I AM VICTORIOUS But It Don't Feel Good

Won NaNoWriMo, just.

This is my victory music, accompanied by me dancing on my chair like a drunk white guy at a disco:



Not happy with how the story went the last two days. Gonna have to redo the last big chunk or retcon the fuck outta it earlier in the story, dunno.

Evreth being sorta-adopting a pair of human orphans because she is so damn lonely she'd do anything for prolonged contact with another sentient being and they are damaged on the inside just like her so she can see past their scary two-legger-ness?

Is that plausible?

Story still isn't finished. Gonna need another chapter or two.

I only just realised that stupid fucking blogger is posting them black-on-black, no text colour autocorrect when I copy/past from word to blogger and nothing to tell me it has or hasn't.

Blogger I'm getting pretty fucking sick of your shit.

Meh, it was about time for a layout change, anyway.

Ugh, I tried to find some new symphonic metal bands and YouTube keeps recommending Lacuna Coil.

Um, no. That's poprock. Try the fuck again.

Like this, the theme for one of my characters. (His story is so angsty, bloody emo angels)



So fucking pissed off right now between fucking story going weird and having to go back to work.

~peri

NaNo2013: Chapter WTFISITNOW? Oh, Eight

I can do this. I can do this. i can do this.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Welcome to the Empire of the Rains. Remember to follow protocol and you won't be poked full of holes.

Enjoy your stay.

Chapter Eight

  Evreth’s bruises and scrapes from her little expedition into lakeshore landscaping had healed long before she reached the outer border of the Empire of the Rains. The bruises in particular had had been truly spectacular, and if she hadn’t acquired them under such embarrassing circumstances they would have been worth showing off back home in the Dragon City. Right now though, Evreth was just very, very glad that all the marks of her crash were finally gone.

  She had dealt with enough awkward explanations while they had been healing to last a lifetime. She did not want to have to deal with the citizens of the Empire of the Rains trying to put together a revenge party to look for whomever or whatever had bashed her up. (That had actually happened at the first settlement she came to after the crash landing. The Sand Clan dragon was still trying to work out if it had actually happened or was simply a hallucination from hitting her head too hard.)

  It appeared that the actions of Ves and Maevrith going out of their way to be helpful in the last centuries before the Hibernation of Sorrow in an attempt to counteract the actions of the Autonomy Alliance had firmly install them both as minor luck gods and protector spirits of the large pantheon of deities worshipped by the citizens of the Empire. A result of this deification of the Cloud Clan pair and the fact that dragons were so rarely seen this for from the Dragon City these days was that all dragons were regarded as being semi divine by the citizens of the Empire of the Rains.

  The closer Evreth got to the borders of the Empire of the Rains, the warmer the welcomes she received each night became. For someone used to suspicion and outright distrust from members of the other races, it was definitely a weird experience. Evreth covered her discomfort by being even more polite charming than usual when out on assignment, which seemed to be the best way to deal with the situation.

  She still wasn’t entirely used to it by the time she crossed the border and entered the Empire proper. By that point Evreth had managed to regain a little weight in terms of muscle mass by forcibly reminding herself to have at least two sold meals a day. She wasn’t looking quite as scary as she had a few weeks ago, however the Sand Clan dragon was still getting worried looks from people when they thought she wasn’t looking. It also didn’t help that the people were used to seeing dragons that were, on average, a third again as large as Evreth was herself. The Sand Clan dragon was confused on a regular basis by beings who barely reached her knees trying to mother her and treat her like a stroppy fledgling.

  While the Sand Clan dragon did not particularly care for the warmer climate and the growing humidity she encountered the closer she got to the rainforest shrouded heart of the Empire, the higher general temperatures did help to ease the constant ache of her tired muscles. She had still been pushing herself far too hard to make up for the time lost by slow flying after her crash landing at the lake.

  Now the Sand Clan dragon found herself flying a little slower than she had been for the trip so far, closer to her normal speed than the faster pace of the dragons with larger builds. Partly this was because she was still physically exhausted and partly because flying in the thick warm air of this climate took a lot more effort than she had been anticipating.

The extra food being forced on her combined with this slower pace was helping her recover, even if she was so tired that whatever she ate tasted like mud the majority of the time.

  Evreth was also grateful for the re-emergence of dragon sized accommodations at the Travellers Hostels. While the Hostels were an international network that had started out slowly and then spread rapidly once people had seen how convenient they were, not all of them catered to the varying physical requirements of all of the disparate races inhabiting of the world. Humans were the most numerous species and tended to travel a lot more than dragons or dwarves did, and the elvenkind essentially never left their forest homes. So therefore the majority of the Travellers Hostels were built to human standards of comfort and the rest just had to deal with it as best they could.

   However, with the actions of the two Cloud Clan ambassadors leading to every dragon essentially gaining the status of minor demigods inside the borders of the Empire of the Rains, ever single Travellers Hostel in that country and the territories it claimed had dragon sized accommodations attached to it. Due to the heat and humidity of the local climate, everything was built of stone, since wood would rot far too fast. Even though the stone was not the black volcanic basalt Evreth was used to, the first time she laid eyes on one of the stone Dragon Hostels she almost cried.

  The airy, spacious stone buildings at the Travellers Hostels built within the Empire of the Rains that were intended for use by dragons when they stayed were large enough to be used for parties when there weren’t dragons around. These buildings were the closest thing to home that Evreth had ever experienced outside the Dragon City. They made her feel at once both close to home and incredibly homesick all at the same time, which was a very strange combination of emotions.

  The deliberate charm the Sand Clan dragon habitually employed in her interactions with people of the other races meshed so successfully with the generally positive regard that the citizens of the Empire had for dragons that she began to thoroughly enjoy her interactions with the citizens of the Empire of the Rains long before she got near the Capital. Between the friendly people and the homelike stone buildings, Evreth could definitely see why Maverith and Ves willingly accepted being posted so far from home. If more dragons were willing to make the trip through the hostile territory in between, the Empire of the Rains could have a very lucrative tourism operation going.

  As the number of positive interactions she had with the citizens of the Empire increased, the frequency of her nightmares decreased slowly. They didn’t disappear entirely, but for the first time since she had awoken in the Hibernation Chambers the Sand Clan dragon was able to go to bed confident that she would only wake up once or twice in the night with imagoes of blood and death before here instead of spending most of the night utterly paralysed, staring into the dark. By now it was second nature for her to paralyse her vocal cords before attempting to sleep, so the citizens of the Empire weren’t unduly traumatised by draconic screams in the small hours of the morning.

  Evreth was almost sad to see this part of her quest come to an end. It had been far and away the easiest and most pleasant time she had ever had while travelling. Although by now the heat and humidity had her more than willing to trade both left legs for a good snowstorm, the large number of rivers (Or was it just one extremely bendy river? She couldn’t tell as the name for it was different at each place she came to, so it could just as easily be one massive river as dozens of different ones) meant she was able to enjoy a relatively cool swim each night.

  Since she was a much smaller dragon than either of the Cloud Clan ambassadors and the general run of Special Courier dragons that usually flew this route, Evreth was able to make much better use of the local swimming holes than any of the other dragons who passed through the Empire of the Rains. Her slower than normal flight speed for this part of the trip gave people plenty of time to send word ahead and if she could get a good swim she usually ended up being the evening entertainment for crowds of curious two leggers.

  The first time a group of people had turned up to watch her swim Evreth had been heartbeats away from fleeing in terror. The next few times she was half expecting it and her reaction downgraded from utter panic to incredibly high levels of nervousness. Her hide twitched constantly, expecting that at any moment the watching humans would pull out spears and pitchforks and leap on her to stab and tear and kill.

  After a while the Sand Clan dragon started to notice the sounds coming from her unexpected audience were more admiring and amused than scared and angry, so she began to relax a little and enjoy her swims properly. By the third week with no signs of pointed weapons appearing Evreth lost the majority of her nerves and was deliberately showing off. She still kept a watchful eye on those watching her, but her purposeful clowning around in the muddy river water delighted the people watching and would do wonders for the general draconic reputation when the stories eventually made it to the ears of people from outside the Empire of the Rains.

  Evreth wondered what on earth the Cloud Clan ambassadors Ves and Maevrith would make of her swims. News of them would undoubtedly reach the ambassadors at the capital well before the Sand Clan dragon herself did. One universal constant across all the varied races of the world was the existence of gossip networks and the speed at which spread socially interesting tales spread along them.

  Knowing how stifled the pair of Cloud Clan ambassadors felt by the strict adherence to protocol required by the codes of conduct within the social structure of the Empire - and especially of those at higher social levels – the pair would undoubtedly have cast soundproofing spells on their rooms so they could laugh themselves absolutely silly at the end of the day. Evreth hoped that when the gossip mill got tales of the Sand Clan dragons watery escapades to their ears the soundproofing spells would be strong enough.

  Shrugging to herself, Evreth ducked her head under the murky water of the latest swimming hole and proceeded to do a very messy imitation of a bathing bird, sending fountains of water spraying everywhere. This was a smaller village, so there weren’t as many adults to annoy by dousing them unexpectedly. No matter where she went, though, every village seemed to have at least two dozen children of mixed ages running around underfoot who universally adored playing in the localised waterfalls that the Sand Clan dragon could create when mucking about in the river.

  Evreth thoroughly enjoyed every chance she got to swim, but still disliked the people watching her. The younglings were mostly alright, except when they hurt themselves or got too excited and shrieked in tones that made the Sand Clan dragon wish fervently that she was deaf. It was the adults that bugged her. No matter how harmless they appeared the adults still brought the muffled sounds of pickaxes on stone to the back of her mind. At times she felt incredibly guilty that no matter how genuinely lovely these people were or how caring they were towards her, she still couldn’t trust them or relax enough to enjoy their hospitality properly. In order to bury that guilt, Evreth went out of her way to be even more pleasant in her interactions with them and spent much longer than she really needed to spend entertaining their children each day.

  Because of her slowed pace the Sand Clan dragon arrived in the capital city of the Empire of the Rains a few days later than she had been expected to. She was also in much better physical shape than she had been when she first crossed the border into the Empire. In fact she was looking and feeling a lot better than she had in a while, for the last few months at the very least. Evreth glided effortlessly on wings that were simply sore from the days flight and no longer throbbing with the built up damage of days of constant torture, following the broad stone paved main thoroughfare that lead into the capital city of the Empire of the Rains.

  She had half expected Ves or Maevrith to come meet her at the entrance to the city, but such an action would be a deviation from the strict court protocol and thus was not allowed. Following said protocol, Evreth landed on the causeway before the massive stone wall that marked the city limits, waiting for one of the gaurds to approach her. Once the necessary formalities were concluded, the Sand Clan dragon waited politely for the city guard to return to his post and signal to her before launching herself into the air and gaining altitude so she could head across the sprawling stone capital and to the palace complex without disturbing the peace too much.

  As Evreth flew, rain began to fall in fat droplets onto the Sand Clan dragon and the reddish stone of the city below, increasing the humidity of the air to the point where it felt like she was trying to breathe lukewarm soup. As her flight muscles began to burn at the constant work being asked of them to move through the thick, still air over the city, Evreth scanned the ground below her, looking for the main palace complex. She had been given next to no direction, simple waved off with instructions to ‘follow the main road and you can’t miss it’.

  Huffing with frustration at the bad directions and muggy air as she peered down through the solid sheet of falling water, Evreth wished the Special Courier who had told her that was there so she could take her temper out on the smug over-muscled arrogant waste of wingsail. ‘Can’t miss it’ indeed, she fumed to herself, half blinded by the downpour. You can’t miss it if you already know where the blasted place is! All the Sand Clan dragon could see below her was the geometric layout of the city, endless squares and rectangles with the occasional odd shape or random stone pillar spearing up into the sky. Everything looked so same-ish to her that she could fly right over the top of the palace and never know it.

  Just before she was ready to scream with frustration, a truly marvellous sight began to materialise from the murky grey-green, grey-red and plain grey-grey muck beneath her. The edges of the enormous palace complex began to come into sight, forming from the fog of distance and cutting a distinctive outline against the strictly regimented appearance of the layout of the rest of the Empire of the Rains’ capital city. Unable to catch her breath in the thick air long enough to crow with relief, Evreth settled for letting her hide flood briefly with dazzling pink and yellow sunbursts before sobering her appearance appropriately and diving for the entrance gate. The courtyard on the city side was more than large enough for her to land comfortably and still approach the guards stationed there without landing too close to them and blowing them off their feet with the wind generated by her back winging.

  Making the most professional and stylish landing she could under the circumstances, Evreth gratefully folded her aching wings to her back and approached the Imperial Palace Guards cautiously. There were two standing at attention before the smaller set of barriers that kept people out of the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Evreth could see the larger defensive gates laid open along the thick walls defending the Imperial Palace from invaders.

  Gates didn’t mean much to the Sand Clan dragon if the wall they were set in didn’t have a roof at the top of it, but the short swords hanging from the guard’s belts and the wickedly gleaming halberd-like pole arms they held at attention. While the long weapons were decorated with dangling tufts of bright feathers and held in an at rest stance, Evreth knew that they were definitely not ceremonial toys and eyed them nervously.

  The two guards that Evreth could see were standing out of the rain, protected by the expanse of reddish stone wall that arched over their heads. Neither of them so much as twitched, though their eyes followed her landing and approach through the pouring rain. The Sand Clan dragon knew that there would be more that she couldn’t see but these two were the ones she had to interact with. Controlling her hide so that it didn’t start to pale and betray her skyrocketing anxiety, Evreth moved to within easy conversation distance of the guards. Taking a deep breath of the muggy air to brace herself and steel her nerves, Evreth searched her memory for the correct phrases and began to speak.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

More volcano dreams last night.

It was raining lava bombs. So much fun.

Me starting today with 6,000 words to go and less than 2 days to write them all in:

Hopefully me tomorrow upon reaching 50,000 words:

I'm so glad the boss gave me an extra day to wind down after this shit.

^.^;

I now have less than 5,000 to write. FUCKING HELL I NEED TO GET ON THIS AND JUST DO IT. So close to the end, both for wordcount and for storyline. Not sure where to end it. HELP.
-Getting to the seers' village.
-After talking to the seers.
I still have NO FUCKING CLUE where the other dragons are.

FUCK.
ME.
RUNNING.

It is almost impossible for me to be sad with this song stuck in my head:


~Peri

NaNo2013: Chapter Seven

This entire chapter is basically a flashback/nightmare/whatever they are.

I'm not going to make you read an entire chapter in italics on a sodding computer screen, so brief format change.

Also: HAHA CHRIS LOOK I'M BLOGGING! MUAHAHAHAHAAAA

Aaaand on with the show.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

  Evreth floated gently in a sea of black. It was a nice, warm fuzzy blackness and she liked it here. She had just had the most wonderful sleep she could ever remember having, and she wanted to dive back into that blackness and have more of that truly excellent sleep. It was nice there in the darkness, it was safe and she felt happy. There was something bad about leaving it, something scary and bad and really really really really incredibly super sad that she didn’t want to have to think about or remember. She would much rather dive back into the embrace of sleep and sink down into the soft black and not have to think about whatever it was.

  The young Sand Clan dragon twitched and moaned a protest at the relentless tide of alertness that was now flooding through her brain, inexorably washing the comforting fog of sleep away. Something dragged her back out of the safe blackness that had been wrapped around her like a blanket and pulled her reluctant mind back into consciousness. Still, Evreth refused to open her eyes. Maybe if she looked like she was still asleep she would be left alone and not have to go to lessons today.

  A nagging little thought worried away at the side of her mind, telling her that there was something very very wrong with this situation and that she couldn’t possibly have lessons because . . . She shoved the little nagging thought away with all the stubbornness she could muster and held as tightly as she could to the last fleeting shreds of sleep that were swiftly disappearing from her mind. Deep in her bones the Sand Clan dragon knew that waking up completely was going to be a very bad thing and she wanted to put it off as long as she possibly could.

  Evreth could feel a pile of blankets underneath herself. It felt strange and smelled wrong, so it wasn’t her bed. Did she stay over at a friend’s place last night? Evreth’s sleepy brain couldn’t produce any memories of the last few days, and besides, the place she was in smelled sort of like her home, so she couldn’t be staying at someone else’s because then it wouldn’t smell like home. She yawned and stretched, uncurling from the tight ball she’d rolled herself into in her sleep and reluctantly getting her limbs back into working order.

  Home definitely smelled funny, like nobody had been here much. It almost had the same kind of dusty, closed up smell that some of the really old unused places she had snuck into did. Had everyone been too busy to be home much? A small piece of information from that nagging part of her mind that wanted her to wake up properly and remember what she was trying to forget got through the young Sand Clan dragon’s stubborn sleepiness and deliberate refusal to process the situation. Ah, everyone had been busy getting ready for the Millennial Hibernation, so maybe that was why home . . . smelled . . . so . . . funny . . .

  That one stray thought opened the floodgates and the small nagging fragment of her mind pounced, forcing Evreth to remember everything that she had been so desperately trying to forget and to avoid thinking about. Memories of the Millennial Hibernation crashed through her mind in a blazingly bright fast forward, relentlessly dragging the frightened young Sand Clan dragon along for the ride.

  The Hibernation Commencement Feast, watching the bonfires with her parents, the rain, seeing Path and Senth fly so gracefully together, the long tunnel going down under the City and walking so long her legs felt like they were going to fall off. Path and her parents staying near, all of them picking sleeping platforms near each other and Path promising that it wasn’t scary and she would be right there for her adopted sister when she woke up. Evreth had been so proud that she was big enough to be allowed to curl up all by herself on the bed platform. Well, she was on one right between her parents but she was still allowed the bed platform all to herself. Then falling asleep . . . and waking up again.

  Waking up to confusion and fear and screaming. Horrible pain filled screams and shouts that had Evreth diving for the safety of her mother’s side before she had even crawled properly up out of the depths of the magical coma that was caused by the Millennial Hibernation. Her own hide bleached pale with panic, Evreth cowering under her mother’s protective grey wing, then her father joining them, her parents creating a fortress of their bodies to block out the awfulness and protect her from it.

  Noise, screaming, blood, death, fear, thunder, more blood and death and fighting and screams filled the young dragon’s mind and she screamed, thrashing on the unfamiliar bed and screaming as if she could somehow just scream loud enough and long enough it would drive the memories out of her head and undo everything that had happened.

  There was movement in the room and Evreth reacted without thinking, blindly scuttling away from the perceived threat. The movement stopped and a draft of air carried a familiar scent to her, a scent that whispered safety and protection to her.

 “’Vethy, you’re safe now,” The voice matched the scent, it was her Mother. Safe. Was she really safe? How could she be safe? Was this really her home? Maybe she was dreaming or maybe home smelled funny because she was dead and this wasn’t really her home, just a place that smelled almost sort of like it.

 “Come here, love.” Veyrith said, injecting as much love and reassurance into her voice as she could. Her hide took on calming shades of blue even though Evreth’s eyes were scrunched so tightly shut there was no chance of her being able to see the colour signals. The Stone Clan dragon watched her screaming, thrashing offspring closely, looking for an opening to approach her without being hit by Evreth’s flailing limbs or accidentally hurting the youngster by simply being larger and harder to move.

  The tone of voice her mother used penetrated the fear and confusion swirling in Evreth’s mind, and she bolted blindly in the direction her mother’s voice and smell had come from. She was too scared to open her eyes in case they weren’t really safe or back at home and there was a worse nightmare waiting for her when she opened them.  There wasn’t far for her to go, and Veyrith closed a protective wing over the scared young dragon as soon as the panic bleached youngster hit her side.

 “See? I’m here. It’s alright. We’re safe now.” Veyrith tried to offer comfort when she didn’t know if there would ever be any for those who had been left behind in the Dragon City to mourn the dead and the lost. “You’re safe now, ‘Vethy.”

 “Are we dead?” Evreth asked in such a tiny, pathetic voice it ripped her mother’s heart out. Even though she could feel the wing surrounding her in a curtain of safety the young Sand Clan dragon still didn’t think it was entirely safe to open her eyes. Shaking, she pressed into her mother’s side, looking for reassurance.

 “No, love. We’re very much alive.” Veyrith confirmed in a low voice, “Lenth is too, so are Ves and Maevrith of the Cloud Clan.” The Stone Clan dragon tried desperately to manoeuvre around the question she knew was coming, the issue that had provoked Evreth’s rather noisy and spectacular display of denial in the Hibernation Chambers. “If you would open your eyes, silly one, you’ll see we are both alive and back at home.” The older dragon held her breath, hoping that this would work.

  She should have known better than to hope such a flimsy ploy would work. Evreth was nothing if not determined once she set her mind on something. Many times in the past her child had been compared to a particular large lizard predator that would follow its prey for days until the animal simply dropped dead from exhaustion. The last major thing on her mind before she had been knocked out by the four adults was the first major conscious idea to come back to Evreth once her befuddled brain had wrapped itself around the rest of the horrific memories and gotten itself more or less back up to speed regarding what had happened and what was going on right now.

 “What about Path? What about Senth?” Evreth asked. Forgetting why she had her eyes closed, she opened them and shuffled around so she could look up past the edge of Veyrith’s wing and see her mother’s face when she asked her next question. “Are they all right too?”

  Veyrith was putting so much effort into making sure her hide didn’t reflect her emotional state that she couldn’t control her wince at the question she had been uselessly trying to steer Evreth away from. That was something she absolutely did not want to go into right now, and she had been hoping that Evreth was still too muddled from the unnatural sleep of the Millennial Hibernation combined with the after effects of being hit with four sleep spells at the same time. Some hopes. The young Sand Clan dragon was worse than a terrier dog for getting her jaws into something and not letting go.

 “They aren’t dead, love. We just don’t know where they are.” Veyrith figured it was better to be honest now rather than build up false hopes which would be harder on Evreth when she realised they were false. “Both of them volunteered to pay for the spell that was needed to move the army of two leggers out of the city. Nobody knows where they went, but since none of the two leggers died we think that Path and the others are alright too.”

  Evreth was torn with conflicting emotions when she heard this. She was relieved beyond belief to find out that Path wasn’t dead like she had been thinking, but absolutely gutted to realise that she was gone in a different way. Why did she have to go? Didn’t she want to stay with her friends to make sure they were ok after the spell worked?

 “I felt that spell thing; it asked if I wanted to stay here or to go away somewhere.” Evreth said slowly, trying to put into words an experience she didn’t quite understand. “I didn’t want to go because I wanted to stay here with everyone,” She sniffed, tears forming in her eyes as her hide dulled to grey when she realised what had happened “If I knew they were going I would have gone too, with you and Dad. That way we could all still be together, because we’re all family too.”

  Veyrith had nothing to say to that, she wasn’t sure if there were any words that could be considered the night ones for a situation like this. She simply hugged Evreth tighter and let light grey flow over her own hide in sympathy. As she searched for something to say, Evreth spoke again.

 “How do you know that they didn’t die and they were just moved somewhere else?” The young dragon was obviously having difficulty overcoming her doubts on the matter. Given recent events, these doubts were natural ones. The Stone Clan dragon moved quickly to walk her offspring through the steps of the reasoning that had lead the remaining dragons to their conclusion that their missing brethren weren’t to be counted amongst the deceased . . . yet. The finer points of magic theory and use could wait until Evreth reached that point in her lessons. Still, she needed to know at least  this much now to put her mind at ease.

 “The reason we think that they are all still alive is that ‘spell thing’ you felt,” Evreth’s expression changed to confusion as the older dragon continued to speak, “Everyone felt it, that was the spell Path cast asking for volunteers to pay the price for the magic. The price for what Path wanted was too big for just her to pay all by herself, so others had to volunteer to pay it too.” Comprehension began to dawn on Evreth’s face as her mother continued to speak. “It was exactly the same as after the Great Eruption, except that a species we couldn’t afford to have any more people die, or we would start to die out completely. So the price for moving the two leggers out of the Hibernation Caverns was for some of us to be moved, too. That was what you felt, the spell asking if you were willing to pay the price. Since we were choosing where to move the two leggers to, we couldn’t pick where the volunteers got moved to.”

 “But how do you know they didn’t get put somewhere like the bottom of the sea, though?” Evreth asked, cocking her head to the side. While all dragons were able to access and use magic, the full complexities of its use took centuries to master. While she would learn all she needed to know in time, Evreth still wasn’t past the more basic level of information in her lessons, this kind of balance of forces was a bit over her head.

 “Because the army of two leggers was moved somewhere they would be able to survive, we can be pretty sure that Path and Senth and the others were moved somewhere where they will be able to live too.” Veyrith replied, putting as much confidence and conviction into her tone as she could. What she wasn’t going to tell Evreth was that while the missing dragons would be able to survive, there was no guarantee that it would be easy for them to do so.

 “They won’t stay there though, right? They’ll try to come back home?” Evreth asked, appalled at the prospect that her adopted big sister and brother might decide that they liked their new home too much to want to bother to come back and let everyone know they were alright.

 “We don’t know. Hopefully they will be able to find their way back in time.” The Stone Clan dragon sighed and scratched her itchy head with a foreclaw. Evreth seemed to be taking this better than she had thought she would. Veyrith had feared a repeat of the scene in the Hibernation Chambers. Lenth had ducked out on this completely, and Veyrith had gotten some pretty hefty favours out of him in payback. “It just depends how far away they are and how long it takes for them to get back or for us to find them.” She finished, looking down at Evreth to see a look of determination cross the young Sand Clan dragon’s face.

 “If they can’t then I’ll go find them. I’ll become a Special Courier like Path did until I’m old enough to be a proper Scout and then I’ll go looking.” She looked up at her mother fiercely. “They would do the same for us, I know they would. They can’t stay lost forever, I won’t let them.”

 “They certainly can’t with you on the case, love.” Veyrith said, with an internal sigh of despair. This was Evreth at her most stubborn and determined. The Stone Clan dragon knew that her daughter would either find her missing friends or die trying.

  Despite the fact that the current state of the world made the latter option for more likely to happen, Veyrith hoped with every fibre of her being that her daughter would succeed in doing exactly as she said.

Incoherent Doctor Rage

Ok, this is bugging me and if I don't have a decent rant about it at length it'll keep bugging me.

And I need all my available brainpower for NaNo. (3 days, 9k words. AMST BOVVRED?)

Also: I think I'm going to ragesplode all over the place.

Yesterday I had to go to the GP to get my meds renewed, and I got a new bloke who I haven't seen before.

No problem, usually.

NOT THIS TIME.

He seemed like a really nice bloke, and I was still riding my "OMFG I GOT SLEEP" high, so I restrained the weirdness to socially acceptable "quirky" levels while we did the obligatory meet-and-greet social stuff before getting down to the 'ok so why the fuck are you in my office, outwardly healthy person' part of the appointment.

-Here to get my meds renewed.

-Ah, why are you on them?

-Because my brain is a glitched-up piece of shit.

OH MY FUCKING GOD I JUST CAN'T RIGHT NOW.

SO MUCH RAGE.

What did I get?

-That's a pretty awful thing to say about yourself.

I'M NOT SAYING IT ABOUT ME, I'M SAYING IT ABOUT MY FUCKING GREY MATTER.

I AM CAPABLE OF MAKING THAT DIFFERENTIATION, DUMBASS.

I got the fucking spiel about how I seem so intelligent and blah blah blah and how I don't need to be on meds because I seem to be cheerful and fine ("Affect: Excellent").

I actually laughed at that last bit and pointed out that I'm a damn good actor when it comes to looking cheerful.

So, according to this guy I don't need meds to help manage a severe mental illness I've had my entire fucking life.

This is despite me pointing out that the only time in my left I've ever approached 'normal' regarding my moods was when I've been on some form of SSRI/SNRI medication and that I did end up in A&E last year when we stopped them for a trial period. That being on meds actually helps me direct my energy towards being able to create and do enjoyable things rather than having to spend it all fighting the desire to die.

He seems to think that because I seem fine now, I just phased off the meds too fast last time and I'll be fine if I just remember to "turn my imagination" to "thinking good things about myself".

Yeah, because that worked SO FUCKING WELL before.

No questions about relevant family history of mental illness, history of abuse, problems with self harm/addiction/suicide, NOTHING.

Did he even read the fucking patient history? He bloody had long enough to do so after I got there!

I am raging so hard right now because attitudes like his CAN and DO kill people.

Telling someone with a chronic mental illness that they don't have to take meds anymore because they seem fine and can manage with happy thoughts from here on out is like telling someone with diabetes that because their blood sugar is stable they can stop the insulin and manage by regulating their diet from now on.

It can work in mild cases, but not all.

I never even WANTED to be on medication in the first place. I watched one family member deteriorate and another be outright fucking KILLED by doctors prescribing the wrong things. To this day I don't take anything new without cross-referencing side effects and drug interactions on at least six different websites because I remember that doctors killed Granma and fucked Nana.M up for life.

It's hilarious when you consider that I still don't care if I die.

I'm still struggling to accept that this is something I'm going to have to do if I want to have any quality of life. Overcoming the cultural biases towards mental illness when it comes to myself is a fight I'm still not fucking winning.

Why?

Society tells us we're weak and pathetic for not being able to "suck it up" and "get over it"

Easy to tell your friend that it's bullshit and they're not weak, they're dealing with a brainglitch that isn't obvious and you don't judge them or blame them for it.

Hard to tell yourself the same thing when you've got an illness that tells you ALL THE FUCKING TIME, IN YOUR OWN VOICE that you're weak, pathetic and stupid for not being about so "suck it up" and "get over it" and you may as well just kill yourself so you don't have to keep inflicting your presence on others because you're a drag and a wet blanket and they'd be happier without you around.

(Yeah, not going into the "suicide is selfish" BULLSHITE today. I may actually vomit from sheer rage if I do.)

As much as I wanted to, I didn't start screaming at him. He seemed like a decent bloke around the ignorance. Instead I lead him a little verbal tango and left with my venlafaxine prescription. (I need more zopiclone too, but I can go a few weeks on shitty sleep.)

I am considering writing a little "Mental Illness 101" for the GP practise, though. The thought of anyone else being forced to endure this shit out of ignorance on the part of the medical profession makes me want to go on a murderous rampage.

Speaking of which, I'm going to blow shit up on minecraft until my computer crashes. I'm honestly too angry to think straight.

~Peri

NaNo2013: Chapter Six

This just seemed too appropriate:

THERE IS A TRIGGER WARNING ON THIS CHAPTER FOR MILD REFERENCES TO EATING DISORDERED BEHAVIOUR AND SELF NEGLECT.

Yes, at this point in the novel I was contemplating giving the main character an ED. Not sure if I will, work people want to read it and I don't want to give them too many clues. Chatterbox and Deirdre aren't complete idiots.

Poor Evreth.

I'm a bitch and I'm sorrynotsorry.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

  Evreth pushed herself as hard as she could on her journey to the Empire of the Rains, hoping to exhaust herself so that she would sleep deeply and without dreams. The nightmares she had been plagued with ever since the Hibernation of Sorrow had been striking with almost vengeful frequency lately, forcing her to relive the events of those horrible days over and over again.

  The Sand Clan dragon flew as if she were trying to outfly her own tail, or possibly the demons of memory that were constantly stalking it. Evreth deliberately pushed herself so hard that she was covering the distance between Travellers Hostels each day at a decent speed even for a normally sized dragon. As she moved further south and the climate became warmer with shorter sunrises and sunsets her take offs each morning and landings for rests (When she remembered to take them) and at the Travellers Hostels each evening were becoming so ungraceful she would have been embarrassed if she had been less tired.

  The lack of sleep and the gruelling pace Evreth set for herself were gradually taking their toll on her strength and health. While she had the physical resilience of the young and strength built from the self-imposed years of flying Territory Patrols and joining the Special Couriers to covertly snoop for hints of her missing friends, waking several times in the night trying to force screams through a throat muffled by magic meant she was not getting the rest she needed each night to even come near what her body needed to sustain the long hours of forced flight.

  Most days unless the weather was particularly foul the Sand Clan dragon even forgot to take the rest breaks that had been factored into her flight time for the trip. She found that if her flight muscles were burning with the abuse they were being put through and her lungs were screaming at her for air it was easier to forget the images that haunted her each night, the images of blood and death and the tearing feelings of fear and the loneliness that followed her into her waking hours.

  Even if she wasn’t pushing herself to the point of physical pain to plough through dead air or fight a headwind, the concentration needed to find a likely thermal or ride a strong air current usually kept her from focusing on the things she wanted to avoid thinking about. In her mind it was also a bonus that she was able to make good time in known territory before she was forced to slow down and take exaggerated care as she would have to once she left the Empire of the Rains to find these seers.

  The meals provided at the Travellers Hostels which were bought by arrangement with the supply of tokens she carried were enough to feed a dragon her size that was doing the expected amount of activity to cover the distance she was supposed to be covering each day. They were certainly not enough to keep up with the amount of energy the Sand Clan dragon was actually using, pushing herself to her limits and out the other side. Somewhere along the way, it seemed that she had also outflown her appetite and didn’t even notice.

  By the time Evreth dropped out of the sky like a shot duck each night she was so utterly exhausted it was all she could do to force her dinner down before removing her harness and putting it and the small packs of personal belongings, money pouch and the packet of letters for Ves and Maevrith safely between her sleeping platform and the wall before passing out on the bed provided. Some nights she was reduced to curling up on top of her harness and gear in a barn as the Traveller’s Hostel she was supposed to be staying at on that night had not thought it was worthwhile to rebuild their draconic accommodations after the Hibernation of Sorrow.

  By the time the sun rose she was usually hungry again, unless the nightmares had particularly nasty that night. If she had had a relatively untroubled night of sleep Evreth would wolf down her breakfast fast enough to frighten anyone who saw her into fits with worry that she would choke. However, if she had spent the night drifting in and out of blood soaked dreams the Sand Clan dragon’s stomach was in so many knots that she wasn’t even able to look at whatever had been provided for her without seeing the remains of friends and family members in place of whatever was waiting for her. If that was the case for the morning, she would apologise profusely and invent a tale about needing to make up for time lost in a storm or to bad winds and be on her way before her breakfast cow or pig was on its way back to the kitchen to be turned into lunch or dinner for the other patrons of the Traveller’s Hostel.

  This extra stress was taking a massive physical toll on the Sand Clan dragon. Even though she usually both arrived at and left the Travellers’ Hostels in the half light of dawn and dusk, people had begun giving her worried looks. There was muttering in the taprooms and kitchens about what kind of dire errand a dragon would be on to push themselves that hard. Despite their shorter lifespans, the events of the Hibernation of Sorrow had not yet left the living memory of the other races of the world. Without knowing, Evreth left a growing concern in her wake as she chalked her bone deep exhaustion down to lack of sleep and forced herself onwards.

  Evreth herself only started to notice something was wrong when she went to put her harness on one morning and tried to tighten it so it didn’t flop around only to find that there weren’t any holes left in the leather so she could make the harness straps small enough to fit snugly. Shocked and confused, the Sand Clan dragon ripped the harness off and examined the leather straps for signs of wear and stretching. The rich brown leather was worn soft and comfortable, but there were no signs of stress on it. There were no tears, no ripped stitches and absolutely no places where the leather had stretched enough to explain her current predicament.

  Annoyed, the Sand Clan put her harness back on only to confirm that it was indeed rather big for her now, and that there was no fault in the harness to explain it. Grumbling to herself, Evreth pulled the buckles down to the last holes in the leather and tucked the excess leather under itself. She decided to do something about it later in the day, maybe stop at a town and ask a leatherworker to punch a few new holes in it or do it herself if the people in the town looked hostile. A badly fitting harness would create problems for her while she flew, but not as many problems as a horde of scared and angry two leggers with long sharp sticks could come up with when they put their minds to it.

  That day Evreth didn’t spot any towns or settlements large enough to have a leatherworker who would have the tools to fix something as big as her harness. The vegetation was slowly taking over the ground below her, and any place bigger than a handful of buildings had enough cleared land around it to be spotted from a long distance. She had been warned about large land predators in this area that were quite happy to go after sleeping humans if the predator in question was too sick or old to go after it’s normal prey, so the large clearings made a certain kind of sense to Evreth. If she was hunting alone she preferred to ‘hide’ far enough up in the sky that an unwary animal couldn’t see her. If she was hunting on the ground she would want a lot of nice, leafy trees and brush to hide behind. Remove the cover and a predator that was running at less than their best would have a lot of trouble keeping themself fed.

  For once, the lack of human habitation had the Sand Clan dragon annoyed. The lose harness had been flopping around all day, the packs she carried banging into her back wings and sides at awkward times and irritating her so much she had spent the last four hours daydreaming of how good it would be to rip the whole blasted thing off and chuck it away.

  When she had about two or so hours of daylight left she started looking for the lake which was supposed to be her landmark for the end of this day of the trip. Despite how fit the young Sand Clan dragon had been at the start of her journey, each day seemed to be harder than the last. No matter how hard she pushed herself to maintain the gruelling pace she had set for herself at the outset, Evreth noticed that she was definitely losing speed along with her stamina. Putting it down to exhaustion and a lack of proper days to spend resting she simply pushed herself harder in order to keep the pace.

  The lake Evreth was looking for was a long, vaguely wiggly shaped freshwater place whose water was drinkable, even though Ves and Maevrith had both told her that it tasted a little weird to someone who was used to the mineral-heavy water or rainwater available at the Dragon City. The lake was also used by the other races, with a sort of camping area at the end with access to the main trade route cutting through the thick forest.

  With glad eyes the tired dragon saw a serpentine gap develop in the relentless swathe of greenery below her. Veering a little left she saw the sky and her reflection in the rippling brownish waters of one of the main rivers that fed into or drained from the lake she was looking for. She became so absorbed in watching the river waver backwards and forwards underneath her that she squawked in surprise when the hypnotising movement disappeared and the tree lined riverbanks fell away to either side of her as she flew out over the freshwater lake.

  Pumping her wings to gain a little altitude Evreth banked sideways and admired the long lakeshore. It was dotted with many little bays so that she wouldn’t have to use the camping area created by the other races and risk a confrontation. The whole are a was difficult for the ground bound races to access so there were no settlement’s within half a day’s flying of any part of the lake. This would be the first time since she left the Dragon City that Evreth would be able to sleep outside without worrying that ever snapping branch meant someone was creeping up to shove something sharp into her.

  If she remembered properly, there should be an area cleared out by Path’s parents and the Special Couriers who have been this way that Evreth would be able to spend the night in. Aparrently there were a small variety of deer here that come to drink at the lake at sunrise and sunset, so if she was careful she would be able to have venison twice within two days while she was here. Evreth made a face to herself as she searched the shoreline of the lake for the dragon’s camping ground. Venison was her second favourite meat after horse, but she definitely preferred it cooked and she hadn’t thought to brink and flint and steel with her. Not for the first time, she wished that she really could breathe fire the way the other races seemed to think that dragons could do. It would make travelling like this so much easier if she didn’t have to remember to bring fire making tools to cook her dinner.

  She spotted the cleared area the Special Courier people had told her about. The trees that had been uprooted to enlarge the natural clearing had been used to create a rough shelter of sorts that wasn’t the greatest one ever built but it was study and would keep off the worst of and truly foul weather better than trying to crawl in under the trees. As she circled past to get a good look at the place Evreth saw that some parts of the shelter thing looked newer than other. Obviously other dragons that were bigger and less tired than Evreth herself worked on it and added to it each time they came past. Since this isolated place actually saw fairly regular use, this made sense. Nobody wanted to be stuck out in the open in the rain or have to sleep in a place that could come down around your ears while you slept.

  The arc of her flight took Evreth back out over the lake again and she decided to take off her blasted harness before going to catch herself some dinner. The side straps were flapping against her sides in the most annoying way possible and a long strip of excess leather had worked itself loose and flopped backwards and forwards across her wing shoulders as the flow of air across them changed. Angling her tired and aching wings to prepare for landing, the Sand Clan dragon scanned the lakeshore beneath her for a good landing site. When she saw her reflection in the calm dark water of the lake surface she got such a shock all thoughts of what she was actually doing – namely, flying – went completely out of her head.

  Evreth crashed into the ground at full speed, rolling nose over tail twice and ending up lying on her back at the end of a dragon sized furrow ploughed on an angle through the shingle of the beach and right up into the brush at the side of the clearing. Completely dazed, the Sand Clan dragon lay there for a few long minutes, seeing stars and gasping air greedily into lungs that wouldn’t seem to fill up. Eventually, she shook the little dancing sparks of light from her eyes and got up very slowly, trying not to catch her wings on any of the broken branches that surrounded her.

  When she had picked her way clear of the wreckage she tested wings, legs, tail and neck. Through some incredible stroke of luck she hadn’t broken anything. However, she was quite thoroughly bruised and a large collection of scrapes from the ground and a few long wounds where the buckles of her loose harness had caught her hide and ripped through it as they were dragged between the ground and her tumbling body. Groaning, Evreth loosened the harness and pulled it off, checking the packs for damage and inspecting the long leather bands to see what would need repairs.

  Her personal pack looked a little squashed, but as most of what was in it was metal or fabric it could take a bit of squashing. The ornaments she had bought with her didn’t have much engraving and could be forced back into shape easily enough if she needed to wear them. The letter package she was carrying to the Empire of the Rains for Ves and Maevrith was spell protected, so it had survived unscathed. To her great disgust, Evreth found that the problematic harness had only torn a few reinforcing stitches here and there. Because it had become so loose it had slipped around and inflicted more damage on her more than it had received from being dragged along the ground at full speed.

  Moving stiffly, Evreth tossed her harness in the general direction of the shelter and staggered in the direction of the lake. She caught her feet in the edge of the trench her crash landing had ploughed into the beach and stumbled, falling flat on her face. The Sand Clan dragon gave up and lay there for a few minutes, swearing internally and wondering what on earth she had done to deserve this. Some bugs, attracted by the smell of fresh blood from the scrapes inflicted by the buckes of her harness, landed on Evreth’s grubby hide and started biting at it, assuming from how she smelled and how still she was that she wouldn’t mind being eaten.

  The sharp stings forced Evreth to her feet, swearing viciously all the way. Everything hurt and she could feel her muscles seizing up under the combined onslaught of bruises and not being properly cooled down after a hard day of flying. Squinting through a growing headache, the Sand Clan dragon stumbled over to the lake and stared at her reflection for a bit before taking a drink to wash the grit out of her throat.

  What she saw in the surface of the lake definitely explained why her harness didn’t seem to fit her any more. She had lost all of her fat reserves and disturbingly there even seemed to be some wastage of her flight muscles. Muscle mass she definitely could not afford to lose. Craning her sore neck upwards, Evreth took an upside down look at her back. She could clearly see the damage done by her overly enthusiastic greeting of the ground, but underneath that she could see each muscle group standing out in a disturbing way, centred by a line of vertebral knobs that played hide and seek as the light changed.

  Evreth shuddered at the sight and shut her eyes as she waded into the lake so that she didn’t have to see her reflection. The lake water was cold and stained brown from all the leaf matter it had picked up on it’s way through the forest. It didn’t feel very good to Evreth’s battered and bruised body, but it felt amazing on her aching head. Right now she wanted to be clean and make sure nothing got a chance to fester in the scrapes left by her harness buckles. Anything else was secondary to that.

  She took a deep breath and submerged herself, passively letting the water soak the dirt from her hide. The Sand Clan dragon let out the breath she was holding and blew a stream of bubbles into the still depths of the lake. She was too sore and battered right now to hunt for her dinner. Even though she wasn’t hungry anyway, especially with the pounding in her head growing despite the deliciously cool lake water she was floating in, Evreth knew she needed food and should probably start reminding herself to eat the meals provided in the Travellers Hostels despite being too tired to eat them most of the time.

  Evreth stuck her head up above the surface of the lake and blew a spray of cold water out of her nostrils. As exhausted and battered as she was, the Sand Clan dragon knew she needed to hunt. There was no getting around the fact that all her bruises and sore muscles were going to stiffen up while she slept, so passing out now was simply not an option. Just getting into the air and gritting it out while her muscles warmed up enough to stop complaining was going to be dodgy enough as it was.

  As she let the cool lake water cradle her tired body, Evreth idly considered trying the crocodile trick of sneaking up on her target while keeping herself hidden underwater. If she could find some deer that were thirsty enough and she could catch them unaware . . . She ducked her head back under the water, darkened her hide to a mottled brown to match the colour of the lake and tried to swim without making ripples, to see if this idea would actually work.

  The result was both laughable and excruciatingly painful. Evreth was an indifferent swimmer at best, and dragons simply weren’t built to be efficient amphibious predators. After less than three seconds she was exploding from the surface of the lake, hide an uncontrolled riot of red and white as she spat water and swore at the top of her lungs, frightening any bird within earshot into taking flight. That was most definitely NOT going to work, and to cap it all she had just made enough commotion to scare anything big and tasty away from the lakeshore for hours. Fish were out of the question now, too. The Sand Clan dragon thought wistfully of the big ocean fish that were as long as a dragon’s head. One of those would go down as nicely as a side of roast deer right now.

  Sighing, the exhausted and very grumpy dragon hauled her abused body from the water and sat beside the trench she had dug with her inelegant landing. She spread her wings to dry in the warm twilight air and hoped that by the time she wasn’t dripping any more she would be able to find something to kill for dinner. Taking her frustration at the situation on a deer wouldn’t make her any less sore, but right now would make her feel a lot better and give her something to start rebuilding her strength with.

Very Loop. Such Spin.

I have discovered Sirenia. Metal+Sweet lady vocals=Purrrrrrrrr

Miles lost his job  today, so he has applied for a temp position with a circus.

We have a $400 power bill. (Didn't get the meter read all winter because the meter man had bad timing, lol). While it could have been a LOT worse, it's not gonna be fun dealing with this just before Christmas.

Finally gave in and knocked myself out last night. Slept for 11 hours!

OMFG I FEEL FANTASTIC TODAY!

Don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight, but I feel too excellent to care. I swear I was built for a planet that has 11 hours of sleepytime and 18-22 hours of wakeytime.

Oh yeah, hoopy progress video.



I'm looking up wind shit now. Mountain passes in completely unrealistic mountains. FML.

~Peri

NaNo2013: Chapter Five

The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary thing was epic.

Two Daleks running around the ground floor of the Rialto, I wasn't the only Cosplayer (Just the least obvious), it was in 3D.

I'm so-so when it comes to 3D movies, to be honest. I'd prefer decent SFX and sound work to 3D. Mainly because my eyes are a bit shonky and the 3D glasses don't work so well for me. I keep being dragged out of the experience by blurriness and weird shit going on with the depth of field when I'm not looking straight at the screen.

I promised no spoilers so I'll be vague AND blue it out. You're welcome.
-FUCKING HILARIOUS
-HURT'S DOCTOR'S SNARK=MY FUCKING FAVOURITE OMG YES
-DAMMIT STOP BEING A LAZY WRITER YOU SONOFABITCH
-COINCIDENCES GET YOU INTO TROUBLE, NOT OUT OF IT
-MULTIPLE BAIT'N'SWITCHES YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU
-FUCKING FEZ STOP WITH THE FEZ ALREADY
-OH SHIT MORE THAN ONE DOCTOR AT ONCE THE UNIVERSE IS DOOMED
-MOFFAT YOU DUMB CUNT THE BECHDEL TEST IS THE LOWEST POSSIBLE BAR HOW CAN YOU CONSISTENTLY FAIL TO REACH IT. (Someone talking to their alien duplicate doesn't count)

Ok, I'm torturing Evreth some more here and bonus points for plodding on despite wordcount padding ^.^;



Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four

Chapter Five

  The next morning saw Evreth leaving the Dragon City extremely early, taking advantage of strong winds high in the atmosphere to get a good start on her journey. With her smaller wingspan it would take Evreth several months to reach the Empire of the Rains where Path’s parents were stationed. They had taken up the post again at the request of both the current Emperor and the remains of the Council of the Elders. Whenever they had written a letter to their daughter, Path had told the young Sand Clan dragon silly stories of the trouble her parents had helped to sort out, ensuring that the dragons as a race still had a good reputation in one place in the world.

  A memory intruded unbidden and Evreth let pink giggles flow over her hide even though there was no one to see them. Her were lungs too busy supplying her burning muscles with oxygen to let her indulge in a verbal laugh at this point. Maevrith and Ves of the Cloud Clan had been utterly astonished to discover that over the years of their interrupted Millennial Hibernation they had somehow been inducted into the massive polytheistic pantheon of Gods venerated by the people of the Empire of the Rains as a pair of luck gods.

  Attached to her harness Evreth carried a sealed oilskin packet of messages for the pair of Cloud Clan dragons stationed in the Empire of the Rains, as well as the personal belongings she had packed the night before. Alongside the grooming items and assorted jewellery there was a small stone luck token given to her by Ayveth the previous night. Her young Stone Clan foster sister had solemnly said that as long as Evreth had the oddly coloured piece of stone with her then she would be safe and that no bad things would happen to her.

  As she made the altitude where the strong winds generated by a clash of weather systems were flowing in the direction she wanted to go, Evreth went into cruising mode and considered the gift from her foster sister with no small amount of irony. From the perspective of an outsider, it would seem like nothing worse could possibly happen to either of them after surviving the Hibernation of Sorrow.

  Waking up to find yourself trapped deep underground with no way out and then to learn that your species were being systematically slaughtered and it was only a matter of hours before you were killed with the added possibility of seeing everyone you love die messily came in near the top of Evreth’s ‘List of Things I Wouldn’t Wish on Another Sentient Creature.’

  Evreth knew that there were horrors worse than those she had personally witnessed, and the Sand Clan dragon suspected that her foster sister had witnessed some of them. As the Sand Clan dragon flew onwards, she hoped fervently that there would be no need for Ayveth’s protection and luck talisman on this quest. The high winds sped her on her way as the sun rose and progressed towards the centre of the sky.

  Unfortunately for Evreth the helpful wind she was riding faded out about noon. The rest of the day was spent in trying to find another helpful air current to match the first, but the Sand Clan dragon had no such luck. She ran across a few passable ones, but they weren’t quite going in the same direction that she was and would have taken her too far off course to correct in time to make it to the Travellers Hostel she was supposed to be staying in before they closed their doors for the night. If she did not arrive before the light had left the sky she would essentially be shut out, and she really did not want to have to waste time finding a safe place to sleep.

  She made it to the Travellers Hostel she was expected at in time for the evening meal. As it was supposed to rain that night she used her tokens to get a sleeping place in a large, barnlike building that was built for dragons and  furnished with low bed platforms covered with piles of old rugs. They weren’t the newest blankets in the world, but at least they appeared to be clean. She was also able to get a breakfast the next morning and dinner as well, which was good because Evreth had been looking forward to a decent feed since the middle of the day.

  With half of an exceptionally tasty roast pig inside her, Evreth carefully tucked her harness and the precious packages it contained down the back of her sleeping platform. Nobody would be able to get  to them without waking her up, not that anyone this close to the Dragon City would theoretically be interested in what she carried. It was far more likely they’d just want to quietly kill her in her sleep out of fear. She curled into the pile of bedding with a tired sigh. It turned out that old blankets were softer to sleep on, especially for tired dragons. Who would have guessed?

  Evreth was the only dragon staying at the Travellers Hostel that night, for which she was very grateful. It was bad enough that her obvious youth marked her as one of the ‘Survivors’, but her small size made her look younger than she was and she did NOT want to have a nightmare with witnesses. The last time that had happened she had woken up to someone uncomfortably close to her with their wing spread over her in a draconic hug. The older dragon had insisted on singing Evreth some silly hatchling songs until she fell asleep, so the young Sand Clan had faked sleep as soon as she plausibly could, then gotten out of there well before dawn so she didn’t have to face the irritating mother-hen dragon twice in one day.

  Evreth snuggled deeper into the bed and worked the now customary magic on her throat so that if she did happen to have a nightmare then she wouldn’t wake the neighbourhood by screaming the roof down. As it had been pointed out to her many times, dragons were large creatures with large lungs and the ability to produce sound at volumes that frankly terrified any who weren’t prepared for it. The Sand Clan dragon swallowed experimentally against the discomfort in her throat. She always opted for a sore throat not so that she would remember to reverse the blasted spell in the morning.

  The sound of heavy rain drumming on the roof overhead relaxed the young dragon and she drifted into sleep much faster than she was accustomed to doing. It was not a thunderstorm so her odd of having a nightmare were at their usual level, basically fifty-fifty on any given night. Hoping against hope that this was one of the good nights and her tired body would get a decent rest for the next day of flying, Evreth let the sound of the falling rain carry her off into sleep.

  When the fighting in the Hibernation Chamber finally ended, Evreth was too scared to believe the evidence of her ears and risk coming out from her Mother’s protective shadow to see if it was really over. Ever since she had been awoken from the sorcerous sleep of the Millennial Hibernation things had kept going from bad to worse until they ended up at positively hellish. The young Sand Clan dragon didn’t want to see any more. She didn’t want to risk being wrong again.

  Evreth flinched and curled up even tighter as someone started shouting something that sounded like an angry lecture into the deadly silence. Her numbed brain refused to make any sense of the words that passed over her head during the speech or in the brief spate of conversation in more civil tones that ended the silence that had followed it. After what felt like another eternity the young dragon heard movement and when she felt something brush over her she jumped and a pathetic little squeaking sound escaped her fear-clogged throat.

  Someone settled down into the soft sand beside Evreth, a large reassuring someone who smelled like her mother. Cautiously, the young Sand Clan dragon opened her eyes the tiniest little bit, ready to slam them shut again if she saw even the tiniest hint of any more Bad Things happening. All she saw were extremely dim shadows. Reassured slightly, Evreth opened her eyes the rest of the way and cautiously tried to lift her head clear of the fine basalt sand the filled the bed platform to get a better look at her dimly lit surroundings, still ready to hide again in a heartbeat.

  She couldn’t even raise her head half a meter before the top of her head hit the something soft and stretchy. With a startled yelp Evreth snapped her eyes shut and dropped her head back into the protection of her forearms so fast she thumped the sensitive skin around her nostrils hard enough to make her eyes water. She heard a rather strained-sounding amused rumble come from deep within her mother’s chest, reassuring Evreth enough that she lifted her head clear of the sand so none would get stuck itchily in the pain tears that squeezed from her tightly shut eyes.

  Carefully this time Evreth opened her eyes and let them focus on her surroundings before she tried to raise her head any higher. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw that the shadows were created by her mother’s wing being spread over her and actually tucked into the sand around the edges so that the youngling couldn’t see anything at all of what was going on around her. Since she knew that her mother had much smaller wings than her father did, Evreth knew that she was not supposed to see whatever happening on the other side of Veyrith’s wing.

 “You shouldn’t see any of this, love.” The words were in mother’s voice, which sounded funny and not just because it was muffled a bit by her speaking quietly, almost whispering to her youngling with her mouth right up against her wing. This cemented the idea in Evreth’s head that Something Really Really Bad was about to happen. Again. “In a little bit,” The Stone Clan female continued explaining to her only offspring, trying to sound reassuring, “One of the healers will come over and put you to sleep with magic again so we can take you home without seeing what happened in the other Hibernation Chambers. It will be alright and your father and I will be there with you when you wake up.”

  To Evreth this sounded exactly like something someone would say just before they all died. Like one of those horrible well intended lies people always told you when you were a hatchling, like ‘This won’t hurt a bit’ when really it would hurt a lot, or ‘It doesn’t taste all that bad’ when the medicine they wanted you to take tasted like they had mashed together all the worst tasting plants they could find and then mixed in a pile of cow dung for interest.

  So naturally, when the words penetrated her sluggish brain Evreth knew that this was it, that they weren’t going to be putting her to sleep at all. They were going to be killing her mercifully and painlessly instead of letting the murderous two leggers do it messily with sharp sticks or let one of the scary mean dragons pull her head off. On top of everything else this was just too much for the youngling. Her terrified mind latched on to the one person who hadn’t lied to her. Ever. The person who had acted as her big sister and confidante since forever and had always told her the truth, even when the truth was that she didn’t know or wasn’t allowed to tell the youngster anything.

  “Where is Path? Can I talk to her?” Evreth asked, squirming around in the living tent created by her month’s protective wing to face the direction she had last seen her adopted Cloud Clan sister in. The young Sand Clan dragon thought she remembered hearing her friend say something just before the hammering stopped and the thunder noise start, but the shock she was experiencing combined with the stress of the events rendered her memory confused and a bit unreliable.

  “She isn’t here right now, sweetling.” Veyrith said, and something in her mother’s tone and the way she said the simple sentence sent a chill down Evreth’s spine. “Path is busy helping someone right now. You can talk to her after we get you home, ok?”

  The chill down the young Sand Clan dragon’s spine turned into a solid bar of ice. That wasn’t right. Path was always there for her. The older Could Clan dragon would have talked to Evreth first to make sure she was ok before going to help the others. She always would. If she didn’t do so then it meant that Path was hurt. Bust Evreth couldn’t hear her, so maybe the healers had put her to sleep?

  The young dragon’s mind shied away from contemplating the other and more horrible reason as to why her sharp draconic hearing could not pick out her friend’s distinctive voice in the backdrop murmur now filling the subterranean Hibernation Chamber. There was no way Path was dead. She couldn’t be dead. No, her adopted big sister was just hurt and asleep and needed Evreth to watch over her and make sure she was ok the way Path always did for Evreth when she was sick or hurt. Evreth had to find Path. Find her NOW. Before anything bad happened to her.

 “No. I want to talk to Path.” Evreth said, trying to push her way out from under her mother’s wing. “I want to see her now, not later on.” The young Sand Clan dragon remembered the terrifying sight of the Star Clan Elder being viciously attacked and all but braining the younger dragon who had gone for his throat, but right now she was beyond caring what else was happening or what other scary things she saw. She had to get to her friend and protect her from the scary mean people.

 “No love, you’ll get in her way. If you wait patiently I promise you’ll get to see her later” Veyrith said with a hint of desperation in her voice. Evreth’s attempts to escape from protective parental custody were becoming increasingly powerful and Stone Clan dragon knew she wouldn’t be able to contain the youngster for much longer. If Evreth’s escape attempts grew any more violent then Veyrith would have to forego the wing pen idea or else risk sustaining damage to the vital flight membranes.

  Evreth was now utterly certain that her adopted older sister was severely hurt and wouldn’t live very much longer, or was already dead and nobody thought she was big enough to be told yet. That sentence from her mother was the last straw. Upon hearing it, the young Sand Clan dragon snapped.

 “NO. Not later,” Evreth howled, “I want to see her NOW. Path! Paaaaaaaaaaaath!” The young Sand Clan dragon started struggling fiercely, thrashing about in the protective pen created by her mother’s wing membrane and shrieking her Cloud Clan friend’s name at the top of her lungs.

 “Path! Path, are you there? Path! Mum, let me out! Path, can you here me? Path? Paaaaaaath!” Evreth started battering determinedly at her mother’s ensnaring wing with her tail and her own wings, deliberately not using her forefeet to punch with in case she stuffed up and accidentally cut her mother’s wing with a sharp talon.

 “Path? LET ME OUT MUM! I NEED TO FIND PATH.” Evreth continued yelling and hitting at the slate grey wing that kept her trapped. Her feet were planted firmly in the soft sand underneath her, ready to escape the instant she saw an opening.

  Cursing internally, Veyrith was forced to remove the protective wing she was covering her protesting youngling with as a strike from Evreth’s tail bruised the fragile tissue. Before the Stone Clan female had a chance to grab Evreth, the youngster was leaping off the bed platform, still yelling for her missing Cloud Clan friend.

 “Path! Path! Path! Path! Paaaaath where are you? Path! Path! Paaaath! Path! Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaath!”

  “Evreth, stop! Get back here!” Veyrith yelled impotently as she struggled to get to her feet in the soft sand of the bed platform. She had been taken by surprise, not expecting that the frightened youngster would be ready to bolt that quickly. In the few seconds it took the Stone Clan female to regain her feet Evreth had gained a considerable lead, slipping between the legs of a startled Vine Clan dragon and darting off, still yelling Path’s name at the top of her lungs.

 “Path, where ARE you? Paaaaaaaaaaath! Path! Path! Paaaaaaaaath! Paaaaaaaaath! Path! Path! Path! Path! Path where are you? Path? Paaath are you ok? Answer me! Path! Paaaaaath!”

  Leth heard his offspring’s frantic voice and turned around in time to see his mate lift her bruised wing away from over Evreth and accidentally unleash the panicked youngling into the chaos of the subterranean Hibernation Chamber Complex. Veyrith’s call for the young Sand Clan dragon to return broke through the confusion holding Leth still and he abandoned the task he was engaged in to chase after his fleeing child. The Sand Clan male tucked his wings to his sides and ploughed past people who were standing stock still and staring wildly around, trying to locate the screaming youngling.

  There was a brief commotion as Evreth’s yelling frayed one poor dragon’s last remaining nerve and they lost the tenuous hold they had been keeping over their fear of being trapped in an enclosed space. Veyrith’s awkward lunge to her feet and Leth’s determined push towards his offspring startled the shellshocked survivor into motion. The dragon gave one strangled croak as his rational mind threw it’s figurative hands into the air and gave up relinquishing control. Instinct took over instead and the dragon mindlessly attempted to launch into the air and take flight away from the scary place.

    All of the healers were completely distracted by taking care of those who had been injured during the short, bloody fight for dominance between the members of the Autonomy Alliance and their supporters and the fragmented remains of the Council of the Elders and those dragons who did not agree with the actions taken by the Autonomy Alliance and especially the situation they had brought their race to. None of them were able to react quickly when the dragon gave in to instinct and tried to fly upwards.

  Thankfully, those who were closest to the panicking dragon noticed the movement as he crouched, and by the time he had his wings spread they were already in motion to keep him from killing himself by accident, flying into the roof and breaking his neck. Several dragons resorted to the expedient method of simply leaping on top of him and pinning him to the ground with their combined weight while one of them drew upon magic to knock him out before he hurt himself by thrashing against the combined weight of those who were trying to help him.

  Evreth didn’t notice any of this. The young Sand Clan dragon just ran straight in the direction she had last seen her friend in, calling her name at the top of her lungs. She darted right between a startled Maevrith and Ves, making a scrambling leap up on to the bed platform she remembered having seen Path on just before the sorcerous sleep of the Millennial Hibernation had come over them, putting all the dragons into a magical coma.

  “Paaath, where are you?” Evreth called from her new vantage point, frantically scanning the Hibernation Chamber for sign of her friend. “Path?” She called again, her voice losing volume and becoming more tentative. All the pale dragons she could see that weren’t obviously bleached pale in fear weren’t her Cloud Clan friend. They were all the wrong height or shape or size.

  A horrible feeling began in the pit of the young Sand Clan dragon’s stomach, clenching around her heart before moving up to choke her throat.

 “Path? Path, please say something. It’s me. Where are you?” Evreth’s voice trailed off into a whimper as she turned around and around in the soft sand of the sleeping platform. Her parents finally reached her and blocked off two possible avenues of escape, with Maevrith and Ves, Path’s Cloud Clan parents joining the distraught youngster’s parents and covering the other two sides so that between the four of them they had Evreth trapped on the bed platform.

  Ignoring the four adults who had her trapped, the Sand Clan youngling continued to turn in place and scan the massive subterranean cavern for her missing friend. She occasionally popped up on her back legs with wings fanning for balance when she thought she saw someone who looked like Path, but it never was. A thought occurred to her that Senth might be able to help her, but there were also disturbingly few Shadow Clan dragons left as well, all of them were wither fully grown adults or hatchlings younger than Evreth.

 “Youngling, Path isn’t here anymore.” Ves said in an extremely gentle tone. The Cloud Clan dragon with the violet markings turned pewter grey from nose to tail. The reality of what his only child had done was just beginning to completely penetrate the layer of shock around his thoughts.

 “What do you mean, she isn’t here?” Evreth asked in a wobbly voice. Path had been right here, hadn’t she? There was no way she could have been . . . out there . . . and . . . Evreth choked on a sob, her eyes starting to fill with tears and a horrible ripping feeling in her chest felt like something was trying to claw its way out.

 “She isn’t here in the Dragon City anymore.” Evreth’s mother said, feeling horribly guilty for telling her child this, even if it was the truth and she was inevitably going to find out sooner rather than later. “Path . . . Path volunteered to pay the spell to move the army out of the City.” Maevrith finished, her blue-marked hide going steel grey with grief.

  Evreth stood stock still as that information processed. All four of the adult dragons watching her braced themselves, trying to anticipate which way she was going to run. Maevrith and Ves saw the instant the young Sand Clan dragon’s wings began to droop. In the blink of an eye her entire hide was the pale grey of a snowstorm and her eyes overflowed.

 “No. No she can’t go.” Evreth said around her tears. All four adults watching the youngster made eye contact with one another, and Maevrith nodded, accepting responsibility and preparing a sleeping spell as Evreth continued to sob.

  “She. . . She’s my sister. She has to stay here and . . . and . . . Path, come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!” Mercifully, the magic took hold and forced the young dragon down into sleep before the knowledge that she was now friendless completely broke her.