Sorrow of an Ice Dragon

Her deep blue eyes were all that she could still move. Once an elegant creature, graceful, and bound to the wind as a sister. She could no longer feel her wings, let alone move them. Remembering what it was like to feel the air across them brought sorrow. To have had the freedom to go anywhere the wind could take her, and then to lose it was unbearable agony. When her doom began, for the first time, she felt the cold. The chill began at the core of her being and began to slowly spread. Now the cold is a bitter memory of a lesser pain. Before, she was a powerful and magical creature, but that has faded, and is still fading.

Her demise comes from a formidable foe whom she should have been always on guard against. Before man came to these shores, never had she worried about the source of her power. When she called upon it her breath could freeze anything that her heart desired. When she desired to hunt, the prey was not hard to find. But as man came, and the herds left. As they became curious about the ancient magic, she began to feel the cold. The coldness was odd, we spend our entire lives breathing but do not notice until something is wrong or our attention is drawn to it, so to was her knowledge of the cold.

Her fall began when, out of curiosity, and out of compassion, she trusted a human. It was a long path from friendship to now. He seemed so much like her, he longed for knowledge. Being so alone, for so long she was drawn to him. Never before had she known companionship, for there are no creatures like mankind or dragonkind. It wasn’t hard to teach him the language of the wind, he just didn’t know how to use his ears yet, even though they were so small, he could hear it. It took time for him to learn to speak it, but when he did there was power, great power. She showed him how to read the stars, a vast epic of future and past that time has subtlety taken from men. But as he learned she forgot. This is when the cold began, but it was a feeling she did not know, and she thought it natural a new sensation she had not seen. She showed him what it was to fly, and in her biggest error she brought him to her home. A cavern hidden by ice and snow on one of a score of mountain peaks. This is where she will take her last breath.

To thank her for all that she had taught him, he promised to help her find a mate. He had learned so much, and taken the knowledge beyond anything she could imagine. He used his arts to draw to her a the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Never had she seen another dragon. Their day was spent flying and in the company of each other. There was no language between them, their thoughts simply became one, and they became one, and after a night, he was gone. But that seemed ages ago. It was in that night that he had forever bound her to him. The next day she was different her legs and wings now began to feel cold unlike before. This was pain, the likes of which she had never felt, and she knew that something was wrong.

It had all seemed so obvious now. How could she have trusted him? The cold had begun to slow her, and then one day she could no longer move. The desire to move after waking was gone. The cold then became tangible as ice started to form. The ice grew and grew. She was encased inside of it. Where a dragon had been a mountain of Ice stood.

Now her will has gone. She has no desire to remain, or to be. In that moment she decides to leave. As she closed her eyes for the last time she remembered the sky. Then her mind was brought to the name he had given her, Sheoth. Then she was gone.

Centuries passed, and her foe had long since died. The Ice began to melt, and where a dragon had been there stood a stone remnant of her being. As the last vestiges of ice melted from her remains became completely liberated. It was clear that in her arms, hidden, protected, was a stone. The stone cracked, and fell to the ground. In her arms, his mother’s arms lay the last of the Ice Dragons. Then he opened his deep blue eyes and venturing out of the cave he saw the sky.