Maggie

When I was still far too young to, I began to explore my surroundings with wonder. I strayed too far from my parents, however, and was eagerly snatched up by an opportunistic clouddancer. I struggled in her maw even as she carried me off into the air, my wings neatly clamped down by a beak then as large as my torso. After several long minutes of panicked confusion, I ripped myself loose.

I plummeted to the ground, which was by now some significant distance below me. My wings opened instinctively to slow my fall, but they were of very little help, as the sheer force of the wind simply shoved them up behind my back. As fortune would have it, the clouddancer had not given up on her easy meal, and dove down after me. She gripped me firmly by my upstretched wings and landed with grace on the boughs of a large tree.
   I hoisted myself up by my wings and kicked madly at her face with my legs, twisting my neck about to frantically bite at whatever parts of her I could. Feathers flew - mine and my predator's - and with a great amount of screeching we fell apart, mutually exhausted by our personal ordeals. Being much smaller than the yellow beast, I slipped through the branches and landed on the ground below with an awful thud.

Only then, lying in a pile of autumn leaves, panting, terrified, and relieved, did instinct retreat. Thought and feeling returned, all at once like they had been waiting for the opportunity. Where was I? Where were my parents? Why did everything hurt so much? And where was all this blood coming from?
   I tried to stand, and immediately fell over. My legs were too sore, too weak, to hold me. I began to pick at my bleeding body, pulling out broken feathers and awkwardly prying debris from open wounds. But blood poured, endlessly, like a fountain all over my body and I couldn't find the source. Only when I began to pull the leaves from my wings did I understand.

Each leaf peeled away reluctantly. They had already formed a sticky mass with my coagulating blood. It stung so much to pick at them, I had to take several breaks. Finally, my wings were free of them...what little there was left of my wings. The membrane hung in tatters, strips of flesh dangling uselessly from phalanges that were never meant to be exposed like this. Blood oozed forth copiously, like water at first but growing thick and slipping from my body in gooey blobs.

To my great dismay, the clouddancer once again pounced, having presumably devised my location from either the overwhelming stench of blood; or my rustling in the leaves. I skwawked myself hoarse but it did no good. She hissed at me, long and low as though she viewed me as a real threat. I couldn't even stand. I certainly couldn't fly, not that I had fledged yet.
   A paw hovered in the air above my head for immeasurable time. Finally, it swatted at me, tentatively, followed by another quick swat with the other paw. This one didn't even connect. More swift strikes knocked me about, batting me here and there like a toy, but she kept her claws carefully retracted, and always danced back after each brief strike as if she expected me to retaliate. Her face was still bleeding. She would tilt her head one way, and then the other, her shiny green eyes watching me intently between each mercilessly soft strike.

Until she finally lunched forth, beak open, ready to snatch me up, to finally end this cruel torture. I wasn't going to let her. I lunged, too, for that beautiful shiny green bead. I felt my beak dig into something softer than flesh, my teeth squished around something that liquefied at their touch, which seeped down around my maw like the yolk of an egg. It tasted bland, like the sparrows my mother fed me; but it was the most delectable substance to ever grace my tongue.
   The clouddancer's beak clamped down on nothing, then opened wide in a scream of belated agony. She threw me aside and pawed pathetically at her oozing eye, crying and whimpering. We lay apart, individually bemoaning our shared pain, until wisps of yellow-orange light began to dance before my eyes.

I thought it was a spiritual escort, come to take my soul to the Plaguebringer. I feebly reached out, and the wisps embraced me.
I awoke on autumn leaves. Not a haphazard pile, but a carefully constructed bed intermingled with something soft - feathers? The feathers shifted, and I screamed as the clouddancer blearily stood. I still couldn't stand, but I sat awkwardly and attempted to shuffle away from my tormentor. The wisps returned, and this time they solidified into something resembling a...fox? It formed a physical and visual barrier between myself and the clouddancer, who seemed not to have yet woken. The fox chuckled softly, then vanished in a literal puff of smoke.

Moments later, I found myself surrounded by specks of light. The very air about me seemed to sparkle and shift. I was aware of the presence of something great, but I couldn't see it. The harder I looked, the more sparkles appeared until they eventually formed a massive dragon. He caressed the back of my head oh so gently with a single finger bigger than my entire tail, barely making contact. As he did so, a sensation of safety washed over me. That dragon's name was Dychmygu, and he continues to care for me as I recover. The clouddancer, too, remains partially under his care; though she is now fully healed save her mauled eye. Leaves still occasionally to cling to my bleeding flesh, but mostly I leave the wounds open to the air so that they'll clot quicker.
He says that when I am better, I can meet the other dragons here. He tells me I am in a new place now, a place of Nature. There are many friends waiting for me here, but not yet. I am too frail. I must recover first. So I sleep in his nest of leaves with the clouddancer, who sometimes brings me food; and he entertains me with beautiful conjurings, or just his own glittering scales.

It is almost a shame that I will always be recovering; never well enough to meet the others. I used to be eager to, but now I am comfortable here, in Dychmygu's care. I trust him. He knows what he's doing. He is a wise dragon.