Heather Thomas

A drake and a wyrm.

You know what those are, don't you?

I thought.

Dragons.

Dragons of the earth, not of sky.

Below me I saw a long, long golden brown body twisting toward me through the ocean of cinders.

A huge, heavy-jawed head lifted out of the ashes to snap the flying man out of the air.

Just as the man had said, something very old that had slumbered deep beneath the earth was finally hatching, or maybe sprouting.

The wood wyrm turned its glass-bottle green eyes on me, and then it breathed a torrent of flame.

My own body caught fire, and it burned with all its ancient rage and sorrow.

It felt the pain of Glass River burning and the pain of so many other wildfires.

Wildfires that had grown bigger and faster and wilder given the overheated air, all the drying and dying forests.

Thousand-year-old trees consumed alongside the frail little things that scurried around them at a rate so much faster than they could be replaced.

It was a relief when I jerked awake.

I heard something outside of our tent, and I sat up fast.

My mother was gone.

I scrambled up, quiet as I could, and I saw her walking slowly into the forest.

I called after her, but she didn't turn her head.

I got it.

She had held it together for my sake, but she was going to go throw up now.