WEALTH

you are the child, moonlight in your blood, always caught staring up, up, up and above them all, wishing you could fly. you don't know yet the meaning of this feeling, the nature of this feeling at all, a destiny burning soft and low in a body small and vulnerable and defenseless. 

you don't know that your life is hard. that there is that sort of thing - suffering. you know that you are hungry sometimes, that your crying will sometimes grant you the rubber nipple of a bottle, but more often than not only the heavens seem to hear you. the starlight spilling through your blinds, shadows stretching long and intimidating in your crib. 

your blanket, a second skin, swaddling you, smothering you, holding you grounded. 

not yet, little one. not yet, not yet. whispers of your mother's voice, but you don't know it's her and you don't understand what a memory is. you know sometimes only that you feel heat, a bubble of warmth, a pleasant façade - what could have been. 

sometimes, when you wake, you are clutching your blankets so tightly you nearly tear through them. your foster mother swaddles you tightly and presses a finger to your nose and you laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and her brows crease, gently, as she remarks to herself how odd it is the way your nails grow.

OCT 2 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
229 WORDS

☉

RECREATION

you start to think. you start to become more than the sum of your parts. abstractions and intricacies, dreams following you into the waking world and nipping at your heels, haunting you with visions of a past made of ash and a future burnt up by reckless wildfire. 

someone tries to steal your best friend's stuffed ariados and you hit them. and you keep hitting them, bones growing, that fire in your veins a vicious, snarling thing, landing you in a locked bedroom for weeks on end, your only solace the love notes slipped under your door. 

dreams are not for you, freak, and you spit in their face, but you stand in front of the mirror with black scales on your arms and a pain over your brows. her hands are the first you let wander over the bumps on your forehead, hidden in your hairline.

doctor's appointments and pills and when that doesn't work, another foster home, another family, your best friend and her stuffed ariados left behind, the golden string between you fading, slackening, becoming nothing but a forgotten once-tether. 

your name shows up on a screen halfway around the world and within weeks, they're on your doorstep, telling you they've found you. they've finally found you.

and they love you so much, freya.

you meet your first dragon, lyune, and the rumble in his throat sends you back, back, back to that moment, part of you not yet you, still moon and stardust and part of the universe, hearing your name whispered as it's meant to be.

daughter of the hunt, he says, welcome home.

OCT 3 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
269 WORDS

☉

LOVE

they tell you who you are. they tell you about your mother, about how she was so very strong. and about your father, who wanted to give you the world, who knew he would fail time and time and time again. they tell you he is alive and well and one day, he hopes, you will find it in your heart to forgive him for all the mistakes he didn't want to make. 

the cruelty he hoped to free you of. 

and you listen with bated breath, an almost-dragon at your side, black scales glittering in the firelight. his tail glows softly atop the stone floor, mimicking the shifting movements of the hearth. you stare into the embers and you clutch a crescent-moon pendant in your hand.

they say you are family. they say they understand if you don't ever see them the way they see you - mother and father to daughter - and you don't care for the history anymore. you don't care for their reasons for finding you. you throw your arms around them and you pull them close and you think, finally, because this is yours. this family is yours. 

you are meant for greatness. your name has been passed down for generations. you are a keeper of wisdom, a piece of a greater whole; they lament on what's been lost by your mother's passing and they celebrate your devotion.

as the world comes apart at the seams, you will hold it together.

you train with the blade, your adoptive father's specialty, and you learn aerial combat alongside your adoptive mother. tutors, scholars, mentors come to you and you sharpen your wit, your tongue.

you never see your childhood friend again. instead, you meet a boy. in the backyard of your family's cottage, you tell him of the endless hunt and how you are destined for greatness.

and then he laughs at you.

and then you kiss him. 

OCT 5 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
320 WORDS

☉

CONQUEST

there is death at your door. you lay to rest the woman you will never become - touch-starved, self-exiled, lost - and you shed her name, freya, and claim your birthright. your father's dragon, the herald of the morningstars, is a guardian once left to protect the secrets of a dwindling, thought-long-gone legacy.

he watches over you now as you wade into the water, as nervous fingertips curl up and over the horns that have finally burst through skin. he can taste the fire that sits in your belly, sense the restless spirit that has haunted you all these years. he can feel it in his own as he greets you in the pool.

a half-moon necklace rests under your collarbone and moonlight shivers overhead. lyune hisses. dragons slither into the water. you are up to your hips now, arms at your sides. patchwork scales gleam on your arms and indigo eyes open wider, chin tilting as you face your rapture. 

they bathe you in the waters of your ancestral home and you become artemis, a name forged by the snarling and thrumming and keening of kindred spirits, drawing you away from the thrashing of the physical world and into yourself, toward that spirit, now unveiled, shuddering with anticipation, yearning to be known.

you are outstretched, phantasmal and resplendent, more than yourself, lost in an endless sea of ancient hide and bone, and then the fire touches you and you are you. you are made a wonder and you are made whole.

and as all rituals do, you meet this one's end.

you rise from the water and step barefoot onto the earth. the dragons recede and your mother and father wrap you in a towel and tell you they're proud and with tears in your eyes, you repay them the only way you know how.

'artemis,' they say, and

'morningstar,' you reply. 

they will never know the weight of your spirit; they will never bear your horns; they will never be your blood, but they will walk with you as equals. your legacy will be their own.

so as you hold them close, your mother and father, who sought you out of duty and raised you out of love, they become more than just protectors of a legacy almost lost. they become more than just keepers. more than servants.

like you, they become draconid.

OCT 5 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
392 WORDS

☉

BIRTHRIGHT

she wakes in a cold sweat, sheds sheets and slips bare out of bed, fumbling through belongings, digging and searching while mist leaks from her pores, suspended in that almost-not-nearly-awake state, a metal mirage on her chest, a weight familiar and unfamiliar. 

the pendant sits in a chest, is lifted up by shaking hands and into the moonlight, sapphire at its center sparkling blue. a faded memory not her own twists around it, against a backsplash of walls that do not match her own. 

her breath catches and fingers go searching, finding only the wispy hairs at the crown of her head, smooth, unblemished skin beneath.

the dream twirls away from her, dwindling with what's left of the moonlight. dawn stretches over the earth and she stands, legs sore after waiting hours for a ritual that would never come. she grits her teeth, stands, and the pendant bites into the soft meat of her palm. 

BEGINNINGS

☉