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After weeks of submission ideas and voting from you, I present the completed story from my 500 watchers celebration! Thank you to those who participated in the selection process by suggesting prompts, voting, or offering feedback, and of course, thank you to everyone that has supported me here on FA over the past two years. There were a lot of wonderful prompts submitted, and I'm glad that you did the choosing for me because I'm not sure how I would have been able to pick from such an amazing list of ideas.
Congratulations to Czero~ and Videri for winning the two cameo slots. You both have really neat sonas and it was fun to be able to include them in the story.
I hope you all enjoy the story!
Summertime Showers
“Are you sure about this?” Denin walked slowly along the stone pathway into Saphirous Park, a cloth satchel over his neck that partially obscured his green scales.
At his side was his friend Czero, a spiked gold-scaled dragon with green lightning patterns along his body leading down to a feathered tail tip.
“Sure! She’s a good friend of mine and I think you two will get along great.”
Denin frowned. “How long have you two known each other?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Long time. She’s definitely your type.”
“If you say so…”
Denin couldn’t figure how it happened, but somehow Czero had convinced him to go on a picnic date with a dragoness he’d never met. The gold was convinced they would get along great with each other, but Denin wasn’t so sure. The last time his friend had tried to set him up with someone, it had been a gryphon a fraction of his size yet three times his age. At least it was already an improvement that this meeting was with another dragon.
Czero was practically twitching with excitement as they walked. They passed a pair of tall walnut trees with twisted branches and the gold pointed forward with a wing. “There she is. Just as I promised.”
“Promised? I hadn’t expected you to not…” Denin trailed off as he followed Czero’s movement. There beyond the next tree was a large picnic blanket sized for two dragons to sit on and taking up one side of it was a young dragoness with a sleek build of carbon gray scales. “Wow…”
“Told you she was pretty. Let me get you two introduced.”
“Wait, shouldn’t you tell me what she’s like first?”
“No, you’ll be fine. You two are a perfect match.” Czero bounded forward to the picnic blanket without wasting another moment.
The dragoness was sitting with a book spread out in front of her and startled when Czero suddenly appeared before her.
“Afternoon, Phyla! Watcha reading?” Czero dipped his head forward to see the words on the page, though the book was upside down to him so Denin guessed he couldn’t read it anyway.
“Oh, just a little summertime poetry. Seemed fitting for the day.” The dragoness blushed and quickly shut the book, slipping it out of Czero’s reach. She turned her head and made eye contact with Denin. “You must be Denin? Czero has told me a lot about you.”
“Hey!” Czero cut in. “I was supposed to introduce him. I had a whole routine for it!”
Denin forced a nervous chuckle and stepped closer, then delivered a casual bow to the dragoness. “I am, though unfortunately he’s told me very little about you beyond that you two are very close friends and have known each other for ages.”
The dragoness’s attention snapped toward Czero. “We have? I’ve only known him for−”
“Details, our bond is strong.” Czero said, gesturing for Denin to sit on the other side of the picnic blanket. “I know enough to think you two will have a nice time together.”
Denin moved to where he was bidden but didn’t sit yet. Instead, he shuffled anxiously in place. “He believes we will pair very well together.”
“Pair you say…” Her gaze turned back to Czero, darker this time.
“You know, look at the time. The sun is getting pretty low and I should get going.” Czero looked up toward the sky. It was a cloudy day and the sun wasn’t even visible. When they looked up he immediately turned to take flight, calling to them only once he was in the air. “Places to be and all. Have fun, you two!”
Before either of them had a chance to reply, the gold dragon had flown behind the cover of a tree’s foilage and was off. The gray dragoness gave a frustrated sigh. Denin felt his heart tighten and his pulse rise.
“Something tells me we’re not here to read poetry together…” The dragoness looked over.
Denin shook his head, still standing.
“He told you this was a date, didn’t he?”
Denin nodded.
The dragoness sighed again. “Oh Czero you oversized feather duster, what am I going to do with you?”
“I can leave if you’d like,” Denin said.
“No, might as well stay since we’re both here. He really has told me a lot about you and I’m a bit curious. Did you still bring the snacks?”
“I did.” Denin settled down on his side of the blanket and removed his satchel so that he could lift the cover and slide out a tin of homemade cookies. “Again, I’m really sorry about this. He told me that−”
The dragoness waved the thought aside with a paw. “Don’t stress yourself about it. He’s done this before to me. You should have seen the last partner he tried to set me up with.”
“It wasn’t a tiny gryphon. Was it?”
The dragoness’s eyes narrowed. “Why yes, it was. She was at least half my size and triple my age.”
Denin laughed again, and this time it was genuine. “Yeah…he tried to set me up with her too. It was a terrible time.”
The dragoness joined his laugh. “So awkward. We didn’t click at all.”
“We didn’t either.”
There was a moment of silence. Both dragons looked away, then looked back at each other.
“My name is Phyla by the way, in case he didn’t tell you.”
“Nice to meet you, Phyla.” Denin dipped his head again. “And you’re right, he didn’t tell me.”
“How am I not surprised? I wonder if anything he told me about you was even true.”
Denin shrugged his wings. “You can ask me.”
“I think I’d rather go without knowing just yet. How about we take a little walk instead?”
“That sounds nice. I’m pretty good at walking.” Desperate to break the tension, Denin was on in feet in an instant, only to notice Phyla giving him an odd look. He thought about what he had just said and blushed, turning away.
Good at walking? Who says that? He mentally scolded himself, hoping she wouldn’t think he was too dumb for his comment.
While he was turned away, Phyla stood and led the way to the nearest stone pathway. Denin slipped his homemade cookies back into his satchel and quickly caught up so that they could walk side by side. An upward glance told him it was still cloudy, but the day didn’t feel cold. It was a bit humid, but he didn’t think it was supposed to rain today.
“Where are we going?” he asked after they had been walking for about a minute.
“There’s a little pond nearby that often has entertainment around it. Maybe we can catch a performance of Drakespeare in the Park or a Clawthorn reading.” She paused in thought, then gave a small smile. “And if Czero was exaggerating your tastes, there’s sure to be at least one typical street performer there.”
“That sounds like a good start. Do you come to this park often?”
“I wouldn’t say often, but I like to visit every now and then.” They rounded a bend and the pond came into sight just before them. Denin scanned the area, but only saw one other dragon around. It was a blue huddled beside the pond itself. He didn’t look like the average dragon, but had a white crest on his head that ran down his neck to his shoulder and a small fin on the end of his tail.
“Let’s see what he’s doing,” Denin said, quickening his pace since he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.
“I’m not sure he’s a…” Phyla wavered, then followed. “Oh why not.”
They slowly approached the blue dragon from behind. He seemed very focused on something in the water and they didn’t want to disturb him. When he didn’t react, they stood at a respectful distance for a few minutes to wait for him to turn around, but that didn’t happen either.
“Do you think he’s asleep?” Phyla whispered, leaning in so that only Denin could hear her.
“I don’t know.” He stepped closer, circling the dragon to see if his eyes were open. “Excuse me.”
The dragon looked over slowly, his eyes were a deep blue and seemed friendly enough. There was what initially appeared to be a scar over his left eye, but Denin quickly realized it was actually a star marking.
“Sorry, we didn’t mean to disturb you, we just wanted to see what you were doing.”
The blue eyed Denin for another moment, then turned his neck to look back and notice Phyla for the first time. When he saw her, he immediately stood up and turned his whole body around.
“Oh, hello there,” the dragon had a deep voice, but there was a lot of energy in it. “My name is Videri. Can I help you two with something?”
“We were wondering…” Denin began, hesitating. Was it rude to call someone a street performer if they weren’t?
Phyla didn’t miss a beat. “Are you a performer, Videri? Could you put on a show for us?”
Videri’s head lifted in a way that revealed his surprise at the request. “Did you recognize me? It’s been years since I’ve done any kind of performance. No one seems to know my name anymore.”
“Um, well…” Phyla trailed off.
Videri frowned and lowered his head. “I guess that’s a no. Figures.”
“You do have the look of a performer to you though,” Denin said. “Especially with that eye marking. Did it have to do with your show?”
“This?” Videri touched a paw to the edge of the star around his left eye. “I was born with this. My performing was part of an aerial flying show.”
“A flying show?” Denin took a half-step forward. “That’s amazing! Can we see a demonstration?”
“I haven’t flown like that in…” Videri looked up toward the sky. “And the weather’s not right for it. There’s a big storm coming soon.”
“There wasn’t any rain in the forecast,” Phyla said.
“Trust me, when you’ve been flying as long as I have, you learn to read the skies.” Videri paused as if he was debating something. “Tell you this, you two seem like a nice couple. I’ll give you a little show here on the ground. It was a part of my old routine.”
Denin exchanged a look with Phyla. “You had a flying routine on the ground?”
“Sort of. Gather around the pond with me, you’ll see.”
Videri turned back to the water and Denin and Phyla moved to join, each taking a side so that they would have a good view of whatever he was planning.
The blue dragon crouched down beside the pond, his eyes focused along its clear and peaceful surface. After a moment, he slid a claw forward and tapped the surface, sending out several rings of tiny waves across it. When they began to settle he took a deep breath and exhaled a controlled stream of fire directly at the water. There was an instant mist as it made contact.
Denin tried to catch Phyla’s eye again but she was too focused on the water. He looked back as well, then gasped. Videri’s fire wasn’t simmering and misting away like normal fire did. Instead, as it struck the water, it created a faint mist and then the water itself began to freeze.
“Cold fire,” Phyla said quietly, the awe obvious in her voice. “I’ve read about it, but I never thought it was real.”
Denin lowered his head toward the shore for a better look. “There were legends of dragons with it. I thought they were just legends.”
Videri’s ice stretched out in a straight line across about a quarter of the pond and then began to arch out to the sides. He stopped his breath and leaned back, a satisfied smile on his muzzle as both Phyla and Denin shifted just a little closer to the water.
“I’ve only met one other dragon that can do it,” Videri said, standing a little taller.
The ice stopped expanding and went still, then quickly began to buckle and thin out, melting already in the summer heat.
“There was a time where I’d freeze an entire pond like this so thick that dragons could stand on it, even during the summer.”
Denin sat back beside Videri, his eyes still locked on the ice. “Why did you stop?”
Videri rocked his head from side to side. “Life changes. Maybe I’ll do it again someday, maybe I won’t.”
“Thank you for letting us see this, Videri,” Phyla said, giving a little bow. Denin echoed the thank you, though he only smiled instead of bowing.
“You two are very welcome. I hope it was a nice addition to your date.”
Denin and Phyla made eye contact, but neither commented on his words.
“Yep,” Videri continued. “I know a happy couple when I see one.”
There was silence. Small ripples began to appear across the water and Denin realized it was beginning to rain. Videri had been right after all, and he felt a surge of disappointment because it meant the outing would have to end early.
“Oh no!” Phyla’s body tensed up. “My book! I need to cover it up.”
Not wasting a moment, she dashed away back toward their picnic site. Denin turned to follow, but Videri stopped him with a wing.
“Hold up,” the blue dragon said. Without waiting for a reply, he plucked a bright red flower from the edge of the pond and breathed across it. His icy breath caused the petals to shrivel just a little before they all froze, preserving the flower in an icy casing until it had a chance to melt. He handed the flower to Denin. “Give this to her. Tell her it was your idea.”
Denin thanked Videri and took the flower, then ran after Phyla.
By the time he arrived back to their site, Phyla had rolled up the picnic blanket and used it to wrap up her book to keep it safe from the weather. The rain was picking up quickly and just as he reached her he caught a streak of lightning in his peripherals. A moment later it was followed by the bang of thunder loud enough that both dragons flinched at the sound and took cover below the twin walnut trees nearby.
The sky had turned black during their run back and as they looked up they saw more lightning flash across the clouds, lighting up the area before leaving it feeling darker than before.
“Where did this come from? The clouds didn’t look that dark,” Phyla said, hugging the picnic blanket close. Denin held out his wing and she gratefully took cover below it as best she could. He pulled his satchel close and slipped the flower into it while she was distracted, slinging it over his neck and a wing. The rain had picked up and its heavy drops caused a faint sting like hail.
“I don’t know, but we shouldn’t fly in this. There’s too much lightning,” Denin called, his voice raised so that he could be heard over the next wave of thunder.
“There’s nowhere else to go! We’re right in the middle of the park.”
“There has to be some sort of cover here. Something better than trees.”
“Um…I don’t know…there’s not much, but maybe…” Phyla stomped a paw against the ground. “I got it! The old groundskeeper’s house. It’s abandoned and coming down, but it’ll give us cover.”
“Lead the way.”
Phyla began to run up the nearest hill. Denin followed as close as he could, trying to keep his wing up over her, though it was quickly becoming impossible to manage. Wind caught on his membrane like a sail and tried to pull it away, nearly sending him back down the hill in the process. The hill was quickly turning to mud too, and his greater weight made that a challenge even if there hadn’t been wind and rain to deal with.
He stumbled once more near the top, but Phyla caught his leg and pulled him up. She pointed to a grayish shape just beyond the base of the hill. “There’s the old house!”
Denin squinted against the heavy rain. He couldn’t see a house, only a blur of color that could have been anything. He trusted Phyla however and was the first to move forward.
If he had thought moving up the hill was a challenge, he certainly wasn’t prepared for the struggle of going down it. This side was steeper and washing away under the torrent of water. Even with his claws out and digging into the ground, he found himself sliding downward, fighting for balance every foot he went.
There was a squeal of alarm from behind and he looked back in time to see Phyla lose her balance and tumble, twisting her ankle as she went down. She rolled once and then crashed into his rear, knocking him loose and sending them both rolling down the hill to land at the bottom with a thick splat in mud. Phyla’s picnic blanket landed just beyond Denin’s paw and began to sink.
“Eww…” Phyla whined, lifting one of her paws to find her scales caked in mud.
The area was lit up by a flash of lightning and the boom of thunder struck overhead, causing them to both flinch again. One glance at the mud puddle they were in told them they had to keep moving…now.
As another bolt of lightning snaked across the sky, Denin stood and grabbed Phyla’s foreleg. He pulled her to her feet and pressed on toward the house. She gave a grunt of pain and snagged the blanket in her maw just before she was dragged out of reach.
Now on flat ground, each step was a challenge. His paw sunk into the mud with each step and he had to yank it out before taking the next. Lightning and thunder urged him on, and Phyla followed close, sometimes leaning on him for support.
Three crashes of thunder later, they had reached the house and collapsed onto its porch.
The house seemed to be a dull blue rather than gray, but it was so faded and in the darkness it was accurate enough to call it either. The front door was intact and had a porch roof overhead, but the rest of the house roof was mostly collapsed and an entire wall was missing.
The porch creaked and swayed in the wind, and Denin eyed it suspiciously.
“I’m not sure this is going to last the storm. Is there a better spot?”
Phyla dropped her blanket and spat mud from her mouth, glancing around with wild eyes. She favored her right front paw by holding it off the ground. “I don’t know.”
“Stay here, I’ll check.”
Denin leapt off the edge of the porch to circle the side of the house and step through the fallen wall. He could already see that the inside was a mess of collapsed roof and walls, but with any luck there would be a room still standing that could offer better shelter from the storm. That said, he didn’t like his odds. The house was more like a big cabin and probably only had two or three rooms to begin with.
The mud around the house was just as bad as the ground before it had been, possibly even worse. Each step he took brought him nearly ankle-deep in mud, which squelched sharply as he pulled free. At the edge of the house’s foundation beside the fallen wall his forepaw hit the ground and it didn’t sink, but instead struck something hard. He looked down and beneath mud and roof tiles something gray caught his eye.
Keeping that paw still, he used his other forepaw to brush aside the mud, revealing a section of flat metal. With a chirp of excitement, he began to clear the debris with both paws, revealing a door that led into the ground. This house had a basement.
The green dragon tried the handle. The door shook, but didn’t open. He tried again with more force. The door buckled and curved upward for a moment but then snapped back into position. Rain continued to fall, cleaning the door further.
Denin gave a heavy growl and reared up on his hind legs, then slammed his forelegs down with all the force he could muster. There was a sharp crack and the door bent downward. One of the hinges sprang loose and the lock shook but held.
He repeated the process, and this time the door practically folded in half from the strength of the impact. It snapped free of all its restraints and clattered down a set of stairs, Denin nearly falling with it. He ducked in to glance around, finding a concrete basement that seemed intact as far as he could see, which wasn’t very far given that the only light came from the door he had just smashed open.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Not waiting a moment longer, Denin dashed back to front of the porch to grab Phyla. She followed as best she could, an unmistakable limp in her struggled gait.
The gray dragoness’s eyes lit up at the sight of the smashed door and she said something that was drowned out by the sound of the rain.
Denin nodded anyway and slipped down the opening into the basement. Human stairs were small for a dragon’s feet, but by getting in first he was able to move the fallen door out of the way and sweep his tail over the stairs to make sure they were clear before Phyla attempted to enter. They were already growing slick from the rain, but there was nothing he could do about that.
When it was her turn, Phyla came down slowly and Denin stood by the base of the stairs, ready to help in case she slipped. Despite her ankle, she managed it without falling, though once she was on flat ground she flopped down with a groan. Denin picked up the damaged door and tried to bend it back into its old shape.
“I didn’t even know this was here,” Phyla said, her head raised and slowly turning as she peered into the surrounding darkness.
“Lucky for us it is.”
Satisfied with the state of the door, Denin took it between his teeth and awkwardly climbed the stairs, dragging it along behind him until he reached the top. There he did his best to wedge it into place to cover the entrance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to slow the oncoming water from a growing flood to steady trickle.
Denin slipped on the way back down, but didn’t fall. As he reached the bottom and his eyes adjusted, he realized the space wasn’t as dark as he had first thought. There was a small amount of light coming down between the floorboards above them, and with a dragon’s senses it was manageable. Now that the door was shut, the basement seemed eerily quiet compared to the storm outside.
He spotted movement and heard a dull clanging sound. Instinctively, he fell into a defensive crouch and glared toward it, attempting to hold a wing out over where he thought Phyla was.
There was a small click, and then a second one. There was a silence for a moment, and then he heard a mixture of cracking and banging toward the other side of the basement. As his eyes adjusted further, and he saw a big shape moving, though it blended too well with the darkness to recognize.
“Stay close to me,” he whispered to Phyla.
There was no reply. He moved his wing with the intent of laying it over her, but couldn’t seem to find her.
“Phyla, where are you?” he whispered again.
“What?” Phyla’s voice echoed from the other side of the room. There was more banging, and then the burst of light from a flame. In the instant before it went out, leaving only embers, he realized Phyla had been the movement and that she had piled together basement debris. He moved over to her to see if he could help.
There was scraping as she shifted the pile and he bumped into a wing that seemed to be held out to stop him in place. In the darkness, her gray scales made her nearly invisible even to dragon senses.
Phyla spat her fire at her little pile a second time and this time the flame held. With the light of a small fire, he could now see her clearly and make out the rest of their surroundings. The basement had been picked clean of anything valuable likely when it was abandoned, but there were a number of broken shelves, floorboards, and other flammable remains that they could use to feed the fire.
“Figured we could use a little light,” Phyla said, offering a small smile. She gathered the closest debris into a pile beside her for easy reach, and then settled down on her underbelly to look over her ankle.
“How is it?” Denin said, stepping forward for a look himself, though he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Just a sprain I think. Glad we found this place, I probably shouldn’t walk on it much more.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“No, I’m fine. Just see what else you can gather for the night.”
“Plenty around, shouldn’t be much trouble.” He dropped his satchel beside the fire and turned to start on his task.
While there was lots of wood around, Denin quickly realized that it wasn’t all worth burning. There were small cracks in the floorboard above, and though they didn’t offer any useful light, they allowed little droplets of rain to occasionally slip through and wet whatever was beneath them. Though these pieces weren’t so wet that it would be impossible to get them to burn, it would make the task a greater challenge.
For this reason, it took Denin longer than he expected to gather a sizeable pile of appropriate burnable for their little fire. By the time he returned to Phyla’s side, the gray dragoness had used her own pile to grow the fire, turning it from a small glow for light into something that actually provided them with heat.
He hadn’t thought that would be necessary since they were dragons and it was summer, but as he settled down on the opposite side of the fire, he noticed her shiver.
“Would you like to lay together for warmth?” he asked, lifting a wing to invite her over.
Phyla shook her head. “I’m fine.”
She shivered again, but it wasn’t as strong and he had a feeling she was purposely trying to hide it. She began to unroll her picnic blanket and soon had her poetry book in claw, though she didn’t open it to read but instead watched the fire.
Denin looked around the room, trying to think of something to say to occupy the time since they would be stuck for a while. The only sound was the muffled rain hitting the porch above and the periodic bursts of thunder.
“So, um…quite a day this has been,” he said at last.
“It has been.”
“Lucky you remembered this place was here.”
Phyla nodded, and then there was silence. They both stared at the fire.
Denin tried again. “Do you want to read aloud from your book?”
Phyla looked up at that. “I thought you didn’t actually like poetry?”
“I mean…I never said that.” It was true Denin didn’t really care for it, but anything was better than sitting in silence at that point.
There was something new in Phyla’s gaze, though he couldn’t quite place it. Curiosity maybe. “That’s fair. I’m shy about reading aloud though.”
“I see.”
More silence, but this time Phyla was the first to break it, just as Denin had begun to stare at the fire in desperation.
“You can come over by me and read on your own if you’d like.”
He looked up just in time to catch a small smile from Phyla, then smiled back and moved to her side. “I’d love that.”
Phyla slid the book over once he had settled in and opened it to a bookmarked page. “This is one of my favorites.”
He read over the poem. It had to do with winter approaching and there was a romantic air to it. a line about flowers freezing made him pause as he remembered the flower Videri had given him.
“What do you think?” Phyla asked after giving him enough time to read.
“It reminds me…you might like this.” He reached over to his satchel and withdrew the flower, holding it out to Phyla. To his surprise, it was still coated in ice crystals, giving it the appearance of the being made from glass rather than plucked from nature.
The gray dragoness’s eyes lit up as she leaned in toward it, touching a claw to her chest. “For me?”
He nodded and smiled again, passing it over. “For you.”
“It’s beautiful.” She took the flower as carefully as if it was actually glass and cradled it in her paws. The fire reflected off the ice crystals, causing them to sparkle and glow with color. That color bounced along her gray scales, twisting over them like a light show as she turned the flower to look at different sides of it.
Denin found himself staring not at the flower, but at Phyla instead. Her gray hadn’t had too much charm to it compared to many other dragonesses he had seen, but now with the reflection of colors dancing across them they were a completely new sight. They sparkled like the flower and he realized that in the right light, he could stare for hours and not grow bored.
Phyla tucked the flower behind one of her horns, using her frill to hold it in place. She shivered once more, and this time Denin simply raised his wing and put it over her back.
He half-expected her to hiss and brush the wing off, but instead she smiled back and shifted over so that they were resting side by side. Neither of them made a comment about it, but Denin felt his heartrate pick up. Her scent was suddenly stronger too, and he had to fight himself to prevent his tail from starting to sway.
Phyla turned a page in her book. “This is another favorite of mine. If you read it for me, I’ll read the next one for you.”
“I would love that.” Denin stretched his neck forward to see the page, thinking about how despite the storm they had both gotten what they wanted. He had his date, and she now had her poetry reading.
It was difficult to keep track of time in the dark basement, but at they took turns reading they found themselves resting closer against each other. With her head against his neck, Phyla went silent partway through one of her readings, falling asleep in that very spot. As carefully as he could, Denin closed the book and slid it away from the fire, then laid his head down and curled partway around Phyla so that she would be more comfortable through the night.
Outside, the storm continued in earnest, but Denin felt a calmness in his heart. As sleep took hold, all he could think about was how comfortable that moment was, and that he hoped she would be willing to go on a second date.
Congratulations to Czero~ and Videri for winning the two cameo slots. You both have really neat sonas and it was fun to be able to include them in the story.
I hope you all enjoy the story!
Summertime Showers
“Are you sure about this?” Denin walked slowly along the stone pathway into Saphirous Park, a cloth satchel over his neck that partially obscured his green scales.
At his side was his friend Czero, a spiked gold-scaled dragon with green lightning patterns along his body leading down to a feathered tail tip.
“Sure! She’s a good friend of mine and I think you two will get along great.”
Denin frowned. “How long have you two known each other?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Long time. She’s definitely your type.”
“If you say so…”
Denin couldn’t figure how it happened, but somehow Czero had convinced him to go on a picnic date with a dragoness he’d never met. The gold was convinced they would get along great with each other, but Denin wasn’t so sure. The last time his friend had tried to set him up with someone, it had been a gryphon a fraction of his size yet three times his age. At least it was already an improvement that this meeting was with another dragon.
Czero was practically twitching with excitement as they walked. They passed a pair of tall walnut trees with twisted branches and the gold pointed forward with a wing. “There she is. Just as I promised.”
“Promised? I hadn’t expected you to not…” Denin trailed off as he followed Czero’s movement. There beyond the next tree was a large picnic blanket sized for two dragons to sit on and taking up one side of it was a young dragoness with a sleek build of carbon gray scales. “Wow…”
“Told you she was pretty. Let me get you two introduced.”
“Wait, shouldn’t you tell me what she’s like first?”
“No, you’ll be fine. You two are a perfect match.” Czero bounded forward to the picnic blanket without wasting another moment.
The dragoness was sitting with a book spread out in front of her and startled when Czero suddenly appeared before her.
“Afternoon, Phyla! Watcha reading?” Czero dipped his head forward to see the words on the page, though the book was upside down to him so Denin guessed he couldn’t read it anyway.
“Oh, just a little summertime poetry. Seemed fitting for the day.” The dragoness blushed and quickly shut the book, slipping it out of Czero’s reach. She turned her head and made eye contact with Denin. “You must be Denin? Czero has told me a lot about you.”
“Hey!” Czero cut in. “I was supposed to introduce him. I had a whole routine for it!”
Denin forced a nervous chuckle and stepped closer, then delivered a casual bow to the dragoness. “I am, though unfortunately he’s told me very little about you beyond that you two are very close friends and have known each other for ages.”
The dragoness’s attention snapped toward Czero. “We have? I’ve only known him for−”
“Details, our bond is strong.” Czero said, gesturing for Denin to sit on the other side of the picnic blanket. “I know enough to think you two will have a nice time together.”
Denin moved to where he was bidden but didn’t sit yet. Instead, he shuffled anxiously in place. “He believes we will pair very well together.”
“Pair you say…” Her gaze turned back to Czero, darker this time.
“You know, look at the time. The sun is getting pretty low and I should get going.” Czero looked up toward the sky. It was a cloudy day and the sun wasn’t even visible. When they looked up he immediately turned to take flight, calling to them only once he was in the air. “Places to be and all. Have fun, you two!”
Before either of them had a chance to reply, the gold dragon had flown behind the cover of a tree’s foilage and was off. The gray dragoness gave a frustrated sigh. Denin felt his heart tighten and his pulse rise.
“Something tells me we’re not here to read poetry together…” The dragoness looked over.
Denin shook his head, still standing.
“He told you this was a date, didn’t he?”
Denin nodded.
The dragoness sighed again. “Oh Czero you oversized feather duster, what am I going to do with you?”
“I can leave if you’d like,” Denin said.
“No, might as well stay since we’re both here. He really has told me a lot about you and I’m a bit curious. Did you still bring the snacks?”
“I did.” Denin settled down on his side of the blanket and removed his satchel so that he could lift the cover and slide out a tin of homemade cookies. “Again, I’m really sorry about this. He told me that−”
The dragoness waved the thought aside with a paw. “Don’t stress yourself about it. He’s done this before to me. You should have seen the last partner he tried to set me up with.”
“It wasn’t a tiny gryphon. Was it?”
The dragoness’s eyes narrowed. “Why yes, it was. She was at least half my size and triple my age.”
Denin laughed again, and this time it was genuine. “Yeah…he tried to set me up with her too. It was a terrible time.”
The dragoness joined his laugh. “So awkward. We didn’t click at all.”
“We didn’t either.”
There was a moment of silence. Both dragons looked away, then looked back at each other.
“My name is Phyla by the way, in case he didn’t tell you.”
“Nice to meet you, Phyla.” Denin dipped his head again. “And you’re right, he didn’t tell me.”
“How am I not surprised? I wonder if anything he told me about you was even true.”
Denin shrugged his wings. “You can ask me.”
“I think I’d rather go without knowing just yet. How about we take a little walk instead?”
“That sounds nice. I’m pretty good at walking.” Desperate to break the tension, Denin was on in feet in an instant, only to notice Phyla giving him an odd look. He thought about what he had just said and blushed, turning away.
Good at walking? Who says that? He mentally scolded himself, hoping she wouldn’t think he was too dumb for his comment.
While he was turned away, Phyla stood and led the way to the nearest stone pathway. Denin slipped his homemade cookies back into his satchel and quickly caught up so that they could walk side by side. An upward glance told him it was still cloudy, but the day didn’t feel cold. It was a bit humid, but he didn’t think it was supposed to rain today.
“Where are we going?” he asked after they had been walking for about a minute.
“There’s a little pond nearby that often has entertainment around it. Maybe we can catch a performance of Drakespeare in the Park or a Clawthorn reading.” She paused in thought, then gave a small smile. “And if Czero was exaggerating your tastes, there’s sure to be at least one typical street performer there.”
“That sounds like a good start. Do you come to this park often?”
“I wouldn’t say often, but I like to visit every now and then.” They rounded a bend and the pond came into sight just before them. Denin scanned the area, but only saw one other dragon around. It was a blue huddled beside the pond itself. He didn’t look like the average dragon, but had a white crest on his head that ran down his neck to his shoulder and a small fin on the end of his tail.
“Let’s see what he’s doing,” Denin said, quickening his pace since he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.
“I’m not sure he’s a…” Phyla wavered, then followed. “Oh why not.”
They slowly approached the blue dragon from behind. He seemed very focused on something in the water and they didn’t want to disturb him. When he didn’t react, they stood at a respectful distance for a few minutes to wait for him to turn around, but that didn’t happen either.
“Do you think he’s asleep?” Phyla whispered, leaning in so that only Denin could hear her.
“I don’t know.” He stepped closer, circling the dragon to see if his eyes were open. “Excuse me.”
The dragon looked over slowly, his eyes were a deep blue and seemed friendly enough. There was what initially appeared to be a scar over his left eye, but Denin quickly realized it was actually a star marking.
“Sorry, we didn’t mean to disturb you, we just wanted to see what you were doing.”
The blue eyed Denin for another moment, then turned his neck to look back and notice Phyla for the first time. When he saw her, he immediately stood up and turned his whole body around.
“Oh, hello there,” the dragon had a deep voice, but there was a lot of energy in it. “My name is Videri. Can I help you two with something?”
“We were wondering…” Denin began, hesitating. Was it rude to call someone a street performer if they weren’t?
Phyla didn’t miss a beat. “Are you a performer, Videri? Could you put on a show for us?”
Videri’s head lifted in a way that revealed his surprise at the request. “Did you recognize me? It’s been years since I’ve done any kind of performance. No one seems to know my name anymore.”
“Um, well…” Phyla trailed off.
Videri frowned and lowered his head. “I guess that’s a no. Figures.”
“You do have the look of a performer to you though,” Denin said. “Especially with that eye marking. Did it have to do with your show?”
“This?” Videri touched a paw to the edge of the star around his left eye. “I was born with this. My performing was part of an aerial flying show.”
“A flying show?” Denin took a half-step forward. “That’s amazing! Can we see a demonstration?”
“I haven’t flown like that in…” Videri looked up toward the sky. “And the weather’s not right for it. There’s a big storm coming soon.”
“There wasn’t any rain in the forecast,” Phyla said.
“Trust me, when you’ve been flying as long as I have, you learn to read the skies.” Videri paused as if he was debating something. “Tell you this, you two seem like a nice couple. I’ll give you a little show here on the ground. It was a part of my old routine.”
Denin exchanged a look with Phyla. “You had a flying routine on the ground?”
“Sort of. Gather around the pond with me, you’ll see.”
Videri turned back to the water and Denin and Phyla moved to join, each taking a side so that they would have a good view of whatever he was planning.
The blue dragon crouched down beside the pond, his eyes focused along its clear and peaceful surface. After a moment, he slid a claw forward and tapped the surface, sending out several rings of tiny waves across it. When they began to settle he took a deep breath and exhaled a controlled stream of fire directly at the water. There was an instant mist as it made contact.
Denin tried to catch Phyla’s eye again but she was too focused on the water. He looked back as well, then gasped. Videri’s fire wasn’t simmering and misting away like normal fire did. Instead, as it struck the water, it created a faint mist and then the water itself began to freeze.
“Cold fire,” Phyla said quietly, the awe obvious in her voice. “I’ve read about it, but I never thought it was real.”
Denin lowered his head toward the shore for a better look. “There were legends of dragons with it. I thought they were just legends.”
Videri’s ice stretched out in a straight line across about a quarter of the pond and then began to arch out to the sides. He stopped his breath and leaned back, a satisfied smile on his muzzle as both Phyla and Denin shifted just a little closer to the water.
“I’ve only met one other dragon that can do it,” Videri said, standing a little taller.
The ice stopped expanding and went still, then quickly began to buckle and thin out, melting already in the summer heat.
“There was a time where I’d freeze an entire pond like this so thick that dragons could stand on it, even during the summer.”
Denin sat back beside Videri, his eyes still locked on the ice. “Why did you stop?”
Videri rocked his head from side to side. “Life changes. Maybe I’ll do it again someday, maybe I won’t.”
“Thank you for letting us see this, Videri,” Phyla said, giving a little bow. Denin echoed the thank you, though he only smiled instead of bowing.
“You two are very welcome. I hope it was a nice addition to your date.”
Denin and Phyla made eye contact, but neither commented on his words.
“Yep,” Videri continued. “I know a happy couple when I see one.”
There was silence. Small ripples began to appear across the water and Denin realized it was beginning to rain. Videri had been right after all, and he felt a surge of disappointment because it meant the outing would have to end early.
“Oh no!” Phyla’s body tensed up. “My book! I need to cover it up.”
Not wasting a moment, she dashed away back toward their picnic site. Denin turned to follow, but Videri stopped him with a wing.
“Hold up,” the blue dragon said. Without waiting for a reply, he plucked a bright red flower from the edge of the pond and breathed across it. His icy breath caused the petals to shrivel just a little before they all froze, preserving the flower in an icy casing until it had a chance to melt. He handed the flower to Denin. “Give this to her. Tell her it was your idea.”
Denin thanked Videri and took the flower, then ran after Phyla.
By the time he arrived back to their site, Phyla had rolled up the picnic blanket and used it to wrap up her book to keep it safe from the weather. The rain was picking up quickly and just as he reached her he caught a streak of lightning in his peripherals. A moment later it was followed by the bang of thunder loud enough that both dragons flinched at the sound and took cover below the twin walnut trees nearby.
The sky had turned black during their run back and as they looked up they saw more lightning flash across the clouds, lighting up the area before leaving it feeling darker than before.
“Where did this come from? The clouds didn’t look that dark,” Phyla said, hugging the picnic blanket close. Denin held out his wing and she gratefully took cover below it as best she could. He pulled his satchel close and slipped the flower into it while she was distracted, slinging it over his neck and a wing. The rain had picked up and its heavy drops caused a faint sting like hail.
“I don’t know, but we shouldn’t fly in this. There’s too much lightning,” Denin called, his voice raised so that he could be heard over the next wave of thunder.
“There’s nowhere else to go! We’re right in the middle of the park.”
“There has to be some sort of cover here. Something better than trees.”
“Um…I don’t know…there’s not much, but maybe…” Phyla stomped a paw against the ground. “I got it! The old groundskeeper’s house. It’s abandoned and coming down, but it’ll give us cover.”
“Lead the way.”
Phyla began to run up the nearest hill. Denin followed as close as he could, trying to keep his wing up over her, though it was quickly becoming impossible to manage. Wind caught on his membrane like a sail and tried to pull it away, nearly sending him back down the hill in the process. The hill was quickly turning to mud too, and his greater weight made that a challenge even if there hadn’t been wind and rain to deal with.
He stumbled once more near the top, but Phyla caught his leg and pulled him up. She pointed to a grayish shape just beyond the base of the hill. “There’s the old house!”
Denin squinted against the heavy rain. He couldn’t see a house, only a blur of color that could have been anything. He trusted Phyla however and was the first to move forward.
If he had thought moving up the hill was a challenge, he certainly wasn’t prepared for the struggle of going down it. This side was steeper and washing away under the torrent of water. Even with his claws out and digging into the ground, he found himself sliding downward, fighting for balance every foot he went.
There was a squeal of alarm from behind and he looked back in time to see Phyla lose her balance and tumble, twisting her ankle as she went down. She rolled once and then crashed into his rear, knocking him loose and sending them both rolling down the hill to land at the bottom with a thick splat in mud. Phyla’s picnic blanket landed just beyond Denin’s paw and began to sink.
“Eww…” Phyla whined, lifting one of her paws to find her scales caked in mud.
The area was lit up by a flash of lightning and the boom of thunder struck overhead, causing them to both flinch again. One glance at the mud puddle they were in told them they had to keep moving…now.
As another bolt of lightning snaked across the sky, Denin stood and grabbed Phyla’s foreleg. He pulled her to her feet and pressed on toward the house. She gave a grunt of pain and snagged the blanket in her maw just before she was dragged out of reach.
Now on flat ground, each step was a challenge. His paw sunk into the mud with each step and he had to yank it out before taking the next. Lightning and thunder urged him on, and Phyla followed close, sometimes leaning on him for support.
Three crashes of thunder later, they had reached the house and collapsed onto its porch.
The house seemed to be a dull blue rather than gray, but it was so faded and in the darkness it was accurate enough to call it either. The front door was intact and had a porch roof overhead, but the rest of the house roof was mostly collapsed and an entire wall was missing.
The porch creaked and swayed in the wind, and Denin eyed it suspiciously.
“I’m not sure this is going to last the storm. Is there a better spot?”
Phyla dropped her blanket and spat mud from her mouth, glancing around with wild eyes. She favored her right front paw by holding it off the ground. “I don’t know.”
“Stay here, I’ll check.”
Denin leapt off the edge of the porch to circle the side of the house and step through the fallen wall. He could already see that the inside was a mess of collapsed roof and walls, but with any luck there would be a room still standing that could offer better shelter from the storm. That said, he didn’t like his odds. The house was more like a big cabin and probably only had two or three rooms to begin with.
The mud around the house was just as bad as the ground before it had been, possibly even worse. Each step he took brought him nearly ankle-deep in mud, which squelched sharply as he pulled free. At the edge of the house’s foundation beside the fallen wall his forepaw hit the ground and it didn’t sink, but instead struck something hard. He looked down and beneath mud and roof tiles something gray caught his eye.
Keeping that paw still, he used his other forepaw to brush aside the mud, revealing a section of flat metal. With a chirp of excitement, he began to clear the debris with both paws, revealing a door that led into the ground. This house had a basement.
The green dragon tried the handle. The door shook, but didn’t open. He tried again with more force. The door buckled and curved upward for a moment but then snapped back into position. Rain continued to fall, cleaning the door further.
Denin gave a heavy growl and reared up on his hind legs, then slammed his forelegs down with all the force he could muster. There was a sharp crack and the door bent downward. One of the hinges sprang loose and the lock shook but held.
He repeated the process, and this time the door practically folded in half from the strength of the impact. It snapped free of all its restraints and clattered down a set of stairs, Denin nearly falling with it. He ducked in to glance around, finding a concrete basement that seemed intact as far as he could see, which wasn’t very far given that the only light came from the door he had just smashed open.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Not waiting a moment longer, Denin dashed back to front of the porch to grab Phyla. She followed as best she could, an unmistakable limp in her struggled gait.
The gray dragoness’s eyes lit up at the sight of the smashed door and she said something that was drowned out by the sound of the rain.
Denin nodded anyway and slipped down the opening into the basement. Human stairs were small for a dragon’s feet, but by getting in first he was able to move the fallen door out of the way and sweep his tail over the stairs to make sure they were clear before Phyla attempted to enter. They were already growing slick from the rain, but there was nothing he could do about that.
When it was her turn, Phyla came down slowly and Denin stood by the base of the stairs, ready to help in case she slipped. Despite her ankle, she managed it without falling, though once she was on flat ground she flopped down with a groan. Denin picked up the damaged door and tried to bend it back into its old shape.
“I didn’t even know this was here,” Phyla said, her head raised and slowly turning as she peered into the surrounding darkness.
“Lucky for us it is.”
Satisfied with the state of the door, Denin took it between his teeth and awkwardly climbed the stairs, dragging it along behind him until he reached the top. There he did his best to wedge it into place to cover the entrance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to slow the oncoming water from a growing flood to steady trickle.
Denin slipped on the way back down, but didn’t fall. As he reached the bottom and his eyes adjusted, he realized the space wasn’t as dark as he had first thought. There was a small amount of light coming down between the floorboards above them, and with a dragon’s senses it was manageable. Now that the door was shut, the basement seemed eerily quiet compared to the storm outside.
He spotted movement and heard a dull clanging sound. Instinctively, he fell into a defensive crouch and glared toward it, attempting to hold a wing out over where he thought Phyla was.
There was a small click, and then a second one. There was a silence for a moment, and then he heard a mixture of cracking and banging toward the other side of the basement. As his eyes adjusted further, and he saw a big shape moving, though it blended too well with the darkness to recognize.
“Stay close to me,” he whispered to Phyla.
There was no reply. He moved his wing with the intent of laying it over her, but couldn’t seem to find her.
“Phyla, where are you?” he whispered again.
“What?” Phyla’s voice echoed from the other side of the room. There was more banging, and then the burst of light from a flame. In the instant before it went out, leaving only embers, he realized Phyla had been the movement and that she had piled together basement debris. He moved over to her to see if he could help.
There was scraping as she shifted the pile and he bumped into a wing that seemed to be held out to stop him in place. In the darkness, her gray scales made her nearly invisible even to dragon senses.
Phyla spat her fire at her little pile a second time and this time the flame held. With the light of a small fire, he could now see her clearly and make out the rest of their surroundings. The basement had been picked clean of anything valuable likely when it was abandoned, but there were a number of broken shelves, floorboards, and other flammable remains that they could use to feed the fire.
“Figured we could use a little light,” Phyla said, offering a small smile. She gathered the closest debris into a pile beside her for easy reach, and then settled down on her underbelly to look over her ankle.
“How is it?” Denin said, stepping forward for a look himself, though he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Just a sprain I think. Glad we found this place, I probably shouldn’t walk on it much more.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“No, I’m fine. Just see what else you can gather for the night.”
“Plenty around, shouldn’t be much trouble.” He dropped his satchel beside the fire and turned to start on his task.
While there was lots of wood around, Denin quickly realized that it wasn’t all worth burning. There were small cracks in the floorboard above, and though they didn’t offer any useful light, they allowed little droplets of rain to occasionally slip through and wet whatever was beneath them. Though these pieces weren’t so wet that it would be impossible to get them to burn, it would make the task a greater challenge.
For this reason, it took Denin longer than he expected to gather a sizeable pile of appropriate burnable for their little fire. By the time he returned to Phyla’s side, the gray dragoness had used her own pile to grow the fire, turning it from a small glow for light into something that actually provided them with heat.
He hadn’t thought that would be necessary since they were dragons and it was summer, but as he settled down on the opposite side of the fire, he noticed her shiver.
“Would you like to lay together for warmth?” he asked, lifting a wing to invite her over.
Phyla shook her head. “I’m fine.”
She shivered again, but it wasn’t as strong and he had a feeling she was purposely trying to hide it. She began to unroll her picnic blanket and soon had her poetry book in claw, though she didn’t open it to read but instead watched the fire.
Denin looked around the room, trying to think of something to say to occupy the time since they would be stuck for a while. The only sound was the muffled rain hitting the porch above and the periodic bursts of thunder.
“So, um…quite a day this has been,” he said at last.
“It has been.”
“Lucky you remembered this place was here.”
Phyla nodded, and then there was silence. They both stared at the fire.
Denin tried again. “Do you want to read aloud from your book?”
Phyla looked up at that. “I thought you didn’t actually like poetry?”
“I mean…I never said that.” It was true Denin didn’t really care for it, but anything was better than sitting in silence at that point.
There was something new in Phyla’s gaze, though he couldn’t quite place it. Curiosity maybe. “That’s fair. I’m shy about reading aloud though.”
“I see.”
More silence, but this time Phyla was the first to break it, just as Denin had begun to stare at the fire in desperation.
“You can come over by me and read on your own if you’d like.”
He looked up just in time to catch a small smile from Phyla, then smiled back and moved to her side. “I’d love that.”
Phyla slid the book over once he had settled in and opened it to a bookmarked page. “This is one of my favorites.”
He read over the poem. It had to do with winter approaching and there was a romantic air to it. a line about flowers freezing made him pause as he remembered the flower Videri had given him.
“What do you think?” Phyla asked after giving him enough time to read.
“It reminds me…you might like this.” He reached over to his satchel and withdrew the flower, holding it out to Phyla. To his surprise, it was still coated in ice crystals, giving it the appearance of the being made from glass rather than plucked from nature.
The gray dragoness’s eyes lit up as she leaned in toward it, touching a claw to her chest. “For me?”
He nodded and smiled again, passing it over. “For you.”
“It’s beautiful.” She took the flower as carefully as if it was actually glass and cradled it in her paws. The fire reflected off the ice crystals, causing them to sparkle and glow with color. That color bounced along her gray scales, twisting over them like a light show as she turned the flower to look at different sides of it.
Denin found himself staring not at the flower, but at Phyla instead. Her gray hadn’t had too much charm to it compared to many other dragonesses he had seen, but now with the reflection of colors dancing across them they were a completely new sight. They sparkled like the flower and he realized that in the right light, he could stare for hours and not grow bored.
Phyla tucked the flower behind one of her horns, using her frill to hold it in place. She shivered once more, and this time Denin simply raised his wing and put it over her back.
He half-expected her to hiss and brush the wing off, but instead she smiled back and shifted over so that they were resting side by side. Neither of them made a comment about it, but Denin felt his heartrate pick up. Her scent was suddenly stronger too, and he had to fight himself to prevent his tail from starting to sway.
Phyla turned a page in her book. “This is another favorite of mine. If you read it for me, I’ll read the next one for you.”
“I would love that.” Denin stretched his neck forward to see the page, thinking about how despite the storm they had both gotten what they wanted. He had his date, and she now had her poetry reading.
It was difficult to keep track of time in the dark basement, but at they took turns reading they found themselves resting closer against each other. With her head against his neck, Phyla went silent partway through one of her readings, falling asleep in that very spot. As carefully as he could, Denin closed the book and slid it away from the fire, then laid his head down and curled partway around Phyla so that she would be more comfortable through the night.
Outside, the storm continued in earnest, but Denin felt a calmness in his heart. As sleep took hold, all he could think about was how comfortable that moment was, and that he hoped she would be willing to go on a second date.
Category Story / All
Species Western Dragon
Gender Multiple characters
Size 120 x 120px
A very nice tale you've spun here. Seems like they had a good time, despite the surprise nature of the date XD
This was a very beautiful read Valia. The opening was very nicely done and enjoyed the storm. The ending was sweet and heartwarming. Happy to see that the two made the best of the situation.
Thank you, Quruzz <3 Congrats once more on having the winning idea!
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