I had wandered with my white wolf at my side, aimless and carefree, until the shades of darkness began to lighten into morning. The hesitant warmth of a crisp autumn day purged my skin of any comfort and the resulting chills forced me to keep a brisk pace that lathered my sides. It had been hours since I’d left the southern realms of Helovia behind me and, though I often fooled myself of the cause, I came once again hoping to catch sight of the land by the sea and the glory it once knew. The images were hazy at best, but the cooling mists had travelled away from their borders (as they were so wont to do) and I smiled inwardly when they wrapped mirthfully around my knees.

However, above the sprays and above the quiet chatter of a world not yet awake, there arose a song so thick with sadness that I stopped in my wanderings to listen. The notes were low and proud and so beautifully crafted that I trailed each wounded rift toward the roar of the sea beyond. It seemed all too familiar and yet so far away, that song… a dragon song. It bit into my soul and began to flower as painfully as any heartbreak and as painfully as any grief I’d ever experienced. Yet, it was different, because it reminded me of days I couldn’t conjure to mind, days that were once mine and now stolen away.

Overhead, light began to bleach the skies in a golden aura that defied the saddened tunes that drifted across the land through the mist. It bent through the greying Edge and allowed me sight where I could not see before. In a moment of hesitation I struggled to ignore the eerie melody, but was instead drawn into the warped sense of loss it conveyed.

Without any rhyme or reason, I trailed the draconic symphony along the very borders of the World’s Edge until I encountered a small gathering of creatures unknown to me. Their heads were bent, their faces distraught, and somehow frozen by time. Everything around me slowed, because I’d seen this once before…  I’d witnessed the softening of their stares, the sloping of their shoulders, and the confusion that twisted their lips upon gazing directly at death.

Though what I saw was nothing short of a novel written in chaos that didn’t quite matter, at least not to me. I didn’t know those faces, but felt as though I should have. If hesitancy hadn’t kept me at bay, I would have understood what was at stake and I would have remembered, at least if I’d been able to gaze into those molten eyes before they closed for the last time.

They would have spurred in me my first memory of her, as well as her last. They would have reminded me of where I’d first heard such a brilliant song… I would have remembered Mirage the DragonHeart.



 "With a deep, yet feminine call, she sung a warm dragonsong over the area she suspected they lingered, which was confirmed when Akaith dropped below the canopy to greet Thor happily, chirruping her welcomes and celebrations to the new mother and daughter as she did so. Above them, Mirage smiled, before flying low, so that the canopy almost tickled her underbelly, a golden hulk creating a draconic shadow over the gathering."

“ Above them a glint of golden dust seemed to catch his eye and he smiled, confident that for once in his life he felt at home. No matter where she led him, he would be home. Mirage had been only a reminder that his heart had not only been claimed by love but by family as well.”