Johppa

As she hatched out of her aura-speckled egg, her parents lifted her to the night sky. The stars had been engulfed by the barring skin of stratospheric and terrestrial light. Magenta comets buzzed fluttered in the soft, golden aureole that surrounded the Observatory, the comets’ tails streaking and curling like ribbons.

Johppa’s upbringing was constructed around that golden vision, of light and magic and concrete and space. Several times over, her Flight would take her and the other hatchlings up to that cliff face where they had all hatched, to gaze upon magenta ribbons of comets and the Observatory’s star-shining Eye. As they enjoyed the arcane light show, they were reminded of their purpose as dragons: to perfect the gene pool of dragonkind, and, most importantly, to achieve exaltation. Her Flight determined that this purpose could only be achieved through the purification of the mind. Johppa was educated to be spiritual, to work hard and with a servile demeanor, and to achieve accuracy and efficiency in all endeavors. The training was rigorous, sometimes to the point of pain; Johppa saw many of her friends crack under the pressure. After her mother left the Flight to join the Shadowbinder, Johppa soon found herself slipping as well. Her father tried to correct this by teaching her the way of “holding her head high but keeping her eyes lowered.” It worked; for a little while, Johppa’s education had been saved.

However, her father was a chronic hypocrite. He was a connoisseur of the arcane, and despite his Flight’s ways he tended to forget his own spirituality and focus on his talents as an enchanter. The Flight was not blind, but they were gullible; his claims that he hoped to be exalted by the Arcanist someday were easily palatable to the clan elders. Now was he not only a hypocrite, but a liar; he kept both his head and his eyes high during his many visits to the Crystalline Reaches. There, a Spiral tinkerer was interested in creating robotic golems, and wished to employ Johppa’s father as his enchanter. Many times, he took Johppa with him to the Reaches to teach her “business,” an art that was condemned by their Flight. “Don’t be so uptight about it,” her father used to hiss at her. “It’s just a little extra treasure on the side. We need this. Just keep it between us, alright?”

It was there that Johppa met Viveca. At the time, the maroon Fae was just some Lightning orphan that the tinkerer had convinced to become his apprentice, by some whim of mercy or another. At their first meeting, Viveca’s appendages had been caked in oil; Johppa almost couldn’t greet her without gagging. Not to mention her manners were coarse, her ideas brazenly ignorant, and her policies decided merely by self-interest. Johppa had wanted to cast her aside immediately, but her father had other ideas. “She’s exactly the sort of dragon who needs a Fae like you, Joh! You must at least try to convert her; she’d be lost without you!”

Like any good daughter, Johppa tried to follow her father’s advice. However, it was not long before Viveca had converted her. For all her coarseness, Viveca had this sense of self-liberation that made her magnetic, made her more of a leader than she would care to admit. In a matter of due time, Viveca had shown Johppa how to have fun, how to be stupid and coarse, and most of all, how to not care about the opinions of others – and once Johppa had had that taste, she couldn’t go back. Her education slipped. The consequences deepened and deepened, but every time Johppa thought she was at the cusp of getting back on track, she’d yearn for Viveca’s company, her voice, her laughter.

Johppa failed her Flight. Like so many of her peers, she left Starfall Isles, exiled and disgraced. Her father watched her leave; as the glowing light of the Observatory had branded her, so had her father’s stunned face.

She tried to pick up the pieces of her shattered life at the University of the Lightweaver, but they found that the education given her by her Flight was not sufficient enough to attend. Johppa fled into Tangled Wood – the rumors and gossip about the Shadowbinder’s domain suddenly became attractive to her. There, she saw the cavorting of the tricksters; she saw dragons whose faces were twisted into permanent sneers, she saw them cackle at casual cruelty, and dance and revel for nothing in particular. Johppa decided they were horrible. They reminded her of Viveca.

The comparison numbed her gizzard. She remembered her father’s agonized face as she fled from her disgrace. A cold, dark whisper filled her ear, her brain, her body and soul: “They’d be lost without you.”

And then, just like that, Johppa rediscovered a purpose in life.

It was time to convert the world.