Secret of the Forest

         A crisp autumn wind swept past his cheek, brushing the troubles of his day away while creating an ambient crackle of leaves. Slowly the elderly man walked past the trees, his puffy red jacket seemed like it could keep the man warm in all but a blizzard. His face was like a book, each wrinkle a page forming his life story, bound in a delicate cover of thin white hair. Although the man’s walk seemed weak, to those that haven’t reached their golden years, he exuded an air of confidence.

         Slowly the edge of the forest, littered with the leaves of mighty oaks and the needles of majestic conifers, came into the sight of the man. He stopped abruptly, however, as if he sensed a change in the air, his head slowly turned, scanning for the source of the disruption. All of the birds halted their choruses that usually enchanted the forest near the encroaching evening twilight, causing an eerie silence in the air. The man turned his head swiftly, his eyes skillfully scanning the many trunks trying to discern any movement that may signify life. Letting out a sigh of relief, the man watched as the two cardinals that scared him so much a few moments ago innocently danced through the many brown, rough, tree trunks. Their quick moving beautiful red bodies mesmerized him, putting him in a state somewhere between hypnosis and unconsciousness. This moment of relaxation was short lasted, however, as the tree above the man’s head rustled violently, dropping the few crisp brown leaves that were hanging so desperately on to the entity that created them. His head instinctively jerked upwards towards the noise, just in time to catch a glimpse of an unusual brown cat sized object. It shot into a particularly large pine, making its seemingly brown body hard to find amongst the similar colored bark. Stretching his neck to an extent to where it hurt, the man attempted to spot the object amongst the brilliant green color of the pine needles and dull brown of the trunk, but after several minutes he found nothing unusual in the tree.

         At first the skilled woodsman just assumed this was some exotic bird, one that he may have not had enough experience with to recognize. When a loud screech, raspy and loud enough to cause physical pain, shot through wood, the man was convinced otherwise. He quickly trotted back to his house, his stiff legs clearly exerting themselves. Several minutes later he came back, small pistol in hand and his chest heaving heavily. Surprisingly, the man was able to spot the creature immediately in the same pine tree as before, although he was still baffled as to what it was.

         It had a four inch long egg shaped head, rough with many bark colored brown reptilian scales, the shape narrowing as you got closer to the tip of the nose,  where two protruding horn-like objects shot an inch up, ending in a sharp point, directly above its nostrils. Its eyes were large, taking up at least half the height of its head, and the pupils were striking hazel green. The man was even more shocked, however, when he saw large bat like wings at least three feet wide when fully spread colored perfectly to camouflage into the pine tree’s trunk. It held on to the tree with three clawed fingers attached to the top vertex of each triangle shaped wing. Wondering what this creature was, the man pivoted around to see the animal’s side profile. He held tightly onto his jet black pistol all the time though, just in case.

         The animal was shaped profoundly like a cat with splayed out back legs. Its shoulder was very accentuated, and its hindquarters were very heavily muscled it appeared. Yet, this animal was nothing like a cat at all. Its body was covered in scales, not fur, and it had wings spread across what appeared to be modified arms.

         The man stood staring at this creature for several minutes, looking for some common relative it might have, and pondering over its origin. His train of thought crashed though, when the creature turned its head suddenly towards him, a wide smile spread across its face all the way to its eyes set back three quarters of the way from its nose. The man grew afraid, the animals many tiny sharp teeth reflected the ever fading sunlight making them look sparklingly white.

         Then, out of nowhere the creature jumped, repelling off the tree with its extremely powerful hind legs. The man stood still, mouth open, gazing as the sunlight that just barely shone through the wing membrane, revealing the network of veins within. In a classic eureka moment, the man immediately associated the wings with that of the dragons found in fairy tales, although these looked much more capable of lifting their small load off the ground. The dragon glided through the trees, adeptly using a membrane that was spread from ankle to ankle over its long-clawed back legs to turn and twist to avoid colliding with the trees. It took strong, slow, majestic strokes with its large wings, much like an eagle would. The man did notice one feature that differentiated this dragon from those of fairy tales, this dragon lacked a tail.

         Coming back to his more logical senses, the man set off in a sprint that he seemed incapable of performing. Soon he noticed what the dragon was doing, following a red cardinal. Slowly the dragon gained distance on the desperately flapping bird, placing its wing strokes strategically to avoid hitting trees. The dragons head soon stretched out, its short neck looked to be only one and a half inches long. In one last ditch effort to evade its attacker, the cardinal dove towards the ground, stabilizing itself when it appeared to be less than a yard from scraping the decaying leaf litter below. This was a mistake though, for the dragon knew just what to do. It quickly folded its wings and dove straight at the cardinal, extending the claws on its hind feet, slamming it against the ground with them, shoving the long daggers-like claws into the cardinals back. Its feet nimbly took the impact that killed the cardinal, and so the dragon feasted away.

Word Count: 1,050