The fire was alive, a roaring, twisting, joyous thing that raced from its confines and licked at the superheated air. Pouncing, it devoured, and whole lives burned. Stone heated and popped in its wake. It spiraled into the air like a dancing, stretching, leaping thing, seeking to destroy.
And the needle-sharp claws scrabbled on the hearthstones, as he turned, cold scales sliding like a slide of dark pebbles. Who, he hissed again, and a curl of smoke drifted, acrid, from his nostrils.
Her wings, trapped against her body by a binding of wool, tensed. The wicked flee when none pursue, the father always said. Not guilty, but unable to stop the flinch, the sinew screaming to be released, muscles clenching and signals telling her to flee. Her breath stopped, as his dark gimlet eyes met hers. And, even when her sister intervened, spoke up, stepped in, even then, when he breathed and the fire bloomed, she was afraid.
So afraid, as as her body glazed with sweat, as her sister twisted in the flames. So afraid, as the blisters raised and broke from the heat. They were left with the taste of ashes, and she longed for the cold.
They all lived in the cold, so they thought. For no one believed in dragons.
She wanted, above all, to be different. Reasonable. Thoughtful. Intellectual. She wanted words to be her bulwark, her cornerstone, her shield wall. She embraced the words that fed the cold, that brought clarity, established reason, precedent, safety. She disguised the cold-blooded scales with jolly fat padding, and surrounded herself with those she found gentle, reliable, unquestioning. Vegans. Ruminants, wise and kind. But though she sought the safety of the flock, they knew.
She was not one of theirs.
And the days passed. And the weeks. And her soul uncoiled, in what it deemed to be safety. And yet, the work, which should have saved her and salved and satisfied, frustrated. And the words, which were to have been her bailiwick became her bane. They twisted. They evaded. They were fraught with curves where she needed edges, mild when she needed… fierce. Everywhere she turned, she was thwarted. There was so much to express, so many ways to evoke verve and color and life. But the words denied her. It all seemed just beyond her grasp.
And no one could see.
“Good,” they said. “Your writing is good. And smooth. And flawless.” And nodded their woolly white heads, all at once.
And she growled. Low down, in the back of her throat, like a predator. And when they bleated, she flexed her hands and needled her desk with evil, ancient claws. And when she whispered, the paint blistered. And when they fled, like shoals of fish at the sharp fin of the shark, she sighed.
And a trickle of acrid smoke plumed from one nostril.
And to her despair, she discovered. She was her father’s daughter after all.