Possession

Episode 3

When I woke the next morning, the suns rays creeping over the treetops, I felt warm and content in spite of being in the middle of an open field. Rolling over onto my side, I expected to see more open area and distant trees. What I saw instead was a giant red eye staring down at me. Inhaling sharply, stifling a shriek of surprise, I took in the dragons form. In the dark last night, even the afternoon before, I had not been able to see what it looked like. Now in the early morning light I could see clearly.

He was quite large, curled around my sleeping spot, large wings folded neatly on his back. His scales were not black as I had originally thought, but a deep red, an ombré of color from tip to base. He had horns on his head and several spiked spines along the ridge of his back, going nearly all the way down to his tail, which tapered off into a sharp barb. Back up to his face, a long snout with narrowed eyes made up his head. From beneath his scaled lips I saw several long, sharp teeth, and couldn’t help the image of how easy it must be for him to rend flesh. A terrifying specimen to be sure.

As I looked into his eye, he stared into mine. “Come.” He said suddenly, making me nearly leap from my skin. “My den is far from here.”

He pushed himself up onto his feet, eight inch long talons protruding from his toes catching my attention, and stretched. He opened his wings and flexed them before pushing off the ground and hovering a few feet above me. Did he expect me to walk below his massive frame?

As if sensing the question I’d not asked, he grabbed me with a talented claw; this time I could not stop myself from crying out in alarm. A growl rumbled in his throat, a warning I was sure. He took us high into the air and I felt a wave of nausea wash over me so intense I had to cover my mouth. I was positively green.

He was as steady as he could be, his flexing wings making us bob slightly as we soared. I hadn’t been aware of my fear of heights until this moment, and feeling clouds pass by was only making it worse. A sudden turn in the air made me cry out again, and the grip he had on me tightened, his talons digging into my sides, not painfully so, but another warning for silence. If I had not been so afraid he would drop me I might have been annoyed at his insistence of silence. I couldn’t help that I was frightened, I had never been flying before; it seemed like we had been flying for hours before he started to descend, and seeing the ground rushing up to meet me was a terrifying, albeit welcoming sight.

When we were a few feet above ground, he released me and I fell into the grass with a thump. Pushing myself to my feet, I immediately collapsed again, the world tilting below my feet. My stomach clenched and I heaved, but since I had not eaten in some time nothing happened, and I choked, gasping for breath. My eyes watered, my whole body tense as I heaved again. I felt cold all over, shaking as I tried to recover from the dizziness. Looking up at him, I could see the disgust in his eyes, but he said nothing, nudging me with his snout until I was under the cover of the trees.

“I will hunt. Stay.” He commanded before taking off again.

Still shaking, I huddled against the trunk of a nearby tree, closing my eyes and resting my head. I heard nothing but the wind through the leaves for quite a while, nearly dozing off several times. After a while I felt a knot of dread form in the pit of my stomach. Did he leave me behind? In the middle of the woods?

Fear began to work its way through me and I stood, poking my head out of the trees and into the clearing. I searched the sky, no sign of him. The clearing, no sign. Even the woods were quiet.

“Don’t panic,” I murmured to myself. “He didn’t forget me. He wouldn’t…”

But he would. He despised me. Well, maybe not just me specifically, but definitely humans in general. Did he regret taking me?

“Well, well~” a voice brought me out of my panicked spiral, and I whirled around to face a small troupe. “What do we have here~?”