“Dragon, stop,” she gasped reflexively, jerking backward against the trough.
She’d known what the beast was, as she knew many things she’d never personally experienced, but it hadn’t really hit her until that moment. She’d never seen one in person, and it was so dark. The driving need to live hadn’t allowed any room for petty things like rational thought, likely maybe trying to stab a dragon wasn’t a good idea. Not until it was too late.
I tried to fight a dragon with scissors.
Alashiya’s bones turned to liquid. She slumped against thetrough and stared, wide-eyed, into the gullet of the dragon. Waiting.
She didn’t know why a dragon might want to hurt her. Perhaps it didn’t have a reason. Not every monster required an evil motivation to act, and not every evil act required a monster.
Of course, over the years she’d given a lot of thought to how she might go. Injury and disease were most likely, but she’d never ruled out bludgeoning, poison, and murder in the general sense. Nymphs were notoriously easy pickings, but it seemed cosmically unfair that her demise would be entirely worse than the expected: burned alive by dragonfire.
Alashiya’s life didn’t flash before her eyes. Stitches did. Every unfinished line of silk thread and glittering chip of gold bullion appeared to her as she stared into the maw of the dragon, past teeth the length of her hand, and into the burning heart of the beast.
I didn’t finish Adon’s robe,she thought, pierced by the unfairness of it all.
She’d labored over her latest commission for weeks. Her fingertips were nearly permanently bruised from forcing her needle and thread through stiff velvet every day. She dreamed of what the man who’d commissioned it would say when he peeled back the tissue paper to see it for the first time.
She always poured her heart into his projects and she was never, ever late. Because it was for Adon.HerAdon, the mysterious figure onto which all her fantasies clung.
When the date of delivery passed without a word, would he wonder what had happened to her? Would he spare her a thought when she was just an ashen smear against an old, rusty animal trough? Aside from her neighbors, he was probably the only person in the world who would think of her when she was gone. At least, she hoped he would.
Something hot splashed her cheek.
Alashiya reflexively touched her skin, but it wasn’t a tear thatdribbled down her cheek to fall from her chin. It was viscous. Hot.
Dragging her gaze away from the dragon’s mouth, she was startled to see something dark and shiny streaming from its snout.
The dragon was bleeding. Not from anything she’d done, she thought, though she’d certainly tried her best. Fresh blood reflected the flickering light of the dragon’s flame. The more she looked, the more she found: slashes along its long, scaly throat, a gouge across the width of its chest, and many more smaller wounds she could only just make out against the backdrop of its dark skin.
As she was looking, the dragon’s lips peeled back from its pearly white teeth. There was a great movement of air all around her as it mantled its wings over them both, the appendages trembling violently with effort. The blue glow reflected off the underside of its wings, showing off their massive width and wickedly clawed tips.
Dragons were people just like everyone else. She knew that. They could understand speech and comprehend the world even in their four-legged forms. If they wanted to, her intruder could have communicated with her in some other way, but there was no compassion in their eyes, no clear desire to speak to her. There was only something animal, something base and possessive in them that made her blood curdle.
The dragon looked at her like he wanted to swallow her whole.
Alashiya’s temper flared. She was weak and small, armed with sewing tools and a little good sense, but she was a wild thing, too. She bared her teeth right back at it.
Raising her scissor’s high, she rasped,“Go!This ismyhome, dragon. Leave!”
A hot gust of air from the dragon’s bloody nostrils was her only response. Before she could decide what that meant, it snapped its jaws at the hand clutching her scissors. A short screamerupted from her throat as she drew her arm in close, dropping the pitiful weapon.
Her mind blanked again as the prospect that she might actually beeaten,rather than burned alive, made itself comfortable in her. It’d happened to nymphs in her line before, butgods,she really thought she’d earned a better ending than that.
The dragon let loose another ground-shaking rumble before it lunged for her. There were no more screams in her. She didn’t make a sound when its teeth closed around the front of her cover-up. They slid through the fabric with ease, and she immediately understood how very mundane it would be for the dragon to rip her open. One bite and she’d be little more than viscera in the grass.
But that bite never came. Neither did the fire.
Instead, she had the breath knocked out of her one more time as the dragon jerked her forward and began to drag her toward the barn, its head lowered and eyes roving wildly all around. Alashiya was pulled off balance. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was prey being dragged back to a den and that it was useless to try and kick or punch their snout, but she did it anyway.
If the dragon noticed her struggles, her blows, her howling outrage, or her frantic twisting to wriggle out of her clothing, they didn’t acknowledge any of it. Wings folded in a threatening stance and violet eyes flickering around the wild yard and forebay, the dragon hunched low when their hind quarters reached the entrance of the barn.
Their wings snapped closed and twitched strangely against their back. With one final burst of speed, the dragon hauled them inside the musty, half-destroyed barn. She watched with horror as a long, spiked tail swung out from behind them to draw the barn door closed.
Darkness, nearly complete save for the tiny amount of ambient light let in through a portion of collapsed ceiling, settled over them both.
The adrenaline that buoyed her strength had fled. Her limbs went heavyand numb, her mind fuzzy. The familiar scent of the converted barn — dust, hay, meals cooked over a communal fire many decades ago — filled her head as she fought to see anything beyond the dragon’s eyes.
They dropped her onto the cracked concrete floor with a massive huff. Alashiya didn’t dare move. She fought to catch her breath as she watched those eyes glow in the darkness. Even if she hadn’t been able to see them, she could feel how close the dragon was as they huffed and puffed and breathed all over her. More blood splattered her face, her neck, as they snuffled at her hair.
