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Faar'dala
"You know, Sharona," Anacleto said as he and Rudolph accompanied the young dragon through the forest, "it was on a day like this when Rudie and I came to these here islands."
*Yeah?* Sharona asked. *Where'd you guys come from?*
"Oh, all over the place," Rudolph replied merrily. "But before that, a long long time ago, we came from the Raad Vuk Ranch. It's been closed down since, we heard, due to certain complications."
*That's a shame,* Sharona said sadly. She tried to imagine if the Bishen sanctuary in Indyana's Creature Refuge ever closed down. It would be very lonely, knowing that there was no home left to go back to.
"Yes, yes, more's the pity," Anacleto agreed.
*That reminds me of a story,* Sharona said quietly.
"Everything reminds you of a story," Clet teased.
*Yes,* Sharona agreed with a twinkle in her liquid-black eyes. *But this is a story everyone knows.*
"Everyone who?" Rudie cut in. "I mean, if we know it, surely you don't have to tell it again."
Sharona stuck out her tongue at the angecurs and continued slithering in the forest until she found a very comfy spot on a moss-covered patch of sunlit soil. There, she curled around herself, her back spines relaxed a little. She purred a little in contentment at the sunlight and stretched her neck out as far as she could.
*Everyone bishen,* Sharona replied lately. *Once, the bishen lived in a great land of mountains, forests, plains, and rivers, nestled calmly between the elves and the humans. Other bishen lived in other parts of the world, but the Machesri clan lived between the elves and the humans.*
"Boring, heard this one," Rudie said, and Clet kicked him sharply and glared at him to shut up. Rudie wrinkled his muzzle and sighed. He sat patiently.
Sharona chirped at Clet's saving her story. *But men and elves get greedy,* she said. *And they wanted all the land for themselves, for no one's perfect, and when your race starts to grow, you have to expand your territory properly. This we know as a basic truth of increasing population.*
Rudie just boggled. Wherever this was going was nowhere near where he was used to it going.
*Then, the war came. And many heroes and martyrs came out of that war, mostly dead, but some alive. Well, the martyrs weren't alive, but you get the idea. Leukosri, the Machesri Kailan, was sent away by his Kailan to find a place where their kind could thrive again until the homelands were inhabitable again.*
"Why they all didn't just up and leave I'll never understand," Clet chimed in.
*Honor,* Sharona replied. *They didn't all leave because it's draconic honor to stay and protect their home. And besides, if they won, they could send for the noncombatants to return.*
"But they didn't win."
*No,* Sharona said, a bit crestfallen. *If it were a story of my own creation, I'd be tempted to let them come back. Well, I'd be tempted, except for this story.*
"Alright, alright," Rudie admitted. "I'm curious. What story is it?"
Sharona smiled. Beamed is probably a better word. She just lit up like that sunbeam. *Among the group Leukosri was transporting to a new homeland were a series of reds and blues and greens. The blues and greens were noncombatants, naturally. But the reds were along because there were constant attacks by the great evil that had descended upon the land. In the attacks, many of the bishen died. A good deal of the shrapes died, also, and some of the wyrms and eggs. And, every now and again, a bishen got lost. By 'lost' I mean he or she was driven away by the forces of evil and left to fend on his or her own without the protection of the group.*
"That was all prologue?!" Rudie whined, flopping over.
"Shhh!" Clet hissed.
Sharona pretended not to hear. *Faar'dala was his name. He was a blue terran, one of the swiftest messangers from the homeland, but he had no taste for battle or death. So it was his choice to leave, and so he did. He went with Leukosri and Sokai, but he was lost before they were even out of the worst of it.
*They had been ambushed, once again, and Faar'dala got cut off from the rest of the group. He drove towards them, but he was thrown back time and time and time again. At length, the group bolted again, and he was left alone, his only protection his blinding speed and his magic object, the Wind Stone, which gave him barriers of harsh winds.
*He was alone and lost. He hadn't any clue where he was or where the others were. All he knew was the way he had come. So, he turned and ran back.* She paused a moment, closed her eyes, and nodded, remembering. *He ran and ran and ran, trying his hardest to ignore the noises in the dead forest all around him, the chitterings, the cold empty feeling all around him. He ignored the cuts his paws were getting, or tried to at least. He felt his heart sinking further into despair every moment he was away from the others, but he kept hope alive that when he returned to his homeland, the joy would return.
*It didn't.
*Against all odds, he ran from the dangers of the woods and the mountains and everything else that the evil threw his way. He would have run passed the homelands, too, except he stopped at the plains. He stopped because of the sheer number of bodies, bishen and human and elf and others, that littered the fields. The pervasive stench invaded his nostrils, and he felt as if he might faint or throw up or both.
*He fought back the heaving motions of his stomach and tried to ignore the foul odors as he caught the sight of battles on the horizon. Stepping carefully, for there is little worse than the sensation of walking through rotting flesh, he headed towards it.
*What he came across the more he walked was so twisted, so horrible, that he wanted to stop, but morbid curiosity continued to drag him forwards.
*What he saw were people fighting, but they only vaguely resembled people. They looked more like fiends from some nightmarish story older shrapes would tell to frighten the wyrms in a teasing way. Still he was drawn closer.
*The elves, he noticed, were no longer pale and beautiful. They were grotesque and dark-skinned and large-eyed, with claws for hands and fangs growing from their mouths and gaping wounds. The humans were no longer the hardy breed of adventurers. Instead, they were scarred and mutilated and limping about and flailing. And the dragons.... Faar'dala saw the dragons and began to weep openly. They weren't the beautiful and smooth-scaled creatures he had left. They were rough and ragged and had more armor than a battalion of humans. Huge spikes and talons and claws, torn wings, and scarred faces spoke tomes of what had happened in his absence.
He found some that weren't fighting, which amazed him. It meant that the dragons had been able to hold their ground. It meant they were winning! He approached and stared around. 'Excuse me,' he said. 'I am Faar'dala. I want to know, what happened here?'
*'You know what happened here, as do the rest of us,' said one of the dragons, a large black hoarding a collection of what looked like rocks, but had the mental imprint of eggs.
*'No, I don't,' said Faar'dala. 'I had gone with Leukosri and Sokai. But I got separated, and the only thing I knew was how to get back here, to the homeland.'
*The dragons in assembly laughed. 'You couldn't've left with those weaklings,' they said, staring at him with malice in their eyes. 'You're a hirgyae, just like the rest of us!'
*Faar'dala stared and then sought out something to show him his reflection. He found a stream, polluted but sufficient enough to show him his outline. He stared, and what he saw caused him to catch his breath.
*What had once been the smooth outline of a machesri bishen was now the ragged, rough outline of a hirgyae. The armor plates stood out at odd angles and red eyes glowed out of the sillhouette.
*'No,' he said, backing away. 'No, no, no!' He bolted, then, blindly. He didn't care or want to know where he was going. All he knew was that he had to drive the empty and lonely from his heart, the cold and the malice. It all had to leave.
*But what used to be release for Faar'dala just brought more and more darkness into his heart, until he was certain that every time he ran, something was chasing him. He was long gone from the battlefield that was the homeland now, however. He was high up in the mountains, towards the homelands of a different clan of dragons.
*He collapsed there, and they took him in, nursed him to health, but the empty had followed him there. He left soon after, and began to wander, seeking out the full that had once been part of his heart, but now was no longer.*
Clet and Rudie blinked at each other and then at Sharona.
"The blazes do you come up with this stuff?" Clet wanted to know.
Rudie just boggled, his jaw dropped. After a moment, he blinked at Clet. "Should a wyrm be knowing stuff like this?" he wanted to know.
They both looked to Sharona for an answer, but she was curled up in what was no longer the sunbeam, since the sun had moved during her story. She was breathing deeply and her eyes were closed.
"Little dear fell right asleep," Clet said with a smile.
"Yeah," Rudie said with an affectionate look at the little dragon. "She's such a sweetie. We'll have to take good care of her, for her own sake. Not for her da's."
Clet nodded in agreement and helped Rudie pile the sleeping wyrm on Rudie's back to bring her home, safely attatched to Rudie's harness.
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