Hope saves Night

"For the past few months our flyers have been quite low, and our most devoted flyer is in their mid-eight hundreds”

“I will always fly for this territory, till I take my last breath!” yelled the oldest dragon of Selene.

“Thank you, Jonas, you are very appreciated,” the wizard said nodding his head as he looked at his scroll full of notes. “In more recent news, the best of our ambassadors for the building of our magic school and one of the best flyers in this territory has sadly passed away, Mrs. Deimos. Her passing is a sorrow in all of our hearts”

The sounds of creatures and humans alike wondering why a dragon not even close to old would have died made the boring town meeting louder than its usual deafening silence. The sound and looks were sickening.

“Because of this our magic school building project will have to be postponed until further notice unless…Sir Deimos would you take the place of your mother and be a flyer and head ambassador for the magic school?”

“I am not my mother,” Nyx said looking around at the shocked and concerned looks in the group.

“Nyx! Have you no wisdom? This would help everyone, but your ego clouds your decision,” Jonas said raising his body and puffing smoke out of his nostrils.

“Even though I am only two hundred thirty I have plenty of wisdom. More wisdom than him,” Nyx said nodding toward the wizard.

“We do not have to get into who has the most wisdom right now, and if Sir Deimos doesn’t want to, he is under no obligation to continue his mother’s legacy. I’m sorry for your loss, Sir Deimos.”

Nyx said nothing, he just sat his head on his front arms. The rest of the meeting was a blur, Nyx couldn’t listen to anything other than the comments on his behavior in the whispers of the group. The looks even though he couldn’t see felt like swords stabbing him all over. He couldn’t bring himself to see who was looking at him for what if it was someone he once cared about, it would eat his soul. He thought that when his mother passed all of the terrible feelings and horrid things would go down to hades with her, but in some way, she still found a way to torture him in her grave.

Once the horn was blown, the fluttering, flapping, and thumping filled the air as everyone started their way home. The majority of them lived in the well-lit, warm, tightly built town, but Nyx lived quite far away from that luxury. He lived in a large cavern in the depths of the woods.

As Nyx was about to get into the woods quick footsteps followed him as Oedipus, the head wizard and Mayor of the town, tried to get Nyx’s attention.

“Sir Deimos, can I speak with you for a moment?”

“It’s Nyx” he said turning to look at the out of breath old wizard.

“…Nyx…I didn’t want to take too much time on it in the meeting but would you reconsider being just a flyer, instead of both flyer and ambassador?”

“I will never be a flyer. I’m sorry but I am no animal for some human to ride and even if I was a flyer for cargo I still would say no, I don’t fly…ever”

“I understand, but maybe in the future you’ll change your mind?” Oedipus said, bowing his head low to the ground, his mid length gray beard touching the earth.

“I won’t.” Nyx said now walking to his home.

Nyx never really cared to fly home even though it would be so much faster than walking. Nyx truly hated flying.

Flying brought back so many terrible memories of his mother and stepfather teaching him how to fly when he was fifty or so. The worst of which was when he was placed in the middle of a pine tree and was told to run up it. Then when Nyx was to reach the top, he would jump and fly, but that did not happen. Baby Nyx was so scared and frozen in spot that to make him move his stepfather started to set the bottom of the tree on fire. The fire grew quickly because of how powerful his breath was. When the fire started to burn baby Nyx’s tail he started to climb up as fast as he could, trying to prepare himself to jump. As he got to the top his front arms let go but his back legs didn’t, he fell straight through the burning pine, which left permanent holes in his wings and scars and burns on his whole body. That moment changed the way he looked for the rest of his life. He was always a large black and grey dragon with diamond blue eyes. After that his body was covered in light grey scars. The spikes on his head have cracks in them.

As Nyx was reminiscing about his awful childhood, he almost missed what was happening around him. There was a distant scream and the crashing of tree branches. Nyx thought it might be some little creatures playing, but after listening for a moment he knew that it wasn’t playing it was destroying. He didn’t want to get involved but his heart wouldn’t let it be.

He started to walk over to the sound. The sound was getting louder and louder and it became more and more evident that the little human, who was screaming for their little life, was not ok. When Nyx saw the child, he saw that fire and broken ground followed the child at her heels. She was screaming and crying and running, her own magic was terrifying her. It seemed that she was too young to understand that she was causing the destruction with her shadowing magic.

Nyx had no idea what to do with this child, he was never good at calming children; even if he was, this child had the largest shadow that Nyx had ever seen.

“Child calm down, you are ok,” Nyx said trying to talk as least threatening as possible. The child only screamed and ran around even faster causing more chaos.

“Please just breathe! Stop running, just control yourself,” he said frosty air coming out of his nostrils unintentionally. Nyx knew that even if the child were to stop running her magic wouldn’t stop causing her pain, so he knew what to do after seeing what other dragon parents did to their child.

Nyx stood in front of the child and gently grabbed her swaddling her lightly to the ground, the child screamed for a moment before calmly stopping. He then started to blow out fires with his icy breath. He guessed that this child had to be over one year old, but not over three based purely by her tiny body. She was so small and weak under his large hand.

After blowing out the flames he noticed that he couldn’t tell if the child was breathing or not. He started shaking immediately as he lifted his hand to see her fast asleep.

“Child why do you have to scare me like that?” he said softly as a smile appeared on one side of his face.

“What am I supposed to do with you? I can’t just leave you here, and I don’t know how well I can keep you,” Nyx knew that he couldn’t leave this toddler here all scratched up and bruised, he already knew that this child would come home with him and make his life so much more different.

Slowly he lifted her and started holding her on his chest then he tried walking home but walking on three legs wasn’t optimal, so he started lightly flapping his wings only hovering centimeters above the ground.

Nyx’s house was built for one dragon in mind and only one dragon. It had one large nest like bed that was raised like somewhat of a second story, but it had no stairs or ladders leading to it; it also had a high dinner table, cold ceilings, dark lightning, and walls covered in shelves of scrolls about everything that he might want to learn again.

When he got to his home the thought of why a tiny human would be that far into the woods by herself, finally entered his mind. Nyx would have heard a guardian calling or siblings scuttling, but there was no one with her.

Looking at his home usually made Nyx calm or at least pleased but holding a child in his arms made him notice all the dangerous things about his house. Before he even fully got his tail into the door his heart was racing on the possibilities of this girl getting hurt.

It was about quarter to nine when Nyx placed the child in his bed, putting a corner of his large old blanket on her tiny body, and when Nyx joined her to sleep it was half past midnight.

He had to do so many things before the child could walk around this place. He first put the bigger pillows that were on his bed on the floor by the ledge. Then he moved his dinner table up against his only empty wall. Then he took his least favorite blanket and put it on the floor like a rug. There was only one more thing that he had to do before the child could wake up; he had to lift all of the scrolls up so that the child wouldn’t touch them.

After cleaning all of his little nick knacks, he picked two scrolls to leave out of the torture of being clumped together with the others, the only two scrolls that spoke about magic. He put those scrolls on the dinner table to read in the morning.

He now could sleep, but he didn’t know if he could get in his bed without waking the child. There was no other option, because he didn’t have a lounge area. He never really had a reason to have a lounge, until just now.

Taking a deep breath Nyx crawled softly as possible into the bed. He wanted to give the child as much space as possible, so he pressed his spine up against the wall, tucking his tail, front and back leg, and head under his wing like a blanket. He would pop his head out all throughout the night, just to look at the child to make sure that she was breathing.

The sleep that Nyx got was as if he slept on a bed of cold nails with unexpected shock and anxiety waking you up every hour. He had never been in a parental role before and he never really wanted to but making sure that she was truly ok made his heart light up, even though he was so tired.

As the sun started to make the frigid air less than freezing, Nyx finally thought that he should get up. It seem that getting out of bed would be more difficult than getting into bed. Every time the blanket moved or if the child ever made a slight sound Nyx would freeze for at least a minute before moving again. The hardest part about getting off the bed was trying not to laugh at the child’s face while she slept; she had her mouth agape and her hair circled her head like a lion. She was the cutest child ever, her small body and little face, but her wheezes like an old man, made Nyx want to burst into laughs.

When he finally got out of bed, he looked around at his child proof house, a smile appeared on his face. He then noticed the scrolls on the dining table, sighing as he went to read.

“The sign of a strong wizard is…having a large shadow. When a human has a shadow, it does what the human does, but for wizards/witches their shadow is more of a flame or blob shape that never moves” he read, “The largest recorded shadow was as tall as the wizard that had it.” His heart kept feeling the emotions and hatred of his mother and how often his terrible mother would speak of these things. He hated how much he hated his mother and how much he hated magic. He knew that the child was more important to him than his feelings, even though he only knew her for a day. There was something about the child that brought him joy.

“If a wizard decides to not use their magic, they tend to get ill and the larger the magic the harder it is to get rid of and if a wizard with a large shadow tries to get rid of their magic, they will fall extremely ill, and they might even lose their life…Wizards are…” Nyx stopped as he heard groaning from his bed.

The child was trying to flatten her strawberry blonde hair while tears puddled in her icy blue eyes, rolling down her round face. Her face was getting whiter and whiter and her eyes getting redder and redder.

“Child, calm down…your hair looks fine,” Nyx said walking over to her.

“No! No,” she said shoving her head into the bed.

“What’s wrong?” he said jumping on the bed cupping her with his body. The child just cried. Nyx could only see himself in the child and his eyes started to water. He knew that his parents would have told him to stop and if he didn’t, they would beat him. Nyx never wanted to put the child through the same torture, so he just stroked her hair and tried to comfort her.

The child was calm after a few minutes, still flattening her hair with her hands, but she was no longer crying. Nyx asked if she wanted to get out of the bed and she just jumped onto his arm squeezing him as tight as she could with her arms and legs. Nyx just smiled and put his other arm on the child’s back as he scooted down to the floor covered in pillows.

Nyx feet hit the ground and his balance was truly tested, he had never noticed how hard walking on two legs was. He probably took four steps before he had to remove his arm from the child’s back to save them both from falling.

“Child, do you feel like walking around with me?” he said rubbing his cheek on her head. The child started to crawl off Nyx’s arm, but when she got down, she placed her hand on his arm while they walked to the dining room.

“Ah, I didn’t think about what you would eat…what do humans eat?” he said opening all the empty shelves in his kitchen. “We could go eat at the bakery…that sound like something a human would do.”

“No, no.” the child said hugging Nyx’s arm.

“Why not?” he said looking down at the child.

“Yucky,” the child said with tears in her eyes, her face getting very pale.

“The bakery is yucky?” he asked, bending his arms so that he was somewhat on her level.

“No,” she said, her hug getting weaker.

“What’s yucky then?”

“Me!” she said bursting into tears.

“Oh, I’m sorry that you don’t feel well,” Nyx said picking her up, looking at the scroll resting on the table. Nyx didn’t even know what to think, that a child this small would know how to hold back her magic, she was so young and unless she was told to do that then it wouldn’t make sense how she would know. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t harming herself like that, so he sat her on the dining table and looked at her cute little body.

“Where’s that shadow of yours?” Nyx said seeing that the child’s shadow was gone.

“No maggick, yucky maggick,” the child pouted.

“Your magic isn’t yucky…your magic is beautiful,” he said tilting his head in confusion. He was so shocked that he was saying those things.

“It is! Maggick is bad, it hurts,” she said now looking angry.

“If you learn how to control your magic you could help so many people. You are going to hurt yourself if you hold it back child…I don’t want you to be hurt,” Nyx said tears welling up in his eyes. The child just looked at him not trusting what he was saying.

“Do you feel yucky?” he asked knowing the answer but just wanting her to say it. The child nodded. “That’s because you are holding back your magic. Can you release your magic for me?” The child looked skeptical, but she took a deep breath in and a deep breath out and her enormous shadow appeared behind her.

“Do you feel better?” he asked smiling at her. The child nodded and a small grin went on her face. “I have a friend that knows more than me about good food, do you want to come with me and visit her?” he said, trying to sound sure of himself but in his heart, he felt terrified to see this old friend of his. The child nodded and started to climb on Nyx’s back hugging him tightly when she reached the top.

“Fly!” the child asked, tapping on his back when they got outside.

“You want me to fly there?” he asked screwing up his face.

“Pweese,” she said tapping on his back more and more. Nyx sighed knowing that he could never deny this child anything.

“Hold on really tight,” he said as he started to slowly flap his wings. The child’s grip was very tight, and Nyx knew that the child wouldn’t fall, but he made sure to say low so that they both felt safe.

This old friend lived close to the middle of Selene in a small house for a creature of her size, but it would be seen as a good-sized house to a human. When Nyx got to the outskirts of the town he landed softly and finished the travel walking. He didn’t want any of the gossipers to see him fly.

When they got to the old friend’s house all of the memories of how their friendship ended came back to Nyx and he didn’t know if he could knock on the door. When he was one hundred thirty his stepfather told Nyx that he wasn’t to be seen with his best friend, the wyvern girl, if he was, he would be burnt. His mother begged him not to, but every time Nyx would speak with the wyvern girl his stepfather would beat and burn him, and after a while Nyx couldn’t take it anymore and he stopped talking to her.

“Iris, can I speak with you for a moment?” he said knocking on the door. Iris opened the door and was shocked to see Nyx standing there with a tiny human on his back. Iris was a small wyvern, her wings and horns being mint green and her body turquoise. Her eyes a sunny yellow.

“Nyx…why do you have a person on your back?” Iris asked, a smile lighting up her face.

“I found her, and I don’t know what people eat…I thought you might know?” he asked, remembering how much he liked her smile.

“I can make her porridge?”

“Please, that would be so helpful,” he said as he helped the child off of his back.

“Wow she’s young…uhh come in,” she said ushering them in. “You found a child this small…where did you find her?” Iris said while she started making the porridge.

“She was in the woods somewhat near my house…she was alone…fighting with her magic,” Nyx said looking at the child while she played with his tail, her magic swaying like flame. “Oh, that reminds me do you have any scrolls about magic and spells or scrolls about magical people?” he asked now, looking at Iris.

“Of course, I love learning about those thing…I thought you didn’t like magic,” she said pouring the porridge into a bowl.

“I want to learn as much I can for the child…she was hurting herself with her magic because she didn’t know better, and her terrible parents must have not cared enough to teach her anything,” he said picking up the child getting her ready to eat.

“Are you going to keep her?”

“Planning on it”

“What about her parents? They’re probably worried sick about their little one.”

“Her parents left her in the woods, she could have died. Why would I care about their feelings?” Nyx said lightly blowing on the hot porridge before the child put her fingers in it.

“I understand but, Nyx, you should at least look for the parents to tell them their child isn’t hurt and that she’s safe in your care,” she said watching how invested Nyx is to the child. “And what if she wants to go back to her home?” Iris added.

“Fine when she’s done eating, we can go to the counsel hall and look for her parents, but, if they seem even a bit off, I’m not letting them take her back. I don’t want her to get hurt,” he said rubbing the child’s back watching her sloppily eat. Iris just nodded.

When the child finished eating the three of them went to the counsel where Oedipus called for a meeting of all Selene. The bell rung and after ten minutes the whole of Selene was in town hall and then in a loud voice Oedipus called for the parents of the child to stand forward.

“We are Mallory’s mother and father,” said two pretentious parents as they stepped forward. The child’s eyes opened wide, and her magic roared. Fire started to cover her hands and she started to shake.

“Did you know that your daughter could have died? She was in the woods fighting with her magic. Where were you to protect her?” Nyx said pushing the wizard out of the way.

“You know there is a lot of stress in moving into a new house and having a very destructive child doesn’t make it easier,” the woman said as she tried to grab her child.

“Get away from her!” Nyx said crystals of ice flared from his nose as he covered the child with his arm. Rubbing her back he tried to calm her shaking.

“She is my daughter!” the woman said backing away.

“You have no right to be her mother. Why didn’t you look for her? Why was she even out there in the first place?” Nyx wanted to scream but he didn’t want to scare the child any more than she already was, so he kept his composure as much as he could.

“We let her outside so that we could clean the house…and when she wasn’t in the backyard, we thought one of your kind ate her!” the man said putting an arm around his wife. The crowd gasped at the man’s words.

“How old is the child?” Nyx asked, tilting his head, still rubbing the child’s back.

“She will be two in a month,” the man said.

“You left a two-year-old out…Oedipus, I’ve heard enough.” Nyx said as he started to walk away with the child.

“Where do you think you’re going? Give us our Mallory back!” the woman said walking towards the child.

“No. You are not good enough for her,” Nyx said looking at the child.

“And you think you are?” the man asked.

“I will be better than the both of you!”

“Nyx, you can’t just take the child. “At least give the child the opportunity to pick who she wants to stay with,” Oedipus said.

“Fine, it’s a deal. If the child comes to you then you can take her but if she wants to stay with me then I get to keep her,” Nyx said.

“Fine.” The woman and man said together. “Mallory come to mommy and daddy! Come to mommy, baby,” the woman begged and begged, and the child just hid behind Nyx’s arm till she stopped.

“Do you want to stay with me?” Nyx asked the child and she nodded vigorously. “Alrighty then let’s go home,” he said picking her up and putting her on his back.

After walking out of the crowd Nyx asked Iris for those scrolls about magic and she gave them to him. “Thanks, it was nice talking to you again,” he said as he walked away. Iris just nodded. When he was out of the town, he flapped his wings and finished the journey by flight.

That night while he was reading the magic scrolls to the child, she started laughing.

“What’s so funny? The biggest ambassador for magic was a dragon named Elpida,” he said looking at the child. The child just kept on laughing.

“Do you like that name Elpida?” he asked. The child nodded.

“Do you want to be called Elpida?”

The child nodded then she hugged Nyx.

“Ok, Elpida it is then. I didn’t think Mallory fit you anyway,” Nyx said hugging his favorite human, “Elpida, I will take care of you, I will teach you everything you need to know, I’ll teach you how to be the best witch that the world has ever seen, and I will love you through all of it.”