Maria and Chester

A Story by rachelovespigs

What happens when a lonely girl in a big city runs into a dragon? This modern day Beauty and the Beast story is definitely in it's first draft, but I'm excited to share it and get feedback. Thanks!

“We, compounded of dust, and the light of a star.”

--Loren Eiseley

Chapter One

“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.” --The BFG

It was one of those first really cold days in the city, after a summer of gentle warmth.

There was a surprisingly brisk wind, unusual, something that no one was truly prepared for. The leaves were still full and green on their trees and the people had not yet changed into winter shoes from their sandals. The leaves on the trees were still green, but the cold was going to change that.

The rain appeared late in the afternoon and from the moment it began, it was torrential. The wind blew it diagonally into the ground.

If someone was looking, they could see the precipitation reflected in the windows of the brightly-lit shops. In that reflection, if you were patient enough to watch, you could see the rain turn slowly into flakes of snow and settled ever more gently onto the pavement. To the city-goers, who were busy bustling about in the big city, it seemed like the snow fell quickly, catching them in unawares. To someone who was watching only the snow, however, it seemed that slowly the day became a gentle blanket of muffled, quiet white night.

The next morning the children were able to make snow angels in the middle of the busiest streets, because no car was silly enough to drive on such a pristine and shining two feet.

However, dear reader, let’s rewind for a moment and return to that afternoon when the storm began. Protected from the street, in the heart of a bustling downtown, there was a bookstore, that was remaining warm and dry and pleasantly noisy. Out of its windows slipped a glowing, golden light that reminded an onlooker of a buttery warmth. Outside, the big old green and gold sign persevered through the storm, glowing determinedly. Inside the shoppers milled about, surrounded by the bookstore’s quiet magic--books.

Anyway, the cold world Maria slipped into that night was far from calm. She had been so wrapped up in her book shopping that as she began to make her way home from the bookstore, she was struck by how suddenly the world became so blustery and frigid and unpleasant.

Luckily Maria was the sort of person who checked the weather report, so her dry, warm, bundled-jacket state was nothing to be concerned about. It was her newly-purchased books, cradled like a newborn, when she stepped outside, that she wished she could preserve.

It probably didn’t matter much anyway, because most of the books were used and already a bit worn. Yet, she still was sad to soil her possessions, even slightly.

Her march against the wind was a slow and painful one. The blustery world yanked off her hood, and her dark mass of ringlet curls escaped into the wind, protesting their tether to her head. Her boots crunched against the ever-growing pile of snow. Her nose and ears stung and turned pink. She marched resolutely, thinking longingly of the warm apartment waiting for her a few blocks away.

It was a miracle, then, that she somehow spotted two small gleams of bright yellow light in a dark shadow across the street.

***

Her neck jerked to the right in a rigid, shocked twist. Her eyes widened and her breath quickened. Her body stumbled as it turned to align with the direction she faced. At first, her brain wasn’t sure how to register what her eyes were insisting to be true.

Maria gasped. It was a dragon, it had to be. She blinked through the snow and stared through the hot fog of her breath in the cold air.

No.

Yes, it had to be. Maria’s jaw dropped.

Chapter

Throughout her entire body Meg felt a pulse of joy such as she had never known before. Calvin’s hand reached out; he did not clasp her hand in his; he moved his fingers so that they were barely touching hers, but joy flowed through them, back and forth between them, around them and about them and inside them.”

-A Wrinkle In Time

There was a creature crouched in the shadows behind a wall, looking at her. It's sharp ears twitched and she realized with a shock that the noise they were responding to was her gasp. The ears had flicked at the same instant her warm breath had whooshed past her cold lips.

Yellow lantern eyes met hers. They were sort of feline and sort of canine, and a sort of precociously intelligent in a way that resembled consciousness.

The dragon blinked once. It was disorienting, exactly like a strobe light--it was bright and then it was dark and then it was bright again. Its beautiful, long lashes swished with the momentum of his eyelid. His huge scaly nose quivered. The creature curved its long neck to face her more directly. There was something about his expression that she couldn’t--couldn’t quite place. It was something more, like the way angels are sorta human, but also something else.

It’s dark scales shimmered with the light--green-glinted, red, purple, white.. all of the colors of the rainbow, and then some. The creature held itself the way humans hold themselves, with a sort of intelligence, a self consciousness, but with four legs and wings. It had wings. The neck extended to a long body, and the creature was about the size of a deer, but somehow aerodynamic and maybe a bit reptilian. His powerful legs crouched slightly and a gleam of sharp silver claws flashed and caught her eye.

Maria wondered briefly about her sanity. This all had to be unreal, and yet there he was. He could not possibly be anything but real, and he could not possibly be anything but a dragon. Maria loved to read, and especially as a kid she loved to read about worlds full of magic--this dragon felt like a character from one of her novels; it was unreal and wonderful. If she was asked how she knew it was real she would not have been able to explain, but in that deep place within her that knew--it was as real as she was.