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“You must come now, and quickly.”
Spoken just above a whisper but in the iron halls of prayer they echoed into a scream. This was not a place where words were spoken.
The Elder, whose name had fallen out of memory, was the first to break the silence in 15 years.
He needed them to move, they were all in great danger, but the shock of hearing him speak outweighed the message he was trying to convey.
His words had acted to paralyze them and they stopped what they were doing, mid prayer, mid meditation, and stared at him
He repeated them, this time louder, and they turned from words into clear instruction as they amplified off the iron walls.
Immediately, in a mass surrender of free will, everyone stood and formed a line, shuffling quickly as the Elder led them from the hall.
Looks were shared between the monks as their robes swept softly along the metal floor, a mutual anxiety for what lay ahead. For many these were the first words and first activity they had seen since seeking refuge.
The Elder opened the doors.
The monks gasped.
The door opened out to the courtyard at the top of their mountain and the monks raced to the small wall on the far side, following the Elder.
Views spilled out in front of them leading as far away as the sea. There were no towns nearby. They were isolated.
Isolated from people, from nature, from animals. No bird song was heard this high up, no tree could grow. They had chosen refuge and in exchange had given up a life connected to the world around them.
Here there was only prayer. Silence.
And a wounded dragon.
They had found it at the base of their wall with only a flicker of life in its eyes and they had nursed it back to health, its eyes lit with fire but its wings still broken. That dragon was now flying in front of them, the wind from its wings knocking them back.
As its throat started to glow orange, the monks were too slow to flee.
Its eyes were ablaze, definitely more than a flicker now.
It appeared massive and featherlight simultaneously.
Fire rained down on them and scorched the words etched into the iron above the door in a language even the Elder no longer knew.
“Never Trust A Dragon”.
Written daily using the #vss365 word prompts on twitter, compiled weekly into a story of exactly 400 words.
#break #paralyze #surrender #anxiety #isolated #flicker #featherlight
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