![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
esp_dragonFandom: Original
Summary: "I always watched them from far away, not getting too close, just in case they saw me. They didn’t come here a lot, but if I saw them, I followed them everywhere, just to see if they would do it."
Rating: K+
Notes: For my Creative Writing class. The prompt is 'Imagine yourself as a child character. Write a first-person narrative based on a child who has a dream of achieving something and does.'
;p Hey, it stopped me from doing a lot of introspection.
Anyone have any ideas that I could use as a modern equivalent instead of chalk?
Genre: Fantasy
Word count: 2,193
Status: Complete
I always watched them from far away, not getting too close, just in case they saw me. They didn’t come here a lot, but if I saw one, I followed them everywhere, just to see if they would do it. Mum was always worried when I got back home, but she knew why I was late and nothing stopped me when I heard one was here.
I'd only ever seen a few of them and they didn’t always use it, but it was really worth it. When they did use it, I would be grinning for the rest of the day, picturing it in my head, over and over again, trying to think how it felt.
They never noticed me when I followed them. They were normally alone, but sometimes, they had someone else with them. An apprentice.
That was what I wanted to be.
I wanted to be an apprentice of a mage, and then be the best mage there was in the world! There were so many stories about them - what they did, their magic, just, everything and they were so cool, the way their long coats looked, stamped with the school they went to.
But I wasn’t going to be one. Mum kept telling me you needed to be born with magic to become an apprentice and I wasn’t. I’d tried to do magic, but nothing happened - no fire, no wind, no green light for healing spells. It wasn’t fair.
So, when I saw a mage, I’d follow them just to see a bit of magic, because that would be as close as I was going to get to it.
* * *
A fog had come in, covering everything like a white blanket; it was so thick I couldn’t even see the other side of the playground.
'How was I going to get home in this?' I thought, staring at the fog. 'It's going to take ages and the roads are busy sometimes – I'm never going see the cars coming!' But, as I watched, I could see through more of the fog so I started going home.
Everything was quieter; I couldn’t hear stuff like I normally could. It was weird; the fog made everything look different, like I was in another town.
I think I was halfway home when there was a shout and then a couple of coloured flashes of light in the fog. I slowed down, peering at the fog in the closest alley. There wasn’t a lot of things that could make lights like that – what was a mage doing there?
The shouting had already stopped, but so had the lights. No-one had ran out the alley so, they went out the other side? I went into the alley, and stumbled over some large stones that were lying on the ground. I didn’t fall, but I scraped my hand on the wall. There was something funny about it – it felt different.
“Woah.” The wall was covered with holes and slashes. The mage was fighting someone? I had to see it. And who was stupid enough to fight with a mage?
On the other end of the alley, the fog was a bit thinner so I could see further. The mage was huge! He was wearing a mix of reds and the man he was fighting was wearing brown but… That wasn’t right. I rubbed at my eyes to make sure. His coat said he was a mage too. Why were two mages fighting each other? They were supposed to help people where they were – not fight each other.
My shoulder was grabbed – not hard enough to hurt, but it wasn’t light. ‘Uh-oh.’ Slowly, I turned my head to look behind me.
It was a man, with long, dark hair that went past his shoulders. “I’m not going to hurt you – just making sure you don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
‘‘Crossfire’?’ “I’m not in trouble?”
The man shook his head. “No, don’t worry.” He glanced at where the mages were fighting, before looking back at me. “I’m Dryden.”
“Um...” I looked down at my shoes. “’M Kendra.”
“Kendra,” Dryden said quietly, “you shouldn’t be wandering around in the fog by yourself, and you really shouldn’t get too close when a mage is fighting."
“But… they’d protect me – it’s safest when you’re near a mage; everyone knows that.” It was in all of the stories about them.
“That’s true,” Dryden agreed, “but accidents can happen. You might get hurt, even when the mages don’t want it to.”
“Oh.” But then, the mage would be able to heal me, right? And I didn’t normally get this close to a mage!
There was a big flash that distracted me from saying that.
“Dammit!” That had come from one of the mages.
Dryden’s hand tightened on my shoulder and pulled me back a bit. “Richard?” he called out, staring at the fog.
The mage that came stomping out was the one in the brown coat. What had happened to the other mage? “He used a bloody teleportation crystal; he could be on the other side of the country now.” Then the mage saw me and stopped. He stared at me, and then looked at Dryden, an eyebrow raised. “Are you lost?” he asked me, concerned.
I shook my head.
When I didn’t say anything else, Dryden said dryly, “I think you’ve made her speechless.”
Richard straightened his jacket -it was kind of scruffy in a few places- and glared at Dryden. “Can you find your way home from here?” he asked me, gently.
I nodded, staring at him. This was the closest I’d ever been to a mage. And he was talking to me! And… he didn’t look that different from normal people; I thought their eyes glowed.
He smiled at me, chuckling a little bit. “Okay then. Be careful, all right?” I nodded again and Dryden let me go.
As soon as he did, I was running back down the alley. I’d met a mage!
* * *
The fog had cleared up by the next day – and it was a Saturday so there wasn’t any school. Mum didn’t believe I’d met a mage, but dad did. I was trying to find him again and this time, I wouldn’t get too close and maybe he’d show me some more magic.
The alley wasn’t too far from my house and I stared at the mess when I got there. There were bits of brick everywhere and both walls –
A hand clapped around my mouth and then everything changed. The alley disappeared and I saw a dark, empty room instead. I felt dizzy, like that time I’d spent too long on the roundabout.
“Hmph. The first time you’ve felt magic?” I stopped moving; I didn’t know that voice.
The hand let go of me and some dust blew into my face, making me sneeze. I yawned. ‘Why…? I didn’t feel sleepy bef…’
* * *
I woke up, hungry. ‘Where-? Where am I?’ The roof was too high for my room and – and… I was in so much trouble.
I was lying in the middle of a room, chalk drawings all around me, joined together by circles. The other mage was standing on the other side of the room, staring at the chalk. I wanted to curl up into a ball, run away, but I couldn’t – I was tied up and couldn’t move.
There wasn’t any other spell that used chalk apart from summoning, and there was only one reason why I would be in the middle of it: I was going to be sacrificed!
“Well then,” the mage said, looking at me and smiling, “shall we get started?” He lifted his arm and there was a purple glowing crystal in his hand. He said something and the chalk started to burn and caught on fire – it was the same colour as the crystal. It spread until all of the chalk was burning. The fire wasn't hot though - I didn't feel any heat coming from it.
The mage started laughing. "Well, well, isn’t that interesting?” The fire was growing taller, and then it got so high, I couldn’t see over it. “I picked you because you’d seen our fight and I really didn’t want people to find out I’d defected until it was too late.” It… was getting hard to breathe and I was starting to feel sleepy again. “You're reacting to this better than I expected – looks like you have some magic in you.” ‘…What? I… had magic?’ “Well, one less mage to worry about.”
The floor shook suddenly, and then shook again. “Welcome!” the mage shouted, sounding happy. All the fire disappeared at the same time and… There was a demon standing in front of me. It was huge, with gigantic horns and claws and bat wings… and millions of teeth. I didn’t move. If I didn’t move, it wouldn’t see me. If it didn’t see me, it wouldn’t eat me.
“Why have I been summoned?” Its voice echoed, like there were two people speaking at once.
“Because-”
“Someone is an idiot.” ‘…That's Richard’s voice.’
“What?” the other mage snapped. “How did you find me?”
“Not. Telling.”
The demon flapped its wings, and howled with laughter. “I love it when food comes to me!” It jumped over me and then I saw flashes of light. Everything was sounding muffled, like in the fog, and I was really, really tired...
“Kendra?”
“Muh?” I squinted at Dryden – when did he get here? An’ why’d he look worried?
“Good, you’re still here.” ‘Where would’ve I gone?’
He held a hand over me; it was glowing blue. ‘Blue was for… water element.’ Suddenly, I wasn’t so tired anymore. But, if he’d healed me, shouldn’t it have been green?
I blinked up at him, confused. “You’re not a mage.”
There was a ball of water in his hand and he threw it at the other mage; he screamed in anger when it stopped the spell he was casting. Quickly, Dryden cut the rope that was tying me up. “I… kinda lost my coat.” He lost his coat? “Okay, it got set on fire by that guy in our last fight.” Oh. He waved his hand in a circle and a big icicle appeared above the demon – it dodged, but one of its wings got trapped. “You okay to move?” he asked me.
“Yeah.” I stood up slowly, watching the fight.
“Kendra.” I looked up at Dryden. “Go hide; make sure you’re far away from us, okay?”
“’Kay.” As soon as I said this, he was moving his hand again. I found a couple of boxes full of candles to hide behind in a corner of the room and then I peeked over it, watching the fight again. The demon was bleeding yellow blood and the mage was holding something that looked like black flames. Richard had just finished casting a healing spell (that one was green; why wasn’t Dryden’s?) when he had to jump out of the way of the other mage’s spell.
‘Was I going to do this? The mage said I had magic, so could I do what they were doing? But I’d tried to do magic before and it’d never worked.’
The first one to stop fighting was Richard, when he was thrown against a wall, then the demon (it went in an explosion of purple fire) and then the other mage.
I crept forward after the fight was over. “Dryden…?” I wasn’t supposed to go near mages when they were fighting, but they’d stopped now, so it was okay, right?
Dryden was leaning on a wall, clutching his side. There was blood coming through his fingers.
“Dryden!” I ran up to him.
He waved at me, smiling. “I’m all right, just a little banged up.” His hand glowed blue, and then he took a slow, deep breath. When he took his hand away, his t-shirt was still red, but it didn’t look like he was bleeding anymore.
He walked over to Richard, his hand glowing blue again, and then Richard groaned, waking up. “We’ll get this guy,” –he pointed to the other mage with his thumb- “set up so he won’t run away again, and then we’re going to talk to your parents.”
…I was in so much trouble.
Richard nodded, healing himself. “We’re going to need their permission for you to be an apprentice.”
I stared at him. I was going to learn magic?
“Any questions?” He was grinning at me.
I frowned. "But, I don't have any magic."
"Well, that's the thing." Richard scratched his head. "Sometimes, magic doesn't manif..." He stopped, and then started again. "Show up because it isn't needed." So, I really could do magic? "Any other questions?"
“Why're Dryden’s heals blue?”
He laughed and looked at Dryden. “Healing magic isn’t always green – it can depend on the caster.” Oh. The stories never said that, but a lot of the stories were wrong. "And Dryden’s a pretty weird guy.”
“Hey!”
I was going to learn magic. I was going to do what I’d wanted to do and if I was an apprentice of Dryden, that would make it even better.
Summary: "I always watched them from far away, not getting too close, just in case they saw me. They didn’t come here a lot, but if I saw them, I followed them everywhere, just to see if they would do it."
Rating: K+
Notes: For my Creative Writing class. The prompt is 'Imagine yourself as a child character. Write a first-person narrative based on a child who has a dream of achieving something and does.'
;p Hey, it stopped me from doing a lot of introspection.
Anyone have any ideas that I could use as a modern equivalent instead of chalk?
Genre: Fantasy
Word count: 2,193
Status: Complete
I always watched them from far away, not getting too close, just in case they saw me. They didn’t come here a lot, but if I saw one, I followed them everywhere, just to see if they would do it. Mum was always worried when I got back home, but she knew why I was late and nothing stopped me when I heard one was here.
I'd only ever seen a few of them and they didn’t always use it, but it was really worth it. When they did use it, I would be grinning for the rest of the day, picturing it in my head, over and over again, trying to think how it felt.
They never noticed me when I followed them. They were normally alone, but sometimes, they had someone else with them. An apprentice.
That was what I wanted to be.
I wanted to be an apprentice of a mage, and then be the best mage there was in the world! There were so many stories about them - what they did, their magic, just, everything and they were so cool, the way their long coats looked, stamped with the school they went to.
But I wasn’t going to be one. Mum kept telling me you needed to be born with magic to become an apprentice and I wasn’t. I’d tried to do magic, but nothing happened - no fire, no wind, no green light for healing spells. It wasn’t fair.
So, when I saw a mage, I’d follow them just to see a bit of magic, because that would be as close as I was going to get to it.
A fog had come in, covering everything like a white blanket; it was so thick I couldn’t even see the other side of the playground.
'How was I going to get home in this?' I thought, staring at the fog. 'It's going to take ages and the roads are busy sometimes – I'm never going see the cars coming!' But, as I watched, I could see through more of the fog so I started going home.
Everything was quieter; I couldn’t hear stuff like I normally could. It was weird; the fog made everything look different, like I was in another town.
I think I was halfway home when there was a shout and then a couple of coloured flashes of light in the fog. I slowed down, peering at the fog in the closest alley. There wasn’t a lot of things that could make lights like that – what was a mage doing there?
The shouting had already stopped, but so had the lights. No-one had ran out the alley so, they went out the other side? I went into the alley, and stumbled over some large stones that were lying on the ground. I didn’t fall, but I scraped my hand on the wall. There was something funny about it – it felt different.
“Woah.” The wall was covered with holes and slashes. The mage was fighting someone? I had to see it. And who was stupid enough to fight with a mage?
On the other end of the alley, the fog was a bit thinner so I could see further. The mage was huge! He was wearing a mix of reds and the man he was fighting was wearing brown but… That wasn’t right. I rubbed at my eyes to make sure. His coat said he was a mage too. Why were two mages fighting each other? They were supposed to help people where they were – not fight each other.
My shoulder was grabbed – not hard enough to hurt, but it wasn’t light. ‘Uh-oh.’ Slowly, I turned my head to look behind me.
It was a man, with long, dark hair that went past his shoulders. “I’m not going to hurt you – just making sure you don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
‘‘Crossfire’?’ “I’m not in trouble?”
The man shook his head. “No, don’t worry.” He glanced at where the mages were fighting, before looking back at me. “I’m Dryden.”
“Um...” I looked down at my shoes. “’M Kendra.”
“Kendra,” Dryden said quietly, “you shouldn’t be wandering around in the fog by yourself, and you really shouldn’t get too close when a mage is fighting."
“But… they’d protect me – it’s safest when you’re near a mage; everyone knows that.” It was in all of the stories about them.
“That’s true,” Dryden agreed, “but accidents can happen. You might get hurt, even when the mages don’t want it to.”
“Oh.” But then, the mage would be able to heal me, right? And I didn’t normally get this close to a mage!
There was a big flash that distracted me from saying that.
“Dammit!” That had come from one of the mages.
Dryden’s hand tightened on my shoulder and pulled me back a bit. “Richard?” he called out, staring at the fog.
The mage that came stomping out was the one in the brown coat. What had happened to the other mage? “He used a bloody teleportation crystal; he could be on the other side of the country now.” Then the mage saw me and stopped. He stared at me, and then looked at Dryden, an eyebrow raised. “Are you lost?” he asked me, concerned.
I shook my head.
When I didn’t say anything else, Dryden said dryly, “I think you’ve made her speechless.”
Richard straightened his jacket -it was kind of scruffy in a few places- and glared at Dryden. “Can you find your way home from here?” he asked me, gently.
I nodded, staring at him. This was the closest I’d ever been to a mage. And he was talking to me! And… he didn’t look that different from normal people; I thought their eyes glowed.
He smiled at me, chuckling a little bit. “Okay then. Be careful, all right?” I nodded again and Dryden let me go.
As soon as he did, I was running back down the alley. I’d met a mage!
The fog had cleared up by the next day – and it was a Saturday so there wasn’t any school. Mum didn’t believe I’d met a mage, but dad did. I was trying to find him again and this time, I wouldn’t get too close and maybe he’d show me some more magic.
The alley wasn’t too far from my house and I stared at the mess when I got there. There were bits of brick everywhere and both walls –
A hand clapped around my mouth and then everything changed. The alley disappeared and I saw a dark, empty room instead. I felt dizzy, like that time I’d spent too long on the roundabout.
“Hmph. The first time you’ve felt magic?” I stopped moving; I didn’t know that voice.
The hand let go of me and some dust blew into my face, making me sneeze. I yawned. ‘Why…? I didn’t feel sleepy bef…’
I woke up, hungry. ‘Where-? Where am I?’ The roof was too high for my room and – and… I was in so much trouble.
I was lying in the middle of a room, chalk drawings all around me, joined together by circles. The other mage was standing on the other side of the room, staring at the chalk. I wanted to curl up into a ball, run away, but I couldn’t – I was tied up and couldn’t move.
There wasn’t any other spell that used chalk apart from summoning, and there was only one reason why I would be in the middle of it: I was going to be sacrificed!
“Well then,” the mage said, looking at me and smiling, “shall we get started?” He lifted his arm and there was a purple glowing crystal in his hand. He said something and the chalk started to burn and caught on fire – it was the same colour as the crystal. It spread until all of the chalk was burning. The fire wasn't hot though - I didn't feel any heat coming from it.
The mage started laughing. "Well, well, isn’t that interesting?” The fire was growing taller, and then it got so high, I couldn’t see over it. “I picked you because you’d seen our fight and I really didn’t want people to find out I’d defected until it was too late.” It… was getting hard to breathe and I was starting to feel sleepy again. “You're reacting to this better than I expected – looks like you have some magic in you.” ‘…What? I… had magic?’ “Well, one less mage to worry about.”
The floor shook suddenly, and then shook again. “Welcome!” the mage shouted, sounding happy. All the fire disappeared at the same time and… There was a demon standing in front of me. It was huge, with gigantic horns and claws and bat wings… and millions of teeth. I didn’t move. If I didn’t move, it wouldn’t see me. If it didn’t see me, it wouldn’t eat me.
“Why have I been summoned?” Its voice echoed, like there were two people speaking at once.
“Because-”
“Someone is an idiot.” ‘…That's Richard’s voice.’
“What?” the other mage snapped. “How did you find me?”
“Not. Telling.”
The demon flapped its wings, and howled with laughter. “I love it when food comes to me!” It jumped over me and then I saw flashes of light. Everything was sounding muffled, like in the fog, and I was really, really tired...
“Kendra?”
“Muh?” I squinted at Dryden – when did he get here? An’ why’d he look worried?
“Good, you’re still here.” ‘Where would’ve I gone?’
He held a hand over me; it was glowing blue. ‘Blue was for… water element.’ Suddenly, I wasn’t so tired anymore. But, if he’d healed me, shouldn’t it have been green?
I blinked up at him, confused. “You’re not a mage.”
There was a ball of water in his hand and he threw it at the other mage; he screamed in anger when it stopped the spell he was casting. Quickly, Dryden cut the rope that was tying me up. “I… kinda lost my coat.” He lost his coat? “Okay, it got set on fire by that guy in our last fight.” Oh. He waved his hand in a circle and a big icicle appeared above the demon – it dodged, but one of its wings got trapped. “You okay to move?” he asked me.
“Yeah.” I stood up slowly, watching the fight.
“Kendra.” I looked up at Dryden. “Go hide; make sure you’re far away from us, okay?”
“’Kay.” As soon as I said this, he was moving his hand again. I found a couple of boxes full of candles to hide behind in a corner of the room and then I peeked over it, watching the fight again. The demon was bleeding yellow blood and the mage was holding something that looked like black flames. Richard had just finished casting a healing spell (that one was green; why wasn’t Dryden’s?) when he had to jump out of the way of the other mage’s spell.
‘Was I going to do this? The mage said I had magic, so could I do what they were doing? But I’d tried to do magic before and it’d never worked.’
The first one to stop fighting was Richard, when he was thrown against a wall, then the demon (it went in an explosion of purple fire) and then the other mage.
I crept forward after the fight was over. “Dryden…?” I wasn’t supposed to go near mages when they were fighting, but they’d stopped now, so it was okay, right?
Dryden was leaning on a wall, clutching his side. There was blood coming through his fingers.
“Dryden!” I ran up to him.
He waved at me, smiling. “I’m all right, just a little banged up.” His hand glowed blue, and then he took a slow, deep breath. When he took his hand away, his t-shirt was still red, but it didn’t look like he was bleeding anymore.
He walked over to Richard, his hand glowing blue again, and then Richard groaned, waking up. “We’ll get this guy,” –he pointed to the other mage with his thumb- “set up so he won’t run away again, and then we’re going to talk to your parents.”
…I was in so much trouble.
Richard nodded, healing himself. “We’re going to need their permission for you to be an apprentice.”
I stared at him. I was going to learn magic?
“Any questions?” He was grinning at me.
I frowned. "But, I don't have any magic."
"Well, that's the thing." Richard scratched his head. "Sometimes, magic doesn't manif..." He stopped, and then started again. "Show up because it isn't needed." So, I really could do magic? "Any other questions?"
“Why're Dryden’s heals blue?”
He laughed and looked at Dryden. “Healing magic isn’t always green – it can depend on the caster.” Oh. The stories never said that, but a lot of the stories were wrong. "And Dryden’s a pretty weird guy.”
“Hey!”
I was going to learn magic. I was going to do what I’d wanted to do and if I was an apprentice of Dryden, that would make it even better.