The Storyteller: Here there be Dragons

[Dulcie]

It was the flapping of wings that first arouse the attention of the farmers of Myrkenwood in the middle of what had been a restful night. It was a sound far beyond that of any bird or creature that they had seen in many years and it stirred more than one family from their sleep. The force of the wind moving around them shook the poor little houses, rattling the shelves inside until there in the middle of the moonlight night many of the farmers of Myrken would come stumbling out of their homes still half asleep to stare up at a sky filled with dragons.

At first many of the farmers stared about in disbelief, looking from themselves to their family members to assure that they were properly awake in what they were witnessing, and yet there it was the complete truth there above them in the sky, a half dozen dragons of varying shapes and sizes circling about the farms below. For an instant there was time where the beasts could be watched in awe, the pack of them lingering just above the farmers perhaps just watching them as they had been watched. For an instant there was peace.

The cries of the farmers filled the night air, at the first attack, one of the dragons sweeping a mostly harmless ring of fire between one of the farmhouses and the yard where the sheep had been resting for the night. While the house remained unharmed the wall of fire lit up the night sky, easily visible from the township itself. With that barrier set the dragon would swoop down, stealing one of the sheep before it began to flap away as the other dragons began similar actions.

[Dulcie]

With each dragon holding a sheep in it's talons the beasts would fly off into the night sky, heading towards the forest and the more sheltered lands that reside there. Those would were watching the dragons would notice that none of them seemed to be of a similar breed. Some where large bulky creatures with vast wings and great gnashing teeth that couldn't seem to wait to get a hold of the sheep that it carried with it. Others were smaller, some with long serpent like bodies and more than one set of wings, others so small that they struggled to keep a hold of their stolen sheep, their wings beating frantically to keep up with the others.

Below the dragons however there were the resilient Myrken farmers who were glad to see the beasts gone. There were children to reassure, fire to put out and those that were religious thanked their respective Gods that their homes hadn't been damaged and that no lives were lost. Still, for some of these families the loss of a sheep meant that there would be no food upon their table for a week, and that they would have to find some other way to stave off starvation. The townspeople often forgot what poverty the farmers lived in. Still for the rest of the night there was a reprieve.

The next day the market would be filled with the gossip and the rumours of the dragons that had come in the night, only to be punctuated by the eerie sound of flapping wings in the distance. The reaction of the people in the town were varied as they turned their attention in the direction from which the sound came, the dragons flying together as a flock while in the market there were screams and the sound of metals being removed from their sheaths. Myrken had not forgotten the damage that dragons could do.