Work Text:
I was standing in my art studio. The walls were a dull grey but I had covered them with unsold pieces and a brightly colored mural. My bright blue couch was a few feet behind me. An old bedside table sat beside me. It had a knife that I had found on top of it as well as an ashtray with a smoking joint resting in it, and on the other side at my feet there were two buckets of paint. My apartment had one window, but it was dirty and streaked yellow, so most of the light usually came from the lamp I had built. The lamp looked like a vine, twisting and twining its way across the ceiling. It had light bulbs instead of leaves.
I looked into the mirror hanging on the wall next to me. My hair was flaxen, and streaked with gold. It had bits of paint stuck in it, and was pulled back into a messy ponytail. My nose was spattered with light freckles, a constellation of stars. My eyes looked like shattered emeralds, their shine in contrasted with my mostly dark attire. I was wearing worn skinny jeans with splatters of paint and random little bleached dots. I noticed a drop of gold paint right between my eyes, and had to wipe it off with my rag that was tucked into my back pocket. I also wore an ancient t-shirt. It was a faded black color that was now closer to being somewhere between umber or wenge and grey, with a swirling bleached design. I bought most of my clothes at assorted thrift shops, so they were bound to have some wear.
I lifted the joint to my lips and inhaled. The heat quickly made its way down my throat. The burn continued as the hot smoke filled my lungs. I held my breath and put the still smoking joint back on the ashtray. It didn’t really affect me the way it used to. My skin was tingling, like little electric currents were zipping around under the surface of my skin, and I slowly drifted toward numbness. Time was nothing, just paint and a canvas. I stretched down to the blue paint bucket with my brush, now the paint was dripping down, splattering my bare feet, black swirls dripping and mixing. I was painting a dragon. Taking the knife, from the table, I scraped away little bits of paint into a detailed design. The dragon that I was painting was the animal that wrapped its way around the knife. The dragon curled itself on the hilt of the knife. Its body was made of blue metal scales. Their color shifted between blues and greens, but somehow appeared to move. The colors looked as if they had a life of their own.
The dragon’s ruby red eyes sparked and flashed, its gaze looking alive, as if it were watching me. I was done with my painting and I stood back to examine my piece. It didn’t capture the life that the figure had. While I tried to figure out why I casually and absentmindedly turned the knife in my hands, end over end. Then it slipped, in my attempt to catch it, I caught the blade and sliced my hand. Blood began to gush from my hand, and soaked the dragon on the knife. I grabbed my rag and I wound it around my hand to stop the bleeding, but the world still began to fade. The edges were turning black. I stumbled back as I made my way the few feet to my couch, all blue and tranquil. Shoots of smoke blew past my field of vision, and I turned my head to the side and was looking into glowing embers of eyes, the eyes of a dragon. Pot and blood loss are one hell of a combination, I thought.
Light began to seep in around the edges of my sight. I gradually became aware of myself and my surroundings, but my chest felt so oddly heavy. The world’s cloak lethargically lifted, and the bright moonlight streamed through the open window, glimmering on a plain steel knife sitting on the little bedside table, covered in blood. The last time I had checked the clock last night it had been ten PM, and now, looking over my shoulder to the little table next to my easel, I was still pretty foggy but I could see that it was 1AM. Well, I thought, at least I was unconscious for a few hours. Still groggy I looked down at my chest, and I saw the same dragon that I had seen the night before, its head resting on top of me. A jolt went through my entire body and every muscle tensed. I tried to get up and endeavor to run away, but I was stuck. A sleeping dragon. I let my brain process this, while debating if I could have possibly been having hallucinations. She looked so real and lifelike, her scales were as blue as the ocean, shinning with streaks of green. A slight gasp escaped my lips, and her eyes flickered open. I don’t know how I knew she was a girl, but I just did. Her eyes were glowing embers.
“Oh, good” the dragon said, or more accurately, thought, I could hear the dragons words, but not through my ears, through her mind. “Usually my venom works faster than this. Also,” she thought, and then said aloud, “thank you.” Her mental voice was a beautiful melodic sound. It was deep and resonated in my bones.
“Um what?” I said, “Wait, venom?”
“First off, you don’t need to say it, second, you’d lost a lot of blood, you punctured your ulnar artery. It’s a good thing that you recovered, Sarah.”
“Darn it.” I held up my hand, but there wasn’t a cut there. A long pale scar now ran diagonally from the middle of my palm up to my wrist. Confusion and disbelief began coursing through my veins, “Slow down for a moment, please explain.”
“You’re taking this particularly well. I’m a Volitatus. We’re in New York City right?”
I nodded with confusion.
“I guess I’d be called a ‘dragon’ here,” She paused, “and you released me from being bound to that knife.
The blood of a telepath has some serious powers.”
“Ok, you’re a dragon, got that, and you were somehow imprisoned, in that knife, but what the hell are you talking about?” I paused, “Telepath and all?”
“You’re a telepath. How else did you think that we could communicate mentally?” she thought. “Volitatus venom usually heightens abilities anyway. Oh, by the way, my name is Basile”
“Wouldn’t I know this by now? If I were a telepath?”
“You’ve been unconsciously siphoning off information from everyone around you for years. You’re not very practiced so, obviously not.”
“Oh, well, OK then. Umm, could you get off me now?”
“Sorry. I saved you life last night by not letting you bleed to death and you saved mine by freeing me.” She stopped.
“Ok, where are you going with this?”
“I need your help again. When I was imprisoned, so was another. We are what you humans would call, ‘soul mates’. The difference here is that we are telepathically connected until our deaths.” She closed her eyes, “I can’t connect, if I push my mind to extend, we can’t communicate. He must still be trapped. Will you help me free him?” she implored.
“How can I help?”
“The last time that I saw him, he was trapped by being turned in to a statue with a potion dipped blade while we battled the knights. I must find him and set him free.”
“Wait, when was this happening?”
“1245.”
“You’ve been trapped for nearly eight hundred years.”
“Come here. Maybe if we put together our telepathic power we could find him.” I sat up and she moved further back, sitting her haunches. “Do you see the golden star between my eyes?” I nodded; I hadn’t noticed the spot earlier. It was a pale and slightly translucent shimmering dot. “I want you to put your palm on top of it, I’m going to let you into my mind.” I put my palm on top of her warm shimmering scales. After a moment, my mind felt like it was expanding and filling. I could feel colors and I saw her life. She saw mine. It was like being on shrooms, the one time I tried them. My brain was on fire and it was spinning and filling. It was everything and it was life in a rush of information and feeling and being. “Focus, she said. Slow your mind. I don’t know this land, you must decipher the sight.” I took a deep breath and slowed my thoughts. My mind and hers came to equilibrium; I could hear every thought and emotion. She then showed me a purple and reddish dragon; his scales shifted and glimmered with colors. “His name is Engel. Now push your mind.”
“I see a castle. It’s near a paved road and… I see a unicorn, wait, it’s the unicorn tapestries. The cloisters.”
“Search it with me.”
“He is a statue, high in the top tower.”
“Get on my back. We can fly there.” She stood up and walked to my open window. She walked onto the fire escape. Her barbed tail caught onto my curtains and ripped them down. “My apologies.” I walked over and removed it from her spikes. “Sit between the spikes on my spine.” She leapt into the air and dove a few feet. The wind whistled through my hair and my heart leapt into my throat. Her leathery wings then extended and everything evened out. She flew higher, and higher, with every heartbeat I could see more of the city lights. I was swept up with the wind, the air streaming by. Looking down I could see all the green leaves of the springtime trees and the Hudson River quickly approaching, its waves glimmering in the moon light. She started descending, and what started out as a tiny speck on the horizon swiftly became larger, until we were landing.
We stood in a courtyard, next to a fountain. The flowers were blooming in every color, or as many as the moonlight would allow to been seen. I got off and strolled on to the walkway. We walked, guided by our minds, the pull of another dragon getting stronger and pulling us onward, until we reached a door. It was about eight or nine feet high, blocking an archway, and had wrought iron swirls covering the whole thing and appeared to be made of maple or another similar wood, and was locked with a thick heavy metal bolt.
“I can take care of this.” She stuck one of her curved spikes into the lock and sat there twisting and turning it, her head was cocked to the side and her eyes were closed. There was a satisfying click and the door was unlocked. I turned the handle and walked under the archway. Basile was looking in through the door, at the place that her beloved had been kept for so long, and sighed. She then stepped forward but the space became a wall of blue sparks and shocked her, and she was pushed back a few feet.
“Ugh!” she exclaimed, “I can’t believe that I didn’t feel this. A powerful potions master must have laid this barrier. You must go with out me, but we will still be able to communicate, so I can aid you.”
I walked inside this little church like room and looked up to the top of the steeple where I saw a glimmer. I looked to the walls next to me, they were stone, but they weren’t smoothed on the outside, so I could use them as a ladder. I looked up at this wall, grabbed a rock sticking out at about head height, and I lifted myself up. Hand over hand I kept climbing. I saw the statue. It was reddish silver, the tail of a dragon wrapped around a post. Its mouth was open and spitting metal flames. I knew I had found him, I’d found Engle.
“How do I wake him?”
“Prick your finger on one of his spines.”
I reached up and wedged myself between the wall and the little ledge that he was sitting on. I leaned forward and stuck myself on the spine. “It’s going to hurt more than you expect. Touch the blood to the star on his forehead.” She told me.
I moved my outstretched hand to his forehead and touched the little silver dot. Lightning shot through my arm and around my body. White light flashed in my eyes. I saw the statue growing and uncurling itself. The metal fire became actual flame, scorching the stone across from it. Then eyes of blue flame looked at me as I began to fall, but was caught by a purple tail. I felt both the dragons’ joy, as they were able to talk again for the first time in many years, it was the warmth of electricity zipping through the air.
Engle then looked me in the eyes and said, “Thank you.” in a voice like thunder. He then jumped up into the air. Grabbed the back of my pants with his talon foot and shot through the wooden ceiling. For the second time that day, I was flying. My heart was in my feet as we shot into the open night sky, an umbrella of stars for his first sight of freedom in a very long time. Then Basile was there calling to her mate. Engle then rocketed downward coming to parallel the ground and dropped me back to earth where I belonged. I could feel every bone in my body recoil after my impact but I couldn’t help but just get up and look to the stars. As the two danced together in pure delight, Basile looked down at me and said, “You will forever have the gratitude of this Volitatus.” She sang out, and then she was gone. Ascending into the sky, playing on the wind.
I then walked back to the road and started my hike to the nearest subway station. When I got there I realized that I didn’t have any money, so I just jumped the turbine and waited for the next train to come along. Looking at my hands in the light I noticed that my nails had changed colors. Now they were a purplish blue and were no longer really nails. They were dragon scales.