Should Have Let Me Die

I watched as most of the group let to go help with getting breakfast set up. My thoughts still left me with a weird feeling; not much got to me, but having my friends scared of me was starting to have an effect. I turned and waved to Alex, who looked at me with a puzzled look.

I turned and ran to the edge of the patio, vaulting into the air. The sounds of yelling faded as I shot into the air, but I didn't slow down. I needed to get some air and clear my head, so I turned to the mountain range we had found Marly at.

Within an hour, I was hovering over the top of the mountain, and I could see her cave below. I let the fire go and plummets to the ground, but thread poured off me and created a tent-like structure to slow me down. I let the thread disperse and fell the remaining ten feet to the ground. 

The place hadn't changed in the couple of days since I had been here last. I walked to the shadow curtain and then pushed through to the other side but stopped.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my mother's cave?"

Ooo, so many ways to answer this question, but most of them would end me up as lunch or a snack. In front of me was a baby blue dragon with a purplish shine to her scales. She was half the size of Marly when she was in her full dragon form, but she was still a dragon.

"Would your mother happen to be Marlogra?"

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?!"

Owo! My damn ears! that came out as more of a high pitch squeal, roar, whine, the fuck you call it. Whatever the sound was, I didn't want to hear it again.

"Okay, calm down..."

Future me will look back on this moment as one of those moments that is to be laughed at, but at the moment, I felt like a big meanie. I should have known what kind of response I would receive after that hair-brained line. Unfortunately for this dragon, my mind wasn't running on all cylinders today.

The blue dragon lunged at me with an open mouth, but I was irritated and distracted, to say the less, and the dragon received a backhand. I wasn't mad, thank God, but the smack still sent her rolling. The dragon picked herself off the ground, but the effect was not what I had expected, no, but it was what I should have.

Large fist-sized tear droplets were pouring out the dragon's eyes, and she began to wail. Oh, did that girl have a pair of lungs on her! I put my hands over my ears to block the sound, but it cut through like my hands were paper. 

"HEY! Cut it out! I'm sorry, you did try to bite me!"

"SORRY?! YOU HIT ME!"

Ugh, so much for being reasonable. If this was Marly's daughter, then I needed to fix this, or I would be dodging Marly. Oh great, now she was rolling on the black glass-like ground wailing.

I scratched my head for a while until it finally dawned on me what to do. I couldn't make her snap out of it because I was a mean ant, so I would be a mean dragon instead. I let the magic pour out of me, and I felt my body start to shift and grow.

About halfway through my transformation, the howling stopped and the cavern filled with silence as I finished changing. After I looked around, I realized something, jeez, I was big. Marly was an enormous dragon and the only other dragon I had seen before this pipsqueak, but I could barely move around in this cave.

"Who...who are you?"

I looked down to find that the little dragon had backed into a corner. She looked like a cat with nowhere to go. Well, that wasn't what I was going for, but she was quiet, so mission accomplished, but what to do now? 

"Let's say I am a friend of your mother's; she is one of my vassals now and..."

"I pledge myself to you!"

"Huh? Wait. What? How do you know I am even telling the truth?"

"I could tell if your lying. Is mother okay?"

Wow, just like that, and she is right as rain; damn woman!

"Well, she is healthy, but she and I got into a bit of a spat when we first met, and, well, I almost killed her the same way I batted you."

"You almost killed her?! Is she okay? How is that even possible? Your...okay, you can turn into a dragon, but your still just a man, right?"

"She is fine, I saved her, but she is different now. And yes, I am kind of just a man."

"That's pretty ambiguous,"

"If I knew what the words meant, I would probably agree with you."

"So, what is different about my mother now?"

"Hmmm? Well, let's say she might look a bit different, and she has lost a good amount of weight."

"Is she sick? Can I go see her?"

"Sick? No, but...ah, it will be easier to show you, but do we have to go so soon?"

"What?"

"Well, you see, I came here to get away for a bit; some things have been bothering me."

"Oh?Like what? Someone as strong as you would have a hard time finding a worthy opponent. What could bother you?"

I shrunk back down to my size, walked over to the blue dragon, sat down beside her, and then leaned my back into her. I couldn't see her expression, so I wasn't sure if it bothered her or not. 

So, I told Wendy, or Wendriosa, about everything that had happened over the last few days. It was kind of nice to be able to have someone just to sit and listen to me rant. After I finished tell her my troubles, she was silent for a moment but then spoke.

"It's right for them to be scared of you, though; arent you ever scared of yourself? As a dragon, we are only taught to fear two things, other dragons, and our own power."