Translation of my own work. Beta-read by LordRandallsLady
First published with the tags: Dragons, Mythical Beings & Creatures, reminiscing, Kilgarrah's brand of angst, Imprisonment, Scheming, Flashbacks, Flash Fic, Translation.
A brief foreword: when I say "selfish instinct", I'm referring to the feeling of love as (some?) anthropologists call it; the expression was used in a tv documentary I saw months ago, so I don't remember who created it, when and such. Not to mention I'm too lazy busy to research. Sorry? But I found it a fitting way for Kilgarrah to think of affection. He's not exactly cuddle material *laughs*
Point two, "Little People" refers to fey creatures and puny humans, too, in his head.
Three, Sareena is obviously an original character. Since we know next to nothing about Kilgarrah's life, I took some liberties.
Hope you like it!
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The great game
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He'd hatched from an oblong, porous egg, laid in a sandy hollow when the world was young and smelled of rain.
The first breath had been vigour, the second hunger: he'd eaten his own shell, spotted like a salamander, fragile like a bird bone. Then, while his brothers began to emerge and his mother – tall, enormous, black – took flight toward new generations, he had stretched his wings. The skies called.
Too soon: the first years need be spent in hiding, storing up strength. It did not matter, he had the necessary patience.
With adulthood he had at last challenged his kind and conquered a rank, a territory, the Little People's fear; unapproachable Sareena – green and lithe as a willow, unmerciful as iron – had been his, for centuries of selfish instinct. She'd given him companionship, faithfulness, nests.
(He still dreamed of her, from time to time. Ghost of a lost era.)
And she'd also given him...
She'd also given him the Dragon Lords.
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"I do not have masters."
"They are not masters." "
Why should I obey, then?"
A snap of glaucous jaws. "You will know when you will see one."
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The first called himself Balinor; bittersweet heritage decided in the Old Religion's belly.
His words were strong, hipnotic like the tide. Not much time had passed before Kilgarrah, having overcome pride and anger, recognised the good intentions that guided the boy – strange biped in search of friendship – and allowed him to be part of his journeys. Every Dragon Lord was in possession of extraordinary powers: Kilgarrah had both educated and learned. While Albion's magic prospered, they had become friends.
(Looking back to those phantoms with the eyes of old age, how vulnerable they'd been! Too sure, trusting, too disgusted by intrigue.)
One day, years afterwards, they had heard about Uther Pendragon. Camelot's court had been the most beautiful and terrible stay of their travels, because there they'd found kin, respect, honour and, in the end, ruin. Balinor and his female had managed to flee; Kilgarrah had stayed.
The great dragon lifts his head toward the vault of his prison, to feel the wind's breath. There are fissures which let in the cave smells and light beams, mirages of the world once to his command. It's like being inside an egg that doesn't want to hatch. He lowers clear eyelids on his pupils and thinks that his forefathers were right: life ends the same way it begins - in darkness, silence, solitude.
All of a sudden, the sound of steps echoe; there's the stench of burning pitch. On the gorge's edge below, Merlin appears; Kilgarrah observes him, unseen.
He's so young and naive. He resembles the Balinor of twenty years before and, like his father, he'll grow. Time and sorrow have this effect.
But what path will he choose?
Spreading his wings, Kilgarrah glides toward the rock facing the entrance. For Albion, the last of the dragons will do his part in the great game of life, scheming as he once loathed to do.
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