Mogdual

MOGDUAL by TISH HAND

            My brain tingles and nostrils flare as they fill with the acrid steam rising from the vents in my lair. The earth awakens and I with it. My eye flaps creak open to expose my golden slit, now blood rimmed and stinging from millennia without lubrication.

             I am Mogdual and I am hungry.

            Turquoise scales shimmer and begin to dry from the condensation. Lava bubbles and flows upward through the lengthening fissures and my split tongue emerges to flick at the tastes on the mordid wind. My stomachs grumble louder than the rumbling of my mountain where I witness a large pile or bone remnants disintegrating before my eyes. I briefly consider filling this emptiness in my gut with the cooling lava. Mogdual would breathe fire once again but would still ache with hunger.

            My talons unsheathe with zipper sounds from my hooked toes and clack against the solid rock beneath me. How long will it be solid? How long have I slept in this icy prison, my blood chilling in my veins, my breath slowing to a near stop, and my body suspended as in death in the sleep of ages? Why isn’t at least one of my stomachs still full from the 25 herbivores I devoured before I slept? I cannot even lick the marrow from their cracked bones; they have turned to decay with flames licking at them.

            I must break free. It grows too hot, even for me, and…       

            I am Mogdual and I am hungry.

My way is blocked by ice I must eat the firestone after all. I rush to do so and return to blow fire at the icy blockade. Frigid water runs beneath my feet and I stand on talons tiptoe to escape its intrepid numbing. Steam rises to blind me and the smoky belch of my exhausted fire mixes black with the white, hissing glare. Blindly, I go to get more fire to feed my flame, ever clacking on talon tips.

Soon I can see light breaking through the dripping wall, but not soon enough. My muscles slow: the heat is gone. With a final, valiant effort, I ram the wall. It gives way and shards of ice sheer off the mountain to crash in plumes of white to the snow-laid plain beneath.

With effort I rise high to meet the sun. I must bask every scale with the radiance and fly south to warmth and life.

I am Mogdual and I am hungry.