Flame Touched

The dragon watched as a little girl emerged from the bushes. It had been many centuries since he’d been welcome in a settlement, but he'd spent enough time around humans, to guess her age was around two or three. He wondered where her parents might be, to let a child so young wander off on her own. At two years of age, a dragon was already hunting for its own meals. But human children were different; slower, and weaker and lacking the cunning that made their elders so formidable.

The little girl giggled as she watched a squirrel scamper up a nearby tree. “So innocent,” Bailey whispered. The girl swivelled around, startled by the sound. Bailey cursed himself for his foolishness.

With narrowed eyes, the girl glanced back and forth around the clearing before finally shrugging her shoulders and returning to her play. Cast in shadows of magic, she could look directly at Bailey and see nothing but the tree line behind him. As a child, she’d have yet to learn about a dragon’s tricks. But an elder would have known how to spot the edge of his binding right away. Better dragons had been killed for smaller slip-ups.

Bailey felt his chest tighten with a pang of grief. Not only for dragons lost, but for the world that had once been. One of peace and prosperity, where humans and dragons and gods had once lived side by side.

Bailey was almost as old as the gods themselves, and he could remember what paradise was like. After all these millenniums, he was still not sure if his memories were a blessing or a curse. Was it better, to have lived in a perfect world only now to be confronted each day with the shortfalls of this one? Or would it have been better to have grown up, believing that suffering was inevitable and that the world was always cruel? He didn’t know.

His memories were a good place to retreat to, but heartbreaking to return from. Like most fools, Bailey wished he could change the past. To have stopped Stormbrew when he first suspected his plan. To have done something. He knew he couldn’t go back, but he could remember and regret…

It was a broken promise that had rotted the world. But those who had stood back and let it happen were just as much to blame.

In the age of paradise, dragons had served as the steeds to the gods, ferrying them between their homeland Aestir and the mortal realm. Ever their favourite creations, the gods had delighted in spending time with humans. Wanting their favourites to thrive, they imparted much of their wisdom to them. They taught humans to forage and hunt for food. They taught them to plant crops and build settlements, to catch fish and tame wild animals.

But, as decreed by Maia, Queen of the Gods, they were never to gift humans with the flame of creation. This is the flame that ends the night, and casts warmth upon the world, allowing crops to grow and life to prosper. No matter how much humans might look to the sky, and long to touch the flame, they must never be given fire.

Maia, their Queen, had killed her own mother, to forge this new world. She had made mountains from her flesh, the rivers from her blood, and scattered her brains across the sky to make clouds. Maia, with the memory of her mother’s blood on her hands still fresh in her head and heart, feared betrayal most of all. She loved her creations more than anything. But knew if they had access to fire, they would have enough power to rise up against her.

And yet, Maia’s steed, Stormbrew, loved humans like his own hatchlings. And like a proud parent, he wanted more for them.

“They shiver in the dark,” Stormbrew had scowled. “When a thimble’s worth of flame could keep them safe and warm.”

“I agree.” Bailey had said, “That doesn’t mean it is not forbidden.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s right either.” The old dragon huffed. “The Gods teach them much, but there is so much more they could achieve; forging tools and roasting meat, ending the dark of night….”

Bailey let out a long drawn-out sigh. It had not been the first time they had had this conversation, and he was certain it would not be the last. And yet, there was an edge in Stormbrew’s voice that made him hesitate. That made him look his friend in the eyes and remind him quietly but sternly, “It is forbidden.”

Stormbrew swallowed, “Of course.” He said and nodded more times than was perhaps necessary. “Of course,” he repeated, more jovially, but his voice sounded frayed to Bailey’s ears.

“Would you fancy a night fly, to clear your head?” Bailey asked, it was a tactic he had often employed, to settle some of Stormbrew’s worse moods.

But his friend shook his head, “No, I think- I think I just need some time to think.”

Itching for a flight himself, Bailey had let it be and set out to go alone. He wished he hadn’t. He wished he’d chosen to stay with his friend and helped him pass his strange mood. He wished he hadn’t ignored his concerns. If he had, the whole world might have turned out differently.

That night, Stormbrew flew to the surface of the sun and scooped flame into his mouth, as one would water from a trough. Bailey could only imagine his friend’s agony. Closer inspection of his body had revealed rows of blisters on the inside of his mouth, seared lungs, and a face of peeled-off scales.

Stormbrew could have spat out the flame right then and there; saving himself from immeasurable pain. But he didn’t.

Bailey had imagined his friend's flight to earth many times. He imagined his eyes were blurry from the pain and that he flew most of the journey from memory. He imagined his whole body had been shaking and shuddering. He imagined Stormbrew smelling the putrid scent of his own burning flesh. And he imagined, that through the whole journey, he had held onto his love for humans resolutely. Knowing that at any time, he could breathe out the flame, and still, stubbornly, bravely, refusing to give in.

His friend crashed to earth, and at last he opened his mouth to let the flame out; gifting humans fire, with his final dying breath.

Maia’s anger knew no bounds. The very world shook, with the might of her rage. But beneath it all, Bailey knew that she was afraid. The whole dragon race seemed to hold their breath, waiting to see what she would do. And for a time, it almost seemed like she would do nothing. They had almost allowed themselves to hope. But what came next was worse than anything they could have imagined.

A curse was cast. A curse of pain, of suffering, of hunger, disease, and hate. If her creations were too busy fighting each other; they would never turn on her.

Perhaps this was part of Maia’s curse, or perhaps they simply blamed them for what had happened, but humans swiftly turned on dragons. They hunted them down, slaughtering them by the thousands. The most formidable of the hunters were those they called flame touched.

Present for Stormbrew’s final moments, these were the mortals who had first seen the flame in all its glory. And the flame had left its mark, turning their hair a bright auburn. They were faster and stronger than the rest of the humans and fought with a ferocity not even a dragon could match. But above all they were cruel.

He’d lost his own mate to one of them. Having left to search for food, he'd been gone for several days. He returned to their cave to find her lying down with a festering wound in her belly. The hunter had left her to die in agony. He could still hear her whimpers, see her brown eyes filled with tears and her whole face contorted in pain.

Bailey had once loved humans, as Stormbrew did. He had shared meals with them and taught them secrets. He had been willing to lay down his life for them. But he knew that humans now were too far gone, too cursed. Maia’s magic had worked, and he could deny it no longer.

Still, it was easy to look at the little girl in the clearing and see hope. He watched her as she tried to catch dappled golden sunlight in her tiny fingers. She was so young and small, so kind and pure. But he knew deep down that would soon change. That he could not ignore the tufts of red hair atop her head and let her live.