The Emergence if Ice - The Storm Dragon

So there I was standing on the edge of the eyewall staring straight up into the sky, which seemed endless and clear. Every direction I looked there were violent swirling clouds like none we had ever seen before. There were legends of course...what did the ancestors think when their world was torn apart by fierce wind, waves higher than all the huts in the village combined and the howling roar from above...maddeningly loud for hours and hours...as if the gods were VERY angry... and then silence. Sun. Calm. They dared to peer out from their sacred rocky refuge only to see the same thing I was staring at right now!

I had fought the wind and rain, hunched over with my tunic pulled over my head, leaning with all my being into the wall of fury, stinging huge deformed drops of water stinging my skin.

My egg...my egg was cradled in my inner pockets, safe and warm as I had been instructed to keep it. But the wind was battering me so badly and I was not able to find the sacred caves that could barely be made out on the bark sketch that had been given to me with the egg.

Why now? Why gods of the sky, why now?

I hoped and prayed we would both survive. Then...as suddenly as it had started, almost startlingly quiet now. Blue sky, silence, peace above me. But I could see the far side creeping towards me. towards us. Although my egg had not yet hatched, it was alive. I could feel it humming and pulsing at night as I kept it warm and protected in my bed. I dare not trust the wild creatures near my humble home in the wooded flats just south of the mountains.

The Dragon Village was a six star sky trek, and I knew my egg needed to get to the village asap so that when it finally hatched it would have access to the fire and water needed for it to thrive. Sustinence that I was not able to provide.

But now... We had barely survived this first two days on foot and I was hungry, wet, cold and my egg...

The Egg! OH NO, where had it gone? It must have slipped out as the wind battered us and I pulled my tunic tight around us to stay dry and warm!

Just at that moment I felt the sky start pulsing again, only this time it was different. I looked up towards the distant thunderstorms roiling the horizon and that's when I saw it. I *think* that's when I saw it. I almost felt it first. This time I felt the pulsing in my chest, like a hollow drum beat. Rhythmic and faster now. Then she emerged...more beautiful than I had ever imagined! Icy scales gleaming with the sun, reflecting the sky like crimson and diamonds! She was weaving between the lightening bolds, laughing at the wind, even rescuing the birds that had become trapped in the eye of the storm.

She swooped down and nuzzled me, pushing her head under my tunic as she had become used to before she hatched. She smiled and chirped, eager to eat and to finally SEE the world!!

We had come so far already...onward to the village now...two stronger than one! She gave me new strength and somehow my clothing had dried, my tunic was twice as thick, and had grown two new pockets filled with precious stones and shells. My shoes seemed new again, the thinning leather now replaced with the same steely scales of her own skin. But unlike her sleek skin that shed wind and rain like the antelope sheds it antlers, the soles of my boots had so much traction now in the wet sand. it was as if the scales provided protection and connection to our earth.

And as the wind picked up, the two of us ... together now... hurriedly began the 2nd half of our journey towards the village, wondering what else we would face and conquer on the way?

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