[Planet Eroka – Hidden Wind Dragon Village]
“I’ll show them!” Leigh said flying just above the treetops, hurtling as fast as she could away from the village. Her dragon form was long and slender. She was about forty-five feet long and covered in pale yellow feathers with a light orange tinge in certain areas. Her forewings were large and powerful, stretching sixteen feet to each side when fully extended, while her smaller rear wings extended just over two feet each. They were very feminine, in her opinion. Her elegantly groomed snout resembled a raptor's beak, and her shiny ebony claws demonstrated her pride in her appearance.
In a moment of frustration, Leigh declared, "I'm going to leave this stifling village and find myself a handsome mate somewhere without all of this village's overbearing rules!"
Although her statement was meant as an exaggeration, the others took it as a promise and urged her to go. To protect her pride, she had actually agreed to leave.
Well, sort of.
The girls had said, “You keep threatening to fly away, so do us all a favor and do it for real this time and leave us in peace!”
To which she had responded, “Fine! I’m leaving.”
The problem is that Erokan Dragons were biologically incapable of telling falsehoods or reneging on vows. While Leigh believed that what she had said wasn't technically a promise, she feared that returning to the village would result in the loss of her credibility and respect.
Suppressing her tears, she reminded herself that crying would be letting them win. She would soon be an adult, after all, tomorrow possibly. And real adults don’t back down when they’re protecting their principles, she thought to herself.
Determined to prove herself, she pumped her wings hard again and sped up. Maybe if she did reach another village she could indeed find herself a worthy mate, and happiness. She was, after all, one of the prettiest girls in her village, and her dragon form was gorgeous, she assured herself.
As she cleared a tall hill, she spotted the mountaintops that served as a natural barrier protecting the village. Every morning the adults in her village crossed those mountains to hunt for food. Rare was the afternoon when everyone came home.
“There’s my freedom,” she said aloud, now unsure of her plans, her words coming out in the musical tones of the Erokan Common Tongue. “All I have to do is clear those mountains and --”
A loud thundering sound echoed through the hills, causing Leigh to slow. She looked down to see rapid movement in the trees below, then was startled as an arrow buzzed past her.
“Centaurs!” she cried. “I’ve got to get a warning to the village!” she said twisting her body and using her rear wings to execute an instant 180-degree change of direction mid-air.
In her haste, the clothes that she had been carrying in her rear claws slipped from her grasp in the effort. She flapped all four of her wings as hard as she could to regain lost speed, dodging more arrows from below. While the arrows likely couldn’t seriously injure her, a lucky shot to the right spot could be supremely painful.
Left, up, right, up, up, up! She dodged and twisted as spears capable of piercing her stiff under-feathers joined the projectiles heading her way. With the pursuers gaining ground, Leigh tried to gain altitude to escape their range. Leigh looked back to see if she could get a count of them, and the world blinked out of existence.
She was sitting, back in human form, in a strangely furnished room made from strange materials. A naked young man was asleep beside her in the bed! Her heart leaped even as her stomach churned. She realized instantly that she had been chosen, but the strangeness of this place blunted any excitement of the honor.
As she tried to make sense of her surroundings, a girl in a moving painting to her left uttered, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
[Tuesday 11:45pm – Queensland, Australia]
Luca Stonesmith was lying in his bed, his body bared to the unbearably stifling heat. It had been another brutally hot January day in Queensland, Australia. Luca had just taken a shower to cool off and had flopped onto his bed while still wet and dripping.
The air conditioning unit had failed the prior day. His father had called to have the unit repaired, but because of the heatwave, numerous people had also called for service on failed AC units. The latest news was that it would be another couple of days before anyone could work on it. So he was doomed to roast for the time being.
Luca was just minutes from the 18th anniversary of the day of his birth. He would legally be an adult tomorrow sometime. Though it would normally be a day for celebration, he harbored no excitement for the day at all. It was on his birthday seven years prior that his mother had left them. She had said that she was going to travel to Brisbane to talk to the Director of the Gymnastics Association about his promising gymnastics debut and to stop in at Australian Customs to pick up the surprise birthday present that his grandparents in America had sent for him. But she had done neither.
The authorities could find no evidence of what had happened to her. The last records had shown her boarding the plane for Brisbane, but there was no evidence of her arriving, nor had she taken possession of the reserved rental car. She had effectively disappeared from the face of the planet. On that day, Luca lost not only his beloved mother but his dreams of gymnastic greatness.
As was to be expected when his mother disappeared, a full-scale investigation had ensued. Luca's mother, Lucille Smith, had been an Australian Gymnastics darling at the tender age of sixteen. She had won numerous medals at the Olympics and was a perennial World Champion. She was the young vibrant vision of Australian girls. For her time, she was the girl that all other girls wanted to be, and the girl all mothers secretly wished their daughters were. The Australian authorities put huge efforts into finding out what had happened to the former celebrity, only to come up empty. As one investigator lamented, “Had she not been so visible in her early life, we would never have known she had even existed based on the evidence we can find.”
Stolen story; please report.
Since no evidence of “foul play” had been found, the authorities concluded that Lucille had just decided to leave her life behind and start anew elsewhere. Even though Luca's father vehemently disputed the assertion, to an eleven-year-old child, the words of the police – and that narrative parroted by the media constantly – held extreme credibility. Young Luca's feelings of grief had been turned to feelings of betrayal. To compound the injury, the loss of his major advocate, the time lost in pursuing his entry into the Gymnastics Association, and the stigma of the apparent scandal of a high-profile mother abandoning her child, destroyed any chance he had of a promising future in gymnastics.
Luca twisted to look at the clock. Midnight. Yet he couldn't sleep, and his dwelling on his mother was making him depressed. He lurched upright to turn on the television in the corner on the far side of the room. Standing, he saw himself in the mirror of the dressing table that also functioned as his desk. He was a boy of moderate height, with light olive-colored skin, light brown eyes, and wet unkempt mousy blond hair. Since he mostly wore short-sleeved shirts and short pants, he had dark tans on his lower arms and legs while the rest of his body was pale. His chest and abdomen were mostly hairless, and very muscular, but not in the way of a bodybuilder.
Due to his training – his father had never let him stop training – he had superior body strength while at the same time not having the excessive bulk of a weightlifter or football player. He could easily lift and toss the cheerleaders at school and was always asked to join the cheerleading and drill teams. He would sometimes agree to help them perform but had never officially joined either.
The lights flickered for a second and his attention was drawn to the desk's slightly open main drawer. The dressing table had been his mother's. The vast number of compartments built in to hold a woman's various cosmetic needs came in very handy to keep and categorize the multitude of throwing implements that he had collected.
One of these, a six-pointed Japanese 'Ninja Star', was sticking up and preventing the drawer from closing. A red dragon design was engraved around the central hole, and the dragon's head peeked just above the top edge of the drawer's facing. Luca fancied that the dragon was watching and smiling at him.
He took the blade of the throwing star between his fingers and flicked his wrist to send it spinning at a dart board on the other side of his room, smoothly hitting the bullseye with a sharp thud.
Luca continued to the television and slapped the power button and the screen came to life. In the room somewhere was a remote control for the TV, however, he was too lazy to find it. A commercial spot was airing, so he waited to determine if the program on the selected channel was acceptable. A flash of light from outside the window caught his eye and he turned his head to look closer. A storm was on the far horizon, and he vaguely remembered hearing a weather report earlier in the day say that unusual weather patterns were affecting the area and were expected to persist for a few more days.
The commercial break ended and Luca saw that a late-night showing of The Wizard of Oz was playing. While not one of his favorite movies, it was acceptable, and he hadn’t seen it in a while. He returned to lie on his bed and considered putting on some pajamas, but the oppressive heat of the night dissuaded him. His father was working late tonight and was scheduled to be home right before Luca was to leave for school.
By the time that Dorothy met the fortune teller in the movie, Luca was fast asleep.
As the movie continued to play, a strong breeze blew through the window. The sudden temperature change caused Luca to shiver and inhale deeply. A moment later, a glowing started in Luca's chest. It was a luminescent yellow glow as if it was shining from his very core. His chest thrummed, pulsating with energy. The glow grew suddenly brighter, as the previously formless light started to take shape, causing his whole body to shine. After a few moments, his body dimmed, revealing the shape that the light had formed: a sinuous dragon. The pulsing light encompassed all of his organs: Its heart was his heart, his lungs its wings, its tail strewn down his torso. His chest flared with light, illuminating his room in a bright yellow. The dragon stretched its neck, weaving upward into his throat. As it roared, he exhaled. The glow subsided and disappeared.
He was dreaming. Luca was wearing Dorothy’s dress and holding her basket on his arm. He was talking to a traveling fortune teller and the man was telling him that his mother was sick and dying. Luca exploded from the fortune teller's abode and started running for home. No longer was he wearing the dress but was naked – a snarling, snapping Toto-sized monster with a lion’s back half, eagle’s front half, and Toto’s head was nipping at his bare heels. Suddenly he was eleven again, wearing a yellow tee shirt and green shorts, running at impossible speeds down the runway, chasing a departing airplane. In the window behind the wing, he saw her. “Mama!” He cried piteously as the airplane lifted off. Suddenly a cloud morphed into a gargantuan Toto-monster. It took the plane into its talons and all faded into nothingness.
Luca murmured in his sleep as tears flowed freely from his closed eyes into the lap of the confused girl sitting on his bed. Not knowing what else to do she cradled his head and stroked his hair.
“There, there,” she cooed softly, the words she spoke sounded strange to her ears.
In Sydney, unnoticed by the staff of the nursing home, an unnamed comatose woman stirred for the first time in seven years.