Little Flame

At long last, the entrance of a cave appeared before us. Weeks of death being at our heels
were over. Hopefully, this cave marked the end of our journey. My companion betrayed his
kingdom with freeing me and made it even worse when he got rid of the men accompanying
us on the journey to my former home: the castle. I remembered the first time we met: I sat
behind bars in a dungeon after my world shattered into a thousand pieces. He freed me, lying
to his brother the king. Slowly, I began to understand what he saw in me. Why he freed me.
His ice and my flame aligned somehow. They were similar and yet, opposites. He assumed
they originated from the same source: dragons. Ancient beasts that roamed our land long ago.

The cave in front of us could possibly be the lair of a dragon. My heart grew heavier. I’m
here, because my queen is dead. Killed by assassins while I had been visiting my former
teachers at the school for magic. Even after weeks, I remembered the rotten smell of my
beloved lingered in my mind. I burned her body. Time should not take its toll on her body.
She deserved at least some dignity. I clenched my fist around the hilt of my sword. A gift.

From her.

Kaya’s words echoed through my head:
You and me. Side by side as queens.

This was our last shot. The last X on the map we found in Kaya’s secret study. The last
chance to get answers to questions I never asked. I mourned her, wished nothing more but to
have her back. She left this information for me. It was about me after all. My past was a secret
to me, but one I was okay with. I was happy the way it was. But with nothing left to lose…
well, I could at least try to follow the trail my fiancé tried to follow.

I felt my magic buzzing in anticipation. It reacted to something. Or someone.

“Let’s hope the dragon is in a good mood, hm?”

I won’t lie. I was nervous as hell. But I also needed to get out of that dark headspace of grief
and loss. Keir stayed silent. We had no idea what was waiting for us. I felt the fire’s
excitement. As if it was an entity of its own. It felt like thousands of ants crawling under my
skin. The untameable nature of wildfire threatened to shatter any bits of control I had.

“Lead on,” my companion’s voice sounded shaky. Keir’s mask of calmness crumbled. If the
dragon didn’t like us, I hope we would meet a quick end. I wondered whether it would try to
burn us, or we are its dinner. Or both. Probably both.

A flame flickering in my palm lit up the dark as we entered the cave. No one said a word. In
dead silence we made our way through the tunnels. My flame flickered, expanded without my
doing. I tried to calm it down, but it refused to obey.

“Damn it.”

The deeper we went into the dark cave, the hotter and brighter my flames burned. Keir was
close behind me. He reached out to me, laying a hand on my shoulders. He had done this
often while we travelled. A small gesture that meant a lot to me. Not being as alone as I felt
made the weight on my shoulders a little lighter. Some nights were filled with horrible
nightmares. He cooled me down with his own magic, prevented me from becoming a burning
hot inferno while sleeping.

The sizzling sound of water evaporating on a hot surface filled the air. Keir had coated his
fingers in ice before touching me. A wise choice, it seemed. My body temperature had risen.
Fire couldn’t kill me. At least not my own. If the dragon’s fire could kill me… well, hopefully
we won’t find out. I usually felt comfort in the warmth. But seeing my fire doing whatever it
liked scared me.

“Gwyn,” Keir froze.

I was busy with taking care of not accidentally setting something on fire, that I hadn’t noticed
we were standing in a giant hall. Across the hall with a beam of light on his head, laid a
dragon. Fiery coppery scales worn down from time lined its enormous body. This colour…
my braid, knotted from weeks of travel were a perfect match to what the dragon’s scales may
have looked like a long time ago. A magnificent beast. A beautiful creature. We found it. We
found a gods damned dragon. “Is it… alive?”

I took a step closer, fire rushed through me. It erupted from my body, filling the space
between me and the beast. A sea of flames. In an instant, its eyes snapped open. Bright golden
irises that looked like my own watched me.

“You.”, a voice rumbled through my head, ancient as the cave I stood in.

A voice rattled through my body and made my bones tremble. Ancient power rumbling
through the dragon’s lair. My magic whirled through my body in response. As if it recognized
its origins. The feeling of familiarity calmed the fire. It knows where it came from. “Me?”
The dragon stared at me, studied me. It felt as if the creature was able to see right into my
soul. It saw the past, the present, the future. It dived deep into the black chasm of anger and
grief I carried within me. The dragon felt the emptiness Kaya’s death left behind and the guilt.
It recognized the gaps of my memories. It knew everything.

“Close your eyes.”

I obeyed. It’s not that I had a choice. In what seemed like a dream, I opened my eyes again.
Suddenly, in the corner of my eye I saw two figures standing next to each other. I knew this
was a memory I had lost.

I was much smaller, could barely reach the knees of the people standing next to me. One of
them wore a long white dress, the other pants of a deep red colour. Their faces stayed hidden
from my sight, but deep down I knew them. My parents. My younger self reached out a hand
and now, the red dragon’s head appeared in front of me. It had closed its eyes and let the child
place it’s small hand on its head. Flames erupted from the child’s hand. The dragon grunted.
The sizzling sound of fire burning through flesh made me want to scream at myself:

Take your hand off!

I couldn’t scream. I was no more than observing events that had already happened.
The dragon didn’t seem to be in pain. It seemed to be… amused?

The scenery before me was filled with joy and warmth. I felt how much this child – how much
I – was loved. Knowing this was just a memory, a reality long gone, threw me in the dark hole
I tried desperately to crawl out of.

The darkness has been growing inside me, threatened to win. I fought back. Every day. Some
days, I didn’t know why I was still fighting. I wanted to stay in this dream-like environment.
Forever. I wanted to stay the little child. I still didn’t remember how my life had been, but I
felt the unconditional love of my parents. I felt the trust they had in the dragon. It won’t hurt
their daughter. I felt the deep connection between myself the person wearing red pants. The
one who I think is my father. I felt their connection through magic. Fire magic.

My eyes snapped open; the dragon’s head hovered before me. Tears streamed down my face,
dropping on the floor. I had no memories of my childhood. But I knew I had been loved very
much. The scar caused by my fire a long, long time ago was still visible on its forehead. The
shape of a children’s hand. My hand, I realized. Shivering, I stretched my hand towards the
dragon. It took me everything to not back off, to not run away. My hand hovered above the
dragon’s head. It pressed itself against it, matching the smaller handprint from centuries ago.

“Welcome home, little flame.”

About the Author: I’m Ilka and I study German and English at the moment. I adore my two cats and playing video games. Even if “playing” is an understatement at the moment because I got into modding games (mostly making new outfits), which results in me start and close the game to test whether the stuff works or the game throws a tantrum. 

Photos by Ilka Ubben, from game Baldur’s Gate 3.