Dragon

Jasper watched as smoke poured out the windows of the cabin and drifted up towards the heavens, the feathers of angels falling in reverse. A sigh escaped his lips as he watched, his breath quivering through his clenched jaw. He could feel himself losing control, the pain that had been comfortably seated in the trench of his stomach, seemed to be ripping out all of his internal organs and having a feast at his expense. He could feel the smoke welling up in his core, it stared him in the lungs and gagged him. It climbed its way up his throat in tendrils and burned away his flaking flesh. He thought of ice and snow and water, but thinking of those things made things worse not better, An irritating itch began at his lower back and eased its way up slowly building in his chest. An impossible pressure pushed against the walls of his rib cage. It whispered for him to let go. The tension in his face released and he let the fire ease through his veins, it let it burn, the release of it all was so, so sweet. Why had he held back so long? What could be wrong about this? He was just doing what he was born to do. “No. No. No.” He said it at first quietly, just to himself, and then with more urgency, screaming it and grasping his head. He felt as though a physical limb was being torn from him as he pulled against the urge, swallowed the ashes and patted them down. He held them there as he breathed, one controlled breath at a time. The pressure eased and he fell to the ground with a hand placed firmly over his heart. If he didn’t have ribs, it would’ve escaped. He breathed in and filled his chest with a balloon's worth of air, and begged that another episode wouldn’t come by to deflate him. The cool air soothed his throat, and he just sat and breathed and watched the feathers falling in reverse. And let the moment sit. There was sudden crash from the woods behind him and his head flung around towards the noise. A new urgency to move took over, he tried to stand but couldn’t. He tried to speak but didn’t, he wished Demi was there with him to say something, to help? He couldn’t even tell. But the thing he was craving most was the opposite of serenity, the distant enemy of isolation. He clawed at the ground like a savage beast, pulling himself along the jagged earth. He breathed in deeper, hungrily. His jaw unclenched and his muscles became more relaxed, as his veins pumped with more urgency now, more life. He could feel his muscles bending and expanding, stretching over the his skeleton. An awful migraine that he hadn’t realized he had, now eased and dispersed. He was left with nothing more than himself, and the cloud of smoke that now pooled around him. His arms moved to push himself upward, his feet sinking into the dark smoke that shifted around him as he moved. The scales on his neck quivered and his head moved so he looked towards the sky. Steam poured from his nostrils. Then there was a flash of light, and all at once it seemed over. He stared down at himself as his fingernails shrunk to stubs and his flesh turned pink, his hair, slick and black once more. Shriveled corpses of what had been trees now surrounded him and a layer of ash covered the decaying ground. In despite of himself, he dragged his skin and bones to the bottom of the hill.