Kastanja

VairaSmythe

Kastanja looks at you curiously, like a cobra prepared to strike. You ask her about her past, just as you have done with the others in the clan. But she just tilts her head, her eyes trained upon you unblinking, wide, and unnerving. You back away a few steps trying to break the eye contact but as you do your brain explodes with a splitting migraine and images flash through it, so fast you can only identify what you've seen by the memory.

Kastanja's distant past unfolds inside your head in hideous detail. You see yourself left on the road as a small hatchling, the caravan of ice dragons continuing down the road, when you try to catch up to them your mother hisses at you like a feral animal. She chases you back to the spot they left you at with wings outstretched and wild eyes. As she returns back to the caravan you cry out, it is a wordless screech, you are too young to speak. But the caravan merely passes from view, deaf to your cries and so you go silent.

You stay rooted to that spot for hours, too afraid to move. You look around, you have been left in a swampy jungle, snakes are wrapped around the branches and lizards dart across the road. Breathing hard you take a step down the road only to decide against it. You take a hard right into the wilderness, it seems like a safer bet than the caravan anyway.

The images end there, you ask for more but Kastanja turns away, her wide eyes untrained and unfocused. You follow her at her heels until she enters her den, you desperately want to know what happened after the memories you have seen but you know that Kastanja would never tell you the rest of her story. Sullenly you drag yourself away, you can't press Kastanja to tell you the the full story for the rest of time. After all, there is still an entire clan left to interview.