These Alien Dragons

Chapter 12 (T.T.)

My eyes opened as Coral devoured me into darkness. I lay still as my brain processed what happened.

I had dreamt of my family... and Coral.

It had felt all so real – the capital, the reef, Swell. Everything.

Yet I was so far from that.

I sat up slowly before I yawned and stretched myself, seeing that the water was a calm pristine blue, a stark contrast from the blood and death last sunrise.

My stomach rumbled. I hadn't eaten since...

How long had it been since the time I ate?

I tried to count how many times Anemone had fed me, but I had lost count since the umpteenth time.

I turned around to see if the eel was still in the crack. Sure enough, it was still there, waiting for its next meal.

Joke's on it because it was my next meal.

The eel eyed me with its small unblinking eyes and gaped its mouth at me, as if it were hissing.

I snapped my mouth at it, but it darted into the crack, and I bit my tongue. A bit of blood dripped from into my mouth, and I gently bit my tongue to stop the bleeding.

The eel wasn't like the crabs and snails that had wandered into my alcove in Undercurrent territory.

Speaking of crabs, I could try to find one here before I left for the River of Beaks and the Rachis Jungle.

I swam out of the reef and searched the other hollows for what I could find. The only things I could find were a map of planet Eukarya on a long sheet of waterproof paper and a bag woven out of multiple types of seagrasses. The map was detailed in showing the poles, continents Eukarya and Bacteria, and the planet's ocean currents in their entirety.

A map of the planet was required in most OceanWing settlements, including the capital. But because I couldn't reference the capital's map, this would do for now.

As I rolled up the map and put it in the bag, I realized that I would be an easy target out there with the pearls on my horns and neck.

I took them off, placed them in the bag, and swam around the reef one more time to find a crab. I found none, meaning that I would have to go hungry today.

I then swam away from the reef and surfaced, seeing how far I was to the jungle. I was maybe twenty to thirty dragons away, not far from it, and I could see that the sun was near its highest point in the sky.

With that in mind, I went underwater and swam towards it, to the mouth of the River of Beaks.

As I got closer to it, I could see sand slowly pouring out of the banks. But it wasn't sand, it was silt.

And in that silt, something moved in it. Something like an eel, but more scalier and fluid in its movements.

Snakes.

The River of Beaks was infested with snakes that could kill a dragon easily. The same snakes that lived here could be found all over the world. It just so happened that they liked to congregate here.

I surfaced before I got into the river and heaved myself onto brown wet sand that lined the sea and the riverbanks.

Before I shook myself, I caught my reflection in the river's water.

A dark blue dragon I was, with grey eyes like stones. A burn mark was on the right side of my neck, at the end of my gills. My form was less powerful than Flood's, but still dynamic enough to navigate the ocean.

I resembled a lost heir, far from home, far from her dragons.

I shook myself to get the droplets of water and wet sand that had clung onto my underbelly off me before venturing into the forest.

The trees were tall, with thick brown trunks and bright green leaves. Vines curled around branches, flowers on them blooming. Birds sat on the ground hopping from one place to another. Some of them flapped into the trees as I approached them.

About thirty talonsteps into the jungle, I saw a large lump near the riverside. As I got closer to it, I realized that It wasn't a rock or a pile of sky-creature corpses. It was a dragon's corpse, and it was covered in the river's snakes.

Originally published: 04/22/2023 (typed up final manuscript of chapter 12, book 1 to page); edited: (WIP)