CASIMIRA

dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah

She has not had nightmares in months, and she doesn’t know why they suddenly have chosen to return now.

It was near dawn when she was startled awake, her heart thundering wildly against her chest and her pale skin glistening with a cold sweat in the places that her white scales did not cover. She swears that she can still smell the smoke and fire from the war, and that her skin still burns where the dragon stallion’s talons had torn her open. She closes her eyes in an attempt to steady herself but all she sees is the bright flash of fire lighting up the shadows, and then the star-studded mare rushing at her. 

Opening her ice-blue eyes again to force the images away, she feels her heart clench with a certain longing. She wishes Badden were here, knowing that if she had wanted she could have curled beneath his wing until her racing pulse had quieted, but tonight, she was alone.

She stands, shaking the debris and the fear off of her, her skin smoothing again to just her bright white coat as the scales disappear. In the distance the horizon has slowly begun to lighten, and she looks in the direction of Tephra. A sigh shudders past her lips, debating: she knows she could go home if she wanted to. She knows the land is likely healed from the war, but now, she feels as though she has missed her window to return. 

When she started to walk she did not realize she was going in the direction of Nerine. It’s not until a coastal wind whips through, with a such a frigid ferocity that she is sure it cuts into her bones, that she realizes where she is. In the distance she can hear the waves as they batter against the stone cliffs, and while she finds herself suddenly itching to get to the coastline she knows that she will not make it far before Heartfire detects her presence. The Nerinian queen was one of the few that her mother considered an actual friend, and Casimira has heard enough about her to know better than to intrude on her kingdom.

CASIMIRA

dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah

She is not left waiting for long, which comes as no surprise to her. In the distance she can see the other mare drawing nearer, and for a moment she feels an anxious quickening of her pulse. She wasn’t afraid of Heartfire — not the way everyone else should be, at least — but knowing the gift she possessed made her slightly uneasy. She knew Heartfire could see almost anything that she chose to, and while she didn’t think she would invade her vision, she wasn’t entirely sure. She has not done anything that she should be ashamed of – not in her equine form, at least. But her dragon form?

That was an entirely different story.

There were still mornings that she awoke to the taste of smoke and fire lingering on her tongue, when she could still smell the burnt trees – and sometimes the metallic tang of blood in her mouth.

This fear of losing control was what still drove her into solitude, no matter how badly she wanted to be with Badden, or to go home to Tephra, she couldn’t risk it. The guilt of the destruction she left in her wake already ate her alive; the thought of accidentally hurting Badden was more than she could bear.

When her pale blue eyes meet Heartfire’s sharp, piercing gaze, she tries to not wither beneath it. Not because she was afraid, but because when faced with someone else so sure of herself, so bold and capable, Casimira suddenly realized how she just...was not, anymore. She was far from weak, but she still felt so lost; she didn’t know who she was, or what she was supposed to be. She didn’t know if she should be strong enough to keep the dragon imprisoned forever, or strong enough to control it. Neither felt doable.

Her head ducks slightly when Heartfire says she was welcomed here, shaking her white forelock from her pale blue eyes as she says with a quiet laugh, “I know, I just, um, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.” She had taken a step forward, and though her gaze had drifted to one of the many cliffs in the distance, she focuses her eyes back on Heartfire. “I don’t think I want to go back to Tephra. I’ve been putting it off ever since the war.” Ever since I died, she means to say, but she does not clarify. Looking back to Heartfire’s bright, blue eyes, she is sure that she already knows. That she already knows Casimira had fought Castile and Ophanim, that Starsin had killed her. That by some strange miracle she was alive again, reborn from a single dragon scale.

“Does that make me weak? Because I don’t want to go back, even though I was born there, even though I should want to be there?” She doesn’t realize that she is chewing on her bottom lip and again refusing to look the mare that she considered more like an aunt in the eye; afraid of her answer, afraid that she will confirm everything she already knew about herself.