But I Was A Fool

If you’re new to The Môrdreigiau Chronicles, welcome! You might find the Glossary helpful for some of these words. Colons indicate the sea dragon’s thought communications.

Previously, the wishing bridge said to Elpis:

:Quite the waste of a wish. The boy is already yours.:

Now…

Read Part 1 / All Parts of “They Were Shining“

Elpis blinked away the tears. :Really? Then you haven’t granted me a wish!:

The bridge rumbled. :You shouldn’t have been so careless then.:

:Oh!: Elpis stomped her foot hard on the white coral wishing bridge. :You—!:

Tears filling her eyes, Elpis fled to the lowest parts of the palace gardens. As she went, she recalled her brother’s broadcast of his Goddess dream, and the bard’s song. How on earth could red flowers help?

She stepped through a coral arch and into a small garden. The corals were colored in various garish hues: orange bulbous forms striped with iridescent pinks and purples, mounds of spotted greens so bright they hurt her eyes. Long black strands of kelp tangled together. When she brushed by them, little spikes stung her flesh and threatened to draw her into their centre. Bright red flowers dripped out of black spiky leaves.

Bright red.

She touched a petal and gasped, jerking back her hand. Her fingertip reddened and blackened and stung like the soft petal had stabbed her.

Tentatively, she touched the drooping stem and suffered no ill effects. Were these the flowers from the song?

She gathered as many as she could without the petals touching her hands. She couldn’t put them in her robes, for that also functioned as her skin, and besides once she left the caer, she’d assume her dragon shape. She shuddered to think what it would be like to have those petals trapped under her scales.

Holding them out in front of her, arms stiff and straight, she headed to the palace’s own gate to the wild ocean. If she couldn’t save Heledd and her friends with her wish, she’d do it with her own two hands.

This is a response to the Smogust Story Hoard writing challenge by Bradley Ramsey and The Circus Dragon for the month of August. And yes, as it often happens with these month long challenges (often being precisely once before), it’s a serial.

Read Part 1 / All Parts of “They Were Shining“