The Burned World

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

But something had changed. It happened after nameless centuries filled with windswept summer nights of silent beauty, after decades of Marsh Kings floating still in their crystal green swamps, their nights sleepless and their days filled with the flashy bell chimes of thin metal fish.

It happened after legions of dry meadows that moved like disturbed silk and sang like the muted rush of a waterfall grew and died a thousand times over, leaving behind blankets of blue belled flowers.

And when it happened, it started with something small, as most disasters do.

A rock fell.

Just one, smaller than a balled fist, and all because an overly ambitious goat settled its coin-slotted eyes on a patch of vegetation clinging to the side of a boulder in green, gnarled veins. Making its way to the glossy leaves, highlighted in wondrous gold by a heavy afternoon sun, its cloven hooves skidded along the shale chips littering the gentle incline of the hill that enclosed the southern edge of the Valley. Pebbles and chips and one smaller-than-a-fist rock fell and bounced down the side of the hill, and the rock made its way far enough to end up in the water of the river that snaked its way along the base of the hill. And on its way down, it knocked other rocks loose, and a little pile formed in the edge of the river, a particularly sun-soaked bend of the river. The rocks accumulated moss and became like a single mass, strands of murky greenness undulating in the watery rush. And as bits of plant debris amassed around it, catching a few twigs and slowly becoming a much-larger-than-a-fist, verdant and planty thing, it changed the shape of the river ever so slightly. Enough to coerce a small rise and fall in the water around and over it, enough to force out of the edge of the bank a pearl that had been buried at the base of the hill centuries past. And once the pearl was loosened from the silt and cobalt shale and was taken by the water in a tremulant glimmering escape, it shone painfully, blindingly. Unnaturally.

It had a beauty that was destructive, an allure that was venomous. Its appearance was meant to be a warning, but whatever had originally made it hadn’t accounted for the irrational nature of living things. Because as it turned out, living things found it irresistible.

And as it was buffeted against cold river stones, from the sides to the bed, arcing towards the surface only to be forced back down, it called out in its strange and bitter way…

Save me, keep me, need me.

Its voice had no sound, but it vibrated the air and the rays of sun around it, turning everything cold and metallic and wobbling, and in its strange and bitter way, its voice traveled far. Far enough to escape the Valley, and to reach the snowy cliffs of the mountain ridge beyond the Valley’s lush hills. And that vibration reached the delicate, yellowed tympanums of the things that lived on that snowy cliff.

Eyes opened unanimously in the dark, hot breath was exhaled in forceful huffs that left the air humid and heavy, the sound of claws digging into solid rock shrieked through the hollows of the cliffside. And the dragons who had slept for so long, who had been sluggish and pale as all reptiles missing the sun are, began to wake and move. From a distance, their exit through the networks of holes in the cliffside looked like disturbed bees exiting the papery honeycombs of their hive. That was, until they began to fully wake enough to begin breathing thin streams of fire, scorching the cliffside as they stretched their bony wings and took flight towards the Valley.

…

Trewiere had been too young to remember the Valley without dragons. Her entire life had been shaped by their presence, and she had no way of knowing how close it had been to never being that way. She stared out through a small gap in the rocks of her cave home at them, miles in the distance, but easily visible as they shone bright and glittering gold and green and red in the evening sun that poured into the Valley. She watched in quiet awe at their large bodies crawling up hills, their spread wings working as they slowly descended onto ancient marsh trees.

The Marsh Kings and their musical silvery fish were gone, the blue belled flowers were long turned to ash, and the meadows that moved like velvet when the wind blew were blackened and bare. Trewiere had only ever heard stories about all of the beautiful things that the Valley used to contain. And those stories, which were sometimes too brilliant and fantastical to seem true, were always followed by a cold fact; the Valley wasn’t beautiful anymore, and it was because of the dragons.

But Trewiere never thought that the dragons were evil. They were animals the same as her and her mother. Strange little creatures living in a world far too big for them… she felt their similarities and commiserated with them, even if she was shaped like a human, not a dragon, and even if they were large enough to swallow her whole. She felt as if she had always known that they were simply looking for something the only way they knew how to: by getting rid of everything, until the thing that they wanted was all that was left.

“What do you think the dragons are looking for?” she asked her mother, who narrowed her eyes in quiet irritation and scoffed, leaving a long silence as she painstakingly threaded a splintering wooden needle. Eventually, she muttered an answer.

“Hopefully something that’ll kill them all.”

But Trewiere didn’t hear her mother. She was lost in thought as she stared through the space in the rocks once more. Staring, watching the dragons roam, heads swinging at the end of their long necks, scanning the ground, eyes twitching as they searched with a calm sort of franticness.

Whatever it was they were looking for, she thought, it must be very small. Very small, and very powerful. She wondered what could be so wonderful that things as massive and gorgeous in their fierceness as dragons would lower themselves so in order to find it.

And she began to wonder what might happen if she found it first.