//------------------------------// // Boots - Beginnings // Story: Two Minds // by Thethhron //------------------------------// In the Land of Dragons Left turn. Right turn. Up the crag. Jump to crag. Drop. Right turn. I had no idea where I was going.         Being pursued by someone much faster than you tends to do that. In order to avoid a repeat of my first escape, I had adopted the strategy of changing direction at sharp angles. Aurora may have been faster than me but it quickly became apparent she’d never spent much time using that speed to chase someone. In contrast, I was doing freerunning before I knew it had a name back home. Now, I’m not super amazing with flips and all that jazz, but obstacles courses are the love of my life. So, in a field of weird hills and mounds like that? I was right at home. And that fact was saving my sorry ass. Each sharp turn or movement I made was accompanied by a subsequent shout or yelp from her. Sometimes there was a crash as she ran into a wall or landed on the ground. I never stopped running, however, and never looked back. Each corner was a new chance, a new opportunity to get farther away from wherever she wanted me to go. A mountain had been looming nearby and seeing as these were dragons, I assumed that’s where she lived. Hence, I was doing my best to weave away from that. Time dragged on and just like every cross country race I’ve ever been in, I eventually had to slow down. No longer sprinting but just running. No longer running, just jogging. My breaths grew ragged, and my walk found me with my head tilted back and hands on my sides. Gotta keep walking. Hooo, haven’t had a workout like that in a while. I panted, trying to get control back over my diaphram. My stomach had stopped doing flips just as her claw came down on my shoulder. I froze and turned my head ever so slightly. Her breathing was just as ragged. At least i’m not the only one who got a workout. “You...fast...gotcha…” She panted out heavily. “Hah….Haha..You’re faster. I’m...just used to doing this.” I had stopped moving at this point. Aurora crouched down onto her belly and continued to focus on catching her breath. “Running...away?” “Well, not the away part, but yeah, running. Distance running is something I do to keep myself in shape.” I looked over to where I thought we had just run from. “So, is that the mountain you were supposed to take me to?” She twisted her neck around, not bothering to try and get up, and followed my gaze. She turned back and nodded her head without uttering another word, laying her head on the rock and whimpering. “P-Please come back with me.” The grayish dragon begged. I looked at her. “You already know what my answer is to that.” Aurora continued to collect herself on the ground. Looking back up, I noticed a cave in the side of a hill not 20 feet from where we stopped. You could carry her to the cave. Who are you and how did you get in my head? Please, you know better than to assume you’ve got someone else in your head. Just move her. I mean, sure, she’s a dragon but she’ll appreciate it, I’m sure. I sighed. Fine but you have to stop making me try and kiss people. Duly noted I moved to her side and dug my arms underneath her. As I cradled her off the ground, I found she weighed far less than I predicted. I received a small yelp and some twitching for my efforts. That’s a LOT easier than it would have been if I was human. I’m definitely stronger. “Besides,“ I averted my eyes from her face as I walked over to the cave. “I need to apologize for what I did back there.” Her confusion was erased by the burning little blush slowly spreading across her face. She looked away out of embarrassment. “I-It’s…um… it’s okay.” “It’s really not though. I don’t even know you! Not that you’re unattractive, but..um...It’s just weird for me. I’ve never been, could never be that forward. So, I’m sorry for my rudeness.” I set her down against the cave wall and leaned back next to her. Squirming, she found a more comfortable position and let out a sigh. Tucking her muzzle in with her legs. she let out a muffled sentence of gratitude as she curled into her little ball. We stayed that way for a minute, just letting the slightest of breezes wash over us. Finally, Aurora broke the silence. Just as I was getting used to the quiet too. “I-I’m gonna be in big trouble now…” She peeped out from her ball. I looked at her in surprise “So, you’re going to come with me?” “What other choice do I have? I’ll be on Foecruncher’s list by nightfall. I’ll be called a traitor or a runaway and hunted down.” She suddenly started sniffling. “I-I might not ever see my parents again…” Oooohhh, now she’s crying. Great job, you hit that one out of the park “He might even kill them!” Aaaand now it’s even worse.That’s… really depressing if he’s actually that bad. I sighed. But I don’t have much of a choice. I brought my hand to the back of her head. Hesitating a moment, I placed it against the spines eliciting a small jump from Aurora. “I’m sorry. I know this is frightening for you. The truth is, I’d be pretty afraid right now, if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t think for very long without my head exploding.” I brought her head over to my lap and stroked it compulsively. “Hehe… I already don’t…” My voice faltered as, for the first time, it really hit me. “I don’t even know where home is right now.” A moist warmth on my stomach brought me out of my funk. She’s so vulnerable and afraid. I paused for a moment before finding myself again. You've made her your responsibility. You better make sure she survives. Trying to lighten the now soured mood, I brought a little more cheer into my voice. “Guess we’re on the same boat here.” She looked back up at me with those big eyes of hers. I didn’t find the smile I was hoping for, but the waterworks stopped at least. Mission accomplished? “Yeah… I guess…” she muttered. “Hey, come on. Perk up. You’re free now.” I smiled. “Not for long though. Foecruncher’s henchmen are going to find us tomorrow. Then we’re both goners.” “Not if I can help it. I’m not going to go die because some idiot on a mountain couldn’t look out for falling objects,” My jaw set. “And neither are you.” I looked outside. The light shining down was still bright, so it couldn’t be too late in the day. Plenty of time to hike on. I placed her head off  my lap and stood. “Come on, up you get. We may not be dying but that doesn’t mean this will be easy. That’s the mountain you came from right?” I pointed into the distance. Aurora responded with a nod as she got to her claws and stretched. “Alright. Then we need to get as far away from that as possible.” I started off with her in tow. The hours had whiled away and soon the bright sun was fading to a dull orange. I had no idea how far we’d traveled but it had to be pretty far. I’d managed to think in short bursts, distracting myself by jumping here and there.  Aurora looked dead tired and I was starting to drag my feet with each step. That race with Aurora earlier had taken a lot out of me. Finally, I stopped and looked back. The mountain was just visible through the atmosphere. A rumble from my tummy alerted me to a problem I hadn’t even considered so far. I turned to Aurora. “So...what do you guys eat around here?” Her eyes went wide and she stopped in her tracks. “Oh my gosh, we’re going to starve…” I sighed. “Don’t give up so easily. You survived out here somehow. What do you normally eat?” “Well, normally we got meat from hunts - but I don’t know how to hunt!” “Well, time to learn how. I probably don’t know much more than you but it’s something. No reason to expect what y’all were eating only existed around your mountain.” “Um…okay. I don’t really know what it was in the first place, but it had fur, so it should be easy to spot, right?” “In this landscape?” I gestured to the bare hills and cracked ground. “Absolutely. If they’re out and about at least.” She nodded and did a full circle, before looking at me in confusion. “I didn’t see any…” That was the first of many times my palm came in close contact with my face. “Well, we’re not going to just stand in one place. Let’s go search.” I hopped on top of a mound, and began scanning for movement. Unsurprisingly, I was rewarded with nothing but more dead landscape. As I began to wander amongst the hills, looking in caves as I came across them, my dragon companion followed close behind, watching everything I did with intense interest - much more than my “techniques” deserved. In the corner of my eye, I noticed her attempting to try and copy me. I don’t know exactly what she was aiming for, but never the less, it didn’t work to her liking. “Um… What are you trying to do?” I asked, as I rounded the next hill.         Caught in the act of trying to walk on two legs, she ‘eeped’ and planted herself back on the ground. “N-Nothing...just looking for fur!” She scurried off to search a cave. I noticed a slightly different tint to her cheeks. Poor girl, can’t help it if she’s weird. I chuckled to myself at the irony of that thought and moved to the next hill.         “AHHHHHHHH!” I spun around in time to see Aurora run out of the cave she had gone into. Four leopards burst out of the cave, hot on her tail. “Crap!” My legs were already working as I jetted off behind them. It was immediately apparent I wasn’t going to catch them, so I hopped on one of the mounds. “Aurora! Over here!” She seemed to hear me - or maybe she just chose to try serpentining - and began running towards me.         Just before the leopards passed underneath me, I leapt off my perch. A satisfying crunch marked my now broken leopard landing pad. The three others skidded to a halt, staring at their fallen mate. “YES! Hah! Hahaha .. haha…. ha….” I could feel the glares of the large cats boring into me. “Shit.”         I ducked as one of the cats jumped at me and began running. Two mounds later, I skidded to a halt, kicking the leopard that came immediately behind me. Its body slammed into the mound. Spinning around, I was too late to dodge the leopards that had circled around ahead of me. Landing on my back, I struggled against the leopard, eventually rolling it onto its back. A punch to the snout and it stopped moving.         The final cat landed on my back, scratching it superficially. Sucking in my breath, I bucked it off of me, and hopped up. I sprung to it and grabbed its head. A quick spin and it too fell.         I sat back, breathing heavily from yet another burst of draining energy from my body. As the adrenaline faded, I got a good look at what exactly I had just done. Three dead animals lay on the ground. One from a broken spine, one from a broken neck and judging by the blood pooling below the skull, one from an open skull. I stood and moved over to the hill, where I braced myself for the dry retching that happened. Aurora came around as I heaved, just staring at me as I finished and slumped against the rough rocks. “Are… Are you alright?” Her face no longer held the blank stare but nervous thought. I laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve never killed anything that large before and certainly not so gruesomely. I’ll be fine in a bit.”  I kept my head turned away from the cat whose head I’d slammed into the ground. The blood was still flowing outwards. “”You’ve killed things before?” Her question was more curious than afraid, which made sense considering what she’d told me about her enslavement. Death was probably pretty common. “No, not really. I used to be pretty mean to my dog, which isn’t something I’m too proud of, but I’ve never really killed anything personally. Not besides bugs.” Aurora smiled a bit. “Well, I think you did a pretty good job for your first time.” “Yeah, I guess. I just hope I don’t have to kill anything that can talk.” I stood back up, and walked over to the bodies. “Blegh…. Crap, how do I skin these? I don’t have a knife.” “I.. I think I could use my claws.” I looked up after she spoke. “Well, I mean, when food was brought, it always had the fur tufts kind of everywhere and, well, the rest of it had to go somewhere…. Claws are very sharp…. Nevermind, it was a dumb-” “No, that actually works really well. Do you know how to skin?” She shook her head. “That’s alright, maybe we can work this together. Come over here.” I pulled the first body away from the others. “Alright, it’s been a while since I last skinned anything and those were fish. Let me see your hand.” She shrunk back, wide-eyed and keeping her claws hidden beneath her. I sighed internally “W- Why?” “Since you don’t know how to do this, I’m going to guide your hand as we go. The only thing you have to worry about is if I cut into the meat itself. You’ll be fine.” I held out my own hand, waiting. She seemed to accept my reasoning and came over. Taking her hand in mine, I closed all but one digit in a fist and began to cut Let’s hope I remember this correctly. Her hands are surprisingly soft, for a dragon. She doesn’t smell too bad either.... I banished that train of thought before it went any further.         We finished carving up the carcasses just before the sun went down, and went to an empty cave nearby. I had managed not to do too terrible of a job getting the skin off, so we now had a couple of untreated pelts and leather strips - which were, of course, nowhere near as good as they could have been if I knew how to tan leather. This left cooking the meat.         “...Shit, no wood. Hey, Aurora. You wouldn’t happen-” as I turned around from scanning the landscape, I was shocked to see she was already eating one of the legs. Raw.         “What are you doing!?” She jerked back at my exclamation.         “What? Did I do something wrong?”         “You haven’t cooked the meat!”         She looked down at the fresh meat beneath her and blinked.“But I always eat it like this.”         “I... What? You should be getting sick from that.” She frowned. “You sure? I’ve never gotten sick from food before…” It was my turn to blink. “Alright, I guess if it works, it works. But I don’t think I can eat raw meat just like that. You don’t… happen to breath fire, do you?” She perked up. “Oh, yeah. My parents taught me how to when I was much younger. Why?” “I know this seems weird to you, but can you cook my meal? I don’t think I can eat it raw.” She quirked an eyebrow but did as I asked. Her fire was a pretty blue color, though it didn’t feel as hot as I expected it to be. The meat disagreed with my sentiment, its outer layer turning black pretty quickly. I picked away the burnt crust and quickly tore at the white meat underneath. Guess they were right. Cat is the other white meat. I snickered at the thought. Aurora finished her meal much quicker than I did and spent the rest of the time in deep thought. When I finished eating, she spoke up. “So what kind of dragon are you again?” “Uh… I’m not really a dragon, per say, though I guess it could apply. This form reminds me of something called a ‘dragonborn’. It’s kind of like dragons, in that it can breath fire and has scales and stuff but it’s more similar to a human than not.” “.... You make it to where I don’t want to ask questions… What’s wrong with you?” “I do? Why?” She sat down and thought about that one before answering me. “I guess it’s the way you talk.” I frowned. “Did I say something wrong?” “Yeah, actually. There’s kind of a list: First off, what do you mean by ‘this form’? Second, what is a dragonborn? They sound familiar, I think. And finally, you’ve said it before, but still, what’s a human?” Well, I’m definitely not in Ireland. "Where do I start? Hmmm. Well, to answer your first question, this isn’t what I normally look like. I’m actually shorter and not colored blue, like I am right now. I’m also covered in scales at the moment, when normally i’d be covered in pale pinkish skin, kind of like the inside of my mouth. Come to think of it, I’m probably a little harder to scratch than normal.” She stared at me. “Sorry, I’m ranting. Let’s leave it at ‘I don’t normally look like this.’ What I look like right now is a race of beings from, uh, children’s stories. This is what I mean by dragonborn; that they are a race.. There’s a lot behind them that I could explain, but that can wait.” I scratched my head. “To answer your third question, a ‘human’ is a different race of beings. In fact, before I woke up this morning, that’s what I was. A human. Imagine what I look like right now, except slightly shorter, with pink skin, not scales, and a much flatter face. That’s kind of what humans look like. And, uh… Yeah. Normally I’d look something like that.” Aurora blankly stared at me for what seemed like a good minute before responding. “...Okay…” “That was a lot to drop all at once, wasn’t it? Sorry.” She shook her head and smiled. “I didn’t really expect to understand any of it, but at least it’s out there right?” I smiled back. “Yeah, I guess. I’m always open to questions about anything you don’t understand.” The sun had dropped below the horizon, as the land lost it’s orange hue for the pale lighting of a moon.. As if on cue, a small yawn escaped the dragoness across from me. “Why don’t we sleep for now? It’s been a long day, for both of us.” “Mmmm- okay.” She said lazily, padding the ground beneath her before resting her head. In turn, I propped myself against a wall of the cave. Despite the lack of cloud cover, I was comfortably warm. Must be because of what I am now? Questions for the morrow. I fell to sleep slowly and in pain, thoughts of the future plaguing my descent into slumber.