Seolthi

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Seolthi grew up without her parents and this made her a timid hatchling, often too shy to try and play with the other children. The other hatchlings feared her quiet and unnerving appearance. She found conversation difficult, never knowing the right words to make them like her. They called her names - weird, ugly, strange, and these stuck to her as if branded into her skin. Shunned by the children, ignored by the adults, she would play by herself and get lost in her own thoughts. Seolthi found living things fascinating, she was intrigued and wanted to know how they worked. When the other dragons discovered her cutting up birds and toads they were horrified, though Seolthi pleaded with tears in her eyes that they had been dead when she found them.

Disturbed, the adults gave her an even wider berth. Their village was a superstitious one; whispers started, then rumors, then jeering comments, that she was a witch. Everyone was afraid of her, and Seolthi couldn't understand what she had done wrong. She desperately wanted to be like the normal dragons and hung on to the fringes of their society. She stayed in the shadows, collecting dusty bones.

Bad luck struck at the worst possible time, one summer when the air was clear and it should have been a time of plenty and joy, illness plagued the community. Strangely, it felled the healthy adults before the hatchlings or elders. The remaining dragons gathered and tried to make sense of their devastating loss. Some claimed poisoning. Some a curse. Desperate for something to blame, they became fanatical and paranoid and, heavy as the falling oak, the fault was laid upon the strange hatchling who could never fit in.

Fleeing flames and stones she escaped into the woods, terrified for her life and forever exiled.

Seolthi wandered alone for weeks, she had learnt to be self sufficient in her exclusion from the others, but she was so terribly lonely. Even seeing the other dragons living and playing had been something; just to hear their voices raised in laughter had given her some second-hand happiness. Daylight never reached the dark forest she roamed, the endless night stretching on until fate unexpectedly struck her in the form of another pariah.

They met suddenly in the night, literally running into one another. After a short panicky scuffle they jumped apart and Seolthi stared in wonder at this enchanting stranger. He was dark like her, with an emerald gleam that was so unlike her sour mouldy green, and fiercely curious. He demanded her name, and when she told him, he said his name was Miasma and he'd been banished from his town after they murdered his mother. Seolthi confessed her past and they bonded immediately. He was younger and smaller than her, but Miasma said he would protect her no matter what.

Finally Seolthi has somebody who accepted her, who loved her. She flourished under his shining light. His determination and intelligence matched with her patience and strength to make them unstoppable. Rather than living off the forest Miasma had them raid villages and travelling carts for food. The two became known as a menace but Seolthi didn't care, as long as she had her brother she was happy.

Seolthi continued to study her passion. She read and re-read medical and anatomical books Miasma took for her. As he experimented with chemistry and microbiology, she took apart the dragon corpses she'd sometimes find in the woods or by the road. Some of them has slashes through their throat, but she tried to ignore that. Through cutting up and putting bodies back together with an amazing attention to detail Seolthi became a excellent medic and would practice her craft on a living being by patching up Miasma whenever he came back wounded from his prowling. He had started to make forays into the cities, but Seolthi was too scared of other dragons judgement to join him. While he came and went through the cities like a hurricane, gaining reputation and power, she stayed behind, content to wait for him.

Time passed and Miasma grew more distant. Once her company had been enough for him, but now he wanted to prove himself to the world and accumulate even more influence. Seolthi was too often left alone and longing. Once, in a rare display of bravery, she had suggested she might come with him. Miasma had looked shocked and reminded her of the cruelty of the dragons that had exiled her, that she looked so strange that others would fear her, and if not that then her shyness would get her taken advantage of. She stayed behind.

Days and nights went by and Seolthi became more despondent. Miasma was bad tempered a lot of the time, and was much more secretive than before. Seolthi tried to ignore what went on behind his locked doors. The yearning for the company of others was like a hole in her, aching and bleeding her sorrows out. Until fate, ever the fickle mistress, bestowed upon her a gift on a grey morning. Seolthi has been rambling through the forest searching for dragons when she found one who was still warm, though he certainly didn't look alive.

She dragged him back to their cave, and not a sound came from him other than the quiet moan as she flung him onto her operating table/bed. As she sealed his cuts and stitched him back together she uncovered a rather handsome male, he had obviously been attacked by another dragon. She tied him to the table so he wouldn't struggle and open his wounds. He awoke hours later, and noticing that he was chained to a table covered in blood, in a dark room with a dark figure looming just out of his sight he began screaming for his life. Seolthi tried to reassure him but the stranger was panting rapidly with primal fear and wouldn't listen. She was terrified Miasma would come home and discover the raving dragon, but her curiosity and desire kept the keys to his chains firmly under her claws. After some time he ran out of breath and was still. And then he spoke to her.

He'd thought she was going to kill him, that she was the shadow that had attacked him while he was travelling the road (Strange, she had found him in the woods, a predator has moved him...perhaps?) but was relieved when she explained that actually she'd healed him. The stranger still seemed suspicious, but he wasn't angry at her, and he didn't run away when she did eventually untie him. He lost his fear then and examined her with thoughtful eyes, asking why she lived alone in such a remote place, and was that a whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling? She was charmed by him, the second dragon to give her a chance, and kept it to herself that she didn't live alone. She knew Miasma wouldn't approve of this, and wasn't sure what he'd do if he found out. They talked a while, but it was evident the stranger wanted to leave. She watched him go and felt her heart tighten in her chest, the air sucked from her lungs and felt a pain no textbook could describe.

Desperation, and some new feeling she didn't have a name for, gave her courage. It took a few weeks, but she built up enough bravery to sneak into the city they had been living by while Miasma slept. She stayed on the outskirts looking in, but couldn't find the stranger from the woods. Miasma didn't notice her skulking out, he had become obsessed with a new rival and had little time for her. He'd become harsher recently, lashing out at her when she questioned him; reminding her of her faults.

He changed suddenly one day, when he returned home bearing a tattered dragoness with broken wings and a serious head injury. Heal her, please, he pleaded. Seolthi took her and fixed her, but Miasma told her to leave before she awoke. Seolthi wondered what he told her but didn't dare ask. He flew back to the city with her in his grasp. Seolthi sat in the darkness and tried to ignore her thoughts that wondered why Miasma had come in with blood underneath his claws.

Deeply depressed and troubled, she stumbled back to the city. She'd visited quite often now but never before when she might run into Miasma. She wandered into a bar and bought a drink. Fate winked, and there he was - the stranger from the woods, sitting across from her and staring into his own drink as if the liquid concealed the answers to the universe. Seolthi was terrified, she couldn't speak, but before she could flee the one she'd been searching for he noticed her; and he smiled and came up to her.

He spoke to her, actually talked to her in front of other normal dragons, and Seolthi felt her heart break. He was so earnest and chuckled about how scared he'd been when he first met her and how grateful he was now. They got to talking, he let Seolthi be shy, content to ramble about his own life while she gained confidence. He had an adopted sister. The night passed and relaxed by his company Seolthi confessed the existence of her brother. He noticed her anxiety then, and simply asked if she was ok. Perhaps it was that genuine caring in his voice that broke her, but Seolthi could no loner contain her secrets. She told him of the dragoness with broken wings Miasma had brought, how she thought he'd hurt her, how other dragons had turned up worse in the forest on nights when he'd been bad tempered, how he kept in his den contained plagues he threatened to use against the city. The stranger had gone pale, he asked what the dragoness had looked like. She'd been pink, with an old battle scar obscuring her eyes, Seolthi told him.

And then he was gone, running out into the night. Seolthi was suddenly scared, she'd done something wrong, Miasma would be furious. She fled back to her home, unaware she was being followed. Miasma was waiting at home, and saw them before she did. The pink dragoness with broken wings, running across the landscape. And the stranger flying beside her. Suddenly Seolthi could see their similarities.

The pink dragoness lunged for Miasma, screaming that he'd lied to her. Seolthi struck back, flinging her back with a whip of her tail. The stranger's sweet face was cut back by a enraged snarl. He growled that Miasma had tried to kill his sister, Miasma denied it, Seolthi trembled. The stranger became more angry and Miasma's cool exterior melted away in rage. Seolthi saw him charge at the stranger with wild eyes, and open his throat.



The world stopped and the pink dragoness's scream stretched out into eternity. The stranger, once so handsome with his kind eyes, was dead before he hit the ground. The essential spark gone, the one thing Seolthi couldn't repair. The brutality left her frozen. Her brother, her savior, with blood dripping from his teeth turned to her. And he looked scared when he saw her. Seolthi was sure then, that she'd never truly seen him all along. The dragoness had escaped. Seolthi didn't care.

'You have to leave'

He had looked so hurt when he'd seen what she saw, when he realised what he'd just lost. But now his eyes hardened and Miasma hurled the rage and hurt right back at her. Traitor he called her. All the ugly names she'd adopted as part of her, he called her. He swore if he ever saw her again he would kill her. And then he left. Seolthi tried to follow him, her loyalty to her brother pulling her onwards but he turned on her, murder in his eyes. She watched part of herself leave that day, and couldn't tell if she was better off for it. It didn't feel better. She felt dead.

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Credits for art: fithandantilus, Riserae, Miirshroom/Pyromaniacal, Chuchuana