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A World Forged By Dragons

My earliest memory is being hungry. Even before I learned to be afraid, I knew hunger. Fear came not long after. The bombs and rockets that destroyed the buildings and streets of my homeland weren't as terrifying as the shouts and slaps endured inside my home. My father hated everyone, most of all his two wives and only daughter, but he even hated his five sons. And I think it was his hunger that made him so angry. I know it was hunger that turned my mothers into silent, hunched shadows of themselves: they lived in constant fear that they might never eat again. What they had, they gave to me. Their entire legacy consisted of a few extra mouthfuls of white rice and a fierce determination to live. It was my mothers who fought to send me to school. After the schools closed, they were the ones who hired tutors and weaved baskets to pay them. They took the beatings for me when I needed new clothes or shoes. They did not have the strength to stand up to him, and as a child, I resented them for it. Only now – when it is too late – do I see how strong they were merely to survive.

The war had been living longer than I had, but it always lived in the mountains and the desert. That all changed during my life. When I was seven, my oldest brother was killed by a stray bullet. When I was eight, my friend was killed by a missile. When I was nine, my youngest brother lost a leg to a land mine. When I was ten, my aunt-mother was taken by invading armies, never to be seen again. When I was eleven, we left my homeland. The entire neighborhood made the journey to the refugee camp together. The men must've decided we'd present a much less-tempting target as a group, but as a young girl, I remember thinking we were an army. How united and powerful we were! Youth is nothing if not foolish…

On our way to the border, we were attacked by the invading armies. The women were raped, the men were slaughtered, our meager possessions stolen, and the children taken for soldiers. I was raped, many times, and left for dead. It was the lowest, darkest point of my short and miserable life to that point. But it was the last time I felt shame. As I laid in the road, broken and bleeding, I knew Allah had forsaken me. I was no longer a child of God. I was an animal. Shame implied loss of honor, which I no longer had. I forced myself to move and keep moving until Allah finally pulled a blade across my throat or opened the earth to swallow me whole. I only survived that night because of a secret ability to heal with my thoughts and hands, but by the time I recovered, everyone else was dead. I had no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Nowhere but back.

I followed the foot tracks of my family's murderers through the mountains. Once they stopped to make camp, I killed the scouts and took their weapons. Then I killed the guards. I killed them all. Ludicrous, really, how easily they were overcome. I didn't win by pure rage or supernatural fighting skills or strategic genius, but by a combination of these things. It was terrible and ugly. And in the end, I was still alone.

A few days later, I was picked up by a trader. He promised to get me across the border, where the war was less intense. He got me out of one prison and into another. In Pakistan, he sold me to a harem for a single meal. It was just one meal, but it could've sustained my family for a week. I was never raped in the harem. The prince had enough women begging for his attention that he didn't need to force anyone. But those who didn't work didn't eat, and the women in those chambers were as cruel as my father had been. It wasn't long before I heard whispered rumors among the eunuchs that I was to be sold again, this time to a pleasure house, where I would be raped or killed.

I used a necklace to strangle a guard and hacked off his head with a pair of sewing scissors. Carrying my trophy while it still dripped warm blood, I walked freely from the palace. The guards could've easily ended my life, but everyone thought I was possessed. To kill my body would free the demon in the palace, where it would haunt and possess them forever.

I wandered into the wilderness: orphaned again. I had no future, no past; no homeland, no clan. I was truly empty: left with nothing but a desire to live in a world that had shown me nothing but misery. In the darkest places of my heart, I'd never felt peace or love. I'd never even given names to these things because they were strangers to me.

The night that I left the harem, I received a vision. In my dream, a great dragon swallowed a world consumed by fire and wasn't burned. When he passed the world, it was better than it had been before: crystal-clear and cool as water. To look at it was a marvel. In my heart, I felt joy just looking upon this world forged by the dragon. This dream could've only been a gift from heaven. Perhaps it was a gift from my mothers, who instilled strength in me. Strength to survive.

In a cave in the wasteland, I found the dragon. He was a man, weak and barely alive: trapped under rocks and unable to escape. When he saw me, he smiled and called me by a name I'd never heard before.

"Tessa… Thank goodness you came. I have… been calling out to you… for some time… You are Tessa, and I am Charles Xavier… And I believe we can help each other…"

…

Author's Notes: I wrote this as a response to the lack of Sage stories out there. Seriously, have you ever checked? There's like seven. Maybe this story's not all that great, I really don't know, but I sat down and wrote it all in one sitting. It just seemed to write itself, so I'd like to take that as a sign. Please review, let me know what you think, and thanks for reading!