A/N: Written for The A-Maze-Ing Race Challenge on the PFC, fic 1 with prompt: flight.
Dreams of Flight
Shards flew as hard head smashed against the rock. Bagon staggered back, stubby arms still flapping in the hopes to feel wind rather than the dust and rock fragments that assaulted him. His head jabbed wildly, bumping smaller bits of rock without smashing them…until, finally, he stopped and opened tear-filled eyes to witness his repeated failure.
His trainer was there, and she came to him now, breaking her vigil. She took him into her arms, petting the sore surface of his skull, offering him a berry and whispering words of hope and encouragement in his ear as she wiped the tears away.
Bagon tried to stop his crying but the tears continued, mopped up by the soft cloth that dabbed his cheeks and eyes. And when he finally managed to stop they went inside for something warm, then bed and sleep and a new day – maybe train or battle or go on a trip – and start all over again. Sometimes he'd learn a new move, forget an old. Sometimes he'd lose a battle; mostly he'd win. Sometimes the rocks wouldn't break. Sometimes…he thought he was flying, for a moment, but he was just falling and time had slowed to tease him.
And then one day he felt a surge of power and suddenly he wasn't a Bagon anymore but a Shelgon. But when he tried to fly he couldn't still – only fall – and shattered the rock into even smaller bits than before.