“Meara!” She shouts, and it is all it took for me to place a foot into the bright, glowing light. It is too bright to look ahead, so I closed my eyes instead, putting one foot in front of the other and slowly walking forward. Even with my eyes shut tight, the light was still very bright, so I placed my arm over my eyes as well.
“You can open your eyes now.” I heard Merilla say:. To my surprise, when I opened my eyes, it didn’t look that much different from where we just came. I don’t know why, but I was expecting something more, like a hidden kingdom or a magical world.
“Why the long face?” Merilla asked, somewhat confused.
“ I don’t know. I guess I was expecting something more then just more trees and unending forest.” I am disappointed.
“ I know you are tired, but we are almost there then you can truly see the place for what it is after a nice long nap.” She is probably right, but I don’t say it. I just let out a heavy sigh and continued walking behind her as she led us down a long stone path into the forest.
Being tired and drained from the long nights walk, I did not notice approaching a huge stone wall with a big wooden door. To my surprise, I gaped at the sight. It looked like it had been here for ages, as it was covered with moss and vines.
Merilla stood in front of the door, as if waiting for someone to open it. I was just about to reach for the door when it opened, revealing two guards dressed in full armor, looking like something out of an old medieval book or movie. Without any questions, they let us in. Merilla simply nods her head and walks past them like they have known her for ages.
The two guards closed the door once we entered and stood guard in front of the door again. Peering my gaze away from the guards fully dressed in armor, I now realize the magnificent place we are at. It was like we traveled back in time, centuries ago, when there were no cars or phones. Some people have wooden wagons for transporting items through the small farmers market, and others carry items by hand or carriage.
I can’t believe a place like this was hidden right under our noses in the forest, and we never realized it.
For a place that looked like it traveled back in time, it did have miner things I spotted that looked like they came from my world—the human world, I mean. Everyone here had an animal by their side, which I guess is their spirit animal, like Merilla was mine, except that their animals were all strange-looking. Some looked like cats, but with the head of a bird of some sort, and others had the body of a bird with the head of a cat again. I still had to find out more about how this spirit animal thing worked.
As we walked through the village, I took in everything from the little cottage houses covered with moss on the roof to the people with their strange clothes, some with vintage clothes and others with somewhat modern-looking clothes that resembled the human world’s but with a different type of material that had more texture.
The markets were like treasure hunts, stalls over filled with the lands bounty. Jewel-like barriers, honey glowing like the morning sun, roots with spiced scent of rich soil. It is so peaceful and joyful here, as the children are laughing and chasing each other through the well-manicured pathways.
The one thing that stood out from the rest was how much the people’s spirit animal somewhat resembled their human. I looked down to Merilla and noticed the resemblance as well. The snow-white hair and piercing blue eyes. The spirit animal should be somewhat of extension of ourselves, I guess. Why else would they look like us, but in animal form.
I continued following Merilla through the little village until we reached another big gate, except this one was made of metal, and it was the entrance to what looked like a big white marble castle.
“ Behold the great castle of Valtor.” Merilla said proudly. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. Lush, terraced gardens explode in a riot of colors. Blood-red roses, vibrant purples, and yellows were so bright that they hurt my eyes. Fountains dance and shimmer in the morning sun as the water trails down in a steady stream. I have to steady myself to paint an everlasting picture in my head because I might not see anything as beautiful as this again, and I have to breathe in the intoxicating scent of the blooming jasmine
“Where are you taking me?” I was confused. Why would she be taking me towards the castle? Was my parent’s servant to the king of this magnificent castle?
"I live here with my mate. He is the king's spirit animal. Once spirit animals are mated, they live together just like you guys do when you get married.”
"YYour Mate? So, you are married?” She nods, and I take it as a yes.
In front of the metal gate are two more guards, and just like before, they open the gate for Merilla. I guess she is royalty if she is married to the king's fox. What would that make me if she were my spirit animal? Would that entail that I would have to bow down to her, a fox?
Lost in thought, I did not realize that we were already at the entrance of the castle.
“Wait here. I will be right back.” She ordered, and I did as she said. Minutes have passed, and Merilla hasn’t returned. I don’t know what is keeping her, but if I wait any longer, I will fall asleep while standing. Scouting my surrounding areas, I noticed a little water fountain in the garden with a bench. Without hesitation, I walked over to the fountain. If Merilla did return, she would most likely spot me here and fetch me.
Sitting down, tiredness swept over me like a heavy rainfall coming down from the heavens. Without realizing it, I dozed off on the bench.
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( Kaden )
The past few months, I could feel the darkness surfacing from inside me, wanting to come out, wanting to take over what little good I still had left in me. The council members had warned me to find a Mate before the darkness has completely taken over my body. They think that in order to find my true mate, it will prevent me from turning, which I highly doubt. Finding a mate was one of the rarest things to do, and I have searched everywhere in the last thirty or so years.
The council has been nagging me non-stop for the past few years and has arranged multiple suitors for me to see if one of them might be my mate, but I have no interest in any of them.
Every time the darkness takes over one more piece of me, the less interested I am in finding my mate. It was once known a long time ago that dragon shifters had to find their true mate and dent before it was too late, and one thing I knew was that I was not a dragon shifter. We would have known, and my parents would have known.
There were times I would think that a curse was placed on me by Cassandra, a witch I had a fling with a few years ago. She was furious when I turned down her marriage proposal, but over the years, I doubt she would dare to put a curse on me.
Every day, I would fear that today was the day that this darkness would consume me.
The stories my grandfather told me as a child said that if a dragon shifter did not dent with his or her true mate, the shifter would become a dragon permanently and become bad. You would not know right from wrong. I knew I was not a dragon shifter, but I was willing to try anything to prevent the darkness from consuming me. That is why I have searched over the years to see if there might not be a mate for me out there.
I had my men read through every book in the castle archives about elementals consumed by darkness, but they were unsuccessful in finding the true reason.
There were some very old books about dragons, but they didn’t study them because they were in an ancient language only the previous dragon-shifters could read, and dragons have been extinct for decades now. They were hunted for sport by a cruel king in a far-off, abandoned kingdom called Dravonia.
It is known that he was cursed by some witch after he killed her mate, who was a dragon. She made sure that the king would never leave his kingdom ever again by putting up a dark, smoky barrier around his kingdom. No one could go in or out of the cloudy barrier, except for dragons.
When the witch cursed the cruel king and his men, she gave them a distinct feature on their faces so that if they were ever to escape through the wall, we could recognize them. What this distinct feature was, we did not know because the ancient books were in Dragonian, and it happened so long ago that no one knew if the cruel king and his wicked men even still lived beyond the barrier. So, we had no dragon-shifters who could read the books for us. I never tried reading them myself, because I wasn’t a dragon. Dragons had nothing to do with my situation, and I won’t find the answers there anyway.
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