She rose with the setting sun.

  Like fire on the horizon, the last fingers of daylight danced between the bruised clouds, painting bright, mocking white on the snow of the higher peaks. Where the cloud shadows fell, they were indistinct, soft and blurred like her memories. But, where the peaks themselves cast their shade, they were as dark and absolute as a blade’s edge.

  A snow drift had collapsed over her, casing her in a tomb of cold. It was the same place she had flung herself down days ago in a desperate, futile fury. She’d aimed for oblivion, to knock herself out and pass back into the void of her centuries long slumber. It had been no use, she could not return, and now she woke regularly, painfully, wearily.

  She lifted her head first, bursting through the snow to scan the sky. The web of energy immediately responded to her presence, swelling into joyful refrains and pensive counterpoints. The slightest brush from her own thoughts sent the harmonics spiraling, resonating with her own dark feelings and unaware of their unwanted celebration. She closed her mind, overwhelmed by the clamor.

  Her feelings and memories flooded her as her consciousness emerged from its torpor. Always the first to clarify was the most painful. A silver haired man, a babe in his arms, and so much blood the memory was red.

  She wretched one forefoot from her chrysalis of ice, roaring with sorrow. She arched her back to shake the snow from her torso, and opened the spine at her wrist that unfurled her great black wings, stretching them skyward. With one great leap, she was airborne.

  For a moment, the sharp bite of the wind centered her. But memories continued, like weighted chains, wrapping around her one by one.

  She locked claws with a black and silver dragon, a crown of six horns around his head. Together they spiraled into free fall while her cruel hind talons crushed and tore at his meat. Kicking him free, he fell and she alone rose. She remembered triumph.

  A thousand serpents rose from the sea, each as thick as her own torso and hundreds of times longer. The ocean was thick with their bodies, and as a tidal wave of her fury, they rose to crash upon the army at the shore. When she lifted her hands, the very energy of the world bent to her will summoning fire storms and lighting and surging earth. The water washed sanguine, the beach stained with rust. She remembered atrocity.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  A silver haired man, with stern expressions and who rarely laughed, kissed her passionately. His hands pulled her close, his legs entwined with hers. Together they flew above the clouds, she was gold and purple, like crushed blackberries, languorous and composed in flight. He was silver and white, like quicksilver, vivacious and cheeky as if he were freed from his dark human moods. She remembered love.

  She stood before a council of nine, with many more empty seats where the diminishing had already left them fewer. On her head she wore a heavy crown - but it was nothing more than a trinket. As a dragon, her four golden horns made a circle on her head that declared her birthright. She remembered responsibility.

  Around her, she felt the march of time.

  The diminishing advanced. Unrelenting, like rust, like dilapidation, like wilt.

  And she felt that she alone had ceased. Her friends, her mentors, her lover, her family, her people, her throne, she felt their aging, watched their bodies and minds failing before her very eyes. All disintegrated, given enough time, and she remained. Around her the currents of the world slowed, and she was acutely aware of the tragedy that was inevitable the moment it all began.

  The diminishing advanced. Obdurate, like mold, like rot, like atrophy.

  At the end of the world, where the galaxies spiraled and stars burst into life and died again into black, she met a faceless figure. Around its neck hung a silver eye that spun to look at her in its metal socket. And there she was freed and chained at once and forever. A tiny silver thread cut free to weave its own path through the tapestry, yet burdened with the weight of the relentless. The dragon in the throne of stone wept, but his thousand tails worked without pause.

  A silver haired man, a babe in his arms, and so much blood the memory was red.

  She threw herself into the dark night, screaming her fury, her terror, her agony. The stars were quiet, and the silent symphony chased her in exultant incognizance of her pain.

  In her wake, flew a silver winged horse, beating his wings furiously to keep pace with her.

  At the northern edge of the sacred valley, a great dark wolf sat with another winged horse. The wolf was black, with silver tips on his ruff and hackles, and bright yellow eyes. The horse was blue roan, shading to black on her extremities and face, with dark solemn eyes. She ruffled her great mottled wings, spotted like a snow owl, and watched the dragon god pass between the stars. The wolf seemed to sigh, and rose to his feet to continue his walk down the slopes where twin silver wolves waited.