Robin, every time you get whipped, I do too... I struggle to tell him.
“Son!” The king shouts.
The queen screams and looks from me to Robin. She whispers in the King’s ear as he bends down to help his son up. He looks from his shoulder to mine, and a frown spreads across his face.
You’re welcome... I hear his voice in my head and he looks up at me with a smile, tears and pain reflecting through his brown eyes.
Something falls upon me as I realize he saved me from a massive beating from his parents. No one has ever... I’ve always took it on alone...
We’re frozen in time and I feel myself want to cry. So many emotions play in my heart. So many things run through my mind.
He cares.
The royals scoop him up as he gives me one last glance, and they carry him away, scolding him.
I stand there as they leave, dumbstruck.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I stumble to my stall and see my trough. It’s filled with food. Lunch. Not hungry. I lie down and rest my head on my talons.
“Blackfire, girl, why aren’t you eating?” My caretaker asks me as he walks by.
I snort in response.
He sighs and says, “Goodnight, girl.”
I dream that I’m four. I stand over my mother. My real one.
“Don’t worry, Starfire. I’ll be okay. You take care of your father, now, you hear? And remember, you're special, and no one can take that from you.”
A tear falls down my face.
“Mother,” I start.
“Shhh…” she says. “Goodnight. Ride Moonshine in the morning, like you always do. That always makes you feel better.”
The next morning, I do what she said, and she was right. I walk into the house with a smile on my face. I ran up to my mother and took her hand and told her about my journey, how exciting it was.
“Mother?” I ask. She had stopped making noises to remind me that she’s listening.
She doesn’t respond. She just stares at the ceiling.
“Mother!” I scream, my heart speeding up faster and faster.
Her hand falls limply to the bed as I let it go.
“Father!” I yell.
He rushes in and looks at my mother. He grabs me and holds me to his chest, and I soak it with tears.
I see my father cry for the first and last time.
I wake up from the painful dream of my memory.
Chapter 4
The next morning, hunters run into my stall and throw ropes around my neck. I resist and pull and move and thrash, but there are too many of them.
I give up.
The next thing I know, I’m in a Dragon-Rodeo.
“Who can tame this dragon?” The main announcer shouts as he rides his dragon around the sides of the tower.
“She has killed forty men with one blow of her deadly tail. She has destroyed thirty miles of pasture with her foul breath.”
Thanks.
The announcer goes on and on about things I had never done at all in my dragon life.
When the show is over, and I supposedly get ‘slain’, I overhear two men talking to each other.
“The king and queen took the prince into punishment because of that dragon.”
“Really?” Asked the second one.
“Yeah, he’s away for five years, then he’s coming back to marry.” The first one says again.
I spend the next four years thinking.
A lot.
When I was three, my mother and father built a separate room for me, even though we could barely afford it, and when I was six after my father “died from the venom of a snake bite”, my step-mother moved me to the smallest part of the attic she could find.
Cinderella had it better than I did. Se wasn’t beat, and she had had her own room, even. She wasn’t abused either. She just cleaned a lot, which I did too, but... yeah. She had it better.
I got a bed, a stuffed animal, and five books. One was on dragons, one on myths, one about sea creatures, and one was about cooking. The last one was the scrapbook mother made me. It was filled with pictures she created.
I remember looking at the scrapbook so much, that it started to fall apart in my hands, and I had to repair it.
Oh, mother... I miss you...
Chapter 5
Seventeenth birthday passed, and I still don’t have a dragon and my parents keep nagging me about having to marry soon. I have to find a bride and spend as much time as I can with her and get to know her, just in case I change my mind. This is a blessing after all, and it’s also a ‘we’re sorry we haven’t gotten you a dragon yet, Robin’ stroke of luck.
“Prince Robin, the king and queen would like to see you,” Loronzo, my servant bows.
I walk to the throne room, not thrilled to have a chat with my parents.
“Yes mother? Yes father?”
“We have scheduled you to marry next year on the fifteenth of September, and we have a princess waiting for you in the ball room,” my mother says with a smile.
“But that day is—”
“We know, Robin. Now do as you’re told and go out there to meet her.”
I nod and walk to the ballroom.
There, stands a princess, talking to a maid. She’s a beauty, and seems almost perfect. I could have fallen in love with her ruby red hair and slim figure, but, somehow, someway, I don’t. I feel nothing toward her but the necessity of her position to my parents.
She curtsies. “I am Princess Sanora Ray Humphrey Grey. I have been invited here by the king and queen.”
“I am Prince Robin,” I say as she stands up. “Might I show you around the castle?”
She places her hand out for me to take it. “Of course.”
I walk her around the castle, not touching her at all.
“Which one is yours?” She asks, looking dreamily at the dragons lined up in our stables.
Starfire, as she does many times throughout the day, pops into in my mind and I smile.
“She’s back in Dragonia,” I say, watching as her face flushes red.
“So you do not have a dragon?” She asks, as if she’s insulted. “Am I correct?”
I nod, laughing to myself. Everyone who comes wants to see my dragon, and half of them leave because I don’t have one. The other half find something they don’t particularly like about me, and that scares them off.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” she says. “I’ve made my decision.”
She turns on her heel and marches back to the throne room. I lean against the door to listen in on their conversation.
“My father won’t put up with this!” I hear Sanora whine. “A prince is meant to have a dragon! A dragon is what makes him unique. Plus, he probably won’t be able to get a bride without a dragon!”
Making her last statement, she storms out of the room and into the hallway. I move out of the way of the large, white doors, and she blushes as she sees me. Sanora rushes out of the castle to her chariot in waiting.
I walk into the room myself, their faces still frozen in dumbfoundedness. I give them my best ‘I told you so’ face and smirk a bit.
That was the thirteenth girl this year.
My parents made plans to go to Dragonia the next day. I swing my leg over my father’s dragon’s back behind him, and we rise up into the air, my mother following close behind, along with Anastasia.
I can’t help but wonder if she remembered me.
The height!
Terribly high.
So, so, so, so high....
...The scaled girl, filled with hatred...
...Blocks the sadness and tears...
...Her love is right in front of her...
...And he'll tell her this without a sneer...
I hear the voice whi
spering by my ears, but no one is around to whisper those words, so I ignore it.
Finally we land.
I can feel her presence.
Chapter 6
Back-flip. Boring.
I’m so out of it. I could be—
I freeze in the middle of the flip.
I turn over and hover.
A presence. I can feel something luring me towards it, like a bug to light.
I block out all of the cursing and yelling around me and follow the pull.
“Starfire?”
It was a just whisper, but it reached my ears.
It was just the voice I’ve been waiting to hear for so long now...
I race towards the voice and land gracefully on the ground, twenty feet from its origin.
There’s a couple getting off a dragon with flashy clothes and jewelry, and the crowd roared in the arena far behind me, but none of that matters. Not anymore, now that he’s here.
I stand staring at the tall boy in front of me. His hair is the same brown, his eyes are the same chocolate color, and his skin has only gotten darker. But he’s still the same boy.
I step cautiously forward.
Robin? I ask.
He smiles and nods as he puts his hand out to me.
I step up to him and nuzzle his hand with my snout.
I hear a gasp.
“Prince Robin! Get away from that beast!”
“We agreed you’d buy me a dragon,” he tells his mother, not taking his eyes off of me.
“Not that one!”
He ignored her and climbed onto my back.
He thinks, Fly. They won’t be able to find us.
I take off at full speed.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
We land in a dark forest. We had flown all day and the sun is setting. As he gets off, the exhaustion hits us and we sit on the ground.
The longer you’re on a dragon, the hungrier and more tired you get. I think it’s some kind of survival thing.
Robin makes a bow and some arrows out of the elements around him. It takes him all night to finish.
You sure you don’t want to sleep? I ask as I hand him a fish that I cooked with my dragonfire. I mean, I can catch any animal you want—within reason.
He had been refusing my offer to capture food for him. It was probably pride that was telling him that he needed to catch his own dinner. Stupid pride.
“Are you going to sleep?” he eyes me wearily.
Later. I have things to think about.
He nods and finally takes the fish.
“You’re not eating, either?”
Nope. Years of patience and a small stomach.
He laughs nervously.
“But you need to eat, Star.”
I shake my head and look up to the sky. He falls silent as a shooting star passes across the dark blanket of night.
What’s going to happen to us? I hear him think.
I look at him. He’s staring down at the fish, holding it like it’s something precious, valuable.
The future is unpredictable. It always changes. I tell him. And you can’t control it. It’s all in God’s hands. Just know everything happens for a reason.
He stares at me for a while, and then I see the exhaustion hit him. He starts to fall backwards, his face suddenly looking years older, and I catch him with my wing. With my talon, I take his limp body and set him on my back.
I focus on his dream to keep myself awake. There are too many dangers out here to fall asleep, especially when you’re a dragon.
Dragon...
I wonder what it’d be like if I was human again. Would Robin even notice me...?
Of course not.
He’s a prince.
In his dream, he is running through a maze, lost, unsure, worried. He runs blindly through moving walls and thorns and through thicket. He can’t find a way out, no matter how hard he tries.
Then his mind goes blank.
“Go to sleep, Starfire,” he mumbles and shifts his weight. “You’ll need the strength.”
I snort in protest as I set my heavy head down on my claws. Robin pats my neck.
“Goodnight, Star.”
I drift off to sleep.
It was my fifth birthday. My mom stood over me, lighting the crooked candles on my cake.
“Make a wish! Hurry, before the magic burns out.”
I closed my eyes and thought about all of the fairy tales my mother had always told me before bedtime every night. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella, the Little Mermaid… they all ended with a happy ending and their true love. A prince…
I always wanted to be a princess. To wear the gleaming golden gowns and slippers. To grasp wealthiness. For my parents to be a King and a Queen, to have something they deserve…
I opened my eyes, the wish coming forth in my brain, and I returned to the world a princess would never live—rags and dirt galore—and I blew the candles out in one big breath.
The day before my mother died, I saw myself with that wish, me in a flowing white gown and in the center of greenery, waiting for something, with a castle far from me, on another hill. My castle.
I had told my mother about it the next morning. She smiled at me with her warm smile and coughed once.
“What did you wish?”
“I want to find my perfect prince,” I said.
She chuckled hoarsely. “It doesn’t have to be a prince, sweetheart. The future is unpredictable—uh—” she coughed. “You can’t see what will happen next, and you can’t control it. Everything is in God’s hands and everything happens for a reason. Know that.”
I nodded.
I wake with a start.
Robin is still asleep.
He’s not on my back anymore, but is up against a flat rock, facing me. There’s a rabbit above a fire, almost burnt.
I snatch it from the stick mounted above the flames and blow out the orange beast.
I set the rabbit back down on its mount and rest my head on my talons, focusing back on Robin’s dreams.
He’s in the maze again.
Lost.
Unsure.
Scared.
He’s closer to the end now, I can feel it.
There are no more moving walls. No more thorns or thickets.
I get a little too wrapped up in his dream and start to will him to go a certain direction.
He’s so close to the exit.
And then it goes blank again.
He wakes up and looks at me.
“You going to eat?” he eyed the rabbit.
Not if you haven’t.
“I already ate,” he pats his stomach and nods in the direction of the small critter on the stick.
I take it and eat it.
“I saw your dream last night.”
I feel the rabbit lodge in my throat and I cough to move it.
What?
“Yeah,” he says, rhythmically tapping an arrowhead on the ground. “I’m sorry. It seemed kind of personal. I fell asleep before I could see what you wished for, so...”
It’s okay, I tell him as I stand up. I saw yours too. Can’t ever find the exit, huh?
“Nope,” he says, continuously hitting the arrow lightly on the dirt.
I’ll be right back. I’m going to get some water.
I go to the river and look it over twice in shock.
Oh... I cry as the shock turns into grief.
One look was too much.
Robin had heard the alarm in my voice.
“What?” he asks, holding his bow up, ready to shoot.
This is where... this is where I—a long time ago, I lost Moonshine... My dragon...
Chapter 7
I’m close
to tears as Robin tells me, “Go.”
I look at him, puzzled.
What?
“Go. Think. Away from me. I’ll be right here. I’ll be fine.”
But—
“Go,” he says gently. “I’ll wait.”
With that, he backs up slowly and turns to go into the forest.
I hesitate. Maybe I should stay...
But I need this.
I spread my wings wide and take to the skies, flying just above the white clouds. I think about Moonshine and all of the time we spent together, all of the time it was just me and her...
By the time I make it back to the spot Robin left me at, I realize I took too much time to think. The fire is spreading and Robin is nowhere in sight. He’s gone.
I successfully blow out the fire after several tries and look around frantically. The trees are cut and torn up by the roots. There is blood on the rock that just a while ago, Robin had been leaning against. A few arrows stick out from the bark of the trees. He didn’t go down without a fight.
My breath quickens as I begin to freak out. If something happens to him...
I take flight once again, calling his name over and over.
And then I feel a searing pain rip through my back.
I tumble to the ground.
Through the pain, I flap my wings.
Another wave ripples across my talons.
I roar out in pain, fire shooting from my throat as I catch myself just before crashing through the treetops.
Robin’s getting whipped.
I race towards the abandoned castle that sits on the opposite side of Dragonia, hoping and feeling as if he’s there, and the whips become even more brutal. It’s the only place he could go without anyone there to hear him.
I fall to the ground before reaching the lawn of the gossamer building as another strike plunges through my nervous system. I try to fly again, but I’m only struck down.
The beating is so harsh, that that last strike had split the scales on my back from each other, blood starting to spill over them.
I ram through the castle doors as Robin cries out.
Fury rages through me.
Fire spurts through my nostrils as I find where they’re keeping him, where they’re beating him.
There’s a man standing with a whip in his hand above a crumpled figure.
Robin is that crumpled figure.
His hands are tied to a pole, his shirt is off and his back is bleeding. He’s on his knees, and can barely keep his balance. My heart breaks.
He swivels around as quickly as he can, wincing from the pain that runs through his back. He stares at me wide-eyed.