Chapter 39 - Dragon for a Day
I came back on Monday, sitting at the same table I was at on Thursday. On Friday, I opted to start work early and do some extra stats work that I enjoyed to the tune of new music I loaded onto my phone. The multitude of old music felt great for nostalgia, but I found myself skipping some old songs to hear the more recent ones. I would have to go through the whole list and pluck the weeds out.
The whole “wearing beast like a cloak” was vivid in my mind, and I found myself wondering what made me think I had made peace with desire. It was a hesitant thought, disappearing the more I attempted to recall it. I put it out of my mind for the time being. For some reason, I was not afraid that I would lose this space, and the freedoms it allowed. I was not overweight here, did not have to be tall, did not even have to be male. I could be any kind of being I could imagine. I could even be a dragon for a day.
And so, I decided to be one.
When I entered the library, I was still human. It was empty. Rather than try to call anyone over, I walked out the front door. With just a slow wave of my hand, the darkness ahead turned into a vast landscape of mountains and forests, streams and valleys. The brightness made me wince, but this was not real sunlight. It could not hurt me here like it did in reality. I took two steps off the entrance and closed my eyes to transform myself into a giant reptilian of myth and legend. I wanted to have wings, but also four legs, clad in green scales, and golden talons. My whole skeleton would be gold, visible on horns, talons, and various spots on my body where the bone would protrude through the skin.
When I opened my eyes, I was flying at a rapid pace over the mountains. The horizon was vast, never-ending in altering climates and sights I wanted to explore. From the mountain range, I flew over the red canyons of grandeur, shifting to deserts with ancient ruins I rested atop. The sun felt so warm and calm on my scales. The desert broke to a coast, into tropical islands, then congregating into swamps and ascending to greener mountains. When vegetation stepped aside, a sulfuric vein led me to an open volcano, bubbling red with molten rock. I took a dip in the red goo and felt myself exhale a breath of flame into the sky like a sigh.
Out of the volcano, I flew in the direction of colder climates, towards mountain ranges that collapsed into pure ice and snow, flying in blizzards as thick as fog. I sat atop the peak of cold and felt myself hunger to roar out. I bellowed a deep rumbling roar into the sky of the icy domain and looked as the solid state shifted to avalanches rolling down the mountains. I felt heat keep me warm inside, as if I had a furnace within. I could rest here, in these cold mountains without freezing to death.
A few minutes of resting brought upon a daze in my mind. It was so dark, and silent, and cold, and wet. It was heaven, if it ever existed. I was able to enjoy this dark as I could see at any moment. I could enjoy this silence, as I was loud when I needed to be. I delighted in the cold, as a furnace of heat burned within me. The moisture was welcome as I was still a creature full of it. I rested in the blizzard as it deposited layer after layer of snow on me, covering me completely save for the golden horns.
I felt far from the library, but in just one thought I could be back within it, and human again. I did not want to be so. I should have grabbed Kara, Lila, and Tarne along with me to enjoy the travel over the lands so vast. I wondered if they got used to Tarne being a grown up yet. It was a shock, for sure. I breathed a fire sigh, melting a bit of the snow over my head. There was still a place I had not visited, and it felt poignant to explore the depths of the ocean before returning to the library.
I stood up from the cold pile of snow, and let my furnace channel heat throughout to melt what remained. Once my wings were warmed, I took off from my little nest and flew above the snow clouds where the sun was just coming up. I looked upon that majesty of light and breathed fire to dance in the sky with the light ahead. I reached the shore in the lands of green before long, and let the water expand beneath me before I dove down through the water surface. With a slight edit of adding gills and webbing between claws, I was able to travel to the dark depths of the vast oceans.
Soon enough, the water got cold and dark, so I breathed a bit of fire into a bubble, letting it circle in magic as an orb of light. There was no other life here. Only I could bring that into existence, if I wanted to. When I reached the floor of the deepest oceans, I let the bubble of light fade. The darkness and cold felt almost as nice as the pressure of water on my body. All that water weighed on me, holding my body to the cold, wet rock of the bottom. It felt almost as great as the cold of the blizzard settling on my body, but this pressure felt like the water was hugging me. A normal body would be dead from any number of things at this point, but I was calm in my creationism magic of being one dragon magical enough to withstand it.
When I opened my eyes in the dark, I saw something I did not expect. There was a fish swimming by my eye, but I did not create any life in this ocean. Upon closer inspection, this was not just any standard fish. This was the building block of this space, a tiny little baby unevolved Rahin. It was a small red fish with angry looking black teeth. The scales were black, but the red between them shone a slight red to look like a skeleton of a red fish. I breathed a breath of fire to find a whole swarm of them around me. Was I the chaos of this space they were aiming to consume?
Before I had a moment to consider it, the swarm churned around the fire created, attacking like piranhas on the scales of my body. Luckily, dragon scales were stronger than those tiny teeth, or so I thought. The black teeth sank into the scales like hot knives into butter. I had to get back. With a blink, I was no longer a dragon, no longer on the bottom of the ocean, and the Rahin were also gone. I stood there naked on all fours for a moment, glad that the library was empty, then exited.
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