Roar by Streya Smith

Ashara dragged the tip of her staff through wet sand, carving out magical symbols. Her hands trembled as she clutched the polished beech. One careless line could have disastrous consequences for the spell, but she was running out of time. The sea stretched out to the horizon, met so seamlessly by the cloudless sky she couldn’t see where one ended and the other began. She didn’t have to turn her head to know the tide was also creeping up the sandbar behind her, threatening to swallow the sand—and Ashara—into its endless blue depths.

Muttering through clenched teeth, she cursed the superstitious sailors who’d marooned her here while she hurried to finish the spell, guessing at a few symbols she’d never bothered to memorize.  She cursed her younger self for that, too.

Once she’d drawn the symbols into the sand, she closed her eyes and gripped her staff tight in her hands. The familiar ridges of carvings pressing into her palms helped her focus on the core of heat and power within her. The sound of the sea was lost to the roar of that inner inferno. She stoked the power with a singular thought: I will be saved. She repeated the thought until the pressure became too much to contain.

Magic exploded from her, released from the confines of her body and let into the world to do its work. The world made its way back into her, replacing heat with the cold damp of her clothes and the unceasing beat of the waves. Shivering, she opened her eyes to watch the horizon.

“I will be saved,” she whispered, jaw tight, teeth chattering.

Minutes passed. Nothing happened. She looked over the symbols in the sand. Something had to be missing. Specificity matters, she could hear her mentor reminding her time and time again. She hastily scratched the shape of a ship’s sails into the pictographs.

At last, a dark shape appeared on the horizon. Ashara shielded her eyes from the sun as the shape grew larger. It bobbed up and down, swayed back and forth, hovering just over the water—not like a ship but like a heavy, floating thing. Her stomach clenched, sick with hope and uncertainty.

“I will be saved.” This time said aloud, chanted like a prayer. But her words grew faint as the blurry form focused into the long, undulating body of a dragon. The dragon approached, its body like a trail of red blood in the sky. Ashara clenched her fists and stood her ground, tenuous as that ground may be. 

The dragon sank its claws into the sand to take purchase and stretched out its wings as it roared with a screaming sound that vibrated down to Ashara’s bones.

Could she have summoned such a creature with her spell? Had the sails of a ship become the wings of a dragon?  Had her anger brought a weapon instead of a saviour? That it had not eaten her or destroyed her with its fire suggested it was, indeed, the result of her summons. She had no time to wonder further. She waded through the rising water toward the dragon’s leg to find a way to climb onto its back.

The dragon reared, tossing Ashara onto the sand. Another wave rolled into her, splashing over her face. filling her nose and mouth with salt.

“Wait!” She cried out as the dragon launched itself into the air. She looked back at her spell, half melted away. Desperately, she grabbed her staff to reform the lines, but they disappeared as quickly as she could write them. She needed something more permanent.

The pin from her cloak was sharp enough. Braced against the waves that swallowed more of her with every breath, she started scratching into her arm. The pain was nothing compared to the terror of the sea.

* * *

The next time Ashara saw a dark shape on the horizon she knew it was a ship. She knew that she, approaching the ship from a distance, appeared to the sailors as a strange, dark spot obscured by the sun setting behind her. She knew they would wonder how it was that a boat appeared to be skimming over the surface of the water.

She felt the sting of saltwater splashing onto the symbols carved deep into her skin and she smiled. This time, she thought, the spell will last. 

She spread her new leathery wings and tasted dragonfire on her breath.

This time, she would roar. 

Streya Smith

Image: A beautiful sandy beach with waves breaking on the shore from Pixabay.com