This was a story written for  Fyrdrgon as a prototype of the kind of clean fiction available in my 'A picture tells 1000 words' Iron Author commission challenge. :3 The illustration attached was drawn by, and posted with the permission of  Flynx-flink


She Comes...

She comes. The dragoness whose very name is a deadly force of nature; the woman who wields blade and ballistics with equal ease, she comes for me. Through day and night, through blazing sun and drenching rain, over the baking, drought stricken grasslands and now through the thick, lush jungle, nothing stands in her way for long. Even now, far away and amid friends and protectors; people from whom others would run, screaming at a mere glance, I know she will find me and I know she will kill me.

My last hope was that the jungle would finish her. That where technology, magic and sheer brute strength had failed, nature in its mighty glory would succeed. A python, sliding down from amidst the trees while she slept to choke and crush. A jungle cat, silent and vicious, leaping out from nowhere to strike faster than she can swing her deadly blades. The smallest of the small, a mere spider, creeping into her boot as she soothes her aching, well travelled feet in a shallow stream. But no, from the kings of the animal kingdom to the lowliest arthropod, they seem to know her. They fear her like no wild creature should fear a single mortal soul. As though she is somehow more. As though her footsteps carry more weight than that of her body alone. Fate sits upon her shoulder, a silent, invisible imp; taunting me with what I know to be true. My end, it draws ever nearer.

Now she stands unopposed, cutting her way through the undergrowth like it isn't even really there, with such purpose, such stoic fury that were they able the trees and vines might wither and die ahead of her rather than remain for what precious little times remains for them, knowing that soon they will stand between her and her goal. Against such a woman, what am I supposed to do? If the world would stand aside and let her through to find me, then where do I stand?! With no-one before me capable of halting her advance, and no-one beyond who might draw her wrath as I vanish into the darkness. I stand as the sum of my experiences. I stand as the consequence of my actions. Hunted. Marked. Frightened.

And when she finds me, as I know that she, the dear, invulnerable, indispensable protagonist in her own life story inevitably will, how will I meet my end at her hand? After her long journey will she simply seek its end, slicing my throat or wracking my body with scalding lead. Will she seek closure, tormenting me, extending my waking death with questions of how and why I have done what I have done to so many lives. Or will her anger overwhelm all reason and mercy? Will she cease to simply be the hunter, and play the role of murderer, torturer, the first devil to christen me down the road to eternity?

Can you see yet why it is I fear her, and admire her so? Look closer. Look beyond the eyes, the scales, the clothes, the blades, the guns. Look within. There beats a heart of pure molten metal. When cold, it hardens to fine steel, impenetrable and unbreakable in its resolve. But when alight, when the dragon's fire burns bright with either love or hate, her heart remains a fluid, passionate core of burning, boiling light. Ever changing. Ever adapting. Such is the heart of one who has known both love and heartbreak, life and death in abundance. Beyond this world of guns, of violence and of death, she lives and loves as would any woman of beauty and means. Yet as she tracks me, does her step ever falter? Does her heart ever waver in its conviction and devotion to this single task?

No. No, of course it doesn't. Because we both know that this world will be a better place without me in it, and so whatever she does here and now on this quest of hers, it can only benefit the life that she will return to some day soon.

Damn her. Damn her name and cast it across the empty skies, where the air is thin and where not a soul nor even a wisp may hear it. I might once have said that no life should be as cursed as mine became the day she heard my name, but now I would die gladly, joyously, if I believed for an instant that she would suffer a fate worse than my own. Yet I know that by even wishing such curses upon her, I only damn myself threefold. Such is my loss, such is my hopelessness, that even revenge beyond my own death would serve her better than it would serve me.

I could run. I know that once again, as I have many times before, I could run, and for a time she would forget me. But were I to make so much as a ripple upon the waters she has travelled, were my name even whispered in a crowded room near which one of her many friends and contacts may be at rest, she would be there once again. Cutting through the jungles, hiking across mountains, dragging each and every scale across the desert to seek me out anew. Every day would be spent hiding from her, and fearing for the day she finds my trail once again. That is no life. Such waking death is a fate which even I would not accept in order to mask my presence.

So I sit, and I wait, and she tears her way through the jungles towards me. The raging, all consuming Fire, licking at my boot-heels and lengthening the shadows in which I stand. I would weep for myself, were I not afraid that she might scent my tears on a morning breeze and hasten her arrival at my door.

Day after day I look at her. I look at her, and marvel in my hatred at the sight before which even the darkness itself quakes. I look at her, and know that she draws ever closer.

The Fire. The flames. The choking, cloying, inescapable fury of her heart. She comes for me.

She comes.

She comes...




By Jeeves
~ 1044 words.