It swooped down and grabbed me underneath my arms. I was screaming and struggling wildly now, trying to free myself from the scaled creature that held me. My fingernails were nearly bleeding due to scratching the creatures paws, but to little effect.
"Stop moving before I drop you!" it commended, its voice telling me that it was a male, whatever it was.
"Let me go!" I commanded before managing to bite one of his paws. He yelped and let me go.
My eyes widened with fear as I began to fall from the massive height we were at. I began to flail wildly in attempt to fly, but unluckily for me, I had no wings. The ground approached me at an amazing speed, and as it neared me, I curled into a ball, waiting for a quick and painless death. Suddenly I was grabbed around my waist and I opened my eyes to see the creature wrap around me protectively. Seconds later we impacted the ground, the creature taking the impact. We then began to roll and the creature involuntary let me go, causing us to roll away from each other. As I rolled, my back hit a large tree, knocking the breath out of me and stopping my roll. The creature then came to a stop on his stomach and let out a deep breath.
"Ouch." he stated before standing, the night keeping what he truly looked like hidden from me.
"Are you ok?" he asked, walking to my side. I nodded in reply, still unable to catch my breath. He suddenly looked to the sky and jumped on top of me, hooding his wings around me like a falcon does its kill.
"SHHHH!" he commanded as he looked over his wing. Suddenly, what seemed to be a human flying appeared in the air. It stopped and looked around before continuing away from us. Once he was gone, the creature let me up.
"Your not supposed to be here. How did you get in!?" he commended pinning me to the tree I had landed against with his paw, my neck lying between his talons. His face just inches from mine, and although I couldn't see him clearly, I could tell that he was snarling angrily.
"What are you talking about? Where am I?" I replied, wrapping both my arms around the paw that pinned me to the tree.
"You, little girl, are in the Spirit World." he said, releasing me and stepping away. I gave him a confused look as I stood.
"So.........I..........I'm dead?" I asked, not truly understanding everything.
"No. you managed to enter this world through your's. How though is what you need to tell me." he replied. I began to search my mind for how I got here, but found nothing. I was only allowed to prod a certain depth into my memories. The rest was a mystery.
"I cant remember." I whispered. He sighed in reply.
"Your lucky I found you before Cross did." he stated, looking into the sky where the human passed us.
"Cross?" I asked, not really understanding him completely.
"Ill explain later. First we need to hide your scent, I could smell you from a mile away and that means Cross can to. Now follow me." he ordered before beginning to walk into the woods, me following hesitantly behind him.
My mind was racing, trying to take everything in. Here I was, apparently in the spirit world, running from a person named Cross, while being led by a creature that I couldn't see clearly and abducted me. Wow what a night.
"Ok were here. My scent should hide yours, so Cross shouldn't be able to find you as long as you're here." he stated, pulling me from my thoughts to see the entrance to a cave. About 30 yards to the left of the cave entrance was a pond. He probably used it for drinking or something. Suddenly the cave lit up, allowing me to see clearly inside it. The creature that brought me here though was around the corner of the cave, out of my view.
"Well, you coming or not?" he commanded from the side of the cave. I hesitantly took a step toward the cave and saw the tip of a blue tail. It tickled my sense of curiosity and I slowly walked inside to see the most beautiful creature I have ever seen in my life, a Dragon. He had his back turned to me, looking at what appeared to be a book shelf. The dragon was a beautiful blue with cream colored belly scales that ran from halfway up his neck to the end of his tail. He stood about 6 foot tall and about 10 foot long, tail and all. His wings were tucked closely to his body and his paws had 4 finger looking appendages with deadly talons protruding out of them. He had 2 gray horns about 12 inches in length coming out the back of his head.
"You seem interested in me." he said, catching me off guard. I hadn't noticed him turn away from the book shelf, and was now looking into his beautiful golden eyes, eyes that I had seen before but didn't know where from.
"You........you're a dragon!" I stated, half excited, half scared. I had seen the movies and knew what it mostly came down to when a human met a dragon.
"Yeah, and you're a human. Over there is a book shelf and my bed." he replied, pointing to a large shelf on the back wall and a pile of hay. The cave was surprisingly, not a cave, but a medium sized, circular area carved out of the side of a large hill. The entire room was very well lit by a dozen torches, only about 4 of which were lit giving off plenty of light to fill the room.
"So, tell me why your so uptight about me being here." I asked, sitting down beside the pile of hay he used as a bed. He sighed.
"You are a living spirit that managed to enter our world, so right now you are the most wanted person in our world." he replied.
"Why do they want me?" I asked.
"(SIGH) This is going to be a long night." he stated before walking to the pile of hay and laying in it. "When a person dies, there soul comes here to stay, but every once and a while someone like you manages to break the gap between the living and the dead and come here. When that happens, the many spirits that live here know that they have the chance to return to the world of the living, to live a new life, and will do anything to find the living spirit and kill him or her. When they do that, you can no longer return to your body, and it essentially goes to the highest bidder." he stated, averting his gaze from mine.
"So, there have been others to come here besides me?" I asked. He clenched his fist and closed his eyes.
"You need new cloths if your going to make it in this world." he quickly stated before standing and waking to the entrance to his home. "Ill be back, so stay here." he said before disappearing into the dark night air.
"I'm being hunted? What is going on here?" I whispered to myself before standing and walking to the large shelf on the back wall of the cave. I came to a stop a few feet away from it and began to scan the books over. Most all of which were written in what seemed to be a mixture of Chinese and Hebrew, but a few were written in Latin. Knowing good and well that I could read neither of these languages, I decided to grab random book and flip through it. I reached out and grabbed a red book, admiring the silky texture of the pages and cover. How a book could feel like this amazed me. I finally after some time opened the book and began to flip the pages until I came to a picture of a dragon and a girl. The dragon was smaller than most dragons, probably about the size of a house cat. It was perched on the shoulder of the girl whom had her back turned to the reader. The girl had blond hair and seemed to be walking in a desert.
"Kind of looks like the dragon." I whispered to myself , taking notice that the dragon in the picture looked like a smaller version of the dragon that brought me here. I sighed and put the book back into its place on the shelf before taking notice of my thirst. I was extremely thirsty, but the dragon told me to stay here. 'Its only 30 yards tops from here to the pond, what could go wrong.' I told myself, satisfying the fear of something going wrong. I then walked to the wall and looked outside, trying to find any dangerous things before skipping happily to the pond where I got onto my knees and plunged my hands into the crystal clear water. The cool water inside my cupped hand felt soothing, and I began to drink. As I neared my filling point, a laugh caused me to leap from the pond in surprise. Only after getting a safe distance from the pond did I turn to see what laughed. I soon spotted the source of the noise and began to make my way to the pond where a mermaid was swimming beside the bank giggling.
"A mermaid? There's no way." I said with a smile before waving at the mermaid. As I reached out to touch her, she retreated into deeper water, away from my reach. She then turned and motioned for me to follow her. I smiled and began to walk into the water. Suddenly the water in front of me erupted and I was sent onto my back. My vision was blurred by the water, and whatever hit the water was big. I quickly wiped the water from my face and looked to see the dragon standing where I had been. He was facing the mermaid, snarling at her wildly, but he didn't waist his time on her for long before turning to me.
" Are you out of your mind!" he yelled as he walked onto the bank. He was obviously mad.
"What did I do? I was just going to swim." I replied. This sent him into a rage.
"Trust no one. She didn't want to swim with you. She was going to kill you and take your life as her own!" he yelled, his teeth visible in anger. I moved my head to the right to see around the dragon at the mermaid. She was holding a knife in her hand, laughing as if she had made a joke. The dragon then angrily spun around and blew a huge jet of flame that made me wince at the mermaid. She dove and never resurfaced.
"Here are your cloths!" he stated angrily, throwing a shirt, some shorts, socks, and shoes at me before walking to his den. I watched him leave and changed, but didn't go inside the den. Instead, I stayed outside for at least an hour, drawing pictures into the mud, thinking about how everything wanted to kill me and take my body. What a world of crap I was in. I thought the spirit world was supposed to a wonderful place where everything loved and cared for everyone else, but I guess I was wrong. The lights inside the den had dimmed slightly, telling me that 1 or 2 of the torches had gone out, so I stood and walked inside. The dragon was asleep on the hay with his head laying on the red book I had looked at earlier. I walked to his side and looked at the page he was on. It was the one with the picture of the human and dragon on it I had seen before. I smiled at how cute he looked when he slept. His head was curled close to his tail, and his wins were fully extended, almost doubling his size. I starred at him for a while before deciding to find a place to sleep. I began to search the small cave for a comfortable spot, but all there was to sleep on was stone.
"Come on." the dragon said, causing me to turn to see him awake. He had his left wing raised to allow me to sleep next to him.
"It may not be as comfortable as what you usually sleep on, but its better than stone." he said, finally managing to get me to sleep on the hay with him. I sighed, deciding this was the best I was going to get, and walked to his side, where I sat against the beginning of his neck and chest area. He lowered his wing, allowing me to use it as a cover before closing his eyes.
"Goodnight." he whispered, causing me to smile at him. After a few minutes of watching him, I began to stroke his head, tracing the line between his eyes and down his muzzle before going back to the top to repeat the process. He curled his head around me and began to snore softly. I couldn't help but giggle at him snoring. After my giggle fit, I sunk down a little so I could get comfortable laying against him. After getting comfortable, I looked to the ceiling. Nothing particular stood out about the roof of the den, but I scanned it anyway. The dragons breathing causing me to rise with each inhale, and fall with each exhale. It acted like a locking chair, slowly rocking me to the wondrous land of dreams, and within minutes, I dozed off.