Day 237 NaNoWriMo Dragon

Excerpt from So Says The River:

She closed her fists to hold on to her patience. Grandmother had said that sometimes the others would test you, to be sure you were who and what you said. Maybe this was a test.

Willow stared into the darkness ahead and thought she saw the light brown stripes of one of the chipmunks. She waited, but what appeared was the face of a cougar, whose black pupils widened in its golden eyes, stepping one paw closer.

Frozen, Willow could not think, but stared down the creature. She felt her arms lift up at her side— she wanted to look bigger. She held them out, pulling her jacket at the zipper to open wider, as if she were a large creature.

But the cougar stepped closer still and its tail flicked once.

Willow’s back felt hot, and she wanted to turn around to see what seemed to be behind her, but she could not let go of the gaze of the cougar.

Suddenly, she felt arms around her, but they were not arms. The cougar retreated one step and Willow found herself rising up into the air and at the side the sweep of a large wing flapped once, twice, and she was above the pines, and in one more flap she was turned back home, and with one more whip of a wing she was back at the meadow where the long leg of the dragon stretched out to put her gently down beside the fence she had earlier crawled over, flying up and back again into the forest.

Willow stared up at the immense black creature— or was that a deep blue? It turned its head back at her, its golden eyes winked just before it dipped back into the forest.

“Willow! Willow!” Ossian called to her. She turned calmly to her father.

“Did you see the dragon?” Flecks of gold sparkled in her eyes, and Ossian scooped her up and raced back home with Willow in his arms.

Day 237 of Covid Stay At Home

Day 616 of daily blogging

 NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month — Day 5 with 8,725 words of 50,000 over the month of November.