Chapter 1

 

    Seven years later, my childish dream of becoming a performer became very much a reality... in all the wrong ways.

 

    "Kossi!" Aya sidled up to me, glad to have reached me before the guards did. We were standing in a holding area behind the stocks. All of us were. The whole band had been captured the night before, while we were traveling across the French and Italian border, and sentenced to death for witchcraft and thievery, whatever they meant by that. It was hardly a time to worry about what they were thinking, though.

    "Aya!" I wrapped my arms around my best friend, hoping perhaps the guards wouldn't make me let go. I grasped some of her fur in my fist for comfort, and she buried her face in my hair, which had turned a deeply emotional shade of pink accented with sorrowful blues. I whispered, "Don't let go, please. I don't want to let go."

    She was crying, sobbing silently into my long hair. I rubbed a comforting hand up and down her back, ruffling the soft, purple fur of her shoulders. An unfamiliar closeness seemed to permeate our friendship. Our embrace seemed to radiate with a sort of fraternal love that I suppose we must have forgotten since childhood.

    It was painfully short-lived, though. Along came a guard, ready for his next victim. My heart beat faster as he turned in our direction, my colors brightened as my pulse increased by what seemed like tenfold. I clutched my friend closer.

    The guard reached us and roughly pried Aya out of my grasp, unemotionally pulling her in the direction of the gallows. My colors faded to an unsettled chartreuse as Aya's hand slipped from mine for the last time and she let herself be dragged limply to the gallows. I just stood there, breathless, staring straight ahead as they placed a rope around her neck. For a moment she stood there, probably as breathless as me, and then, after an eternity of a second, she dropped. My breath caught in my throat, and a mortified grey permeated my body. I hardly even noticed when a guard took my arm and began to pull me along.

 

    They didn't lead me to the gallows, though. Somehow, minutes later, I found myself not facing an executioner with a rope in hand, but the queen and king instead. I stood there, completely bewildered and unsure of whether to be terrified or relieved, as their eyes bored into me.

    Finally, the king spoke. His voice was a cold monotone, "You change color."

   I nodded, and quickly replied with a "Yes, sir," which I felt was an appropriate response for the situation.

    "How?" The queen inquired.

    My words caught in my throat for a second, unsure of what to respond with. Finally, gathering my words together, I responded as calmly and politely as I could with, "I'm a chameleon dragon, ma'am. My skin... naturally changes colors. I can... change it at will, see?" I shakily turned my colors to a humble spectrum of teals and greens.

    To my surprise, the beginnings of a smile touched the queen's mouth, "Will you dance for us, gypsy girl?" Her voice still held a touch of cruelty, but now it was mixed with a curious delight. A selfish wave of relief washed over me.

    "Yes, ma'am!" I curtsied deeply and slowly began a shaky but well-rehearsed dance. It was a move of desperation, I'll admit... a last, desperate hope of survival, completely selfish in nature. At times I think back and regret that dance. I remember cruel delight in the queen's eyes and the heaviness in my own heart and feet as I self-servingly displayed myself to them, my passion to them, turning the deepest part of me inside-out for all the world to see with an empty dance of desperation.

    Perhaps, on that lonely, heavy, crowded afternoon, I lost the part of me I found seven years before. It certainly felt that way to me as the queen's hollow words echoed across the throne room, "Keep her," She told the guards, "I think she'll make a lovely court dancer. We can't kill such a pretty little thing."

    With that, a pair of guards grabbed me once more by the arms and pulled me, a bit more gently this time, off to wherever they planned to house me. My whole body felt numb.

Reviews

[bluessadmood]

And this is life ,it takes sudden good turns at times and most of the times bad turns ..
as they all ,the whole band was caught by the guards,captured for the crime of beings thieves and witches
something the poor girl did not even know what it means..
she saw them pull her good friend from her arms to the gallows and saw her being hanged ..
all blood was drained from her as she herself was taken away to the court where the king and queen were..
they asked her to dance in front of them and they were charmed by her way of dancing so they spared her life
so she will spend her nights in a stony locked room..this is still going so nicely ,so exciting to read
lovely write..