Dragon's Gift Chapter 1

She was shivering. The tattered rags she wore did nothing to protect her from the chill winter wind.
         A tall man walked by, clothed in an expensive four piece suit and a fur lined coat. Seeing her sitting there by the side of the road, his gray eyes softened. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a herr coin and tossed it to her.
         ‘Get yourself some food, girl,’ he called.
         She picked up the coin gratefully and ran down that street to the baker’s shop, the one from which she was sometimes given a bun to eat, when there was extra. The metal handle of the door was cold, and no light shone from the window; the shop had closed for the night already.
         Disappointed, she walked slowly back to her spot on the roadside. She would have to wait until morning before buying something to eat, but the promise of a breakfast on the morrow made the cold night seem somehow less forbidding.
         Curling up beside the road, she fell asleep.

-x-

         A pair of golden eyes snapped open. They had an appearance to them which would cause any viewer to assume the owner of these eyes was both old and wise, and rightfully so.
         ‘I have chosen.’
         ‘Apollo?’
         The golden eyes looked down, and met the pure white eyes of the Cadi.
         ‘Yes?’
         The Cadi blinked, and for a moment it was entirely invisible in the darkness.
         ‘Chosen what?’
         ‘I have chosen to whom I shall give the gift,’ Apollo stated.
         ‘Oh.’
         A flame suddenly flickered into life, and both the Cadi and the dragon could be seen.
         The Cadi was a small creature with sleek black fur, a spherical body, for lack of a better description, and three short legs, the ends of which were adorned by rather large paws, each with two toes ending in short, milky white claws. It had no face; that is to say, there were eyes, but no visible nose or mouth. The eyes were strange, with no pupil or iris, but rather a solidly colored eye which usually matches the color of the claws; in this case, white.
         After a few moments of silence, the Cadi spoke again.
‘Apollo?’
         ‘Yes?’
         ‘Who did you choose?’
         ‘A human girl.’
         ‘Human?’ the Cadi repeated, surprised.
         ‘Yes.’
         Apollo slithered gracefully from the cave. The full moon cast a pale glow over his slim figure.
         Before moving on, a few facts need to be established, or the reader will have difficulty following the story.
         Dragons do not have wings, nor are they as large as the average human imagines them to be. In fact, they do not even have the regularly thought of body shape. Dragons are closely related to snakes, and if a large snake and a dragon were both set in front of a human, and if the dragon did not make any move to show its superiority to the snake, the human would have difficulty in distinguishing between them. In fact the only noticeable differences are that dragons are capable of speech and flight. They are also most often colored similarly to fire, meaning that they are occasionally found to be blue, or even white, but the rarity of this is extreme, and any such colored dragons, especially the white, would have so extreme a power over fire that if they were to use this power without consideration, they may well destroy the whole of At’gen.
         This said, we can move on to the next point, which is simply that dragons never have, and do not at the present moment, and will not in the future, breathe fire. They do, however, have control over flames of any kind.
         Now that these potentially boring, yet essential, snippets of information have been relayed, our story can continue.
         ‘Up,’ Apollo commanded.
         An elf was sleeping outside, having been uncomfortable in a closed area such as the cave which Apollo had recently occupied along with the Cadi. At the sound of the dragon’s voice, he got up slowly.
         ‘What?’ he mumbled sleepily.
         ‘I have chosen.’
         ‘Oh, good. Shall we head for Karne Tru’f, then?’
         ‘Yes. We must make a stop along the way, though.’
         ‘What is there between here and the palace but wilderness? Surely not…’
         The elf’s voice trailed off and he waited, horrified, for Apollo to confirm the one thing he had hoped against since finding out that the dragon would place a gift in the heart of a chosen individual.
         ‘The passage to the world of the humans, yes,’ Apollo sighed. ‘I know you do not approve of them, but it is a fact that I have chosen a human to receive the gift, and that is something that no opinion can change.’
         The elf cursed angrily. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Why would you choose one of those pathetic creatures? They are not skilled in anything, they are dirty, they are… damn it, for a supposedly wise dragon, you’re a hell of a fool.’
         He turned angrily and left the dragon alone to ponder on what he had said.
         The Cadi stepped nervously from the cave and watched as the elf left.
         Sensing the Cadi’s approach, Apollo sighed.
         ‘Is he right, Xto? Am I a fool for trusting that a human will be able to handle my gift?’
         ‘Tarl is a prideful elf, Apollo,’ the Cadi replied carefully. ‘He believes, I think, that he should have been chosen, or at least that an elf would have been best suited for the gift. No, you have made a decision, and you must stay with it.’
         ‘I just hope,’ Apollo said quietly, ‘That you are right.’