I could barely see my hands in front of me as we stumbled through the wilderness in the inky darkness.
“Minerva, remind me, why are we here in the dead of night, heading to our demise?” I asked the silhouette of my friend behind me.
“Because, according to you,” she replied, implying that I wasn’t a very reliable source of information, “dragons sleep at night.”
“Yeah, but did we have to go on a moonless night? I’m going to trip and break my neck,” I complained.
“Hazel, don’t forget that this dragon hunting thing was entirely your idea, so don’t whine.”
“But we’re basically broke, and I heard that dragon scales can sell for a lot. So can a dragon’s teeth, claws, horns…” I went on and on. I left out the part that there might not even be a dragon, but there had been dozens of farmers that claimed to have spotted one in a nearby abandoned apple orchard, so it was highly likely. I ignored the fact that the last guaranteed time a human sighted a dragon was at least half a century ago.
“And whose fault is it that we’re out of cash? You. You spent all our money on food.” I couldn’t see in the shroud of blackness, but I was sure that Minerva was glaring at me. “I hope you have a plan on how to kill this thing. Neither of us has hunted anything worse than a bear, and the bear was being attacked by bees at the same time we were attacking it,” Minerva snapped.
“Well, I was thinking that we could sneak around it and find some of its shed skin. We could sell that. Dragons shed right? Also, don’t you know some magic of something? Can’t you blast it with a few fireballs if it sees us?”
“Just because I know how to conjure a tiny orb of light does not mean I can shoot fireballs,” she shot back.
“Okay, in that case, can I get some light please? We’re here.” I knew we had arrived because the thick branches and leaves that blocked the stars before had cleared, and glowing pinpoints freckled the raven colored sheet of the sky. Everything before me was an even void of obsidian, until the world was revealed by the light cast from a glowing white sphere that materialized, floating above Minerva’s left palm. The sphere pulsed and rippled a little, like water, as I gazed at the scenery. The land before me was a wide expanse of overgrown grasses swaying in the nighttime breeze. Trees with thick, gnarled trunks and dense viridian leaves grew wildly and round, blood-red fruits with buttery yellow splotches buried within their branches. The wind swirled the crisp scent of apples around us. Some trees had fallen over, snapped from splintering ashen stumps. The trees made jagged shadows on the ground. The tip of the long spear that Minerva carried in her right hand glinted like an icicle, and its wooden shaft bore a slight sheen. I sucked in a deep breath before advancing into the orchard.
“How come you didn’t create that light before, when we were at risk of snapping our limbs in the dark?” I inquired, thinking of how many shrubs that I could have dodged if I’d seen them coming towards my face.
“It only works once a day, unfortunately, and only for an hour. Didn’t I tell you like fifty times? What’s in your bag, Hazel?” Minerva asked, gesturing at my brown leather satchel that I carried by a cross-body strap. The strap clashed awkwardly with my bow and quiver of arrows, which I wasn’t exactly good at using, but was better at using than anything else. I didn’t really appreciate the bag in general. It was too large and clunky, and it hit me when I walked, but I had to have somewhere to put my stuff as I traveled, and I couldn’t get a backpack because it wouldn’t work out with my quiver. In response to Minerva’s question, I rifled through my bag.
“Water, cookies, a loaf of bread, two apples, a block of cheese,” I listed.
“Is all you have food?” She seemed outraged.
“Yeah, as you said earlier, I spent most of our money on food, which, mind you, is also a very necessary thing in order to live. Also I have water, and technically, that isn’t food.”
“But you don’t have anything useful,” she pointed out.
“We could set a trap and lure it in with the cheese and—”
She cut me off. “Nope. Absolutely not. That idea is worse than the original. C’mon.” Minerva let the light she had summoned float near us as I ran after her over the waist-length grasses, she with her spear brandished, and me with an arrow notched in my bow that I had unslung from my shoulder moments after she started to run. We made our way through the endless blades of lush emerald grass, past more ancient apple trees, and deeper into the grove. It seemed like the farther we went, the taller and thicker the trees became. I didn’t know where Minerva was leading us, but I knew better than to question her. The trees finally became so densely packed that we had to crawl under arching roots, and shift through narrow gaps. I had to put my bow back and my arrow in its quiver so that I didn’t stab myself in the eye. I also had to throw my chunky bag ahead of me, so I could get through. I swear that I got claustrophobia after that. The magic orb-light still lit up our way, trailing us. We finally broke out into a clearing. Well, I tumbled out and landed on my face.
“Ouch…” I groaned. “Where are we? Why’d you come here?”
“Shush,” Minerva whisper-screamed, waving her arms in the air, “the dragon’s here.” I sluggishly stood up and brushed the dirt off my clothes and face. I slung my bag over my shoulders as I peeked around a large mossy boulder that we had come out of the trees behind, and I had to stifle a scream. The clearing we were in was perfectly circular, and in the center grew the thickest, tallest apple tree of all. Its trunk could have been easily used as a ship large enough for forty people. Its shadowed branches reached upwards like crooked streaks of ink. Its roots crisscrossed the ground like a labyrinth. Its leaves were each the size of both my hands with fingers outstretched, and were a healthy shade of dark green. The most beautiful part of the tree was its fruit. Each apple that hung from it was easily as big as my head, which I admit was kind of ginormous. The apples were the color of rubies, and had canary yellow tinted spots that gave the illusion of pure gold. A sweet scent emanated from the tree, drawing me in, making my mouth water. The thing that filled me with fear though, was the long serpentine body that wound around the gnarled trunk, made up of shifting cerulean and lapis blue scales that glimmered in the soft shine of the magical floating light. Attached to one end of the snaky form was a head that grew two sharp stag-like antlers that seemed to be carved from sapphires. Two round, sea green eyes blinked their translucent lids, and rows of deadly-looking moonlight-colored fangs gnawed on the tough bark of a tree root. From the sides of the dragon grew four legs bearing pointy talons, which dug into the sides of the enormous tree.
“Uh… so I confess that most ideas I have are usually fatal, but I think that this was the worst one yet,” I admitted. I was kind of expecting the dragon to be no bigger than a house, but this thing was gigantic. I was also expecting the dragon to be sleeping.
“You think?”
“But all this couldn’t have been in vain! We have to get some shed skin or something!” I exclaimed, but then clamped my hands over my mouth. It was too late though, and the dragon’s head turned. I tried not to think of its very, very razor sharp teeth and antlers that resembled a spear, with lots of spikes attached.
“Great going, Hazel…” Minerva gave me a withering stare. The dragon’s seafoam green eyes were locked on us, and it started to unhook itself from its place entwined around the tree.
“Time for us to run!” I blurted with mock cheer. “Hurry!” I added as I pulled Minerva back into the tangle of trees that we had come from. I scrambled as fast as I could, falling over and under branches. My annoying bag was dragged through the dirt. I would have left it, but there was food inside. I couldn’t abandon food. The dragon was no doubt following us, and I heard booming footsteps echoing from behind us. My face was smeared with mud, and my hair was entangled with twigs when we sprinted into an area where the trees were further apart from each other, and there was more space to move.
“Okay. I think it stopped following us,” Minerva panted. The footsteps had ceased, and we were surrounded by the silence of night. I sighed in relief, but then held my breath as I listened to a faint noise.
“Do you hear that?” I asked quietly, my heartbeat speeding up faster than it already was. A distant flapping sound came from somewhere above us.
Minerva scowled. “I jinxed us, didn’t I?” I glanced upwards, and there it was. The snaky blue dragon was there, looking like a ribbon of water against the star speckled sky. Between its claws was a wide, translucent sort of membrane that it glided on.
My jaw dropped. “You’re joking, it flies?” Minerva’s magic light chose that moment to go out, and darkness engulfed us. At least we could see the dragon though, for it turned out to have a bioluminescent quality to its scales. I also realized that now, the sky was more of a purplish eggplant color than black. The sun must have been rising. I gripped my bow and notched an arrow in its string, fumbling in the dark. I took aim at the dragon’s eye, then fired. For a second, my arrow soared like a comet, but my heart fell when it missed the eye and collided with the solid wall of scales next to it with an empty clink. I fired a few more arrows, but they either fell short or veered off course due to my shaking hands and poor archery skills. Probably mostly because of my poor archery skills. The dragon seemed bored watching me miss, so it dove at Minerva, who was waving her spear at the dragon and shouting at it. The dragon snatched the spear up in its jaws and snapped its shaft in two.
Minerva sighed, “What now?”
“I don’t know! I’m just—augh!” My words were cut off because suddenly, I found myself dangling by my obnoxious bag, zipping high up into the sky, my bow and arrows left forsaken in the dirt. The strap of the bag was gripped in between the dragon’s teeth. I stared up at the dragon, who seemed hungry. Its coat of blue scales glimmered like knives. Don’t look down, don’t look down, I thought, but of course, I looked down. The land below me was tinged by a faint amethyst light. I could see the dark silhouettes of mountains on the horizon, and seas of trees. My feet hung uselessly below, like a pair of dead fish. My hair whipped my face, and I could barely breath—much less scream, though I tried, creating a few choking squirrel noises. I started to struggle frantically and I was sure that I looked like a headless chicken on fire, until I realized that if I fell from this height, the result would not be great. I couldn’t hold on for long, because I greatly lacked upper arm strength, so there was only one solution. Unfortunately, this solution also involved upper arm strength. Try or die… I guess? I tried to shuffle up the strap of my bag, like a rope. The dragon just shook its head a little, and I let out more attempted screeches as I swayed by the thin leather strap of the bag I was holding onto. I heard a quiet shouting sound echoing from the orchard below. It must have been Minerva.
“Hazel! Don’t let go!” She hollered. Thanks for the advice…
The dragon swooped downwards, and the bottom of my shoe skimmed the top of a pine tree. I wondered if I would crash into an even taller pine tree that would emerge from the darkness, and wished for the thousandth time that the moon was out. I started to get sidetracked from my life or death situation. The moon kind of looked like a wheel of cheese, so I got hungry. My wonderful mind thought, If I die, I might as well die while eating cheese. Careful to not let go of my bag, I opened it and pulled out the slightly misshapen quarter of a wheel of cheese. Food was motivating me to be able to hold onto my bag with one hand. I was about to take a bite of it, but before I could, the dragon dived downwards. My insides lurched, and the slice of cheese in my hand flew to the ground, a pale dot against the purple landscape. The dragon flew downwards even faster, and I couldn’t believe that I had held on so long. I could make out blades of grass, and apple trees as I tried to squint past the wind battering my face. I should have been much more scared, but I think that I was in shock at the moment. To my surprise, the winds blowing around me ceased and my feet were standing stably on the ground. My fingers were so numb from gripping my bag that I hadn’t realized I’d let go, and that the dragon was no more than a thin line in the sky. It had carried my bag with it. Before I could be disappointed that all my food was gone, I threw up all over the tall grass in front of me.
“Ew… Hazel, that’s disgusting…” Minerva was standing in front of me, squinting at me judgementally. “At least you lived.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth and not listening to her at all. She just shrugs.
“Maybe we should get money in some non-fatal way. Like hunting squirrels.”
“Yeah…” I sigh and we trudged back into the forest, now slowly lighting up as day approached.
