The Enchanted Path (Book 1 of the Dreamfarers' tales)

Chapter 12 - To Dream, nay, to Awaken

Chrysantos, Dianthus and Cassidy waved goodbye to Griselda the following morning, for Chrysantos wished to discuss with Thalia the newest pieces joining the puzzle. Although shaky, he had a new clue to follow. Those apparently unrelated events were starting to stretch out to one another like stitches in the weaving of a spooky tale of nightmares and locked memories; in the middle was the significant gap of time between Griselda's accident and the latest events and, of course, the main character was well hidden. Assuming the 'Sphynx' griffin was talking about the same 'creature,' Chrysantos mused. There were still too many holes in that tale, and for each guess he made, Chrysantos had the feeling of leaning blindfolded over the ridge of a mountain.

Speaking of which. For the time being, Chrysantos reminded himself to push aside his cyclic assumptions and focus on the two foals descending the peak ahead of him. Dianthus and Cassidy chatted animatedly, trying to guess what kind of 'creature' could have caused so many troubles.

"What if it was a dragon?" Cassidy was saying.

"A dragon?" Dianthus repeated. "Have you ever seen a dragon before?"

"No, but my sister's mate claims he has and told me what it looks like," Cassidy said. "Have you ever seen one?"

Dianthus snorted. "What kind of question is that? Of course not!" A few pieces of debris rolled under his hoof.

"Watch your step, Dianthus" Chrysantos recommended. "The descent can be trickier than the climb. We are still several wing-strokes above the ground."

"Yes, Dad." Dianthus peeked over the edge to his left and saw the taller shrubs come into view again as they descended, some reaching out with their brushy branches, some with bare, gnarled limbs. The little unicorn could hear Cassidy's wings flap steadily following behind him. She had felt confident enough to fly her way down, and the trio could spare a stop and save precious time.

"Well, what does a dragon look like?" Dianthus asked after a while. He had only basic notions about those fearsome creatures: big, winged, fire-breathing reptilians with a soft spot for hoarding treasures. He knew, from his parents' teachings, of the existence of a kinder counterpart but much more rarely seen around there.

"Alcyone's mate —I keep forgetting his name— said that the dragon he saw was covered in bronze scales and its wings were the color of the sunset..." the pegasus told Dianthus. "He saw it from a distance, though, hovering above the southern mountain range...its roars echoed from wing's reach away."

"Mhm... the fellow sounds quite hard to miss. Madame Griselda would have recognized it," Dianthus pointed out.

"Yeah, you have a point."

Chrysantos turned an attentive ear to the foals' conversation. It was no dragon, of course, what he, nay, what Griselda had the misfortune of encountering that fateful day. The misfortune of hearing, he corrected himself. She never saw it coming. Then the umpteenth doubt popped up into his mind. Did she hear it at all? Was it a...a real sound, propagating through the air that we heard? The unicorn frowned in concentration but again, little was left of his experience within Griselda's mind to recall. It was so. Very. Frustrating.

"Madame Griselda talked about a wail, didn't she?"

Cassidy's voice snapped the older unicorn from his thoughts again.

"Maybe it was the Night-Mare?"

"I thought we'd already established that—" Dianthus leaped forth, jumping over the last step at the base of the peak. "That the whole ordeal was like a nightmare."

"No, I mean the Night-Mare," Cassidy repeated, stressing the last two words slowly. "It's a pegasus myth —rather silly to mention now that I think about it," she admitted. "You know, the kind of silly tale the grown-ups tell so that you behave." Then she snorted and added, sarcastic, "Not that you'd need any of that."