This story is for an abandoned dragon at Isle of Mirrors.

The world of Filara was not a far cry from Earth. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and skycars sped through the streets of the cities. In fact, the only difference between Filara and Earth were the Punjaro class of highly spiritual warrior-priest-mages, any one of which could instigate a massive cataclysm, except that their training prohibited them from using their skills to harm others.

Each of the Punjaro were able and eager worldbuilders and wishgranters, using their magics for the good of mankind. None would ever dream of using their powers for evil.

Among these, Amity was the strongest. She was also the youngest. The people of Filara looked to her for guidance, however, for she was wise beyond her years.

Amity and her kind were the guardians of the Wishing Trees. People would write their wishes on paper, burn the paper, and drop the ashes in a Wishing Well. Then, they would tie strips of colored cloth to symbolize their wishes -- blue for protection, green for prosperity, pink for love, red for desire, and purple for strength in the spiritual realm. In time, their wishes would be granted by the Punjaro.

Filara was a happy place. There was no war or famine, and there were very few quarrels.

It was as if someone had, long ago, wished for peace and prosperity to visit this now-utopia.

"Lucy! Dinner's ready!"

Lucinda closed her notebook and sighed as she glanced across her textbooks to her half-finished trigonometry equations. She'd never get this stuff. Gah.

"Lucy!"

"Coming!" she shouted over the music blaring from her sister's room next door. "Geez," she muttered. "Relax, will ya?"

She pushed the door open just as Rachel pushed hers open next door, and they slammed into each other. "Watch it, Runt," Rachel snarled.

"Anything you say, Lord High Master," Lucinda shot back.

Rachel was two years older than she, and far prettier. Or, at least she had been prettier before Rachel started dying her hair jet black and calling herself Silverwolfe. Lucinda couldn't help but roll her eyes as she followed Rachel 'Silverwolfe' Smith downstairs.

"Help your mother set the table, please," Dad said as he watched the closing stock reports on the holograph.

"Help Mom with the table, Runt," Rachel bullied.

Lucinda stuck her tongue out and did as she was told.

Rachel probably didn't even know what a wolf looked like. It was small consolation.

Amity watched her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her long, golden, bouncey hair out of her face. She stared impassively into her own eyes, blue-grey and glittering like river stones. Through the reflection of her own eyes, she saw the days to come. She saw the days of peace and prosperity would soon be ending. And she knew she must warn the people.

Lucinda glanced up from her notebook at the clock. Shoot! She was going to be late for the bus! She swept all her notebooks into her school bag, shoved her feet into her shoes, grabbed a hair tie, credits for lunch, and her breakfast bar as she flew for the door.

Rachel had already left, driving her clunky skycar off to school, but first to pick up her friend, Stacy. Mom had tried to coax them to drive together, but Lucinda didn't need a headache from Rachel's music so early in the morning. It was bad enough that they shared a wall between their rooms. They didn't need to spend more time together.

The huge yellow caterpillar that was her bus was creeping down the skyroute even as Lucinda reached the door. She had made it - barely - and struck the signal to stop the bus at her door. It creaked to a halt, levitators still humming, and her house door opened onto the bus platform. She hurried aboard, locking up as she left her house, and plopped into her seat next to Kate, her best friend.

"Morning," they said to each other, but Kate wasn't very sociable this early in the morning, so they both put their earbuds in and turned on some music, interrupting only once, because Kate had a new Flotsam//Jetsam song Lucinda wanted to hear. Beyond that, they rode in silence.

"The trouble is, Gavin, that I don't know how we can stop it. There's a terrible event looming, but that's all I know. If we can't see it more clearly, we can't stop it. I need your help. No one sees like you do."

"Amity, it's not as simple as that, and you know it. So many things need to happen precisely for me to see even a glimpse of defined future. It's not like I can just pull things out of thin air. After a a^2 = c^2 – b^2 = 1692 – 1192 = 28561 – 14161 = 14400

Lucinda looked up from her notebook and stared at the clock. Just a few more minutes til lunch time. After that, it was all her art classes, then a study period, then home. But first, class let out, and she went down to the cafeteria.

At lunch, she talked to Kate and Palm and Gavin, her three best friends. Kate was more sociable now she was awake, and Gavin was making sculptures of dinosaurs with peas and mashed potatoes. Palm was busy making eyes at Jude Ludwig, and this left Kate to engage in 'serious' conversation. Kate was reading Lucinda's latest writing excursion, so Lucinda sat quietly and waited.

Suddenly, Kate laughed out loud. "Gavin's meticulous attention to detail has given him precog!"

"I foresee a wealth of opportunities here," Gavin intoned piously before giving a cheeky smile. He then returned to crafting the skull of a prenocephale with his spoon and a pile of mashed potatoes.

Kate handed back the notebook. "When do the rest of us show up?" she asked, grinning.

"Soon. You're all three Punjaro."

"Like you."

"Like Amity," Lucinda corrected.

"Right. Slapping a new name on makes her a completely different person, wholely separate from your likeness. Please."

Lucinda couldn't help but blush. "Well. I'm trying."

"Make a boy. They're easier to separate from you as a writer."

"And how would you know? You don't write."

Kate shrugged. "Why are you writing this again?"

"There're these sites on the conglom. They're run by artists who give pictures of animals and stuff to stories that deserve them. I'm hoping to get a dragon."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Okay. Boring."

"It's better than turning out like Silverwolfe."

Just then, Palm said something almost impossible to hear over the surrounding conversation.

"What?" they all asked.

"He's gorgeous," she insisted to no one.

The conversation quickly changed tacks from dragons to dating, and Lucinda took mental notes.

Amity stared up at the wishing tree, its cloth strips waving in the wind. There were less there today than there had been yesterday. The Punjaro had been granting the wishes made in an effort to keep the growing evil at bay. They were all starting to feel its spread rising in their hearts.

Amity, for the first time, knew fear.

Art class was easy. It was one of the few classes Lucinda actually enjoyed. For this reason, she had three of them, back-to-back with the same teacher in the afternoon. As she finished one project, Mr. Wells let her start her next. As it was, she was caught up before most of her classmates were half-way done. So, Mr. Wells gave her sketching time.

Lucinda loved it.

She sketched the characters of her story, as well as the places. She sketched the Wishing Trees and the temples, the skycars, the clear air...

Outside their window, all there was was ash and greyness, the storm that had been broiling for weeks. Ever since the Cataclysm over a century ago, the sun was a rare sight. Everything was cloned or hydroponic, and the world was struggling to repair its atmosphere using smog-reduction technology in the skycars. Groundcars were still used, but only rarely, because the ground was so far down beneath them.

Lucinda loved the time she lived in. It was a time of the conglommerate-tube-network (the conglom) and the holographivisions (holographs), of real-time VR vacations and scientific breakthroughs left and right.

But she yearned for a time when none of this would be necessary. It would all be perfect and the sun would shine on the world again.

Mr. Wells leaned over her shoulder. "How's it coming, Cindy?" he asked.

"I'm not sure I have the perspective right," she said, still sketching. "But I like how it's looking so far. I'll probably redo it on watercolor paper if that's all right with you."

He nodded. "Alright, then. If you need any help, don't hesitate to ask."

She nodded and went back to sketching. By the time she was finished, the side of her hand was black with graphite.

Amity paced the halls of the Punjaro palace in Theara, capitol city of Muntango, the largest country on all of Filara. The opulent splendor reflected the brilliant sunlight that came streaming through the windows high above the hall. The lapis blue columns stretched to pinpoints before they touched and supported the gold-leafed, high-vaulted ceiling.

The palace was her home ever since both her parents tragically died when she was fourteen.

But she didn't have time to think on that. Kate was late. Kate was never late. Never.

Something must have happened.

Clearly.

She walked to the communication circle and began to spell out Kate's name with the magic tiles when the transportation ring activated behind her. She spun in surprise and--

"Runt. Mom wants your help with dinner." Rachel cracked her gum nonchalantly.

"Can't you help her? I'm busy!"

"Yeah. Well. Jack out of the conglom for a micro and get your butt downstairs because I'm helping Dad."

Lucinda glared and saved the progress she'd made. And she was finally getting somewhere good, too!

GAH!

It was the weekend, and she could finally get some writing done!

Or so she thought.

Dad woke her at four in the morning. "We're going to Grandma Sandy's."

"Whaa?" Lucinda managed, staring around her pitch-black room.

"Pack a change of clothes."

Lucinda got up, grudgingly. No one ever told her anything!

Guh.

She got dressed, shoved clothes she remembered as matching in her backpack with her notebooks, sketchbooks, textbooks, pens, and pencils. She certainly would write this weekend! No amount of family togetherness was going to stop her!

Grandma Sandy lived in the 'country'.

If you squinted extra hard, you could see mountains through the wind-lashed rain. Fewer people lived out here, but there were still enough to live in towered buildings everywhere you looked.

Dad liked to remark that the only way to reclaim the surface would be regimented birth control to drastically reduce the population.

Rachel liked to argue that birthing children was a woman's right.

Lucinda liked to stare out the windows as the train sped down the track towards Grandma Sandy's.

She had taken a nap in the skycar when Grandpa Roger picked them up at the station. Now, Lucinda was awake, struggling through her chem homework.

Grandma Sandy didn't have conglom access except through the internet. That was a real chore. She'd tried to get on the conglom before, but NOTHING was backwards-compatible with stuff from the Dark Ages like Grandma Sandy used. It was a complete waste of time trying. She couldn't even get to her messages. Argh!

"Need help, Kiddo?" Grandpa Roger asked, peeking over her shoulder as she stared blankly at her chemistry notes.

"No, thanks," she said.

Grandpa Roger used to drive shipments for a bookstore chain. She doubted he'd grasp organic ecostabilization theory.

Two days without the conglom felt like ages. But Grandpa Roger came in handy after all and helped her with her trig problems.

She was so tired, though. She couldn't sleep anywhere that wasn't her own bed. So she'd been meaning to write on the trainride home.

She took out her writing notebook and her sketchbook and propped them up on her knees. She took out a pen, and she fell promptly asleep.

When she woke up, Rachel was shaking her. "Come on, Runt. This is our stop."

Lucinda looked around. "Where're Mom and Dad?"

"They're going to the courthouse."

"What? Why?"

"Grandma Sandy called us up to discuss her will."

"What?"

"Pay attention, Runt. Geez," Rachel sighed. "She's got the Snags. She's not going to make it passed spring."

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Lucinda asked as she shoved her sketchbook in her bag and zipped it up.

"Uh. Because you're so busy being clueless, I'll bet. Part of why we all went up is because Dad's schedule is going to get crazy and Mom's got to make major overtime hours to make the mortgage and--"

"WHAT!?" Lucinda felt her head spinning.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Don't worry, Runt," she said as the left the train. "We've made it trhough this before."

"We've always been fine before!" Lucinda protested.

Rachel grabbed their bags and usheered her off the platform. "Sure, Luce. Sure."

"Alright," Lucinda said as she logged onto the conglom. She felt bad that life in the real world was going to pieces, but it was all stuff she could do nothing about. She knew writing was escapism, but it was all she had, and she'd made huge progress over the weekend.

She opened her notebook, ready to trascribe it.

This... was chemistry.

This was... history. This was... ecology. This was... -- Where was her writing notebook!?

She searched all through her bag, then out in Rachel's skycar. She'd had it on the train and--

Oh no.

Oh NO!

She'd fallen asleep on the train, and Rachel had been talking to her and -- She must have left it there!

All her beautiful, wonderful writing! It was gone! Some stranger had probably found it and they were going to finish the story and publish it! Her beautiful story -- Gone forever!

"Okay, less panic," she said to herself. "There's still your progress on the conglom."

She forced herself to calm down, looked to the conglom display, and wanted to cry.

Lucinda couldn't help but curse quietly to herself.

When Mom and Dad came home, they decided the conglom was not one of their priorities. And besides, it was Lucinda's terminal. There was no one else who used it. She put any viruses there. This was her punishment. No conglom for a month.

This meant no dragon. No story. No friends.

A month!

This wasn't fair!

Downstairs, Mom and Dad were fighting. Next door, Rachel's music was vibrating their wall.

Lucinda took a blank notebook and tried to write. Instead, she sketche dthe Punjaro palace out of boredom, frustration, longing, something.

"I wish I could write," she scribbled next to it. She flipped the page over. She sketched the Punjaro versions of her three friends -- Kate and Plam and Gavin. "I wish my parents weren't having a hard time."

On the next page, she sketched Amity. "I wish I could get a dragon."

On the next page, she sketched a Wishing Tree. "I wish my life was different."

Rachel's music turned off, doors slammed. Lucinda tried again to write. Nothing came.

Her proliffic creativity dried up.

She stared at the wishes in her sketches. She stared at the tree just across the room (If you could call it a tree...).

Maybe she could get a mindset and get something restarted.

She found red and purple markers, colored two pieces of an old, torn pillowcase, and tied them around the treebranches. They bowed sharply with the weight, and she snuck downstairs to the kitchen.

She turned on the gas stovetop.

"Punjaro, hear my wishes," she hissed. She tore the pages from her notebook, and one by one, lit them on fire.

She held them until the heat was too much, and she dropped them into the sink.

When she was done, she turned off the gas and washed the ashes down the drain. She still couldn't write, so she went to sleep, where she dreamed of wide, open green fields and the yellow sun in the bright blue sky.