Destiny's Challenge

I always knew that I was different. That I was out of step with the world. My friend once made the statement that she had been born during the wrong decade. That she should have been born so that she was a teenager during the fifties. That if she had, she would have been one of those perfect school girls in the poodle skirts. One of the popular ones.

If she should have been born in another decade, I should have been born to another world. More than once I felt like everyone had a owner's manual for this life but me. Oh, I had a manual. It just didn't correspond to this world.

People often say that I take everything too seriously. That I'm over-emotional. I imagine that no one can or will understand what it was like for me growing up. I knew I didn't belong. I knew there was something bigger for me. That fate had something in store for me that no one on this world could comprehend. That some world, somewhere needed me. That one day someone would appear proclaiming that I was their savior, that I was the only one who could defeat the darkness that was destroying their planet.

I use to dream about it when I was younger. I would play the scene out in my mind. One day I would be walking down the street, to class, in my house. I would turn a corner and there it would be. A doorway. A portal to another place, another time, another dimension. I always imagined it would glow in a swirl of different colors. And as soon as it appeared I would have to make the choice. Would I step through into the unknown, into a potential death trap, or would I stay here?

I never stayed.

There was a show that came on the networks when I was about eleven. In it a group of children were sucked into another world in order to save it. I remember watching it, religiously at 4:00 pm every afternoon. I would run from the bus stop sometimes to make sure I got home in time. Nothing could take me away. For thirty minutes each day, my destiny was played out before my eyes, lived by another group of kids.

Of course, it was just a cartoon. On some rational level I knew that. Paint and inks and drawings from some animators' minds. But for the span of two years I was there with these kids. I laughed when times were good. I held my breath when they discovered that the evil they fought was none other than one of their own. I grieved when they lost friends. I prayed during that last epic battle when they fought to save both their world and the one they found themselves in.

Then, it was over. Above all else I remember that last episode. As they left the world that they had saved to return to their own, I sat on the floor. I pressed myself against the screen, watching the too bright colors before my eyes. And I cried.

I cried so hard that it hurt. Because I hurt. It should have been me. I should have been the one to go to that other world, to have had the hopes and dreams of an entire planet resting on my shoulders. And I cried because in the end, they had to return to normality. No matter how hard they smiled, you could see the tears in their eyes. They, who had once been the hope of an entire world, had been returned to mere mortals.

I couldn't imagine going through that. To have everything, to be everything, and then return to your life as if nothing had happened. I feel a deep gaping wound in my heart just thinking about it. How do you survive something like that? How could these kids find a way to go on knowing that no one would ever understand where they had been or what they had become?

I don't think I could do it. I think I would kill myself if I had to.

Eventually, I grew up. Twelve passed with no doorway, then fourteen, and then sixteen. The kids in books and cartoons who would go to those magical worlds grew younger as I grew older. I mourned those passing years, holding out that my destiny had not passed by. That I still had a chance to be one of the chosen few. That the world that needed me still existed, was in fact looking for me with all its might.

Eighteen came and went. The age of miracles died with it. I had to face the facts. There would be no other world, no desperate need for me. I was... normal. Nothing more, nothing less. The most I could look forward to was a life with a job, an apartment, maybe a cat or two. Eventually I would find some nice guy, settle down, and have kids. My dreams and knowledge that I was someone special would be put upon a shelf somewhere, dismissed as nothing more than childish fantasies.

It hurt, that realization. Like a part of me was dying.

Life went on. I hung out with friends, went to parties, dated and worked. In other words, I did everything that was expected of me. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. There was an empty place in my soul, and even at twenty-three a part of me still whispered that things weren't right. That I didn't belong. That there was something out there waiting for me if I could only find it.

Then the night came when the truth was revealed.

I was in bed awake and alert. The room was dark, the full moon shining in tiger stripes through the blinds. Outside the wind whistled, rattling angrily at the window panes. My upstairs neighbors had long ago shut their rock music off. Everything was quiet in the apartment complex. Eerily so. The clock beside my bed read 3:14 in the morning.

It started with a low rumble. I should have mistaken it for thunder. Anyone else would have thought it was thunder with the wind blowing like it was. The herald of a storm. Somehow I knew better. I stared up at the ceiling, feeling my stomach clench. Then I got up out of bed and walked out the front door.

There is one thing I want to make clear. I felt no confusion. There was no "I wonder what that was" or "Maybe I should go see if something is happening." I knew something was happening. Just as I knew it wasn't a dream. Knew that the noise wasn't something spawned by my over active imagination.

I was dressed in shorts and a shirt. My usual nighttime attire since I have a bad habit of sleepwalking. I opened the door and let it shut behind me. Which officially locked me out of my apartment since my keys were still inside. Along with my shoes. The concrete of the breezeway was warm under my feet. The wind whipped my hair around my face. The moon was alternately hidden and revealed by clouds in the sky.

As if in a trance, I walked to the edge of the breezeway, looking over the concrete wall that prevented anyone from accidentally falling to their deaths. My first real thought was that I was not alone. I was standing on the fifth floor of a twelve story apartment complex, a half a dozen kids with me on our floor. The oldest kid on the breezeway, except for me, was maybe fourteen. We were all looking of into the night. Waiting.

We didn't have to wait long. A portal opened up in the sky, a hundred, a thousand times bigger than any I had imagined. It swirled with colors, bright pastels that somehow seemed ominous. Angry. I knew that there were other kids on all the other floors. We held our collective breaths as the gateway grew wider.

Then an ear splitting scream ripped through the night. Kids squealed and screamed at the sound. I flinched, covering my ears with my hands. From out of the portal flew a dragon, wings wide, golden scales gleaming. It twisted somehow in mid air, spitting fire back through the portal. One feathered wing hung at an odd angle.

At the same time the golden dragon hit asphalt in a semi-graceful landing another dragon emerged from the portal. This dragon was a black so dark it swallowed the night. It roared at the golden dragon, and spat blue-white lightning. The golden dragon dodged, but a small grocery store wasn't so lucky. Blood red claw marks graced the black dragon's entire left side. It landed on a car parked along the road. Hissing barely masked the sound of crunching metal.

The age old fight between good and evil was played out in front of us that night. Gold versus black. Fire versus lightning. Light versus darkness. Kids were yelling at the dragons urging the golden one to victory. Over-passes, shops, cars, the road, all became victims to collateral damage. Screams and roars filled the air.

Later I would wonder why there were no cops. No sirens. No adults. As if reality had been put on hold. Later I would wonder what the normal world must have thought when they woke from their beds only to find half the block destroyed. Terrorists possibly? I don't know. All I know is that night, to me and those kids, nothing mattered but the fight.

After minutes that seemed to encompass hours, the golden dragon took a fall. And didn't get up. Kids were screaming, almost chanting. "Get up. Get up!" I bolted for the stairs, pushing them out of the way in my haste. I took them two, three at a time. Sliding down them when my feet refused to cooperate. But I kept going. It's a wonder I didn't kill my self in my haste to get down them.

I hit the door at the bottom at break-neck speed. My whole side went numb from the impact. I didn't care. The air was filled with the smell of ozone and smoke, baking asphalt and the sweet scent of impeding rain. The black dragon was moving towards the unconscious gold, slinking in a way that was vaguely feline. Adrenaline gave me an extra boost of speed as I placed myself between the two foes.

"No! Stop!" I screamed, letting the volume of the words tear at my throat. The black dragon drew back, hissing. I threw my arms wide, blocking the huge creature's way. A stitch in my side radiated pain with every harsh breath. My heart was pounding. Blood made a dull roaring in my ears.

I remember thinking that this was it. This was what I had been born to do, what I had waited all my life to accomplish. Even if I died under the claws of the black dragon, I would go knowing that I was a part of something bigger. That fate really had made bigger plans for me. I had protected good from darkness. I had made a difference in the universe. I looked into the pale blue eyes of the dark dragon and was unafraid.

And then I knew that I was mistaken.

It clicked. Like the last piece of a puzzle that suddenly falls into place, my entire life made sense. I was not to die that night. But neither was I there to protect the golden dragon. My whole life I had been wrong. I looked into those impossibly pale blue eyes and knew that this dragon, this creature of darkness, was mine to command. I was not destined to be the savior of a world. I was destined to be its destroyer.

I dropped my arms to my sides. The black dragon had been hissing its frustration at me. Now it was silent. Watching me. Waiting for my orders. I walked forward, and raised my hand up. The black diamond shaped head dropped until it was inches from the road. I laid my palm against diamond shaped scales. They felt cool in the warm night air, vaguely hard yet yielding under my hand.

Something stirred in the back of my mind. A word. No, a name. He had told me his name. I whispered it, giving voice to something that had never been said before. The dragon purred at the sound.

The sound of running footsteps, sneakers against the hard pavement, caused me to jump. The black dragon reacted to my emotions, and began hissing in the direction of the golden dragon. I had forgotten about it. I looked towards the sound, staring as a guy in boxers and a blue jersey threw himself against the golden dragon's head. He was yelling, pleading with the huge creature to move, to get up.

My first thought was that he was my age. Maybe a little older, possibly even a year or two younger. His words were coming so fast they were running together. His hands were splayed against golden scales, rocking the gold's head in an effort to raise the creature. He seemed to have forgotten the black dragon in his panic. I doubted he even noticed me.

I raised a hand up, touched the underside of my dragon's neck, and he fell silent. My dragon was confused, but obedient as it tried to decipher my intentions. It was then that I decided. This would not end tonight. Not here, not like this. There was too much I didn't know, too much I didn't understand to end it now.

He must have been reading my mind. The black dragon nudged me, a gentle affectionate motion. Then it drew itself up, rising up on its haunches, neck drawn back. Like a serpent ready to strike. Only no venom spilled forth when he opened his mouth. Just a loud unearthly scream that descended from its highest pitch into a bass roar. A call to challenge.

I covered my ears once again as the sound rolled through the street. Windows shattered at higher tones. Car alarms wailed when hit by the bass rumble. Half-way through the incredible noise, the golden dragon's eyes slid open. It carefully raised its head from the broken asphalt. Rich green eyes pinned me to the spot, from only a hundred feet away. Then it was looking left, down at the guy who stood beside it.

The guy looked back at the dragon. Something must have passed between them, something akin to what I felt with my dragon. Then the guy was looking at me. We stared at each other in the brown light of streetlamp. Memorizing each other. He was cute in an awkward way. Like he still hadn't grown used to what he had become after puberty. I could understand that. I had a feeling that given a time, and a different set of circumstances, I could have understood him.

"We are enemies, you and I." I remember how those words sounded hanging in the air. They didn't sound stupid. Or clichéd. Instead they echoed with a sense of rightness. They were strange, yes, but with none of finality they should have carried. He nodded in understanding.

My dragon dropped back to four feet, then crouched down near the ground. He wanted me to ride. I put one foot on his foreleg, and using hands and toes managed to scramble onto the black's back. There was an indentation at the base of his neck, right in front of his shoulder blades. It made the perfect saddle.

"When we meet again I won't forget that you could have killed us here, but didn't." The guy spoke this time, his words appropriate. Like lines to a script we had been waiting to read all our life. I nodded. My black dragon got to his feet, a graceful fluid motion. There was no danger of me falling off. I believe my dragon could have flown upside down and I wouldn't have fallen.

I looked over at the apartment building. The kids watched me with hundreds of eyes. They were afraid of me, of the darkness I represented. I didn't bother waving. They would have responded to the gesture with nothing but fear. It saddened me to think that, but I knew I was right.

Beneath my legs I felt the black dragon's muscles tense. Then we were air borne, taking off with great strokes of bat-like wings. I could see the gold below us, getting slowly and painfully to its feet. I could see the guy, my enemy, watching me leave, his hand shielding his eyes against the wind created by the black dragon's wings. A few fat raindrops splattered against my head. I remember wishing that I had had a chance to brush my hair as it knotted in the wind.

Then we were going through the gaping portal in the sky. I watched my dragon's head disappear nose first into the pastel light. This was it. My destiny. Not what I expected, not what I hoped for, but mine nonetheless.

Whatever happened, there would be no going back.

Destiny's Challenge
By Tsaiko
© 2001, Tsaiko