camp nano 2018 drabbles 5

She is the great golden dragon. She has always been the dragon. There was no time from before as far as she is concerned; always the great raging spirit, the cruel beast of fire and death and destruction, of revelry. Her blood-red eyes have watched thousands die, under her flame and her hands and the nightmares of metal she took and remade for her own purposes from the people who--

No. She stopped there, always. There was no before.

For an eternity she knew only blackness. No time, no space, no meaning and no limit. The only breaks in the void were bubbles of color and light here and there, dreaming or open minds, or those who searched for her. She came to them when called, for she had nothing better to do. They always regretted it, but one way or another the bubbles winked away or dissolved like smoke shimmering in the sun.

And then, one day, there is a child. A girl-child, pale of skin and blue of eye and with hair that, black though it is, shines radiant compared to the void.

Perhaps there is more to the radiance than that. If so, it does not occur to her, the great dragon. She sees nothing but entertainment, another distraction from her eternity of waiting.

"Evening, little one," she whispers, circling. "Evening neverending." The girl squints, flailing unseeing in the darkness, and wavers a demand to know who she's talking to.

"Why, me, of course," she purrs, and takes fierce joy in the fear in the girl's face when her eyes are opened, and suddenly the great and shining length of her is visible in all its glory. "Don't you know me, child?"

"No." The girl is trying to stay calm. Her voice shakes, and her fists are balled up, but she looks determined nonetheless. "I don't know you. That's why I'm here; to find out." She swallows hard. "So. I ask you in Merlin's name: who are you?"

The dragon's shriek of laughter reverberates through the void, making the girl-child flinch and press her hands over her ears. When the last echoes finally die away, her baleful red eyes consider the girl, sizing her up. She feels a tug at the words, but she is not nearly so weak as to be bound by them. /"Merlin,"/ she mocks. "Merlin! In the name of Merlin you come to me, the old fool. Perhaps you should scatter some of his moldy old bone dust over me to put a little weight behind your words. Merlin is /dead,/ pale little thing. Do you understand? He holds no power here anymore, and certainly not over me."

The girl-child stares up at her, ashen, and doesn't back down. The dragon meets her gaze, focusing her thousand years of cruelty and rage into it, and the girl trembles, but stands firm.

"If you won't do it in Merlin's name," the girl-child says at last, her knuckles white, "do it in mine. What's your name?"

The dragon stares at her, incredulous, and the girl swallows hard. "I just want to know."

So she has been called. Called, but not by name. Called by a slip of a thing she could crush in her jaws without a thought, who had appeared sharp-edged in the void, and awake.

The child will still regret it. But perhaps she will be interesting first.

The dragon settles on her belly like a snake, folding her legs one over the other in front of her chest, and smiles a smile with no goodwill at all in it. "Very well then. Let us play a game."