Schism

Relations

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Mate: Snowfall
Close Friends: Itami
Enemies: Brielle

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Personality

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Schism is often seem as anxious and paranoid, which is quite true. As a hatchling, she was traumatized by her experiences, and she's still haunted by them. She's claustrophobic, and hates crowds and strangers.

She can be quite sweet, luckily, when one gains her trust. Schism prefers to be alone, but she'll tolerate others.

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Background

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Did you know that darkness makes a sound? You can hear it in the depths of your ears, just thrumming, thrumming, echoing away in tunnels unseen. Your own pulse rockets through you; you can feel every cell of your blood as it brushes through your eyes. You can't see anything, of course. It's dark. You're listening to the sound of darkness, and it's loud, so loud.

Itami told me something about shadows, once, before he lost his mind to the dark's grim sounds. "They've got to come from somewhere," he said, "and there's somewhere they've to go." Tip, tap went his hammer; where he is, I'll never know. I miss the guy. He was kind, so kind, the grandfather I never had. He taught me to sing, and he taught me to rhyme, to let nothing hold me down.

Spectre whispers about darkness in the night, murmurs about it when no one's listening but my ears and the black. "One-two-three," she says, laughs softly before dipping away to the land of her dreams. She dances with the dark, she says. She leads children into it and watches them rot. It's such a cold thing to do, isn't it, to give children to such a cold death? Perhaps it's how it ought to be. She led me, once, but I left long ago.

Nimbus shadows me. He murmurs about betrayal, about need, craving. When he was little, he was so kind, but no longer. Now, he carries the hammer, sends Nyss to the dying and the dead. No dragon dares resist his call, no dragon but me. I remember when he would play with my tail, when I could dangle it for him, and he for me. I see the hatred in his eyes now, and I wonder.

I spend a lot of time wondering. Perhaps I spend too much time in my mind, trailing threads of thought that are barely enough to pursue, but does it matter? I am content enough to observe until the time comes to meddle. I am content to hear the darkness and watch my body fade, fall to dust, and blow away in the wind. I am content.

Why do I lie to myself? Why do you listen?

I suppose... yes, I ought to tell you. We've only just met, after all. Where am I from, you wonder? Who am I? Listen with me, and I'll explain, put things straight. There's a lot to say.

My father. I don't know if he was sick, but he must have been. I remember how resigned he looked when I peered from the egg; he knew, he knew. He always knew. My mother, however, couldn't stop the screech of delight that tumbled from her lips. I was beautiful, she said. I looked just like her. Just like him, a sick illusion of a father. I wasn't even able to walk when I was first alone in the world.

Were you ever a part of the dragon trade? I was. I remember the cages, cold, iron bars and rattling chains, the ache in my neck from struggling to find a position to sleep in, the cries of the others around me. We were all hatchlings, then, prime catches. Adults would come by, now and then, shovel some slop through the bars, something cursed with the consistency of gravel. We ate it without hesitation. There was always a chance that they would forget to feed us the next day, and that we would starve to death. The adults didn't clean away the corpses often. It was even rarer that they cleaned our cages, but that's not something I like to mention. Let it suffice to say that the scent was unbearable, and that I could barely breathe. Inhaling was like lifting a block of stone with my lungs, but I didn't have another choice. I wasn't going to die there, crying in the cages of the trade.

Every few days, a small number of us would be carried out of the cages; most were never seen again. The rumors about this were wild. Some said that they were taken to a butcher's shop and sold to cannibals, though that sounded far-fetched to me. More plausible was that they were taken to some sort of shop front and sold. It would explain why most didn't return, and why the ones that did seemed so dejected, hopeless despite their clean feathers and newfound fame among us. I felt bad for them.

Ages seemed to pass before it was my turn; the cage was growing too small for me, they said, and so I needed to be sold. Should I be proven worthless, I would be killed, never to return, or sold into servitude. It was a frightening prospect, and so I resisted. They ripped me from the cage, half-drowned me in what they called a "bath", then held me down. How could any dragon be prepared for the firm click of a price tag being implanted on their wing? How could any dragon face the pain when their wing tips are cut so that they will never fly again? I was in a shocked daze when they led me into a clear box, closed the lid over me, sealed it, left me there. The wails of strangers surrounded me; cries for mothers, moans of pain. My wheezing breaths soon joined the din as I lay on my stomach, neck extended so that I could breathe. The air was thick.

It seemed another eon before the dragons came in to purchase us, we dragons trapped within the trade. Perhaps you can't understand their cruelty without experiencing it, but there are dragons that search shops like the one I was in. They hunt for appearances, force dragons to raise nest after nest of clones, collect them as if it were some sort of sick game to them. I know how it is. I was picked up because of my looks and my illness, picked to breed pretty little bioweapons. They had to drag me to the clan. My legs had given out weeks ago, as had any hopes of growing even plumage.

The sound of the night when they dragged me in was loud, so loud. I heard nothing but whooshing, but blurs and murmuring. I was not alone. None of them were alone. We all had our little shadows. I remember the wrenching pain that arced down my spine when my shadow whirled into my body, tore air from my lungs, made me writhe helplessly on the ground. It was my first seizure, and I was completely aware. More followed. They just stood there and watched, all of them, ruby eyes gleaming in the black of the air. Thick, so thick, that air. I couldn't breathe. It was-

Darkness has a sound. Did you know that? It's the sound of a hollow sigh, of that pang in your chest, of the sound of a dead lover's voice. All you can hear is your heart. Please, please. Listen to it. Listen to me. Get me out of here. Please. I'm going to die. They're going to kill me, all of them, because they know...

Hurry.