Dragon Eggs

Prompt: “You’ve been sneezing all day. When you sneeze for the 12th time, you sneeze fire.” Prompt provided by Writingpromptsdaily

My response:

“Oh no,” my date said.

I stared at the sidewalk, frozen in shock. “I…you saw that, right?” But when I finally turned to see his face, it was not one of confusion or shock. His eyes held a knowing worry, as if I’d been condemned to die. “What…?”

“I thought you said this was just a cold!” His voice turned angry.

“I thought it was?!” I backed away from him and the scorch mark on the sidewalk.

He glanced around–we were alone on the street–and moved toward me, grabbing my arm.

“Hey! Let g–” I sneezed once more and something floaty that could only be described as a purple cosmos came out, lingering in the air as it dissipated slowly. He let go with a flinch. My gaze was stuck to the starry microcosm before me. “What’s…happening to me?”

“You’re hatching,” His voice was monotone if not grave, “in the most inconvenient place.”

I tore my eyes to him to see unwanted work settling on his face.

“Follow me.” He began toward the nature trails we’d been walking toward.

I nearly protested, but a third sneeze of yarn convinced me to shut up and follow the guy that wasn’t entirely confused by the situation. He briskly led me to the public sidewalk and a sneeze of bubbles persuaded me to follow the guy I met at the bowling alley last week off trail into the trees. Misunderstanding children played with the bubbles I left in my wake. A few trees, modern ruins, and sneezes of lightning, leaves, and the most unpleasant–locusts–later, we were standing at an unusual gathering of rocks. We were both out of breath, me more so than him given the sneezings, and he just looked down at the rocks.

“Okay. Now that we’re out in the middle of nowhere and you haven’t–” A sneeze of snow. “–killed me,” I caught my breath and stood straighter, “is this the part where I die?”

“No.” His voice was angry, determined, as he stared at those stones. “Not this time.”

“This time?” I questioned before a sneeze of confetti took every last drop of my energy and I fell to my hands and knees, the ground fading in and out before me.

Greg, my date, tightened his jaw at my predicament. I was nearly unconscious, and he was running out of time. Swiftly, he swooped to his knees, rearranging the rocks.

“Quick rundown. When you were born, a dragon blessed you, and when a dragon blesses you, you basically become their child. Your human form is like an egg and these sneezes are like your feet punching cracks through that shell. You’re ready to assume your true dragon form.”

The strange, yet intriguing girl from the bowling alley clutched the grass beside Greg, likely to remain conscious, but he was unsure if she heard everything he said.

“Am I dying?” she whispered, fear shaking in her lips.

He leaned back from the rocks, now placed in a new symbol, a rounded almost circle with arches above it and two stones marking the center. His heart was pounding at everything, but it skipped a beat at her question. “Possibly,” he answered.

Dragon births used to be easy and safe, but something changed in the chemistry of humans some time ago and now, most don’t survive without a tamer to help them through. Greg wrapped his fingers tight around one of the stones. The one that he held when he failed to save his brother. The first one he lost. See, his mother was one of the last tamers, since belief in dragons and hope had been dying with the population, and she barely passed on the spell to him before rabid dragons claimed her. The dragons were getting restless in their realm, so few of their babies surviving. Which only made the remaining tamers jobs more stressful. Especially when you were so young and untrained that you lost every dragon you stumbled upon. Eleven. Eleven dead children.

His hand shook from how hard he was squeezing the rock, but that didn’t stop the tears from falling. He looked at the girl who was still fighting to stay conscious. “How many sneezes did you have today before the magic one?”

“Wha’s happ’n’ng t’me…?” Her speech was slurring.

“How many sneezes!” he demanded.

There was silence while she let out a few breaths. “…eleven.”

Greg stared at her in fear until he let out a sharp breath and shook his head. “Okay.” He began to take eleven of the stones out of the pattern for each dragon he’d failed to save, counting carefully to make sure he only took out ever eleventh stone for the amount of sneezes it took for her to crack through her outer shell. After every death, he’d checked his notes fervently for where he went wrong, why the life always faded from every beautiful eye. He’d compared his notes to his mother’s and still never found an error. He’d so much to learn about magic, so few teachers available, and too many children calling for him to hold them as they died.

“This time.” He stood up, wiping his tears on his sleeve. “This time, it’ll work.”

The girl collapsed on the ground, letting out a weak sneeze of spattering liquid silver, followed by shallow breaths. “I want…home.”

He held the final stone taken out over the symbol before them both and spoke the words he’d practiced too often. Ancient dragon and tamer charms. The stones closest to her lit up first and the light dominoed to the rest until they were all emanating a blue glow. He closed his eyes for focus as he spoke the spell, fighting the memories, the broken promises, the tears he didn’t even get to dry since the bodies always vanished into an unreachable realm before his spell was even finished.

A voice joined him. It was faint and weak, but the girl was speaking his repeated spell alongside him now, even thought she didn’t know the words. It gave his heart a painful warmth that he forced to turn into heightened passion, determination, strength. The spell coursed through his veins into the stone, trickling onto the rocks below that exploded blue light like a shimmering eggshell canvas around them both. Then Greg’s voice was alone and he squeezed his eyes tighter, letting the spell repeat three more times, running on wounded hope, and then he opened his eyes.

The rocks had faded back to a boring, dead grey and the canvas no longer held any presence among the trees. Beside Greg, the grass was empty and the forest was quieter than an infant’s sneeze. His knuckles turned white against the rock and he threw it hard against a nearby tree.

How dare it give him hope. How dare any of these rocks give him hope! He kicked at them but didn’t hit enough to vent the anger. His knees brought him to the ground and he let out a tortured roar as he swept his arms across the ruined symbol and threw his body over the spot the funny and kind girl last lay. The sun beat down on him and he cursed it. “Why should we even try to save them? Why!”

A tiny sneeze added warmth against the tired tamer’s cheek. I was now a dragon of light, staring out at a forest where golden rays bounced, glittered, and danced through the air. I understood little, but I remembered the boy and I knew I was alone without him. He turned his soaking wet face to see me and I stretched out my shining wings with a yawn. His eyes lit up brighter than any of the lights surrounding him and new tears fell as he awkwardly reached and retracted and reached his hand out again as if to want to touch me.

The rocks whispered that he saved my life and the lights gestured for me to trust him, so I lept onto his arm, climbed to his shoulder and smiled curiously into his eyes. He beamed.

“Let’s go find your mother.”