Of Fire and Tide

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. The Lanterna mountains imploded, crashing into the ground - leaving behind only craters of soil and rock. Now devoid of sun, the flora and fauna that had once sustained the land wilted into nothing. The villagers began to starve. Many packed their belongings and moved onwards to more fruitful plains. Some died on the journey, others were lost to the harshness of the winter. Those that survived took root again but would wistfully remember the place that had been home. They would talk of the majestic Karianarga tree that would flower under the touch of the morning sun, leaving parcels of handtied food – succulent salifir meat, sweet mead cake and bottles of candied dew.

They had never known hunger and neither had their ancestors before them. And they had never felt the clutches of a winter wind - for warmth and comfort had emanated from the ground beneath their feet. Such had been the way in Eventia. The queen had ruled with a fair and just hand, never wavering from her dedication to the villagers and the land.

They often wondered what had happened to their flame haired beauty.

On rarer occasions when beer and wine took its course, they would talk of a quest to restore what had once been, but in the sombre light of dawn, they knew that such a feat would be impossible for they had no idea where to even begin. And so, they concluded in hushed tones that they had lost its queen and therefore its magic.

Dispersed and at odds with this new way of life, stories of the old dispensation slowly disappeared. The benevolent queen and the bountiful land became more myth than memory – a fairy tale told at the Sanbaniata around the fire or distraction for hungry children. Nothing more.

Or at least it would have been, but for the curiosity of an innocent heart. A rarity in the cruelty of perpetual winter. Amarosia was a quiet child, her mind too occupied with stories and fables for the boisterous games of her brothers. Caught in a daydream and propelled by the fireside tales that had first ignited her imagination she found herself walking along the old barren trail of the river that had once sustained her ancestors.

As she wandered, her eyes followed the path, imagining what might have once been in this once benevolent land. She had never known a full belly or felt the sun on her back but in her mind, she was transported back to better time. She stared hard at the empty riverbed, willing it to rise. Nothing. But something did catch her eye. Right in the centre of the cavernous expanse there was a shimmer of sorts. A strange iridescent flicker. She scrambled down the side of the frozen embankment. A scale. She smoothed it gently with her thumb and began to feel a gentle warmth emanating from its core. It pulsed softly under her touch. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth to spread through her hands and upwards into her body. It offered a welcome relief from the cold that had long embedded in her bones.

As the warmth progressed it was as if a collective memory had been ignited; her mind was flooded with visions; a land teeming with life, the river alive and sparkling, and at its edge, a woman with flame-red hair, majestic and powerful but her green eyes were filled with a desolation that can only be born from a heart that has been broken. The queen.

Amarosia felt an overwhelming compulsion. The scale seemed to be willing her forward. Her feet could not stop if she tried and so she relinquished herself to its power – gripping it tightly as she walked. As the warmth grew, so too did the strength of her visons. Sharpening into vivid, touchable recollection. She saw the great Karianarga tree, blossoming under the shimmer of a breaking dawn, the mountains reach upwards to their zenith, snow-capped and surrounded by perfectly manicured fields, rich with crops. And in amongst it all the queen’s laughter reverberating throughout the land. Joyous and free.

As quickly as they had appeared the images shifted, fading into a bleak and desolate silence. The river receded and the mountains trembled to the floor, taking all with them. Amarosia felt the sharp cut of betrayal, sinking to her knees in bewildered despair. She clung to the scale as she cried.

“Find me, Amarosia. Find me”, a whisper drifted through the air.

Steadying herself, Amarosia spoke into the darkness, “Show me the way.”

The scale glowed brighter.

Amarosia rose, her eyes fixated on the faint path illuminated before her. She stepped forward,

The path serpentined through the remains of the Lanterna mountains. Time stopped in motion as she walked through days and nights - fixated only on the scale’s pull.

Disoriented and disconcerted, she stood outside the opening of a large cave. The scale grew warmer and the light that had been faint spread into an evanescent beam, irradiating the darkness in front of her. She gazed around at the walls; each were etched with mysterious runes – depictions of the queen and the land she had once held dominion over.

Amarosia inhaled loudly, steadying herself, she knew that she had found what she had come for.

The scale dropped from her outstretched hand – it’s glistening light reaching outwards in every direction before solidifying into a faint outline of a figure – not of human form but that of a dragon. Eyes glistening azure with the sorrow of water and scales glowing with the scarlet energy of fire.

Amarosia stepped backwards, “Queen?”

“Yes Amarosia. It is I” The voice was gentle like the evening song of a nightingale. I have long awaited your arrival. A pure heart strong enough to rekindle the magic that endures beneath the earth.”

“But I don’t understand. You’re a..”

“Yes dear. That I am. It is, as I am sure you can imagine, rather a complicated affair. Alas, there is little time for life stories. Watch”

The dragon queen breathed softly onto the wall of the caves. Flames flickered lightly across the stone walls depicting all that had gone before. Each scene shifting and shimmying into the next. The queen as a young dragon, her scales alive with fire and water, her eyes bright with innocence and ambition. The land was exuberant, verdant and pulsating with energy. They were one and the same.

The scenes shifted, showing the queen walking among her people in human form, her flame-red hair tumbling from her crown of lilacs. The images blackened – red and orange filtering into ash. A woman dressed in a black cape, her smile twisted and askew.

Amarosia’s felt a sharp pang in her chest as the images unfurled: the queen’s laughter softening, as she fell into the arms of her lover. The gentle, nurturing strength of love.

And then, the deep knife wound of betrayal.

Amarosia watched as the queen’s heartbreak unleashed her true form, her dragon self-emerging in a moment of anguish, her breath turning rivers backward and her grief shattering the mountains.

“I loved her,” the dragon queen murmured. “But she was not who she claimed to be. I was nothing more than a conduit. A way for her to steal the magic of the land. But she did not understand that earth magic – it cannot be fooled or realign to another. It’s essence belongs only to whom it has been bestowed.

Amarosia felt the queen’s pain deep within her own chest. “What must I do?”

The queen sighed, she looked up, her deep eyes still filmed with the weight of tears, “It will not be an easy journey, child, but you have the purity of spirit to make it. I am sure of it.

The dragon queen dipped her head, and with a delicate breath, she released a single ember, a spark which floated down to rest in Amarosia’s open palm.

“Take this, child of Eventia,” she whispered. “Carry it with your heart to the Karianarga tree. It is the last flame of my magic and within it is the strength of all those that have gone before you. Serve them well my dear.”

Amarosia nodded, her heart resolute. She closed her hand around the ember, “Thank you, my queen”.

As she turned to leave the cave, the dragon queen’s form began to disperse, her spirit finally at peace, comforted by the knowledge that her destiny was in the hands of a young girl with a pure heart.

She had learned to trust again.