I’d like to think of myself as more obsessive than insane. Once a thought runs through my head, it’s hard to walk away from it. It will pester me until I either get rid of it or act on it. I only really act on it once in a blue moon, but I have enough of the thoughts that even with that, I end up seeming like I do whatever crazy thing has just jumped to my mind at the moment. In reality, I’ve had hundreds of insane thoughts and only acted out the least insane of them before it drives me mad. It’s become a quick way for people to grow scared of me. The dragon who acts out, how poetic, how justified they must feel in their disdain towards me and my kind.
They’d never admit to it, but the people here aren’t as progressive as they think. They let dragons into the school but they put us in the highest tower at the farthest end of the castle, far far away from all the other dorms in the east wing. They say we are all equals but they have a whole prophecy about how one of us is going to try and end the world and they have to vanquish us. They say the prophecy doesn’t make them dislike us “good” ones but I know they do, I see it every day.
Even the book I’m reading History of Firebreathers I had to sneak in and steal from the restricted section of the library. They won’t even tell us about our own history for crying out loud, likely because they know the very thing I learned my first day here, that they are the villains in the story. Drunstan has done little for dragons, drakes, wyverns, wyrms, and phoenixes, beyond hunting us in the Old Days and offering menial reparation since. Half of them can’t even tell you the difference between a dragon and a wyvern despite us being completely different species, they just don’t care enough.
Why my mother insisted I go here, I will never fully understand. “It will make sense in time. You are there to save our greatest hope,” she would say, whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.
Just thinking about it all has got me all riled up. I get out of bed and head to the common room. I just need one good fly before everyone gets here and before anyone can accidentally see me flying.
I go to the ledge, in spite of the fact that it’s the end of summer there is a certain chill in the air. I close my eyes and feel the wind blowing around me. Letting it cover all my skin. I take a step towards the end of the ledge then hear a rustling in the common room. I turn to see Mira staring at me through the windows.
Thoughts rush through my head. All of the reckless dangerous things I could do to make sure she never forgets this moment. That it gets stuck infinitely in her head. I pick the one I deem least dangerous, mostly because I’ve done it successfully once before, and take a step back, my heels over the edge of the ledge.
I give her a smirk and let myself fall backward off the ledge, transforming in mid-air and flapping my wings before I hit the ground. Then I shoot up into the sky, hoping that all she can see of me through the window is the gold scales on my stomach.
I swirl my body to fly away from the castle but not before turning my head ever so slightly to see that Mira is still standing in the common room awestruck. Perfect, she will be thinking of me all day I bet, just how I want her to.
Soaring through the air is the one thing that seems to ever clear my mind. I’m completely at peace in the clouds, just like a dragon should be. I stop flapping my wings and let myself glide through the air.
There’s a group of sheep on the ground a few thousand feet ahead of me. My stomach growls and I’m greatly tempted to go and feast on them, but SUC generally frowns upon students eating the local livestock.
It makes me remind myself to set up a petition to the school to offer fresh livestock to the firebreathing students, if not regularly at least on special occasions. Technically we can survive off human food just fine, so can most creatures, but there’s something different about eating in your native form, with the foods you grew up with. It’s just different.
I turn around to head back towards the school, it should be close to lunchtime anyway, maybe there will be something in the dining hall worth eating. Unlikely, I think. School hasn’t even started yet, the dining hall is likely going to be empty.
I don’t land on the ledge of my dorm. Instead, I go straight to the dining hall. Landing in the garden behind some hedges so no one sees me in dragon form. Once I’ve fully transformed back into a human, which is a rather uncomfortable process, I walk over to the dining hall’s outdoor entrance and enter.
It’s empty, as I expected, except there is a steaming pile of fresh rolls on the far side of the buffet table in the middle of the room. I take a step forward and I see more food begin to appear. Mutton, green beans, mashed potatoes. It’s too much food for any one creature, or even two, but I’m too hungry to question it. I take a plate and begin to serve myself.
I’m about to take a scoop of mashed sweet potatoes when I hear a scraggly voice coming from the indoor entrance to the hall. “Miss Stormflyer,” Headmistress Dampner says to me.
I turn to her, placing down my plate on the buffet table. “Headmistress,” I give her a small bow. If I were in dragon form the bow would look much more elegant, my wings spreading out as my head bends down, but in human form, I’m afraid it looks more like a nod than a bow.
“I wasn’t informed of your early arrival,” she informs me.
I nod along, “It wasn’t planned,” I tell her. “This weekend was the only day the trains were running from Stormbend to Drunstan.”
She gives me a quizzical look. “Then why aren’t your colleagues here early as well?”
I shrug. “I believe they are taking in the sights of the Drunstan capital. Mother had to fly home early so I had to be dropped off.”
The headmistress nods but gives me a look like she suspects I’m up to something. I am, but that’s not her business. I’m up to bothering Mira as much as I can before her savior, Jaylin, gets here tomorrow.
“Well I hope you enjoy your time,” the headmistress tells me.
“Thank you,” I say as she turns to walk away. I then grab my plate once again and begin to pile it high with sweet potatoes. We don’t have sweet potatoes in Stormbend, root vegetables are rather hard to plant when you have claws, and only a few of us firebreathers come from families with the ability to shift to human forms. Most of us that can end up here in Drunstan for school. Something about our presence being an act of political gratitude on both sides. We hold up the bridge that keeps Drunstan and Stormbend from killing each other. Sometimes I want to burn that bridge, no not sometimes, always. I always want to burn that bridge. It’s likely why I don’t even try to get along with anyone here.
After I’ve sufficiently stuffed my face I head back to the dorm. It would be much easier to fly there, but I walk up the twenty flights of stairs just in case Mira is still in the common room. My choice is quickly justified when I find her sitting on one of the couches in the common room. A book in her hand. History of Firebreathers. For fire’s sake!
She holds up the book when I come into the room. Gently shifting it in her pale hand. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Something from home,” I tell her. It’s a lie and we both know it.
“Huh,” she says and I can see the redness that’s creeping up her neck. She’s getting mad at me. Perfect.
“It’s none of your business,” I tell her because it isn’t. I’m a firebreather, it’s about firebreathers, she’s not one of us, it shouldn’t concern her.
She gets up and walks to me. “It is my business.”
I take a step closer to her. “And why is that?”
“I think you took this from the restricted section. If someone found it in our room I could get expelled.” She takes a long look at the book in her hands. A small smile creeps onto her face. “I could get you expelled for this.”
I don’t like the way her face is contorting. She looks past me and I know what she’s about to do. “Don’t you even think about it,” I tell her.
But it’s too late, she dashed past me and to the stairwell.
I follow her, trying my best not to let my emotions get the best of me and accidentally transform. This stairwell is far too small to fit a full-grown dragon. I rush down trying to catch Mira. She’s too fast for me on the stairs, but I know once we hit the halls she won’t be a match for me.
It’s a few minutes of furious running down steps before we hit the bottom. When we do she comes into full view. Her blue eyes turn to look at me as she hops off the railing, making her wavy black hair bounce. So that’s how she got down so fast.
In the halls I’m right behind her, she’s just within reach and I reach out to grab her, but my hand, it’s not a hand actually, my claw reaches out for her instead. For fire's sake, I’m transforming. I should slow down, should stop chasing her, should transform back, but I rarely do anything I should.
I grab her shoulders, hoisting her into the air, just a few feet off the ground, nothing too terrifying. Mira is struggling in my arms as I see an exit to the garden and take it.
In the garden I still barely hover her over the ground. Once again, I don’t want to kill her.
“Let me go!” she shrieks.
“Give me the book,” my voice comes out deep and sinister. I think the shift in my voice that happens when I transform startles her because she drops the book immediately. “Good choice,” I tell her. I fly her a few more feet away from the book before I set her on the ground. Then I dive for the book, cradling it in my right claw.
Mira stands to her feet and starts to brush off the dirt that now covers her hands. “You didn’t play fai—” her eyes widen as she looks up at me. “R— red,” she says as she takes in my dragon form.
I realize she’s the first non-Stormbender to see me and it makes smoke leave my nostrils. I didn’t want anyone to see me.
“You're a red dragon,” she tells me.
I laugh and it comes out deep and rough. I’m not a red dragon, I’m a young gold dragon. Not that she would have ever been told the difference between the two.
“You’re Red.”
I laugh again, but I don’t correct her. Why would I? Would she even believe me if I did
ns3.17.139.45da2
and then Add to home screen.