Bless the Beast

I am Allegra. I am a warrior. I am a leader. I am the Queen of the dead. I am the Grim Reaper. I am the Wrath of God. I am Fury itself. My rage knows no end! I will silence that which is evil in one fell swoop of my talons. But at this moment, I am wounded. Man has harmed me for the last time, and I will fight to the death and kill any man that crosses my path as I try to heal here in the darkest of nights with only the moon to guide my eye as I lay vulnerable with only the shadows to protect me from the gaze of any passersby.

I am the last of my kind in the woods of solace and silence where I was once the Queen of all dragons in the land of pine and cedar near an ocean that now runs red with the blood of the winged dead mingled with that of men who believed that they were superior to we the gods of the air, land and sea.

I have heard trampling and whining for quite some time, and I fear that they are out to trick me the only divine one left who can conquer them. As they are all aware that the one thing I have vowed to never do is to destroy a youngling of any kind who displays honest innocence in my presence that I simply call amazing grace. And I do not want to believe that that which I hear is the heartbeat of a true youngling of man, and the scent of a child lost in what was once solely mine because I just want to sleep as long as I can.

Before I can even close my eyes to get one wink of sleep, a girl child of two or three appears before me in the clearing where I dare not go because the stench of the older ones is not far behind, and I need rest before I can finish them off; just a wink or two or three maybe more than four blinks, but as the sound of the child's cries becomes louder, my heart goes out to the innocence and the truth of her speech and the smell of the salt and sea of tears that run from her eyes. With what little of me is left to be shared with something that is not of my blood or kind, I guide the youngling with my mind and cloud her thoughts so that she will not fear that which is a fellow sentient being who is simply different and also truly divine unlike she: a human child of two or three.

With her young mind clearly under my control, I lead her to my side, so that my scaled body can protect her from the elements. She nestles against me and closes her eyes, and within seconds she is fast asleep. The soothing sound of her heartbeat is so close to the organ in my chest that resembles that in hers that her presence alone allows me to rest. At that moment, I decide that it is more important for her to be truly warm and safe than for me, the last of a species, to survive with my unhealthy and singular goal of wreaking havoc on her kind with a probable final result of my living alone forever with the word forever being undefined. Thus, with my tail, as she sleeps, I sweep together twigs and leaves, and start a small Prometheus fire with my dragon's breath so that at a minimum, she not I will survive the night.