Why did the girl have to be so beautiful? Truly, why did that young woman have to be so beautiful?

Why did that woman she had watched for so long have to be a perfect example of everything that she would never be able to have but would always crave, desire because of how wondrous she was?

Her name was Julia "Julchen" Beilschmidt- and she both hated and loved how beautiful Elizabeta Hedervary was. She adored her, in all that she was, but she hated how Elizabeta could never be hers for such a large multitude of reasons that her heart twisted and ached and cried out at everything Elizabeta was, despised how she might never know her as she so desired to.

However, she knew that customs would never let them be- even if the lovely young woman, the beloved princess of the nearby kingdom, with eyes green like the forest and hair that was wonderfully long and always flowing in the wind.

They were never meant to be, the king would never let them be together based off of solely whom they were, Elizabeta, well…. she was a princess, destined for the life of man and the daylight, able to be seen and beloved by all.

…. And Julia was a dragon, mighty and fierce, but also a girl, with skin white and pure like starlight, her glowing blue heart visible through her chest, scars of men marring her star kissed skin.

It was common knowledge that dragons were made from the stars- and Julia was one of the most star-like of them all, glowing white and shining like a constellation come to life on this planet. All sorts of dragons desired her when she was older, they claimed, and once she was wizened too. Her fire was blue due to a rare fire inside of her; though her mom had always said when she was a girl that it was from how stubborn and hotheaded Julchen was.

In her most human form, her white hair flowed long and cascaded down her shoulders, or she wished it did. Truthfully it was tangled and matted, occasionally blood spattered as well. It was as white as freshly fallen snow, but her eyes, no; her eyes glowed with the power of freshly spilled blood, melting the snow around it with its heat.

However Julia was lonely and longed for companionship- and Elizabeta Hedervary was beautiful, beautiful as the sun. This was perhaps the reason Julia loved Elizabeta most- Elizabeta seemed to be made from the sun, the most important star in Earth's skies, and the only one visible in daytime.

And so Julia ended up likening herself to the moon- forever chasing after the sun in the sky, never quite fast enough to reach her love.

That was just another reason why Julchen could never be with her. Stars that shone like Julchen could only be seen under the darkness of night. Elizabeta was so wonderfully bright that she was visible in the daylight, and so large that the Earth's rotation brought it out of view with the changing of time, never to be seen by its paler cousins.

And her sunshine created beauty, which so reminded Julchen of freedom, was about to be snuffed out, ripped away from her and put away forever, another flame blown out by man.

And Julchen despised that thought. Her mother, who had been beautiful and strong in her life, with golden scales and golden hair, had her fire doused by man- specifically by one man who the golden dragon had loved dearly. And she had left Julchen and her egg alone after her death, Julia not quite even out of her hatchling stage.

For 12 years of her life she had been content to watch Elizabeta from the shadows, though they had played as children when Eliza had managed to sneak off from her palace guards.

Julia had been as enchanted with her from the very first moment she had laid eyes on her, and clearly, Elizabeta had thought her an enchantress, an elf, or some other Fae being.

Are you a fairy?

A young voice whispered at Julchen, a precious memory of two young girls playing with magic and pretending that perhaps Julia was. But, perhaps Elizabeta had always believed it, and didn't know that Julia was playing pretend. The Fae were tricksters at heart, and elves were always so cold, by Julia's line of thinking anyway.

Plus, the only enchantress the dragon had ever met was scary and evil!

No, perhaps Elizabeta hadn't known all that! Since she had been a kid, Elizabeta had probably just lumped in all magical beings together. Surely, now that she had grown, Elizabeta knew that her dear friend who glowed in the shadows was a dragon.

The dragon girl took her scrying liquid to the pool of water in her cave, and slowly poured some of the liquid into the water, to look upon Elizabeta, softly whispering the girl's name into the water as though she was whispering to her lover. The scene formed as clear as a mirror, where Elizabeta was wiping her tears as she was being measured.

A wedding dress, wasn't it? Julchen watched her with big sad eyes, breathing out small blue flames that licked the surface of the pond. Elizabeta was upset, saying how horrible a fate this was. Her fiancé was a man she had only met once before, according to the girl's watery words. Julia's fingertips gently ran along the water's edge, not wanting to make ripples in the image of her beloved.

That was despicable. Humans were truly strange- why make a young girl marry a man 20 years her senior? It was one thing in dragon society, where the ages ranged thousands of years. However, humans spent so much of their life as children, it seemed awful. A child bride, it seemed would be a good fit for the man who had paid her parents for the arrangement. Elizabeta was 16.

A few of the maids in the back maid some raunchy comments about how her first night with the man was going to be, and Julchen felt enraged on behalf of the poor girl, wishing for them to have some more tact.

But the girl, who in any other circumstance would fight, cowered and bent to their words, feeling crushed under the weight of her pressures.

The girl continued in silence, but Julia didn't need to be magic to see her tears.

XXXXX

The night wore on, and Julia's fears for the girl had yet to be quelled. She turned the egg over, sighing softly at the golden child her mother had died before ever meeting, before the child was hatched. Julia herself wasn't even fully grown yet. Her mothers untimely death 13 years ago had left the dragon slightly stunted, but she was greeted often enough by others, older and wiser than her.

She walked out of the mouth of her cave, glowing softly in the darkness of night, looking up at the sky, where the new moon was hiding from her, unable to be seen.

Slowly, she allowed her body to become its true form, her blood red eyes looking to the stars, her kin. She felt her wings blossom out from her back, revealing themselves in their entirety as she bent forward onto all fours, her body elongating and growing as she transformed into her dragon self.

She stretched out her wings, her form not reflecting as much light as it usually did without the presence of the moon.

Her mother had warned her of meddling with humans, shortly before her death. Her mother had said that it only led to misery on the behalf of the dragon. Julchen couldn't imagine that- not with her beloved Elizabeta.

Are you a fairy? Can you do more magic! Elizabeta's youthful, excited voice stuck in the back of her mind, along with the image of her hiding her tears.

Nothing had to come of this for them, of course…of course, Julchen desired more, but she promised herself that she wouldn't grow upset at anything that might happen from this point on.

She was going to kidnap Elizabeta. That was what dragons did, right- in the lore of man? Did they not take beautiful princesses to save them?

As she took flight, Julchen only imagined Elizabeta's smiling face.