[FM] January Topic: Dragons
Jan. 24th, 2008 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changehistory"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed". -G. K. Chesterton
He waits now, always. There are shadows that make him skittish, imagining a blade within them. Where before, eternity stretched out at his fingertips dragging on with limitless possibilities, he feels now that he treads lightly forward on borrowed time. He listens, always alert, breathing slow and shallow, as soft as he can make it so it won't cover the whisper of sound of time about to stop.
It's futile, though. When time stops, he'll never know it, he'll have no warning. He's clawed his way back into this world, holding tightly to renewed life, but in an instant it could be gone. It is a frightening glimmer of mortality that haunts his steps now. Once escaped, he cannot truly think he'll be imprisoned again. It won't be a captor that comes for him, hand on his shoulder, fingers cutting in with a passion born from twisted responsibility. It will be Death.
Time was not the dragon, not truly. He was, always, and now he knows himself to be hunted. An empty grave lies waiting for him, and the hero has always known how it must end, if it is to truly be over. A blade, his blade no less, swift and sure. It won't be fair, steel to steel. He won't even see it coming, he knows. A breath, a moment frozen, a flash of steel, and the dragon will fall. Today. Tomorrow. A week from now. A month. A year. A century. It doesn't matter, when time dances at the hero's will, and he can skip across it like a stone across a lake, never resting. Wherever the dragon goes, he will be found. However long the hunt takes, one day it will be over.
Even he knows enough to know that is how the story must end. It is just a matter of time.
330 words
He waits now, always. There are shadows that make him skittish, imagining a blade within them. Where before, eternity stretched out at his fingertips dragging on with limitless possibilities, he feels now that he treads lightly forward on borrowed time. He listens, always alert, breathing slow and shallow, as soft as he can make it so it won't cover the whisper of sound of time about to stop.
It's futile, though. When time stops, he'll never know it, he'll have no warning. He's clawed his way back into this world, holding tightly to renewed life, but in an instant it could be gone. It is a frightening glimmer of mortality that haunts his steps now. Once escaped, he cannot truly think he'll be imprisoned again. It won't be a captor that comes for him, hand on his shoulder, fingers cutting in with a passion born from twisted responsibility. It will be Death.
Time was not the dragon, not truly. He was, always, and now he knows himself to be hunted. An empty grave lies waiting for him, and the hero has always known how it must end, if it is to truly be over. A blade, his blade no less, swift and sure. It won't be fair, steel to steel. He won't even see it coming, he knows. A breath, a moment frozen, a flash of steel, and the dragon will fall. Today. Tomorrow. A week from now. A month. A year. A century. It doesn't matter, when time dances at the hero's will, and he can skip across it like a stone across a lake, never resting. Wherever the dragon goes, he will be found. However long the hunt takes, one day it will be over.
Even he knows enough to know that is how the story must end. It is just a matter of time.
330 words
