Chapter Text
By the west hem of the Empire, a dark, phantasmagoric forest spread out, exhaling a blue-white haze that shroud its woods in perpetual mysticalness. Through skeletal branches and shadowed fissures, moonlight infiltrated the thick canopy, gracing earthly creatures a silver of its celestial beauty.
On this night of the Full Moon, mythical creatures born of nursery nightmares and the hushed, terrifying warnings of nannies to drill fear in the most fearless, stubborn child, prowled the woods. Their canines and talons glinted silver, shuffling the woods soundlessly in search of prey.
It was in the marrow of these woods that the Sorceress resided, living out her quiet, plant-like existence.
***
On a warm summer evening, when the Sorceress had finally recovered from one of her long, closed door research endeavours, she came across a dragon at her doorstep. It lay wasting away in her garden, a catastrophic weight that had crushed half her crop of spider-lilies and poppies. At least it spared her winter vegetables, winter would otherwise be quite difficult, and she refused to buy from the nearest market in town.
She deduced, from the deep blood tracks leading to the woods, that the dragon must have crashed somewhere near her hut, and having caught the wafts of incense burning at the window, dragged itself all the way here.
Bold of it to try out its luck on her. Most beasts of the forest avoided her, knew from a primordial instinct that she was not to be neared. Trees rustled with a passing breeze, bringing in the metallic scent of blood. She took in where the creature bled—a shallow tear to the throat, puncture wounds along the flank, a sheared horn, and fractured talons. No doubt it would bleed to death in less than half a night’s time if left unattended. So vulnerable, yet fearless, something greater than despair must have driven it to her doorstep. She contemplated the dragon’s broken body for a while, mildly fascinated.
What brought you here, little dragon? A strong will to live? She doubted it.
Survival instinct should have deterred any sane creature from her door. But the Sorceress never understood such ‘absurd will to live’. Master had laughed it off, and with soft eyes, said it was ‘life’s beautiful form of resilience’. She resisted verbal contradiction, knowing it would not make any difference.
Now, she contemplated long and hard at the dragon who had ruined not only her garden, but also her plans for an evening stroll. The Moon was in full, not a wisp of clouds interrupted her pale, lunar face. Moonlight, as molten silver, softened the dragon’s dark scales, making them glow— translucent, as the most luminous shell. Incredibly fragile, as though she could ground them to dust simply by rubbing her fingers together. For a wicked, tantalising moment, she almost did.
Life’s beautiful form of resilience, or whatever this was, she would like to see how far it could go, where it would lead her to, or if it would go down like embers of a dying flame.
She heaved a long sigh and made up her mind.
Chalking out a jagged rune circle in the dirt, she teleported the creature into the house.
***
The Sorceress was beginning to regret bringing in the dragon.
Her magic, usually so sharp and obedient, slid off the dragon’s hide like rain on oil. Its scales were deceptive—appearing as fragile as sea-glass, yet possessing an impenetrable metaphysical density. She had to do this the traditional way, that was, the herbal way of treatment.
Eying her herbal stocks in dismay, she knew without going through the jars and pots that they ran low. For the past season or so, she had not been able to spare a shred of willpower to refill her supplies aside from keeping up with the absolute minimal chores to sustain the illusion of a functional life. She had begun her research early spring, when there was still a shred of snow on the birches, and now the full-blown green of midsummer had announced its presence on those very same birches.
A trip to the village outskirts was required. She left a purse of gold and satchels of tea for the old herbalist on her way out. The old man would know she had dropped by, his mysterious, faceless client known only by an alias R.
By dawn, the bleeding had been coerced into a stop. Should it continue, the Sorceress might have given up and just let Death have his own way. She would gladly knock on Master’s door first thing in the morning and informed her that ‘life’s beautiful form of resilience’ was a fabrication of the weak-willed to justify their abjection, so prone to wretchedness and degradation they were enslaved even by a linguistic delusion of their self-making. The death of a dragon—an immortal, mythical, and almighty creature would be her ultimate proof.
As the first blue ribs of dawn cracked the sky, the Sorceress sank into a bath of scalding water, her arms still stained to the elbows. The blood unspooled in the water like silk ribbons. In the dining room, the dragon snored softly. She thought of the velvet-like texture of its scales, tender as shells, luminous as moonlight. They seemed to shimmer upon her touch, and yet was stubbornly resistant to her magic.
How deceptive they are, appearing so delicate yet indestructible.
Up close, she could vouch with certainty that this was a young dragon, barely grown, perhaps only a child in human age, prime of his youth. Did it even know how to fly? She doubted, having plucked wooden splinters buried deep all over its wings. There was something peculiar about this dragon that made her uncomfortable, an omen she could not quite decided if it was good or evil.
Dragons, as the Sorceress understood it, were highly intelligent creatures. They were solitary, often residing in selective, secluded areas from high mountains, deep gorges, to giant forests and great lakes that were remote to human civilisation. Territorial and reclusive, they remained a queer, mystifying object of curiosity even among the circle of sorceresses. What was documented of them were scarce and few.
To have one appear at one’s doorstep was, therefore, nothing short of strange, and very much a surprise. For a highly self-possessed creature such as a dragon to seek help from another that was not even one of their own was stranger still.
Or could he have known? She shook her head, water droplets flying. No, there was no way.
The Sorceress had a premonition, that the arrival of the Dragon at her doorstep was not coincidental. Fate, her worst enemy, fickle as light, deceptive as shadows, must have seen a cruel joke coming along the way. How she would love to see the Sorceress fall for her trick again.
She had pushed aside these thoughts as she busied herself with treating the dragon’s wounds. But now, in the moist quietness of a bath, apprehension reared its horns and gnawed at her unrelentingly.
Fisting her hands so tightly they drew blood, she vowed to herself that she must find out where this dragon came from. But for now, she had all the time she needed. If there was anything that immortality had taught her, it was that Time was an old man who was always late, distracted by the most insignificant thing as night stars, sand, or a face etched on some old tree trunks. But the man would come by eventually, and you need only to wait him out to reveal what was concealed along the way with a patience that could outrun even Time himself.
The first ray of blue was beginning to emerge. Clusters of stars, which had been outshone by the Moon, made their brief appearances before fading back into the gentle hues of blue. The Sorceress gazed afar, and let herself be temporally distracted by these fading stars. ***
By midday, her hunch was proven true. There was more to this mysterious little dragon than to what met the eye, for in just a mere couple of hours, all the wounds the Dragon sustained had vanished without a trace.
Certainly, her decisive tending to his wounds helped, but that would not explain fully the extraordinary speed in which they healed. While the young Dragon remained unconscious, the Sorceress believed it was the best of opportunity for her to fulfill both her intellectual interest and personal agenda.
Quick sketches done in charcoal sat among rolls of bandages, cottons and crushed herbs. A measure tape had rolled over to a chair’s leg, when the Sorceress was taking measurements of almost every measurable body parts of the Dragon, charting them rigorously on a pinboard.
As she was buried nose deep in her sketches, it escaped her attention that the Dragon’s tail was twitching.