Mindoraan
A short story
There was once a dragon living a miserable life, running away from the humans that sang the song of war against him. They were so eager to kill him that they would lose their lives on this path. But why? That was the question that the dragon asked himself every night before sleep, before he had to risk his life for some rest. Losing his whole family was the worst experience of his life, but what made him so miserable was the fact that he could control time!
Well, sadly, not enough to bring his family back. You see, he could manipulate time in a way that it would pass faster for an object, but he couldn’t make it slower. Maybe if he had learned how to do it, he could have saved his family that night. The night that those monsters attacked them with their flaming spears and their shiny shields.
He had this question in his mind since he wasn’t a grown dragon: “Why are they hunting us? What have we done to them to deserve this? Why do we have to run away all the time?” That’s why he knew these monsters; he got so much time alone to search for an answer, to seek a reason why his family should get murdered by these human beings, to understand them.
Well, he failed in that, too; there was no rational reason for his question. At least, this was his idea before that night. The night that today’s dragons remember as “Mindoraan.” So, what happened that day, you might ask. To answer that, we have to go back way back to the morning of that day, and you will understand what I mean by going way back!
That day, our lonely and miserable dragon was passing by a mountain near those human villages. It was an ordinary day after a long escape the night before. He was tired, sleepy, and sad after all his memories of losing his family came alive last night. Looking for a place to rest, he found a waterfall area covered with long trees and berry bushes. After looking for a place to hide, he was ready to close his eyes, but then there was a sound, a burst of laughter, you might say.
At first, he thought he was hallucinating, but then there was that sound again, once more. Looking around for the source of this sound, he finds a child, a human child! Oh, no, are there any humans around here? Where are his parents? Are they coming? They could kill me if they found me here! Fear of losing his life, he was ready to run away, but the kid was right over his eyes, throwing his hands in the air while laughing into the dragon’s face. What makes such a harmless creature become a blood-thirsty monster? That’s what was going on in his mind.
Was it worth it to risk his life to find the answer to the question that made his life so miserable? With no further thought, he made his decision and started to work. First, he went back to his hiding place right beside the gigantic stone near the waterfall. Then he began to use his ability, that same ability that was useless to him for his entire life. As the dragon used his magic, the child started to age faster, and it was like he and his surroundings were out of this world!
The child became a little kid, hungry and in the search for food, putting everything he could find in his mouth. Luckily, there were a lot of berries to eat! Then he became eight or nine years old and started looking around, searching for new things. Having fun with no thought of the world around him, jumping around, and drinking water from the lake.
In a matter of hours, he became a teenager, looking for more food, something new! Making stone tools and breaking trees down were his first actions. Making long and sharp spears came after that, and then there was fishing! That first step towards killing! “Aha, I knew it; this has to have something with them aging,” the dragon said to himself.
The experiment was working; he was on the right path; he even forgot about the fact that there could be humans around here. He kept going and pushed the kid to his limits, getting older with every hour passing by. Finally, he was an adult, and the cold nights of autumn arrived as the once-a-child human started making fire and hunting a boar for food.
He got covered in the shelter that he built on that exact day, which seemed to be a lifetime to him. Right in front of him was a campfire with a boar hanging on a stick getting cooked. The dragon was angry and confused; he had watched an entire lifetime of a human being, and even now, he couldn’t find the answer he was looking for! What? What makes them attack us? What makes them kill for no reason? The boar or the fish, I get it; he wanted food, but why us?
Desperate in the thought that he would never find his answer, thinking that his family death had been for no reason, something extraordinary happened. A group of knights arrived near the waterfall, trying to find a place to camp and rest for the night. That was when the full-grown child, for the first time, met his own kind. But his reaction to them was what made the dragon so surprised!
The moment that he saw the knights in their full, shiny armor, he took his spear and started to shout at them. That shouting sounded familiar to the dragon. That exact shouting that he could hear from all of his parent’s murderers. He was attacking the knights, but why?!
Of course, he ran away from that place to save his life and didn’t stick for long to see who would win a fight. I guess that’s obvious because that’s why we are hearing this story right now, but what about the answer. It took him a long time to process what happened that day, but he finally found his answer. It wasn’t some highly sophisticated and hard-to-understand answer; it was actually pretty easy. So easy that you can summarize it in one sentence: Humans are afraid of the Unknown!
Soheil Erfani Tabar © 2023. All rights reserved.
