Inspiration of Fire and Blood

Only Dreams

She looked over the fairytale lands that were her paradise, warm thermals stroking her face as if returning the affections she felt for this land. Her hair unbound, it danced to a wild rhythm, caught between zephyr and flesh, tied to the woman who gave them existence. She listened to the cry of the wolves, the call of the wild beasts. The wild was in their blood, as it was in hers.

She turned her face skyward and smiled at the warmth of the blazing inferno that cast life on her land. This was her world, a richness she inherited from her beating heart and vibrant soul. The sphere of burning light marked her skin, claiming it gently and yet possessively. It knew her as she knew it. It was not the weak light of Earth, it was hers. Across the horizon she glanced, eyes caught on the allure of the closer orb that existed in space she had not yet ventured. Her moon.

Though silky it appeared, it was rough as well. Gentle like a mother’s gaze and firm like a father’s scorning call. She feared and loved the unknown it represented. She opened her mouth to call to it as the wolves did, her heart racing. Her blood, her life’s essence, pounded through her body, pulsing with a frantic rhythm that was that of a world. She was the life of this world that ensured her existence. A mutual relationship.

She leaned off of the cliff and looked down. Jagged teeth of stone were exposed, their watery creation suppressed from the moon’s close presence. She smiled as the water, so akin to her own blood, frothed with rage at the binding of gravity. To and fro it struggled, lashing out against the teeth and cliff’s side as if the action would make her moon release them any time sooner. She laughed at the water, because she knew she would do the same. She was laughing at her child, one she nurtured. She laughed gaily at herself, and no one else.

She listened to the soft ocean roar, the wolves howling. She felt the shiver of the trees, swaying with each breath she took. Her air was the wind, her life was the life of all things the thrive on the life-granting elixir. Then her world turned red. Startled, she fell forward, leaned desperately back, and lost her balance. Her mouth agape in a silent scream, she listened to the shrieking wind that echoed her inner cry.

The initial fear fled her body, and the shriek ceased. She smiled happily, this world could do her no harm. It was her child, one she loved. It knew it, she knew it. She would not suffer death from the land she birthed any more than she could be torn limb from limb from the wild things that stirred and burst forth from her blood. As she cut deep marks in her flesh, new beasts sprang forth, but not now. The teeth reaching for her would not mark her skin so easily as it would another’s. She birthed the rock, the land, the wind, the sea, the fire, the sun, and her moon.

She reached back toward the approaching rocks, deciding they neither came rapidly, nor in a time frozen in place. The just came, like all of life’s ordeals. But this approach, she saw. Of life outside of her paradise, there was only stupidity and blindness. Here, there was light and love.

A color, a flash. Someone had joined her flight to the sea. She glanced into an eye as big as her hand and smiled with compassion. She cared not about the razor fangs that were bared in a grin, nor about the lethal talons he wore. He was playing, he knew she would not die. She knew his thoughts because they were hers.

You cannot fly, he was calling, for you have no wings.

I have wings, she replied, I’m an angel now. Watch me! Watch me fly!

They raced to the bottom of the cliff, to the spears of stone, to the blooded waters below, and plunged both Dragon and Goddess to oblivion.