INCENDIARY

Dreams are a dangerous place, but I suppose I've always been one to dance with danger.

Sometimes, with the stars overhead and little on my mind, I make the mistake of remembering. The nightmare keeps returning. It just goes on and on and on, shapes in the smoke and screams in the fire...then I connect the dragon in the dream to the dragon I am today, and I realize how little time has passed since those nightmares were my reality.

I don't remember her name. It's the odd things, like the color of the wing, the pitch of the death-scream, that seem to stick in my head. She was a young SandWing, one of the first that Scarlet pitted against me. She had the loveliest voice. I wonder if she was a singer.

Another one was this lavender IceWing, an old and skilled fighter. I think he could have lasted another few minutes. He just made the mistake of trying to grab me. He was one of the fortunate ones, with a quick death. It was still fiery, of course.

Her name was some kind of ocean bird. She put up a good fight, that green SeaWing. I remember her mantra, the constant mumbling as she circled me in a pitiful attempt to find weakness (as if a starved SeaWing would stand a chance against me). "I want to see him, I want to see him." Who was 'he'? I guess I'll never know. Those were her last words, the last coherent speech from her before I slashed through her skin and burned her right to the breastbone.

The cycle of memory repeats. Death after death after death. Countless lives cut short by Queen Scarlet's lethal champion.

Did they respect me? Did they fear me? Or was I just their suicide device, their only way out of this cruel prison?

I wonder about them, but, strangely, I don't feel a lot of guilt. The memories are held back. They simmer beneath my scales, boiling below my conscience, and surface only when sleep forces me to let down my guard. Day after day I go on with life, pushing past the words I don't dare face. Monster. Murderer.

I think about her. Kestrel, the mother I never knew. Would she have loved me? Should she have chosen my twin? So many questions I will never be able to answer. It's odd, the way one dragon's death can impact you more than all the deaths you caused. It isn't right. Perhaps those all those dragons I killed in the arena were "Kestrels" in their own right, in someone else's world. I don't know. I will never know.

The unanswered questions, the frustration, it was all kindling for a fire inside that I thought would never die. An inferno of hate.

Clay was the one who put out that fire. He replaced the smoke and death with a new kind of flame. I don't know how to describe it; it's something that I've never felt before: a passionate love of gentle warmth. There's a fire in him, one just as great as mine, but it's a different kind. I love his fire. I love him.

But I can't help but feel that our love is a fragile thing. It flickers faintly on the pinnacle of coincidence, fed only by our undying faith in each other. What if he wasn't one of the red egg MudWings? What if I my touch could burn him the way it burns the others? Every time I look at him and his leg, I'm reminded of all the ways I can hurt him.

Clay knows, and he loves me anyway. That's the mystery of Clay. You would think that a fire as hot as mine would drive him away, that he would choose someone more dependable. You would think that I, the incendiary daughter of destruction, would walk a lonely path.

Would you brave the furnace for our romance, Clay? Would you dance with danger the way I do?

Yes, you would.

Yes. That I know.