She could never remember much. There wasn't much to remember. A deep, deep sleep, into which the little dragon couldn't remember falling.
She wished she could. But the fact was, when she woke up that first morning, Gail could not remember a thing.
Light pulsed against her eyelids and she opened them, feeling warm and sleepy. It was nice to feel warm. Warmth felt good. It reminded her of something. Poor Gail just wished she could remember what. She felt herself smiling slightly. That felt good, too. All the warmth and good feelings made her open her eyes.
She looked around quietly, blinking her eyes. She was perched on a windowsill, facing a large window, in which she could see her reflection. Her eyes flared violet, and they went with her green scales nicely, she decided. She yawned gently, stretching her wings. It felt good to stretch her wings.
Gail glanced around. The room she was in was small, with a dark mahogany four-poster in one corner, an ebony desk on one side of the window, and a similar bookshelf on the other. She shuffled her feet, moving around to get a better look. Two of the walls were purple, a slightly paler shade than her eyes, while the other two were a pretty turquoise. The room was pretty and colorful. Gail decided she liked colorful.
A noise was coming from one of the walls, where she noticed a white door. The door had a poster with words on it, written in colorful ink. Someone was walking towards the door with the colorful words, she realized. She turned back towards the window and froze solid instinctively just as the knob turned and a girl walked into the room.
She was a pretty girl, Gail decided as she watched her reflection in the window. Gail liked her at once. She had pretty smooth skin and pretty dark hair and pretty brown eyes and pretty blue glasses. Gail stood still as the girl picked up a laptop, sat at the ebony desk, and began typing. Gail couldn't see the message in the window's reflection, but after several long moments of clicking keys, the girl lifted the laptop from the desk and scooted over in a rolling chair to the windowsill where Gail perched.
"Enjoying the sunlight, Gail?" the girl smiled. "Here's my new story. See what you think."
She didn't hold it up for long, and the language wasn't dragontongue, Gail knew. But the words weren't so hard to read and Gail picked up a few of them, including dragon and hrrr and Fain. All familiar words, even the latter, though she wasn't sure what it meant yet.She also caught another word: Laurel. It was pretty, like the girl, andGail decided that it must be the girl's name.
Laurel took the laptop back to the desk, but she took Gail with her this time, placing her beside the keyboard to watch. She typed for a long time and Gail didn't read all of it, but she could read more than she had before.
Dreams I Can't Explain
It doesn't make sense. None of it does. The dreams come every night, and they're not always the same. But they're always about the same things: dragons that say hrr and strange, not quite real creatures that the dragons have told me are called the Fain.
There's really only one dragon who talks to me. He's a male dragon, and he's purple. I giggled the first time I saw him, but he said, "Laurel, I'll have you know purple is a very significant color in a male dragon." It sounds funny, but it's very dignified, really. It's a good color for him. He introduced himself to me as a ci:pherel, which is a reader. A reader of emotions and stuff like that. It's hard to explain. I can't be certain, but I think he told me his name is G'leareth. It's interesting; he's different from Gail, but their eyes are shaped the same way. Except for one thing-his are violet.
G'leareth comes to me about every night. He's told me loads of stuff, like the that the Fain were here a long time ago and used the Earth to raise dragons as hosts. Not hosts, exactly. They didn't control them; they comingled. That's another one of G'leareth's words; two beings joining together on a higher consciousness for the greater good of them both. It doesn't make sense, all of what G'leareth says, but I do know who the bad guys are: a race of the Fain called the ix. The ix don't commingle; they control, and they want to destroy humans and dragons and everything else. The way G'leareth talks all the time, it's hard to understand much more than the basic good guy/bad guy stuff. I wonder if all dragons are such big-picture people.
I'm still not sure what my role in all this is, either. I just hope he tells me. I just hope I find out soon.
There was more, but that was all Gail got to read, because just then Laurel closed the laptop. She lifted the little green dragon carefully and placed her back on the windowsill to watch the sun, which was floating lazily higher. Laurel kissed her dragon, then slipped out of the room.
Gail unfroze and frowned at her reflection, wondering why she didn't remember anything before this morning. She sighed, blowing a tiny smoke ring. Laurel's story was strange. The story made her think. Why couldn't she remember anything? Was there anything to remember?
Gail was sure of a few things: She was a dragon, her name was Gail, she belonged to a girl, and, evidently, she had a role to play in "all this". And, like Laurel, she hoped she would find out what it was soon.