“Let me tell you: the only way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.”

-Evgeny Shvarts

There was fire and there was darkness.

The whole world was burning, smoke and soot blotting out the sun.

The only voice his own- Roaring his hunger.

Creatures born of pure elemental magic soared through the sky or strode over the cooling lava flows, swum in the deepest depths of the boiling seas.

Little creatures tried to flee but were soon caught in his talons. The moon hung low and distant. Volcanoes spat fire, eruptions of the earth's blood breaking the crust of the young planet he had come to claim.

The warmth was soothing and the blood of primordial creatures, magical and grandiose, flowed freely.

His old world was dying.

He had seen eons come and go, his descendants, even his whole race dying before him. He had been ready to perish with the fading of the sun.

But then he dreamed and in his dreams, he saw a new shining world, gods forming it from the blood and body of a slain elder being, more than and less than a god- and he did want to see it, wanted to fly in new skies, bring terror and majesty one last time.

The ancients had worshipped him as the darkness that comes at noon when his wings eclipsed the sun. Their long-deserted ruins still dotted the mountains and deserts, home only to the wind and the dust.

He had been alone for an age.

So he had spread his wings for a last long flight, leaving behind the smoldering ember that had nourished his world for so long, and flew into the cold empty dark.

He drifted among the stars and final sleep was only a wingbeat behind. But he arrived and for the last time, he ruled a new world.

But as it must, his time ran out and as he lay dying under a foreign sun his blood and his magic brought forth his children.

The tiny dragonling dreamed, as avaricious and grandiose as only those of his kind do.

Then there was a voice whispering and singing, soothing his temper and causing him to yearn to see the creature who made that noise, spun that magic.

He instinctively called for his mother, she who would baptize him with the blood of the prey, feed him so that he would grow strong and venomous.

And he woke from his long dream of the past and the first of his kind, long since faded into myth.

He forced his tooth through the tough leathery shell encasing him, and with the fluid bathing and nourishing him he spilled out. It was graceless and he was angry his small tail lashing. Magic embraced him, glyphs surrounded him and the song was louder and he wanted it to never end. A soft hand touched his head and blood flowed into his maw. Power arced between him and the songstress and wove a bond even death would not completely part.

His first thought and his first words, if words they can be called, they were more properly described as complex emotions, were:

“I am hungry, feed me!”

Alyssa thought- Cats and dragons have a lot of similarities.