Fiction by Kira M. Tjomsland
The lonely breeze moaned through the sepia grandeur of autumn decay. Muted rays of off-gold sunlight filtered through crisp crabapples; branches permanently withered from the memory of heavy harvests. Their roots were soiled with the rotting remains of their life’s work.
Deep in an abandoned hollow, where spiders spin tapestries of silk and antlers lay abandoned, the dragoness lifted her aching neck, tasting the breeze as it kissed her scales. Her eyes, gold laced with an aged fog, caught a brittle leaf twirling in helpless descent. Tucking her wings closer, the cold-blooded wyrm shuddered from the chill. She had to keep moving.
Her scales, once a brilliant suit of amber and bronze, were now dull brown. Her limbs shuffled with the gritty gait of arthritis—her heavy wings too tired to fly. Still, she pressed on, only pausing for breath when she reached the gaping maw of an ancient stone cave. For a moment, she stood at the threshold, feeling the flame in her breast sputtering and losing heat. Then she ducked inside, the blunted edges of her horns scraping the rim.
The dragoness tried to ignore the blanched bones piled up before her, empty eye sockets staring at the next priestess—the next sacrifice. She kept her eyes on the object before her, stumbling and falling before the altar just beginning to film over with a thin coat of frost. Prostrate and trembling as her own claws began to freeze over, she strained to look up at the stone statue crumbling to life.
Scales peered from the heartless gray, glacier-white and brilliant. Eyes opened, deep and blue as arctic waters, as a crown of horns clattered like freshly-formed icicles. Dappled wings stretched open—a plume of frostbreath whispering into the air, dancing with the beauty of winter’s birth—and the world went dark.
Kira M. Tjomsland is published in national journals including The Rectangle, The Westmarch Literary Journal, and Timada’s Diary. An avid bookworm and scholar, her adventures include a semester at the University of Oxford. Living with her husband in West Palm Beach, Kira is an editor for PBAU’s Living Waters Review.
