~Coral~

The sky is fire tonight. Brilliant molten reds and ember oranges-- illuminated with a tinge of the gold that lights a spark from the firepit as of a cold evening. The sky is fire. But not from the sunset.

I do not see this as I walk from the makeshift trading post and out towards the sea. I do not see it as I dip my toes in the lapping waves. Nor do I notice as I gaze out across the waters and think of things that I refuse to forget. The laugh of my brother, loud, and far from graceful, the fresh, soft loaves of bread my mother used to bake early every morning. It never occurred to me how she managed to get ahold of the flour for the dough. Or the sugar that made them sweet.

A yell tears me away from my thoughts. I can tell the voice is screaming words, and I can hear the frenzied tone, but I cannot gather meaning; the voice is too far away. Muffled by the trees and the thick, airless quality of my thoughts.

But it makes me look up.

Hundreds of gem-colored stomaches and tails and wings and eyes and long, white claws are above me. Their jaws are spread wide, issuing the fire that I had mistaken for the setting sun's color. I must have taken the flapping of their large, terrible wings for the crashing of the waves. But their keening . . . .Their hissing-- it grates against my ears and lends my thoughts a sharp, fevered quality. How could I not have heard that?

My gaze falls to the  water. It reflects the rainbow of the thousand-colored reptile herd, and looks to me to be a sea of treasure, of jewels and snow-white pearls. Gold and silver.

I rise to my feet, but stumble, distracted. Mesmerized.

And then some sort of instinct sets in. I narrow my eyes on the ground in front of me. The blood rushing in my ears thankfully drowns out the screeching of the dragons, and my feet speed along the sand toward my hut. 

But the fire is beginning to rain down. Like fallen angels from old island tales, each comet shoots to earth before fizzling out on the sand, or hitting the water and creating a large cloud of steam. I run and dodge to the best of my ability, and believe I will make it to my shelter, to my few possessions. I will survive, at least long enough to die with a weapon in my hands. And that was when it hit.

I didn't hear it coming. I didn't hear a whoosh. The sun wasn't in my eyes, I wasn't distracted. I just missed it. 

A searing pain, an awful, burning pain erupted in my legs, my back, and right arm. It was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was as if my skin was being peeled away. And at the same time like I was crumbling to ashes beneath it. My mind went fuzzy. I had only one thought.

Get to water. 

At some point in the last few seconds that felt so much longer than they were, I had fallen to the ground. I dragged myself across the earth with my left arm, pushing with my left leg. The sand grated against my burns like sand paper, and at the same time were pushed into my wounds by my bodyweight.

I screamed.

Loud, shrill, and terribly full of pain, my cry would have echoed across the island like a beacon for animals, humans, or dragons. But instead, the earth absorbed the sound. My teeth dig into the hard-packed, well-traveled sand, and it grinds and scrapes at my mouth. I breath in and swallow loose sand.

I wonder, if it had been allowed to scream freely, and join the dragons' awful, keening song, what would've happened to me. Would I have found a dragon at my elbow, its teeth in my neck? Or would I have brought help? Or a friend? 

It alarmed and tortured me that a bit of ground that I had traversed in thirty second or less took me such an eternity to cross now, with my injuries. I could easily imagine the the smallest children, the mere babies on the island had grown up, married, had children themselves, grown old and died of natural causes before I reached the sea. 

I do not know what happened overhead while I was making the journey to the water. What the dragons did. Every now and then I saw a bolt of fire nearby and felt a faint wave of heat, and it's a wonder I was not hit. My eyes were blurry with pain and sweat, my ears buzzed with panic, and my mouth stung with thousands of little cuts. Observation was beyond me. Perhaps I was hit. Perhaps I was beyond that level of feeling, too. Maybe I was numbed to stronger pain. 

With every foot I traveled, inches of my skin were peeled away. I imagined them, black and charred, falling to reveal red flesh.

I nearly fainted.

Taking a shakey breath, I extend my arm one final time in my futile movement forward-- and feel cool water ease the scrapes on my left hand. I drag myself forward.

A million little knives plunged themselves into my back. Gallons of cruel acid ate away at my flesh, turning me into a puddle, yet evilly keeping me alive the whole while. I arch my back and hold back a terrible scream, and small bubbles of precious air escape from my nostril.

Salt.

Curse my mind, curse my thoughts, curse this island and all the people on it. How had I not thought? 

A small sliver of a comment worms its way into the light in my brain, begging for my attention.

At least you know that you weren't hit by dragonfire again, it says, because you would have felt it. And what a great comfort it was, in that moment of agony, to know that I could still yet feel pain.

_____________

The fire above cast a strange light in the water.  It was dark yet light.  Crimson yet blue. It felt like shadow and made go still, abruptly stopping my thrashing in the stinging waves. 

The dark, I thought, the cool shadows.  

And I began to sink.

Lower and lower, and the light faded to a silken grey. I made my heart calm. I got ready.

And then I swam; quickly, fiercely, ignoring pain as much as  I could, trying not to yell out into the dark seas. The practice of making air last as long as possible was coming very much in handy. I hoped I was swimming in the right direction.

And then I hit an invisible barrier, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end . . . and it all went black.

And yet I could still feel my heart beating desperately against my chest, as if it was trying to escape. I could feel the clammy coolness of the deep waters, but I could also feel the fire of the salt fading, and I felt air against my cheeks.

I coughed. Loudly and wetly, and spat sand from my mouth. I removed a bit of seaweed from my hair.

So this is it. This is The Pit.

I heard something move in the darkness.

The Pit. Where the rebel prisoners go.

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Sorry I haven't posted in sooooo long!

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