Far in the frozen south

Flamegill is lost and alone, with only the old stoiries for company. She seeks the truth behind the tales, but will she find it?

The waters carry secret truths which all who live in them know. The words are whispered amidst the silty particles of sand and drift softly up the estuaries, audible to those who know to listen. In the warm waters of the shallow ponds, the koi know the deepest truths and the most secret legends that the rivers keep in their hearts.

Flamegill knew the tales, her school-mates speaking it in the flutter of their gills and the wave of their brilliant fins. They danced in the warm sunlight, golden beams illuminating their lithe bodies and giving them a nebulous, ethereal air. All of them dreamed of the rivers, the deep waters and the rushing, thunderous roar of the great legends.

Sometimes it felt as though Flamegill dreamed further and deeper than her peers. She drifted in their wake, filmy fins fluttering, as she lost herself in the tales. And ever so slowly, it seemed that the dreams frittered away more than just her time. Her school swam faster and harder, flitting through the dark waters of wintertime like flames in the shadows as the colour leeched from Flamegill’s scales and she glowed ever brighter in the gloom. Flamegill’s body gleamed like bone, like ice in the frigid waters and the wakes she followed went cold.

She was lost.

There was only the water and the stories it told to comfort her in her solitary wanderings. Memories darted through the waters alongside her, distant whispers of half-forgotten voices accompanying her as she sought the deep truths.

But the cold seeped into her bones and frosted on her scales – where once was warmth, red and orange and yolky gold, now was white and grey and the iridescent shimmer of blue and purple. The northern waters where her school once swam became scalding hot, and she fled to the south. Her wails of loss echoed in the empty expanses, weaving between the waves and washing up on abandoned shores to seep between the grains of sand. She knew not where her family was, and she was lost – the legend slipping away from her grasp.

One day, as she drifted listlessly amongst the ice floes, her body barely distinguishable from the grinding ice that floated above, she saw that the sky above was mirroring her scales. Blue and purple tinged with green danced in the sky above, a celestial school of scales just like her.

As the light pierced through the waves, it coloured the water and breathed new life to the stories it contained. Flamegill remembered the warm tales whispered of in those shallow pools, and though the feeling was now as alien to her as the stars above, the words remained hard and bright and true. She sought out one of the kings of the ice, who might now how she could chase the legend which she had thought was lost. For now, she no longer felt as alone, and the impossible seemed closer than ever before.

Flamgill found the great lord of the icy wastes, he with the deepest scars, the longest tusks, the largest harem. Though he eyed her with the thought of food whispering in the depths of his gaze, he was flush with food and attention, and her questions amused him. And so, he told her of the great frozen flow that brooded in the south.

With a new determination, the legends whispering in her wake, Flamegill sought out the icy waterfall. Though she had once dreamed of doing this with her friends, all of them rising like an algal bloom in the first flush of spring, she was alone in the frozen wastes. Darkness whispered in the water as she flashed her fins. Her tail whipped the ocean into a frenzy as she launched herself skywards, the darkness unfurling into wings that lifted her frozen body higher and higher. Flamegill arced over the glacier, her body sparkling like a star. Iridescent scales flickered and shone in the moonlight as above her the aurora erupted into life once more. It mirrored the flashing lights on her scales and in her eyes as her fins stretched, her body shifted and lengthened and a new dragon joined the dance in the sky.