Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

1

She walked down the trail, the wind brushing past the trees and letting her long chestnut brown hair flow gently with it. The girl paid no attention, her blue dim eyes staring up in the clouds. Maybe it was something else, she wasn’t sure. A bag was slung across her shoulder carrying a bundle that seemed to stir, or maybe it was the wind playing tricks. The bag was made of deer skin and it wasn’t the only item that was that the girl wore. In fact every item she wore was made from the stuff. The belt that held the rusted sword around her waist was even made of deer skin. Her hands were placed in her pants pocket as she just strolled along the road. Anyone that would see her would have a hard time believing that this girl, no older than sixteen, had been travelling this path for three weeks now. Her skin was fair and soft and her body was slim with the perfect curves. She looked like a girl from royalty escaping the palace by wearing peasant clothes, but this wasn’t the case. She was born in this forest and lived off of it her whole life.

The girl stopped in the middle of the road. Dirt gently floated in tiny dust clouds around her shoes. Her eyes shifted gaze to the top of the forest trees to the vast number of apples. She could hear her mother’s voice soothingly say ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away, Flame. And since you and Chao need all the strength you can get, grab your bounty.’ A small forced smile crept on the girl’s face. The natural beauty that was there vanished and what was there instead of a pain trying to explode out of her very being. Smiling no longer was natural and the girl could feel it now more than ever.

“Where were the doctors for you mom?” she muttered softly under her breathe getting on her toes to yank an apple from its mother. No one was around. She could speak as loud as she wanted to, but the trees had ears. Anything had ears, and maybe even her apple did. She shoved the thought away sinking her teeth into it. The juice poured out seeping into her tongue and gradually followed down her throat. It was better than water but it did make her thirstier. However, it was better than what she had eaten in the past three weeks. All there was in this forest were rabbits, deer, and other plants. It was rare to see an apple tree in these parts. If she wasn’t dying for another taste in her mouth she wouldn’t have wasted her time trying to grab these apples. Truth was that she hated apples and everything about them. In the old days they were just too sweet and the skin always got in the way. But today, they were the sweetest tasting things in the whole damn world.

The girl dropped her bag onto the ground and there was a thud and silent grunt. The flap of the bag opened letting a white scaly tail skimp out and resting right on the flap. The girl looked down giving the bag a scolding look dropping apples right into the bag. With each apple that fell there was another grunt that escaped the bag. The girl bent down grasping the bag’s handle and brought it to her face. “You know better than that,” she hissed, her voice barely above a whisper. “You know what will happen if someone saw you, even if it was just a tail.”

The tail sunk back in and a low murmuring sound began to escape out of the bag. It seemed as if it was talking to the girl, but that would be ridiculous, or maybe it wasn’t. The murmur sounded to be from another tongue, a tongue that didn’t belong to anything human.

Another smile, which still seemed unnatural, crept on the girl’s face as she slung the bag back on her shoulder. “I don’t need to lighten up,” she smiled, which still seemed unnatural. “Do I need to remind you that I’m keeping us alive from the bounty hunters? You’re just going to have to get used to living like this.”

Another murmur came out of the bag. This time the murmur sounded the way a child would when it wasn’t aloud chocolate before dinner, a whining cry.

“You have apples to occupy you’re time, buddy-oh-my,” she mused. “We’ll be living like this until the quest is done.”

This murmur was a grunt of dissatisfaction.

“Part of the quest is figuring out how to find this thing,” she murmured. The girl cocked her head up, her blue dim eyes looking back up into the sky casting off a dazed look as she continued walking on the trail.

2

“Long live the bloody King!” he bellowed clashing his mighty glass against his friends. The beer over flowed and foam sprayed everywhere.

“In bloody hell is where he should long live!” his friend cackled with laughter. “That’s udda be the sayin now!”

Dill Gibbs smiled slamming is drink down on the table. “I hear ya on that one, brother. Most of this town would agree with you.”

John Murts bared his ‘win a fair lady’ smile of his. “Too bad an’ rebellion that tooken place in this fair ole’ city of ours resulted in bloody deaths an more fear. So much fear it went up all our wazzoos!”

“It might not always be like that, John,” Dill smirked. “Who knows, maybe someone will come into the Hulls and put an end to it all. I mean, we’re getting close. Some demon chick with crazy white hair came close to defeating our Royal’s army of dragons.”

John laughed hard breathing in the tobacco and the smell of beer. “She nearly got em, tis true. But she rots in jail awaitin death like the rest of us damn rebels.”

Dill considered this taking a big swig out of his glass. “Who knows, John, who knows? All I reckon is maybe one day we’ll have a chance is all. I mean a demon came! A demon! Out of that there Dragon Forest! We all thought that no magical being lived up there anymore but a demon came out of there!”

John raised a brow. “Whatcha point Dilly?”

Dill’s green eyes lit up. “We all heard the tales of the Dragon People. Humans gifted to be half dragon but was then banished by the dragons themselves to live in Dragon Forest! Now, those tales were legends and we heard that no magical creature lived there now! But they were wrong! Which means that the dragon people exist too!”

“I don’t understand Dilly….”John frown, his face red from the liquor but he wasn’t too far gone to understand crazy talk when he heard it.

“Dragon people speak dragon! The king has dragons protecting his oh-so-royal regime! So we, you and me John, go up that forest and snag us a dragon person and see if he or she can get rid of those dragons. Who better than a human with dragon powers! And then we can take that bloody king down to the core!”

“Even if wad you say is true, Dilly-boy,” John said taking another swig of beer. “How do we knows that this dragon chick or dragon lad will help us? Wad if they savages? May be a reason for they bein banished to Dragon Forest. Fools go in tha forest! Fools, Dilly-boy! Demon could ‘av been travelin through Dragon Forest so goin in there would be a waste o’ time!”

Dilly sunk back in his chair. The drunken men around the two ignored their talk completely as beer glasses flung and men began to sing horrible show tunes in curdling cries. “We could always go to Brutus and Bob to ask the demon girl if she lived there or was travelling. I mean, all the rebels die to the dragons, or they go to jail to be starved to death and then be killed by the dragons. The dragons then terrorize our people, take our kids to the King’s ‘so-called-school’ to train them to be killers, and just goddamn too much more! I want to end it! I’m sick of it! If there’s a chance, a small slim chance, that we can grab a dragon girl or dragon boy that might help us, then I want to take it, John. I want to grab it and hold it as hard as I can, until my fingers bleed!”

“This isn’ just what the king did to your youngin, Billy, Dilly-boy?”John’s face no longer held a happy thought but was stone serious. Dill had never seen his friend’s face like that ever in his life. “This isn’ retaliation? This is straight out of the heart and the means of savin everyone? Not retaliation for your boy, Billy?”

Dill closed his eyes biting his lip firm for a moment, or maybe it was a minute, but to him it felt like an eternity. “It isn’t retaliation. I just don’t want another parent to go through what I damn saw and have a kid go through what my boy did. Our mad hatter king’s gone too far, we have to stand up and be men.”

“Bein men by standin behind a dragon kid? How manly is that, Dilly-boy?”

“Next to that dragon kid,” Dill said firmly. “We get that hope and spread it around town and this time the king can live long in hell with Satan!”

John’s smile returned. Dill could always count on John Murt’s smile to know he was in it until the end. “Fine, you n’ me will go to the insane forest and chase us down your imaginary dragon people. We fin’ one n’ we’re in da business. If not, then it was a fun hike, dontcha say?”

John Murts took his hand away from his beer glass and spit in it. He held it out firmly waiting for Dilly-boy to do the same. Dill grinned spitting in his own hand. The two laughed shaking.

“People aught to think we’re queer, Dilly-boy. An I may be crazier than the wazoos for doin this but I got big faith on ya boy.”

“I got a wife,” Dill laughed. “So don’t you.”

John shrugged. “Queers have wives too, if they don’ then they don’ hide very well.”

“You better not scare off our dragon boy or girl with that dry sense of humor of yours!”

John bellowed with laughter clutching onto his gut. “Maybe all we need to en’ our dragins is my dry sense o’ humor!”

John and Dill continued to laugh picking up their beers and drank to Dragon Forest and in hopes of finding the imaginary dragon people. The sad thing was, the two forgot that the walls had ears.

This was something that the dragon girl travelling out of Dragon Forest knew all too well.

3

It had been one grand ole battle, but in the end all she had to show for it was sitting a pile or rotting hay and rusted jail cell bars. She smiled contently to herself; a piece of hay was presently on her lips like she was a western farmer living her dream. Rotten hay for a bed wasn’t so bad, she had been in worse. The past two years of her life she was sleeping in dirt, and sometimes, oh praise the lord on those sometimes, she would sleep under corpses to conceal herself from her enemies. If she could sleep with the stench of rotting flesh seeping in her demon pours, by god she could sleep in rotten hay!

The demon with stardust hair closed her eyes, her smile widening. She could picture it, that battle with the dragons. It had been sweet and vigorous! Now, only if she won she could boast to herself to let time pass by on how she almost beat a couple of dragons to the king! Instead she would have to settle on something not as great as that triumph, getting out of this jail cell before the Hull’s king figured what to do with her.

Did she care?

No. Of course not! The only thing that truly mattered was to follow the scent of the blood suckers. Those ruddy things sure travelled fast and the longer she stayed here, the harder it would be to catch up to them.

How are you going to beat them when you do catch up to them?

She shrugged to herself smugly. There had to be a good fighter around these parts somewhere. Someone she could easily get her hands on and trust her life too. Well, not trust her life too, but trust that they were stupid enough to die for her cause. A tool, yeah that was a good word for it, a tool was exactly what she needed. A living breathing tool and those blood suckers would be as good as hers.

Her mind scattered away from those thoughts and returned to dragons. The past few days, even before entering town, her mind had been consumed with dragons! She didn’t understand why, and neither did she plan to figure out why, but her mind had gone dragon loco! It was the very reason she went into Dragon Forest and spent nearly four weeks to get out of it. That was a pretty damn big forest. She remembered walking by a village that day, that village had been on her mind a lot too, seeing people humbly walk around. But the one thing she vividly remembered was a girl who was about her age getting the snot kicked out of her by some old geezer. Zeera supposed that the girl was some sort of apprentice or something, she honestly didn’t care. What she did care about, however, was at that point when the girl was smashed across the face by the old man’s weapon. Zeera heard skin crack open, the sound was so horrible that it pierced through her dreams some nights, and dragon wings sprang out. They were covered in a coat of blood but they shook themselves off and then they just gleamed. That was all she remembered of that village. The next couple of days through her journey Zeera woke up to blood boiling screams from afar. She guessed something happened there.

But if it had nothing to do with Zeera, it didn’t matter to her as well.

Maybe all those dragon loconess was a sign of her battle with the Hull’s dragons. Those things, they were on steroids or something, too powerful for a normal dragon at least. She would know, her father and her had killed a couple of dragons back in the day when life was good. They didn’t even speak either; it was just mindless battle-to-the-death. And that wasn’t normal as well. Every dragon she ever knew tried to shove philosophy down her throat with their gifted ‘OOO look at me! I am sooo special’ way of talking.

This kingdom was weird.

The dragons were out of wack.

And the king himself had something fishy up his sleeves.

Maybe those god damn bloodsuckers did something. That seemed logical to her. They were the logic when the world went crazy.

Maybe you have vampyre on the brain instead of dragon, Zeera? Ooo! Maybe the dragons are vampyres as well, did you ever think of that?

She laughed. That would be silly, if that was the case she would have sniffed it on those steroid dragons when she fought them. But, it was an interesting thought. Nothing was certain when it came to those ruddy folk, like the reason they decided to mess with her!

Nevertheless, she would let dragons and blood suckers be placed behind her. She would travel and things would become clearer when she was out of this smelly joint. And they said the Hull was a nice friendly place to stay! Well, that’s if the dragons want it to be nice! Zeera held her laughter and let her mind go blank. It was time to rest and she’d think of escape tomorrow.

4

She was back at the village. But instead of seeing people swarming around and going about their daily business like last time, all she saw was a dead decayed place with ashes everywhere. The bodies were burned and it was hard to tell if they were bodies at all, but her nose alone could answer that question for her. Zeera gazed confused walking around. She saw this place a few days ago, so what the hell happened that turned it to this disaster?!

She realized this was just a dream and nothing more. Maybe her sick mind wanted to see a happy place destroyed. It wouldn’t be the first sick thought from her and neither would it be the last. Zeera kicked an arm out of her way and then she kicked a leg. “It’s like…soccer…”she mused sickly kicking a toe. It flew across the air landing next to a girl. This girl wasn’t dead, but she looked like she wanted to be. It took a moment for Zeera to register this was the girl with the dragon wings. She was the one that was being smacked several times by the old geezer.

The girl turned to look at her; her blue eyes were as dim as a fog. Zeera felt goose bumps rise across her green skin. She didn’t know why, but the death look in those eyes scared the hell out of her. “You kicked Uncle Wayne,” she said. Her voice was complete monotone.

“Well, you’re Uncle Wayne is dead,” Zeera said and was surprised to hear the harshness in her voice. “So I guess he don’t mind if I kicked his toe or even his own head.”

The girl just stared at her. “You wouldn’t want me to kick your dead carcass around if you were dead just because you’re a demon.”

Zeera took a step back. She hadn’t expected to hear that, but she wasn’t surprised. “If I’m dead, I’m dead. Can’t stop the future and can’t change what happened. So I wouldn’t care if you spit in my mouth for that matter.”

The girl nodded, it looked like her mind was working on her words. “Why are you here?”

Zeera laughed, “It’s my dream, so I should be asking you why I’m standing with a bunch of dead bodies and talking to one.”

The girl smiled, it was unnatural and brought more goose bumps up Zeera’s skin. “The dragons aren’t on steroids, you know.”

“Wait…what?”Zeera asked confused.

“You heard me.”

“Well, you’re confusing me!”She stammered.

The girl nodded again, grinning that inhuman smile. “You’re vampyres aren’t your real enemy either.”

Zeera’s face dropped hearing those words. No longer holding surprise or fear on her face, Zeera lunged for the girl grabbing her by the collar and forcing her face into hers. “What are you talking about! God damn tell me everything you bloody know!”

The smile never faltered and her blue dim eyes now danced with white flames. “You’ll find out in time. You’ll see me again and I’ll see you for the first time. But those dragons, they weren’t on steroids.”

“What do you mean!?”She yelled shaking the girl over and over again. “What do you god damn mean!?”

5

“WHO ARE YOU!?”She yelled leaping from the ground and her gold eyes sprang open. She could feel the cold sweat still mounting on her face. “What are you…”

It was the same girl, but the white flames….

You’re going crazy, hun. Just take a step back and realize it’s just a dream. Maybe you’re little vampyres sent it to you to slow you down. Maybe they want you to go off and chase some dragons instead of them.

She couldn’t deny the voice of reason. Those filthy bloodsuckers were slippery enough to pull a trick like that, but something tugged at her strings telling her that this wasn’t so. Why would they lead her to creatures that would eat them like chew toys? Her little vampyre buddies would know she would find a way to conquer the beasts and set them loose on her.

But you haven’t found a way, have you Zeera? Why else would you be sitting in this cell rotting away? You lost to those dragons!

Maybe she had, but that was just a test run. She’d defeat them sooner or later. Right now, though, she sat back down letting her mind whirl around in thousands of thoughts about dragons and vampyres and how the hell the two could possibly relate.

And she thought of the dragon girl…and white fire coming out of her eyes.

6

John Murts could talk straight, but it was as rare as drunken cats having a gang fight with a whole bunch of dogs. The liquor was the only thing that mattered to him, and if that damned his speech and made it almost intolerable for anyone with a right of mind to comprehend, it was a small sacrifice to pay. Drinking booze was worth more than travelling with Dilly-boy to find his imaginary dragon people. So it was of no surprise that when they travelled through Dragon Forest, Murts was swaying to and fro carrying a few bottles of his god-for-saken ail.

He made sure that he would be all set for the whole day’s worth trip walking around this forest. Murts had a bag full of any type of liquor the drunk could get his hands on, which was about eight or nine bottles of strong booze. Dilly-boy would give up before nightfall and return home to his wonderful mousy looking wife, Alice.

Murts would have the pleasure of passing out in his run down shack of a home and drink more booze when he woke up. Unlike his friend, Murts never had anyone to turn to in his life. Well, that was a lie. Once, in the days of his long forgotten youth, Murts had his own little Alice that would keep him sober and fill his head with the hope that Dilly-boy now carried so well. His Alice was now far gone and the memory of her was fading fast. He could remember the smell of her hair and the feel of her hips in his hands, but the color of her eyes and shape of her lips had become nothing more than a mystery to him. He remembered her long thick chocolate smooth hair but that was just about it. He had blocked most of it out through the lifestyle he lived now, and to him, there was nothing wring with the way he was living.

He didn’t lose his Alice the way his friend had lost his son. No, if that was the case, John Murts would have it a lot worse than a heavy drinking problem. He probably never would be able to sleep again. His Alice had left him. It was plain and simple like a common story. John was once a good looking guy who fell in love with a good looking girl. Good looking girl realizes that she needs more in life than a simple good looking farmer so she grabs her bags and goes off into the city. The only thing that burned deep inside his little drunken heart was that his Alice didn’t have the decency to give him a little note that she would leave him one day. It wasn’t the greatest feeling in the world to fall asleep holding the girl you love and wake up to find nothing in his bed but his bare body. By then his Alice was far north, south, east or west, or just plain out of the Hull.

John Murts had never had another kind of Alice again. His new Alice had become booze, and booze was good enough for him. The way he looked at it was simple. A drink never hurt you, complained to you, or gave any negative feedback at all. A drink would soothe the aches in his mind and fill a world full of painful images to a world full of blended colors and blurry looking ‘meople’.

Dill, on the other hand, had a sober head strapped on his shoulders. He would only have drinks going out with John to the tavern. Those occasions were few and not as exciting as the one from the other night. Gibbs had no time to get drunk and kill his brain cells. He had to take care of a grieving wife and still raise the farm. After what had happened to Billy, instead of damning the man, it had opened up his eyes and forced him to see what was going on in Hull. His story was a story for another time with complicated loops unlike Murts. It would unravel in time, and Gibbs was content to hide that part of him in the past for now.

The two continued down the trail. One was shorter than the other, but could be taller if his back wasn’t hunched. Murts, unlike most drunks, was as thin as a twig and carried no beer belly. Instead the beer had become something that seemed to suck the life out of him. His skin was paler giving it a grayish quality and his body was not exactly as straight and bold as it used to be. He wore a farmer’s black hat to cover the strip grey of locks taking root in his scalp, but you could see the grey stubbles of a becoming beard clearly on his face. Dill was completely different than his friend. For someone that was around forty years old, Gibbs looked just out of his twenties. He was muscular and tan from all the farm work that needed to be done on his farm. His face was clean and his hair had only one or two grey hairs resting in its scalp. It was an odd pair to see walking in the woods. One strong was strong while the other was feeble. One was bright while the other was wasted. The comparisons could never end with Gibbs and Murts but it would end like this. They were odd and seemed like a pair that would get nothing done correctly and right. Maybe one would, but the other would slow him down. But none of this mattered. Their kingdom, the kingdom they only knew, was falling apart and breaking fast. Hope was all that was, and could be found. And if hope brought this odd pair to do its tasks, then it was alright with them.

Dill looked over at John; a smile crept on his face as he shook his head laughing. “You’re absolutely hopeless, aren’t you?”

“Me hopless?” John laughed swigging another sip of his hard core liquor. “Imma no hopless, Dilly-boy! You shoulda be one hopless buddy, you an your imaginary dragin people!”

Dill just smiled, “If we’re going to try and convince one of them to help us save Hull, I think it would be smart to stop drinking the whisky. We’re not as young as we used to be and I highly doubt two middle aged men that are graying up in the top can take down dragons, don’t you agree?

John shrugged, stumbling his way through. To be quite honest he was drinking more this morning than on a normal day. He wondered why Dilly-boy wasn’t doing the same, considering they were travelling in a forest that seldom would cross. And they crossed when they had too! This wasn’t a ‘had to’ mission but to just prove to ole Dilly here that the dragon people never existed. It was just some story that kids heard, like how Humpty Dumpty did disco with the queen! Well, he wasn’t sure how that story went but Murts was sure it had to do with discoing eggs and horses on walls.

All John knew for sure was that he wanted to get the hell out of this forest. There had to be a reason that not many travelers went by these parts. And Dill was a smart guy, he was the smartest out of the two of them and it wouldn’t take him long to figure out that his imaginary folk were long gone and dead. Then they could return home and he could sleep away until it was time to drink the booze.

John just had to wait for Dill to come to his senses, and that would happen very soon. The drunk smiled, his cheeks blazing red, as he took another swig of his whiskey.

They would be home in no time!

7

The liquor was gone. It was all gone! Never before did John Murts feel a sickening feeling pouring out of every fiber of his bones. They had been travelling all day and now Dilly-boy had set up camp. They weren’t supposed to spend the night! They were supposed to come home! And now, here he was, sitting by a campfire with all the liquor, booze and whiskey gone for good. John’s face dropped staring into the fire trying to keep his mopey expression hidden.

He was doing a bad job at it.

“Maybe one night of you being sober is going to be a good thing for you,” Dill said dropping more wood to fuel the flames.

“Shud ap…” he groaned.

Dill just grinned. “I can see someone’s a little grumpy. But I’d suck it up if I were you. We don’t want to scare ‘em off if they’re around.”

“You shoulda listened do you wifey,” he mumbled. “Dragin meople doon exist. If we adda listened da her we be home…and I’d have me drink…”

His friend just shook his head. “Alice understands why we’re here. They probably don’t exist, but there is a slim hope that they do! And right now, hope’s all that Hull can count on.”

John’s eyes narrowed hocking up a loogie and spitting it into the flames. “I spid on hope. I wanna go home, Dilly-boy.”

“That’s just the booze talking.”

“Soooo?”

There was silence between the two; there was no complaining from Dill, as the moon shone brighter through the forest thick roof of trees. John refused to talk keeping the haggard look on his face, anyone would think he lost a loved on rather than his booze. Dill didn’t mind, he used this time to think on how to talk to one of the dragon people if they happened to meet upon one. When it was late the sober man let out the fire and got settled in his sleeping bag. John was still motionless staring at the empty campfire. “It’s not that bad you know,” he said.

“Shud ap…”John muttered. He tottered over lying straight on his back looking straight up in the clouds.

Unaware to them, up in the trees painfully sharp dim blue eyes glared down at the two. They had been there for a while not settling its gaze on them. It only grew more fierce when ‘dragin meople’ was mentioned by the knocked out one.