| It was the dance opportunity of a lifetime and Velzleiss
was not going to lose it. She glared hotly at some of her competition -- hardly
competition at all, she reminded herself -- and gave her tail a contemptuous
flick. Her eyes glittered brilliantly in the sea-filtered light and she arched
and flexed, stretching her fins in preparation for her chance.
The first
one was a drab female, cloaked in opalescent shades of silver; her face had the
dull look of one who was truly indifferent and her dance was equally
thoughtless. Velz' restrained a smirk, forcing a pleasant, if slightly aloof,
smile to her features. After the first, more followed, each in their naturally
different colours; the reds were too dull, the blues not bright enough, and the
greens ... why they just looked as washed out as the dancers themselves. She
would shine where these others have failed.
Her turn came and she, in a
whirling of rainbow colour, started out into an acrobatic display, twisting and
twirling, twining and spinning in a frenzy of colour and light. Her dance was
the finest she'd ever done, stretching her body and mind to the limit as she
performed.
And then ...
She awoke on the shore, once bright eyes
glazed over with foggy memories of pain. At some point, her fins and tail were
displaced, her humanoid legs crumpled unnaturally beneath her. Probably broken,
she thought, prodding at the numb extremities with a slight frown. Whatever had
happened, she couldn't quite remember. It was a slaughter, that much was for
certain; shark-shifters must have found them all ... she dimly remembered
fighting with her nails and she examined them indifferently. Blood remained
under her fingernails, but nowhere else; the sea had scrubbed her clean. She
bore no wounds, save for her shattered legs. No one else rested on the shore;
she was the sole survivor.
Unable to walk or even to shift into her
swimming form, she crawled onto a rock with her hands and arms, letting her
broken legs dangle behind her. Sighing heavily, she rolled onto her back and let
her rapidly drying black hair fan outward like black wings behind her. Death
would come soon enough for her.
And, it seemed, she guessed correctly. A
dark beast, almost black in the deepening twilight, landed a short distance from
her and a soft thump indicated the landing of something else. She didn't bother
to turn her head as the young man jogged toward her, his blushing face drenched
in shadows.
Velz' felt something being thrown over her, but she didn't
fight; barely moved, in fact. The man spoke in a language she didn't understand
and when he pulled her from the rock into his arms, his terrified gasp barely
elicited a sigh from her. He could've done what he wanted ... but he did not,
choosing to take her to his beast, who sniffed her and gave some kind of odd
rumble. After that, it was all darkness.
Months later, her legs had
healed with the help of the locals, people who lived a in home of creatures
called "dragons". She was being expected to stand for a dragon, although the
concept -- and the words -- utterly escaped her. She murmured the words of
acceptance and acknowledgement, but they seemed as baffled about her language as
she was with theirs. In time, they understood her name to be Velzleiss, although
they invariably pronounced it "Fall's Lace", softening the harsh pronunciation
considerably.
It was the fact that she might one day be able to dance
again that kept her from slipping fully into depression. And if a "dragon" could
help her -- though she couldn't help but think of Leviathan, the old sea beast,
when she saw them -- then perhaps that would be the way to go ... |
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