I was challenged to write a 1K short story about these rock circles that are in Scotland. And while this barely reaches 788 words, I figured I’d post it here. 😀 here you go:
Years before humans came to Scotland it was a land of mystery. Beasts that breathed fire and had scales for skin, lived in this land. Their wings could carry them for days without stopping. When the humans came to Scotland they called these beasts Dragons, and they were feared by all. The Dragons were known to be violent, and would come out during the night and set the human’s homes on fire.
The human’s feared the mountains and fields where the dragons inhabited. The few that dared to go into the fields would take great care not to be seen by the creatures, or their young. What these few people recorded is what I tell you now.
The Dragons would take large boulders, the size of houses, in their mouths and place them in circles. These circles would catch the morning and evening sun in them and insure at least 5 hours of light for any animal that sat in the circle. It was that said that the Dragons would lay their eggs there, the eggs that held their developing young. The sunlight would hit the eggs directly and serve as an incubator so that the Dragons would not have to warm them with their bodies. After six weeks the eggs would hatch. In the amazing phenomenon the morning sun would reach the egg and once again cover the entire circle. The eggs would than begin to move and crack for a few minutes, until there was a bright flash of fire. Than there would simply be a small dragon (small being a term in comparison, the baby dragons were about the size of a ten year old human) and the ashes of the egg that had once protected the fire breather. The men called the rock circles created by the Dragons, fiedi’s.
One day a young child was searching through his fathers notebooks. He found one that had the image of a dragon on it and was intrigued. As he read about the fiedi’s he grew more and more interested by these creatures. The young boy read his fathers entire notebook in a day and took it with him when he went to a location marked down on the notebook as a fiedi. He found the fiedi and was overjoyed to find an egg in the middle of it. He looked around and saw no dragons. The boy was mischievous and known for stealing, and so he took the only 1 week old egg from the nest.
5 weeks later the egg started to move. The boy watch intently as the dragon baby was born. The egg moved and jumped for about ten minutes before finally cracking. Finally a small dragon snout appeared from the crack in the egg. After a few more minutes of struggling the entire dragon was seen. The cracked and broken white egg under his feet. The boy flipped through his fathers notebook hurriedly, wondering why the dragon had not set fire to his egg.
The baby dragon looked at the frantic boy quizzically as he sifted through the book in his hands. Suddenly the boy realized what he had done…it was the fiedi. Without the suns rays the Dragon would not develop his fire breathing ability. The boy was disappointed to say the least, though he still kept the baby dragon. Dragon and boy grew close and they became like pet and master. The boy managed to hide the dragon from his father by hiding him in the mountains and away from the village.
The boy grew into a man and wrote many books about the behavior of dragons, making them as friends not beasts. He was persecuted and shunned by his family and the villagers, though it did not bother him as long as he had his dragon.
One day when the boy was of old age he came to visit the dragon in his cave. He brought with him a gold plaque that said “Tithram”. The boy gave it to the dragon to keep in his cave. After seventy five years he had finally named his dragon. It is said he chose that day to name him because he knew it would be the last time he would see his lovely creature.
Tithram watched in despair as his master walked slowly over the mountains, his hunched over form slowly disappearing behind them. The boy did not return to his pet the next day, nor the next week, or the next month. He had passed. Though his Dragon lived. It is said that you can hear Tithram crying for his master to this day.
The dragon without fire for breath and the feidi’s will forever be part of Scotland history.
Bethany Faith Writes 