Knight of The Dragon

Knight of The Dragon

‘The quest for Sagittarius A’

There weren’t always dragons in the valley, and the Cosmos didn’t always get their water from the stream, either. When the war exhausted, if you hadn’t fallen on the front lines you were likely claimed by famine or disease, even dehydrated to death. The Dragons reconciled the drought, restoring balance and reining in the new days. Sya and the surviving cosmos were visitors on their island and in leverage of the situation, they were lucky the creators kept mostly docile. The Dragon was believed to be the only remaining.

Water flowed gently vanishing in a large clay vat, it had been a scrupulous winter, very wet, indicating a plentiful harvest. Once filled, Sya set aside the cask and gathered from the cool spring with her hands to drink. Long crimson hair fell in waves, full of salt against skin now browned by the sun. Built with lean muscle and humble curves, Sya was barely 5 feet on her toes. Ember lit green eyes closed while she savored the fresh water and then splashed her freckled cheeks, wiping her leathery rose lips.

She drew a breath with shaded gratitude in her heart, remembering a time when the valleys were dry, where her brothers likely died of thirst and by consequence of apathy and greed. She held a grim vision of bodies stacked and left to rot.

Sya and a group of others had made it through The Slip. Time jumped from 2050 when the Eva project was created to ensure survival groups. The goal; natural fertility and reproduction. Trouble was, men were subordinate. The Cosmos or rather, the people, like most species, evolved to be 97% female, and the few boys that had jumped were claimed in the first year by a blood sickening virus.

Turns out the future didn’t favor men.

If the girls were to come across any, they were to turn him over immediately to Mother. Likely to sicken him with liquor serums and force every girl in the village upon him. Clock was ticking, afterall.

The sun descended quickly across thick grasses that had turned the color of pale wheat as the season raced towards a blazing summer. Olive, pomegranate and orange trees had dropped their fragrant blossoms to begin fruiting, and the paper-thin red Anemone Poppies and creamy yellow Crown Daisies wilted under the late May sun. This was a bountiful land, thanks to the Dragons, but if the Cosmos couldn’t procreate, they only had 6 harvests left.

Suddenly a swishing of backlit, tall foxtails was heard. Sya’s eyes searched like switchblades reaching for her side harness to feel she had serum shots, just in case. Across the dried nettles and dandelion weeds, the sound approached rapidly. Furry white seeds dispatched and danced through the golden light. Her heart began to throb in her ears, a side effect of The Jump.

She held ground.

From the corner of her eye she caught the flicker of blazing gold, pink, orange and glistening bronze scales. She gasped, her small, muscular frame gripped in anticipation, she wore only cream mud cloth wrapped around her smooth skin like a mummy. There they were, the golden irises flickering in the silhouette of the sun, panning between whimsical millet wheat.

“I see you,” she whispered, and the scaled serpent’s eyes snapped shut and open like a camera shutter. She wished she could take a picture for a moment, but those, like water from plastic bottles, were left behind in The Jump to the Age of Capricorn. Good riddance, she thought.

“It’s ok.” Sya remained crouched and still. She was patient with the beast who extended no more than 8 feet in length and made its way tactfully through the thistles on 4 raptor like feet complete with razor sharp claws. She drew in a steady breath, though the Dragons weren’t by nature aggressive, they could still be territorial, the Cosmos had occupied the island for over a year now, and the Dragons hadn’t exactly been treated humanely. If it were Mother, this gentle giant would have already been shot by sleeping serum.

“You’re amazing,” she spoke quietly to herself and gently wisped her fingers together and clicked her tongue as though to conjure a cat. The creature advanced, but with caution. Sya noticed the whiskers long and fluid like tentacles of a jelly fish, airborne in their feathery weight.

Just. Magic.

The fantastical beasts made the land fertile; they brought the rain and even pollinated the plants. Mother claimed they sprung up after the Final Cleanse or, the days after war, as a mutation of surviving breeds adapted to Climate Distribution. Now, for the Cosmos it was the Dragons who promised a new kind of man, super-humanism, and the dawn of a new age. It was nearly 2,500 years since 2050, the year they’d jumped from, and according to the oracle, the next flood was right around the corner. It didn’t matter for the dragons, they could fly, and swim.

Evolved to perfection, and Mother wanted to bottle it up in a syringe and jab it into the Cosmos arms. Intervention was critical in her terms.

She remained perfectly still, to be honest it was the closest she could recall. His face came into complete view and Sya was breathless by its masjesty.

“You’re like a dream.”

It was a face of legends, glowing gold and panning colors in the sun, like a Chinese parade charater, glittering greens with swaths of purple and blue dancing across the pale peach base scales and Sya was in awe as it, (a he, she reckoned) revealed his entire form, snakelike with a large torso, a seized core and the tail; a wonderful kite of plumed muttonchops spinning circles in the heavenly breeze.

She flexed her elf-like frame, drawing a single breath, sitting upright.

The dragon didn’t take his eyes away and neither did Sya.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I’m safe,” she whispered as the irises continued to shift. She thought about the dragons in captivity on the island, being used as test subjects for DNA evolution that would one day be injected into Sagittarius A, possibly even her and from there would begin a new race of man, ensuring evolution, or rather, forced evolution.

Then something extraordinary happened. The Dragon unlocked eyes with Sya and advanced to the springs edge, she watched as it patiently drank, slurping clear cool water like a horse might.

“You’re not afraid of me.” Sya continued as she watched it crouch down to the banks, resting on haunches and tucking its body closer to the waters source, gulping away. Sya could feel herself begin to reach out a hand, and it was against her own good will, the dragons eyes switched back to hers and abruptly sat up from watering, raptor arms tucked into its chest, keeping gaze as Sya’s hand continued to reach in length.

The Dragon froze. Sya froze. Time froze.

“Are you lost!”

A high voice pitched through the moment and the Dragon let out a snarled yawn she could only liken to a wild cat, flashing his gleaming white and definitely sharp teeth and in an instant, wings extended like a condor and the flawless creature climbed to the air. Whooshing was heard and the force of a vortex fanned over her skin and she watched not just her Dragon rise, but two more further into the valleys gorge. The three ascended spiraling around each other playfully for a moment before vanishing beyond a sheer rock cliff hugged by the old stone walls of Illios island.

“Oh my God, Sya! Did you see that?” it was the voice of Rey. She emerged from the other side of the stream wearing only a thin cotton coverup that revealed her perfect legs from a side slit. Her blonde platinum-streaked silk hair in length swooned across her face, complimenting her pale grey, blue speckled eyes.

“Of course, and you scared him off.” Sya said with a laugh but also a bit of resentment, what she wanted to say was, “you ruined it.”

“Sorry! It’s just, Mother is looking for you” Rey had aged 35 years but the girl didn’t look a day over 17. Time jumping through the Slip had reversed aging slightly, or at least considerably slowed it. Sya would have been 29 in July, but now, her face too took on that more of a child, while their bodies blossomed like the caper flowers.

“It came closer this time” Sya started “I …”

“Did you touch it? Sya you’re really not supposed to, but did you.”

She sat beside the bubbling spring water as golden streaks of light spun across the surface in the waning sun. Rey waited.

“Almost.” Sya was less enthusiastic. “They’re so beautiful, but they don’t trust us.”

“I suppose not after seizing them for their blood.” Sya could only shudder at the words.

She looked right at the plummeting sun remembering what her Mum had once said; “Don’t look at what the sun touches, but rather look right into the sun, then you’ll know how unforgiving this life is.” Days later she was dead.

“You know, in the legends they say they hunted and slayed the dragons, so at least we’re beyond that barbarianism.” Rey had a way of justifying just about everything.

“Yeah, now they’re just used towards our own selfish advances, history repeating, again.”

“Anyways, in the new age they’ll be our allies, and we’ll be their avatars!” It was a nice thought, but Sya returned to having only 6 harvests left in the Valley of the Moon, unless the 3% existed somewhere, the lost boys of pure blood, and of course as long as at least some of the Cosmos still had good eggs. Only then could Sagittarious A be born.

“We have to get to screening before dinner, you know how Mother gets.” Rey still had a bit of a South African draw in her voice. Sya talked steady and stern, trying with all her might to forget London, her village of Finchingfeild in Essex full of death, and everything else that fell in the Aquarian Cleanse.

“Rey,” Sya began still looking right into the slipping, golden sun.

“Yeah?” she was a good friend when she needed to be.

“Do you think, if the 3% lives, that they’ll remember how to love?” Rey smiled shaking her head and laughing through her nose like she often did.

“I don’t know, but they’d better be ready to give cause there’s gonna be a long line of little nyphs!” They both laughed, but Sya also cringed. She wondered if one day, in the New Age, there’d be a holy book that spoke of the Valley of the Moon, the Cosmos, the first Man, the serum, the Dragon.

She wanted to know more now, of the future, but the Oracle hadn’t foreseen the virus. She also hadn’t seen the age reversal, the Cosmos dying so young, some of the others dying even now.

The oracle had however spoke of the flood, and according to the timeline, that was coming fast.

“Do you miss it? The land before the slip? I mean, do you miss your family?”

“I do, but look how lucky we are to be selected, real life Musketts!”

“Trust me they had it far worse than this, don’t glamorize.” She thought of how the elite had left on Mars One, an expedition that removed them from the war. Musketts were women, mostly girls, chosen to go as ‘company’.

Everyone knew what that meant.

“I know,” she followed, "it’s just, we are lucky, we made it through The Jump and now we’re here to serve, to make us again in our image with the dragons, Supers, so that in the future, there won’t have to be anymore war or drought or deadly viruses.” She had an innocence that felt labored at times.

“But think about the 3% and if they exist, how can we force them into reproduction?” Sya sat grim.

Rey only laugh. “Aha, trust me if they’re anything like 21st century men, they’re not gonna mind!”

Sya shook her head, but a smile creeped in on one side. She wasn’t wrong. But The Slip had vanished, like the oracle predicted. The Cosmos were in the company of Dragons now and they were otherwise, alone.

“Let’s go!” Rey insisted, “you’ll be on Cinderella duty for Chist sake!”

Together they stood and crossed barefoot through the stream, Sya carrying the clay vat filled with clean spring water for their meal. She watched as the sun finally slipped beyond the crystal sea that was calm like oil and fading into shades of indigo and orange.

The truth was, Sya wasn’t as concerned with reproduction and who would successfully birth Sagittarius A. She was far more attentive to the dragon, she was drawn to them, bound by something she couldn’t quiet explain. To Sya it was all that mattered. The legend of the 3%, didn’t seize her interest like the others.

As they threaded back to the ruins of Vrill, the once fortress now village which followed 380 ancient stone steps atop the islands northmost cliff, Sya felt a surge of vertigo. Dizzied, she dropped at once to the stone forced to surrender into a vision.

“Sya!” Rey’s faint voice was heard as blackness closed in around her.

. . .

It was nightfall, but by the light of a waxing full moon she could hear the screech of the Dragon. The vision flashed in and out and the silverly olive branches danced in the wind as the creature landed. A hand reached out and the dragon went to it. The shadowy figure was nuzzling the creature’s smoking snout, she strained under the pressure of the optic to hear a voice, a young sounding tone: male. The sudden insight was so real, Sya could smell the blooming night jasmine.

“Hello there, I’m sorry I’ve been away so long” he swung his head and hair that fell to his chin in a slanted line fell across his face. With broad and strong shoulders flexed, he rubbed the dragons neck.

It didn’t resist. He looked right into its eyes, fixed.

Another flash and at once the moonlit dragon was netted. The boy protested, drawing a glimmering weapon from his side. A group of shadowed figures fought to contain both subjects. Sya flinched as she heard them both cry for help. The boy was overwhelmed by the group who had syringes drawn, then there was that familiar voice.

“Knock em out.” Guttural and distinguished, it could only be Mother.

Sya felt taken by rage. She was helpless, pounding the cement stone stairs as suddenly the world re-appeared and a faint blue light hung across The Valley of the Moon.

“What happened?” Rey was hankering, her soft, strong hands squaring Sya’s shoulders.

“He’s coming.” She was panting, hard, exhausted by the insight.

“The knight is coming, and we must protect him.”

END Chapter one