Halla

The true story has been lost to time. Halla was a hatchling taken from her clan the day she was born. Torn away to be sold on the slave market and exalted against her will to increase dominance for one of the flights. She was terrified, chained leg to leg with tens of other hatchlings being gathered together for a sacrifice that would push the flights dominance over the land and against the rising beast hoards from the south.

In the dark of night, she cried and clawed frantically at her bindings until her voice was gone and her ankles raw and bleeding. Only now a few weeks old, she had known nothing but captivity and desired only to be free. Though she was told daily of how her soul and her energy would grant great power and that she should feel proud of her place in the world, Halla could not believe it.

One evening, the lair she was being held in was attacked by a rival lair seeking to poach the hatchlings for their own. They cut the bindings, and she slipped from their grasp. Panicked and desperate the young dragon fled to the woods, her pursuers close behind her. Lungs screaming for air and weak muscled limbs burning in pain, Halla ran out of strength to run. She pressed herself to the ground at the foot of an ancient oak tree, wings spread across the Moss and body flat to the roots and rocks.

please don't let them find me. I'm not a dragon, I'm a tree, don't let them find me, I'm not a dragon, I'm the earth, I've been here since birth, I'm not a dragon, I'm the grass, and all this will pass, I'm not a dragon, I'm not a dragon, please don't let them find me

And they never did.