Thursday, May 26, 2022

Dragon Boy Scene 1

 This writing is in response to this contest: https://vocal.media/challenges/the-fantasy-prologue

Let's take a stab at it shall we? This is the first draft.


Dragon Boy

There weren't always dragons in the valley. The words of my father rang in my ears, "as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall not falter..." but his voice trailed off. It had been such a long time since I was at church. The sunlight and the wooden pews. That was before the monsters came. They came in the windows, slowly, like tiny mice, and picked us all up and carried us away.

Currently, the mice were clinging to my clothes, about a hundred of them, their tiny teeth biting into my linen jacket and pants. The linen was made for me by the monks at the mission, they had worked for days. Before I headed out on my horse to get to the valley, they gave me about 80 mice in a canteen and told me to let them out, at just the time when I approached the valley.

The mice then went about climbing up on my clothes, each of them grabbing part with their teeth until they hung on me, like armor. That was the plan.

I stood there, next to the horse, with an armor of mice.

I thought of mice and lions. I thought about the story of the mouse getting the thorn out of the lion's paw, of some story when I was a kid. I thought of lions and lambs. 

I guided the horse slowly down the hill, the mice silent and clinging.

Fernando told me they were magic mice and that when we got to the bottom of the hill, they would run and create a rainbow barrier around me while I went to steal the Dragon's heart.

We did reach the bottom, and the mice ran and encircled me in a more stunning way than I could have ever imagined, a rainbow bubble shooting up from the ground and hanging around me, a forcefield of beauty. 

I came up to the sleeping dragon and tried to take his heart, but it was already taken.