I was born marked by blood and shadow.
What was it, in Mimic's eyes, that polluted me? Perhaps when my mother gave birth, my horns tore her soft flesh and I was baptized in her blood. Perhaps I was conceived in the light of some horrible, deadly sin. Maybe I was fated to be an instrument of pain. Whatever the cause, the cold finger of fate has touched me, and the cruel colors of life and death mark me as their own.
My nag always said I was a demon. Excuse me... she wanted me to call her Snapdragon. She wasn't really my mother. She may not have even been a relation. It doesn't matter anymore--she was just a nag. If her blood has any relationship with mine, it will have to be content in its knowledge. I not longer care.
Some of my earliest memories involve this word. Demon. Snapdragon always made that clear to me, in her hysterical shrieks and sudden fits of violence. My colors, my symbol, my name, all point to this fact. The otherwise harmless-looking lizard on my rump seems to glow with an inner fire, sometimes, that my nag must have found frightening. I never knew, in those early years, that she was afraid of me. But she called me Fire Drake, because my mother didn't care to give me a name. And she kept me in such constant fear of her that I never knew her fear of me.
"DEMON! GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE!" A crash followed as the mare bent her graceful neck and snapped her head upwards, tossing a heavy iron cook pan. It landed harmlessly in a pile of branches and logs, pounded to manageable sizes by my young hooves. I do not know how old I was at the time, only that it was a long time ago. Not wanting to hear the reason for her sudden outburst, I followed orders as only the threatened can, my hooves slipping on the stone floor as I hastily made my exit. I ran from that little cabin, fleeing as far as I dared go before stopping in a low bunch of nettles to hide. I feared her wrath, but at the same time I had nowhere to go. I was afraid of her and afraid of being abandoned by her. When she finally found me that day, cursing me in the name of Mimic and Bright Eyes, my primary reaction was that of relief. I still had a place to bed and eat, even if I earned it through the bloody beatings I received from her hooves.
Blood does not show against my fur. Maybe that's another reason. When first shed, it makes my coat shine, but there is no change in color. My body is blood. It's only later, when the blood cakes and turns black, and bruises begin to show through, that one can tell that I have been injured. Sometimes as I lay exhausted, my life pooling at my feet, cold and sticky, I wonder if I will lose my color and turn pure white in death. But my nag always reminds me that I am an evil demon. When I die, I will become black as ash. The shadow will have claimed me completely.
One day, I discovered an escape.
I was young then, too, but years of hard work and harder beatings had made me strong. I do not remember why she was angry at me then, I never really know. Presumably, it was because I was alive. She constantly complained of my presence and how good she was being to me, when I obviously didn't deserve her charity. That time, like so many others, I could see the gleam of hatred in her eyes as she approached me. Sometimes, she didn't let me run. Sometimes she just beat me. This was one of those times, or it would have been. Light was scarce in the little shack, and though I was cornered, it occurred to me to try and hide from her fierce gaze. The corner of the room was shaded from the fire, and so, desperately, I tried to hide in the shadow. What would have been the fanciful imagining of a crazed young mind, however, worked. The shadow was open to me as soon as I willed it to be, and I found that I could enter there, safe, and she could not follow. She bellowed in rage, attacking the wall with her hooves as I looked on from within, splintering and cracking the soft wood. Then, she disappeared from view. When I next saw her elegant purple form, she was carrying a torch from the fire. As she came closer, I found that I could not see the light of the torch, the flame being obscured by blackness. And then, I couldn't see her at all. I was trapped in the world of shadows.
I found out later that, in her anger, she had set fire to the wall. Maybe she meant to kill me, imprisoned as I was within the woodwork. But when the blaze had satisfied her anger and she feared the house would burn, she fetched enough water to douse the fire. When I returned alive, she set me to repairing the charred and splintered surface, and meanwhile she saw fit that there was never enough darkness inside for me to flee into again.
The world of shadows is fascinating. Though my nag had blocked my exit there, I soon realized that wherever there was enough shadow, behind a large rock, or a tree, or under a cliff, I could make an exit. Sometimes I would walk through the forest's shadows all day, looking out through the tiny patches of darkness under leaves and never once seeing the sun. There, I was safe. But always, I had to return to my nag. Snapdragon would not be kept waiting for long. I did not dare oppose her. And eventually, I always went back for the beating I deserved. My demon blood would stain her delicate hooves, and her fury would eventually subside. And I would gratefully slip back into the shadows, waiting for her next summons, the next job, or the next chance to steal a morsel of food.
After that day, however, I found that my peace came at a high price. While I had a new escape, she had a new weapon against me, and she used it with increasing frequency. Fire. The walls were now lit with torches and braced with woven branches so that I couldn't press against them, and even when she approached me with a burning faggot I couldn't slip away. Light was my prison, and it hurt terribly. Sometimes I wondered what sin I had committed to deserve this torture, being burned and beaten, and burned again until I was almost too tired to walk. Then she would kick me out and I might be able to gain the energy to slip away for a rest. Or maybe I wouldn't, and she would start at me anew because I hadn't the sense to stay out of her sight.
Eventually, it became too much to bear.
Sometimes the burns and bruises would be so great that I would crawl away into the darkness for days at a time, trying to heal before the next barrage. I do not know why she was becoming more angry with me. Sometimes I thought she really was trying to kill me. Much of the time she told me so. And sometimes I even wished she would. Then, I became sick. I was gone for a week, maybe more. The time did not seem to pass normally in my world, I could only tell night from day by the size of the shadows through which I could see. It was like permanent night. It embraced me, supported me when there was no other support but the pain in my body to remind me I was alive. Eventually my burns healed and my fever broke, and I emerged, starving, into the forest. I don't remember what I ate. Maybe berries, maybe the bark off of trees. I was frightened, though. Frightened to go back. Frightened that I would not be accepted back. Frightened that she would really kill me this time. Fate had decreed that blood would be spilled.
I stayed away longer. I built up my strength. I tried to find food on my own. I got lost and unlost and lost again. But I did not stray far. She was keeping me there, that strange power that she had over me. The only home I ever had, the only reason I ever had to live. The place that my mother had delivered me to. And it was there to which I returned.
My nag was not happy to see me. But at the same time, I believe she was afraid. Today I had fire. Today my Salamander burned. She was screaming about some chore that I had neglected, and how charitable she had been to take care of me when I was clearly a demon bent on causing her misery. Her stately head shook in anger. But I did not back down. I demanded to know why she hated me, when I had done nothing wrong.
"Unholy child! Mimic-forsaken DEMON!" Her voice broke into an unearthly screech. "How DARE you presume to question me! No wonder your mother sent you to me! I was the only one with the goodness in my heart to take care of you, you unholy ABOMINATION! Demon child!" Now she was throwing anything she could grasp in her teeth. For the first time, I was being showered with food. I chuckled.
But also for the first time, curiosity burned within me, alongside this curious feeling of power. "Who was my mother?"
A cruel cackle spilled from her lips. Her voice was cold and spoke of many long nights spent in fear of her. "You, child, are not fit to be loved. Your mother sent me here because she was too kind to kill you, as you deserved." She came closer, now, clutching a heavy torch. "Perhaps I should have done so long ago!"
"No," I commanded. As if stung, the mare dropped the torch on the stone floor, where it flickered and sparked harmlessly. I wasn't afraid. I was in control. "Tell me who my mother is."
Snapdragon trembled at my voice. "The messenger said that you were the child of the queen," she whispered. She spoke as if she had no control over herself. And it was true. I could have ordered her to put out her own eyes at that point, and she would have done it.
She was only telling the truth, but her reply fueled my anger. I stepped closer to her, and hissed my questions. "What messenger? Where did I come from? Where is my mother?"
The nag only rolled her eyes into her head and moaned. "Queen Silver Dream... baby... not wanted..." and then she sank to the floor. And found my power dissipating, but my anger was as hot as ever.
Whether I was angry at her or my supposed mother, I don't know, but I took revenge on both of them. Grasping the torch in my teeth, I swung the flame at her head, catching her across the cheek and scorching her fur. I relished the scream of anguish as sweet music. How many times I have screamed from the same torture. I pressed the torch into her side, now, grinning as she rolled away from the heat and whinnied in pain. As she tried to scramble to her feet, I tossed the torch aside, idly taking notice of its resting place against one of the wooden walls. I smiled at that too.
The nag had recovered herself, but it seemed she couldn't see out of the burned eye. Doubt gripped me, as she bared her teeth in defiance, filled with her own righteous anger. "Mimic curse you," she croaked angrily. "You are an evil creature. I'll kill you!" And then, she charged. Before she had been as royalty, dispensing justice from above. But I had wounded her, disfigured her, and made her no better than me. She had nothing to lose, and no reason to hold back.
And of course, neither did I. She was blinded by her anger as well as her wounds, and this time I wasn't afraid to fight back. As she charged, I shifted my body to her blind side, and used the weight of her charge to drive my horn into her neck. I heard flesh tear, and my head was jerked back even as the point of my horn tore a deep gash across her side. Startled and frightened, I twisted my head aside in time to free my curved horn and see her crash lamely into the floor behind me. The cut was not as deep as I had hoped, but blood was flooding from her once-proud neck and she didn't appear to be moving. Flames climbed the wall nearby, crackling and sending bits of debris onto the floor, as if to taunt her. I am free.
I stand for a moment, admiring my work. I had never really noticed how beautiful blood was. It gushes from her neck in spurts, more slowly now, but there's more than enough to puddle at my feet. As the flames lick their slow way up the walls, I turn and leave the cabin for good. Blood marks my hoof falls into the forest, but soon, even those will be gone. I do not look back. I am now truly alone.
What was it, in Mimic's eyes, that polluted me? Perhaps when my mother gave birth, my horns tore her soft flesh and I was baptized in her blood. Perhaps I was conceived in the light of some horrible, deadly sin. Maybe I was fated to be an instrument of pain. Whatever the cause, the cold finger of fate has touched me, and the cruel colors of life and death mark me as their own.
My nag always said I was a demon. Excuse me... she wanted me to call her Snapdragon. She wasn't really my mother. She may not have even been a relation. It doesn't matter anymore--she was just a nag. If her blood has any relationship with mine, it will have to be content in its knowledge. I not longer care.
Some of my earliest memories involve this word. Demon. Snapdragon always made that clear to me, in her hysterical shrieks and sudden fits of violence. My colors, my symbol, my name, all point to this fact. The otherwise harmless-looking lizard on my rump seems to glow with an inner fire, sometimes, that my nag must have found frightening. I never knew, in those early years, that she was afraid of me. But she called me Fire Drake, because my mother didn't care to give me a name. And she kept me in such constant fear of her that I never knew her fear of me.
"DEMON! GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE!" A crash followed as the mare bent her graceful neck and snapped her head upwards, tossing a heavy iron cook pan. It landed harmlessly in a pile of branches and logs, pounded to manageable sizes by my young hooves. I do not know how old I was at the time, only that it was a long time ago. Not wanting to hear the reason for her sudden outburst, I followed orders as only the threatened can, my hooves slipping on the stone floor as I hastily made my exit. I ran from that little cabin, fleeing as far as I dared go before stopping in a low bunch of nettles to hide. I feared her wrath, but at the same time I had nowhere to go. I was afraid of her and afraid of being abandoned by her. When she finally found me that day, cursing me in the name of Mimic and Bright Eyes, my primary reaction was that of relief. I still had a place to bed and eat, even if I earned it through the bloody beatings I received from her hooves.
Blood does not show against my fur. Maybe that's another reason. When first shed, it makes my coat shine, but there is no change in color. My body is blood. It's only later, when the blood cakes and turns black, and bruises begin to show through, that one can tell that I have been injured. Sometimes as I lay exhausted, my life pooling at my feet, cold and sticky, I wonder if I will lose my color and turn pure white in death. But my nag always reminds me that I am an evil demon. When I die, I will become black as ash. The shadow will have claimed me completely.
One day, I discovered an escape.
I was young then, too, but years of hard work and harder beatings had made me strong. I do not remember why she was angry at me then, I never really know. Presumably, it was because I was alive. She constantly complained of my presence and how good she was being to me, when I obviously didn't deserve her charity. That time, like so many others, I could see the gleam of hatred in her eyes as she approached me. Sometimes, she didn't let me run. Sometimes she just beat me. This was one of those times, or it would have been. Light was scarce in the little shack, and though I was cornered, it occurred to me to try and hide from her fierce gaze. The corner of the room was shaded from the fire, and so, desperately, I tried to hide in the shadow. What would have been the fanciful imagining of a crazed young mind, however, worked. The shadow was open to me as soon as I willed it to be, and I found that I could enter there, safe, and she could not follow. She bellowed in rage, attacking the wall with her hooves as I looked on from within, splintering and cracking the soft wood. Then, she disappeared from view. When I next saw her elegant purple form, she was carrying a torch from the fire. As she came closer, I found that I could not see the light of the torch, the flame being obscured by blackness. And then, I couldn't see her at all. I was trapped in the world of shadows.
I found out later that, in her anger, she had set fire to the wall. Maybe she meant to kill me, imprisoned as I was within the woodwork. But when the blaze had satisfied her anger and she feared the house would burn, she fetched enough water to douse the fire. When I returned alive, she set me to repairing the charred and splintered surface, and meanwhile she saw fit that there was never enough darkness inside for me to flee into again.
The world of shadows is fascinating. Though my nag had blocked my exit there, I soon realized that wherever there was enough shadow, behind a large rock, or a tree, or under a cliff, I could make an exit. Sometimes I would walk through the forest's shadows all day, looking out through the tiny patches of darkness under leaves and never once seeing the sun. There, I was safe. But always, I had to return to my nag. Snapdragon would not be kept waiting for long. I did not dare oppose her. And eventually, I always went back for the beating I deserved. My demon blood would stain her delicate hooves, and her fury would eventually subside. And I would gratefully slip back into the shadows, waiting for her next summons, the next job, or the next chance to steal a morsel of food.
After that day, however, I found that my peace came at a high price. While I had a new escape, she had a new weapon against me, and she used it with increasing frequency. Fire. The walls were now lit with torches and braced with woven branches so that I couldn't press against them, and even when she approached me with a burning faggot I couldn't slip away. Light was my prison, and it hurt terribly. Sometimes I wondered what sin I had committed to deserve this torture, being burned and beaten, and burned again until I was almost too tired to walk. Then she would kick me out and I might be able to gain the energy to slip away for a rest. Or maybe I wouldn't, and she would start at me anew because I hadn't the sense to stay out of her sight.
Eventually, it became too much to bear.
Sometimes the burns and bruises would be so great that I would crawl away into the darkness for days at a time, trying to heal before the next barrage. I do not know why she was becoming more angry with me. Sometimes I thought she really was trying to kill me. Much of the time she told me so. And sometimes I even wished she would. Then, I became sick. I was gone for a week, maybe more. The time did not seem to pass normally in my world, I could only tell night from day by the size of the shadows through which I could see. It was like permanent night. It embraced me, supported me when there was no other support but the pain in my body to remind me I was alive. Eventually my burns healed and my fever broke, and I emerged, starving, into the forest. I don't remember what I ate. Maybe berries, maybe the bark off of trees. I was frightened, though. Frightened to go back. Frightened that I would not be accepted back. Frightened that she would really kill me this time. Fate had decreed that blood would be spilled.
I stayed away longer. I built up my strength. I tried to find food on my own. I got lost and unlost and lost again. But I did not stray far. She was keeping me there, that strange power that she had over me. The only home I ever had, the only reason I ever had to live. The place that my mother had delivered me to. And it was there to which I returned.
My nag was not happy to see me. But at the same time, I believe she was afraid. Today I had fire. Today my Salamander burned. She was screaming about some chore that I had neglected, and how charitable she had been to take care of me when I was clearly a demon bent on causing her misery. Her stately head shook in anger. But I did not back down. I demanded to know why she hated me, when I had done nothing wrong.
"Unholy child! Mimic-forsaken DEMON!" Her voice broke into an unearthly screech. "How DARE you presume to question me! No wonder your mother sent you to me! I was the only one with the goodness in my heart to take care of you, you unholy ABOMINATION! Demon child!" Now she was throwing anything she could grasp in her teeth. For the first time, I was being showered with food. I chuckled.
But also for the first time, curiosity burned within me, alongside this curious feeling of power. "Who was my mother?"
A cruel cackle spilled from her lips. Her voice was cold and spoke of many long nights spent in fear of her. "You, child, are not fit to be loved. Your mother sent me here because she was too kind to kill you, as you deserved." She came closer, now, clutching a heavy torch. "Perhaps I should have done so long ago!"
"No," I commanded. As if stung, the mare dropped the torch on the stone floor, where it flickered and sparked harmlessly. I wasn't afraid. I was in control. "Tell me who my mother is."
Snapdragon trembled at my voice. "The messenger said that you were the child of the queen," she whispered. She spoke as if she had no control over herself. And it was true. I could have ordered her to put out her own eyes at that point, and she would have done it.
She was only telling the truth, but her reply fueled my anger. I stepped closer to her, and hissed my questions. "What messenger? Where did I come from? Where is my mother?"
The nag only rolled her eyes into her head and moaned. "Queen Silver Dream... baby... not wanted..." and then she sank to the floor. And found my power dissipating, but my anger was as hot as ever.
Whether I was angry at her or my supposed mother, I don't know, but I took revenge on both of them. Grasping the torch in my teeth, I swung the flame at her head, catching her across the cheek and scorching her fur. I relished the scream of anguish as sweet music. How many times I have screamed from the same torture. I pressed the torch into her side, now, grinning as she rolled away from the heat and whinnied in pain. As she tried to scramble to her feet, I tossed the torch aside, idly taking notice of its resting place against one of the wooden walls. I smiled at that too.
The nag had recovered herself, but it seemed she couldn't see out of the burned eye. Doubt gripped me, as she bared her teeth in defiance, filled with her own righteous anger. "Mimic curse you," she croaked angrily. "You are an evil creature. I'll kill you!" And then, she charged. Before she had been as royalty, dispensing justice from above. But I had wounded her, disfigured her, and made her no better than me. She had nothing to lose, and no reason to hold back.
And of course, neither did I. She was blinded by her anger as well as her wounds, and this time I wasn't afraid to fight back. As she charged, I shifted my body to her blind side, and used the weight of her charge to drive my horn into her neck. I heard flesh tear, and my head was jerked back even as the point of my horn tore a deep gash across her side. Startled and frightened, I twisted my head aside in time to free my curved horn and see her crash lamely into the floor behind me. The cut was not as deep as I had hoped, but blood was flooding from her once-proud neck and she didn't appear to be moving. Flames climbed the wall nearby, crackling and sending bits of debris onto the floor, as if to taunt her. I am free.
I stand for a moment, admiring my work. I had never really noticed how beautiful blood was. It gushes from her neck in spurts, more slowly now, but there's more than enough to puddle at my feet. As the flames lick their slow way up the walls, I turn and leave the cabin for good. Blood marks my hoof falls into the forest, but soon, even those will be gone. I do not look back. I am now truly alone.