On another day, like any other day in any season of any year, I make my way out of the cave and douse my lantern, returning it to its designated spot after making a note about the oil level and resigning to needing to buy more. Back in the cabin, I pull out my coin pouch and grimace as I realize it is quite a bit lighter than I’d remembered. I mentally knock oil off The List—after all, I can see in the dark, so going down there shouldn’t be a problem without the lamplight for a little while.

  I hesitate, thinking over The List, but as I think about going into the cave in the dark, I mentally put the lamp oil back on the list, instead removing a new blanket from it. Winter is a month or more out, I can wait on it as long as I get the nails to fix the door. Thinking around in circles again, I consider if I can afford nails as well, and mark it down as being a lower priority than lamp oil as well.

  Frowning at The List, I feel the hazy fog of sleepiness settling over me with a small bit of dread. I never liked to sleep so shortly after visiting my parents, but I would be no good to anyone if I fell asleep by the river later and missed a catch again.

  Sighing, I opt to slide into the chair, slipping my tail through the hole in the back and leaning my head down into the crook of my elbows as my coppery hair slides down to cover my face in relative darkness, and before I know it, I’ve dozed off…

  I shudder, my hands clamped over my mouth, as I watch. I’ve seen this hundreds of times, maybe even thousands. Past a point, it’s become hard to track. But I watch all the same, unable to tear my eyes away. I know it’s not real, but it is. I know it’s the past, but it feels like it’s in the present.

  There’s a sickening tearing noise that’s immediately followed by a heart-wrenching crack, like a sail being torn before a mast snaps. In the dimness of the early dawn, the light in the cave is barely enough to see by. But it’s enough, isn’t it? It always is. I watch as a mighty dragon’s wings are rent asunder by beasts, by monsters… by “heroes”. The tearing of the leather stretched across great wings, an injury that would surely never heal properly even under magical care, hurts me nearly as much as it does the dragon who I’m watching die again.

  They are backed into a corner of the cave, as far away from me as possible. I’m hidden in an illusory alcove near the front of the cavern. So tauntingly close to freedom. So damnably close to seeking help. But I cannot move, not now, not ever. I watch as the dragon draws in a breath, motes of Ignia sparking in his mouth, his core visibly heating and lighting as energy builds within their body. A Breath like unto the fires of the sun herself. In but a moment, the Breath would be unleashed, disintegrating the interlopers and changing fate. My own Breath is drawn in, caught up in the moment, and I feel small bits of Ignia forming in my breast.

  “Maybe this time it’ll be different? Surely father is strong enough to ward off three adventurers and that thing.” I feel my objectivity slipping and my mind casting back to that day, with preciously little I can do to stop it. I feel the rising hope in my mind, alight like the hearth within the dragon’s chest. Nothing can withstand the Breath of an ancient dragon like Pa. Wars were ended in one torrent of fire, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that this battle will be won all the same.

  It feels as though time has stopped. I see the fallen form of the draconic woman in the middle distance between me and the dragon. Surely, she’s still breathing. Once ‘Ma rises and rejoins the fight, the villains will be lain low. … The villains. I gaze at them in this moment where time has frozen like a once-raging river in the dead of winter. Four of them. One tall and built like a brick storehouse carrying a sword more akin to a support beam than a blade. One reedy individual with a staff, gesturing and speaking an incantation of dark and doom. One bearing braces of knives like a lethal porcupine. And the last one. The monster. Their body is wrong. Not like any of the kyn I know or knew. Something distorted. The others might as well not have even been there while that creature was on the field.

  Time, it seemed, was beginning to tick forward again, and my eyes are drawn to where they always are. The spark of Ignia in the throat of the dragon. Suddenly, the air pressure in the cave changes, as though the world itself were drawing a shuddering breath anticipating the forces that were being unleashed. I see the first whorls of fire, hot as the sun herself, eject from the dragon’s maw. But…they stop in place. Held by a spell. A terrible, terrible spell. The dragon’s eyes widen in shock when his breath cannot leave his mouth, but there’s little he can do. Nothing is made to contain those forces. The Breath, drawn in anger, consumes. Everyone in our family knows that.

  The dragon lurches backwards, trying to break the spell, but as he roars, no sound comes out. The cave is suddenly silent despite the thrashing dragon. All I hear is a sick cackle. That laugh rising above all else from that creature. It strides forward after the dragon falls to the ground in a silent crash, scales melting from the trapped fire within his body, leaving rivulets of molten copper growing like a spreading pool of blood on the cavern floor. The creature reaches a hand forward and grabs the spell from the air, drawing it into its sickly looking hands while it’s standing in front of the dragon’s maw.

  The flames burst forward, silently seeking to devour the distorted invader, and I feel my hopes rise again. But they are dashed upon the rocks instantly. The creature holds out broken, sickly arms that are filled with an amethyst miasma that leaks from cracks in its skin. The fire strikes the extended hands and is immediately sucked into its body, as though being rent from the dragon’s body by force, like a barrel uncorked with no intention of filling a glass. Its arms glow brighter and brighter. The form distorts further. Growing, shuddering, its body takes on draconic traits like mine and my family's. A mockery of a noble dragon, with gemlike purple scales adorning its mottled body.

  Seeing this, the dragon loses its will to fight. Its final attack rendered worse than moot—it only served to empower his foe. I watch in horror. What can defeat a dragon? What can lay low a beast of legend in its home? Heroes. People who hunt our kind. Is this heroism?

  I find myself dropping to my knees, keeping my hands clamped over my mouth to stay quiet, knowing instinctively that there’s nothing I can do but die in this place. Maybe that would have been preferable to what happened next. The long minutes of wind rushing as everything that made them what they are is wrenched from them and pulled into the horrid body of the monster.

  At the end of an eternity, I look up to see the aftermath — a vast sea of off-white powder, all that remains — and can’t help but retch, making a noise for the first time in minutes? Hours? The thing turns at the noise and stares at my hiding place. Its attendants seemingly unaware, but that thing knows where I am. And at that moment I see my death. But…it merely smiles with a maw that had grown increasingly more like my father’s own with every second. Its lips pull back in the rictus grin of a happy corpse. Tight, with countless fangs. However, instead of coming for me like it should have — like I wish it had — it turns and stands, making a gesture to those who follow it, and walking out of the cave. But all I could see was its eyes.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Laced with purple drifting smoke, bloodshot with magical essence, intelligent, but still feral. Scheming, planning, and, most of all, hungry. It’s all I can see. Those eyes and my eventual death within them being the last thing I see.

  “Ayre! I want to go fishing!” I hear a distant high-pitched voice and the thing in my dream turns to rush me as I wake. Again, I wake standing, with my spear at the ready, only to realize it’s Lilly who’s come to visit. We exchange some pleasantries, but she seems oddly distracted. I catch her glancing over her shoulder towards the river every now and again. She must be excited about this thing she saw in the river. Maybe it’s a rare fish or something. That would be nice.

  I stop lightly chastising her as she expresses she needs to share something serious, her face going uncharacteristically downtrodden as she does. I change my tack, realizing she needs support and extend my arms for a hug, feeling my wings pantomime the gesture and scrape the walls as the tiny fairy bowls into my collarbone and I wrap her up in my hands. After a little while of that, I gently pick her up and lift her to the top of my head. She always likes riding atop me since I’m tall, and she says it’s an impressive perspective, but I’ve never really understood it, since she can much more freely fly to any reasonable height, but the fey are strange, so I’ve always just accepted it at face value. “Alright, Lilly, let’s go fishing and you can tell me about it.”

  I grab my spear and rod and stride out while Lilly bounces around my hair and horns. She chatters endlessly about whatever comes to her mind, and there sure are plenty of things coming to her mind, as usual. It’s nice, though, it gives me something to focus on for a while while I wait for her to drop the topic she actually wants to talk about. I add little bits here and there, ask questions, answer questions, and nod or shake my head when appropriate. The latter actions seem to amuse Lilly, particularly since she's bestride my head.

  We arrive at the river, where my little dock juts out into the river with a hand made stool that is slightly less wobbly than those at the cabin. I pause briefly at my barrel of bait. Popping the lid off, I toss in some food scraps and plant greens, and reach in to mix the leavings deeper into the rich black dirt. At the same time, I sift my fingers through and pull out a few worms to use for fishing bait, keeping 3 large ones and tossing back the couple of smaller worms to continue their appointed duties.

  “Aw, do we have to use worms, Ayre?” Lilly groans aloud as she sees me digging in the barrel before I replace the lid.

  “If you want to have any remote chance of catching anything, then yes, we do. I suppose a sparkly little fairy could be decent enough bait…” I trail off as I reach up towards the complaining fairy and make an exaggerated attempt at capturing her. Which she easily avoids and hops off my head to look at me indignantly as her wings flutter and, and she straightens her arms and legs in mock offense.

  “Well…fine then! We’ll use the little wigglers this time. I could just use my magic, you know that, right?”

  “Trust me, Lilly, I am quite aware — I've been getting reminders near weekly for over fifteen years — and it is still my opinion that doing so is cheating, and that that isn’t fair to the fish. You’re gonna have to believe me at some point, fishing is an art, and you can’t rush art. Half of the fun is the relaxation.” I respond simply with a hand gesture after I jab the haft of my spear into the ground. “So, all of that aside, what weighs heavy on your heart?” I ask her in the ritual way she usually prefers as I sit down on my stool and affix a worm to my hook and cast. It splashes once before flashing blue with some magic expended to hold it in place instead of being carried off by the quick moving river. One of the many nameday gifts Lilly has given me over the years to make me more comfortable. Probably among my favorites.

  With my free hand, I gesture to a padded spot on my knee for her to come sit.

  She flits over and plops on my knee weightlessly, falling cross-legged in one smooth motion and a full three hundred and sixty degree spin—ever the performer. “You remember my rival?”

  “The little weasel? Yeah, last I heard about him, you’d said he nearly beat yo-” My knee is promptly punched with all the unrelenting force of a disgruntled mouse.

  “That part doesn’t matter! He cheated anyways, there was sun in my eyes!” Lilly quickly fires off a few excuses and I merely raise my brow ridges quizzically, “Agh, fine… Look, I accidentally hurt him today and I feel terrible about it. I tried to do an interesting parry with my shield when he tried to bite me, and I broke one of his teeth…” She trails off and casts her eyes downwards, looking like the single most kicked puppy in the entire world for a moment.

  “A broken tooth can be pretty serious for a wild animal. Makes it difficult to eat and defend itself. Did you wind up putting it out of its misery?” There’s a tug on the line that distracts me as I speak, causing me to miss both setting the hook and most of Lilly’s response.

  “‘Out of its misery’?! What’s wrong with you, Ayre? I healed him! I hadn’t realized how old he had gotten, and when I healed his tooth I saw how badly rotten all of his teeth were. It's hard to remember that stuff…changes like that for other stuff than us. I couldn’t just leave him like that, for all of those reasons you oh-so-kindly pointed out. So…”

  “… So?” I ask into the void she leaves for too long.

  She pauses for a moment before spurting out everything in one breath, “I bound the stoat to my essence and named him Sir Henry Slinks, and he got a lot younger but was still asleep when I had to leave, and I know I’m gonna get in big trouble when I go home and Caoimhín and father are going to scold me and I know he was just a weasel, but he meant a lot to me and—” I hold up a hand at that point to try to forestall what was clearly about to turn into a much longer diatribe.

  “It doesn’t sound like he was ‘just a weasel’, then. You were honest in the second half of that one, though. He meant a lot to you, and you helped him. I’d be lying if I said I fully understood the full breadth of what you did with him, but it sounds like you helped someone dear to you, and if Caoimhín has a problem with it, he can leave his precious forest and take it up with me.” I say sternly.

  “I guess you’re right. He was suffering, and I couldn’t stand by and let that happ- Hey! What’s that?” Lilly abruptly jumps to her feet and into the air for a better vantage point and I follow swiftly, eyes scanning the area for threats before I finally settle on the direction Lilly is pointing and see…a person floating around the bend, face down, about five feet upstream from a piece of driftwood. Taking a moment to process the sight, I find myself in motion before I’ve fully decided to be. My rod clattering to the wooden dock, I’m airborne, diving headfirst into the water in a shallow dive. Kicking my legs and undulating my wings, I move against the current with ease to reach the person quickly and surface beneath them. No point in wasting time checking their status here, so I immediately drag them towards the shore by their garments. Garments which are in a pretty dire state already. They’re basically five scraps of fabric away from being in the nude.

  Quickly hauling the person, realizing he’s a human man now that I can actually see him, onto the shore, I roll him on his side and lean down to listen to his chest, and hear some slight wet sounds of very slight breathing and a very irregular heartbeat. He’s swallowed water and I can’t tell if it’s in his lungs, but it sounds pretty deep. My mind races about what to do before recalling a book I’d read last year. I quickly roll him onto his back, and tilt his head to the side and overlap my hands on his chest, just above the abdomen and press a few times before leaning over and closing my mouth over his, breathing a deep breath into his lungs. I watch his chest rise with it, and then return to making additional chest compressions and alternating with breaths a few more times.

  After a few stressful minutes, he suddenly sputters up some fluid, so I quickly roll him onto his side and let him clear his lungs. And as I step back to assess the situation, I take him in more completely—tattered traveler’s garb, belt knife, what remains of a decent looking bow and…his…arm…

  My eyes lock open as I stare at the arm, my brain diving back in time to seeing a purple, mist leaking, cracked, arm drawing my father's last Breath from his lungs. Distantly, I hear Lilly say something, but I can’t understand it. My blood pumps harder and harder in my head, the sound of rushing air and my beating heart fills my ears, and I struggle to breathe as my vision tunnels on the arm. That arm. That thing. The monster. Slowly, I reach up to his head, and pull an eyelid open, and see bloodshot eyes looking at me across the darkness of the cavern. Before I can consciously think, I find myself standing over the fallen creature with my spear in both arms, poised to plunge it into its torso and end the nightmare that’s plagued me for so long.