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How long has it been...? How long have I been here in this world of light...? 600? 700? Rakashi did not know. He had tried scratching a mark into the cave wall for every cycle of the blazing orb of light that traversed the heavens, but he had found it pointless after the 2451st mark.
Time measured in days did not matter to Rakashi, and though he was an exception for nearly every draconic fact and stereotype, his lonesome life had showed him that time was irrelivent.
He'd rot and die sooner or later.
Those words taunted him every day of his existance, ever since he had lost any and all contact with the outside world. There were no villages, no living creatures, not even marauding bands of beasts.
He had taken refuge in a small cave inlayed in a rocky outcropping. Outwards from that stone rise were not but dead, wind-swept plains.
Now, everyday, Rakashi would walk out of the cave, raise his snout high and smell out for any living thing. He would even venture out and scan the area, always looking. Yet whether it was for food or companionship, he did not know. Yet every search brought only disappointment, and he returned to his lair to eat the stone for sustinance.
Yet, one fateful day of the year -4829 D.R., when he stepped into the soft light of morning, his shoulders in their purpetual slump, he raised his snout up to the heavens and took in the scents. He expected and recieved the usual: Dead grass, dying trees, stone, his own earthy scent and the dirt the wind kicked into the air. Yet, there was something else. Something...living.
Hope sparked a small fire in his soul. Something living! he shouted in his mind, for he doubted he could speak now after hundreds of years of silence. He had even forgotten what his voice sounded like.
His wings flicked in anticipation, which was such an odd feeling. He had feared the sky for years, and his wings had grown weak and spindly as with the rest of him.
Moving at a slow trot, he headed out to the smell. His head low, he traversed the couple of miles of so-very familiar terrain. He found the source within a large ring of gnarled, leaf-less trees, using odd tools made of a combination of steel and wood.
There were at least three scores of them, standing on two legs instead of four and with oddly smooth, scale-less skin. How they looked so foreign to him! Crops of hair topped their heads, some so long they reached the small of their backs or so short it was but a little fuzz. They had no snouts or claws, no tails or wings, and they spoke in an odd language he could not understand.
They were using their tools, which he would later learn were axes, to cut down the trees. Then they would haul the wood into the center of the clearing and erect odd structures.
Others made fensing structures to hold odd quadipedial creatures with little fur, pudgy bodies and small hooved feet, as well as similar creatures that looked more fit and had wild manes of hair on their necks as well as smaller creatures with white, curly fur that made odd 'baa'ing noises. Apparently they were used for food, for some of the odd two-legged beings butchered, skinned and cooked them over small fires.
Rakashi watched the human's build their homes for hours, hiding in the tall, browning reeds some ways away. He was about the size of one of their horses, so it was an easy task to stay out of their sights, even if his scales were as dark as night.
And there was one figure that caught his attention the most. A tall, feminine human wearing fitted plates of steel that gleamed in the sun. With long hair that looked golden in the light and with a very imposing voice that was tough enough to command but soft enough to sooth, she directed the others in their building.
His sapphire eyes were wide in awe of this person, and he was quite compelled to walk in amongst them and meet them and her. He even took a step forward, and why not? He had never encountered humans before, and in his ignorance, he saw no reason as to why they might not welcome him with open arms.
The next day, he learned otherwise.
He slept that night in the field were he had watched the bustling people, who had, by nightfall, already built one building and had up the frame work for three others.
By the time he awoke, two more buildings were complete and the skeletons of five others were underway. They weren't all that impressing, but they must have been satisfactory at the time for the humans.
The trees they had cut down, Rakashi observed, wouldn't be enough for them, and he knew they'd soon start searching for more.
In his desperate hope for companionship, he thought that maybe he could find a language he and the humans both spoke, and he could direct them to the more wooded areas.
He started forward slowly, the distance not great, but seemed like miles to him. Yet before he knew it, he was poking his head through two trees and looking left and right, amazed at how the human's looked up close.
They were less enthusiastic.
One of the woodcutters, wiping his brow with a burly forearm and exhaling heavily happened to glance his way, and in the bright daylight Rakashi was hard to miss.
"Dragon!!" the man shouted, dropping his axe in his shock. Rakashi didn't know what it meant, but it must've been something bad for soon the people were forming up into regiments, bearing their axes, slender and sharpened slabs of metal and bending wooden objects with string stretching from end to end where long wooden shafts tipped with sharp stones or steel that were notched back and poised to point at him.
Under the armored woman's call, Rakashi soon learned what a volley of arrows was.
Arrows flew forth to chip and break through his scales, causing pain to shoot through his form. He recoiled from the foreign sensation of pain and bolted before the axe-and sword-wielding humans could get within striking range.
He practically flew across the fields of brown grasses with leaping bounds instead of his usual slow strides.
It took his three sun cycles to yank out all of the arrows, the ones in his flanks being the hardest to get at. There had even been what looked like a giant arrow that had hit him in the shoulder, a javelin he'd learn later, but it had luckily fell out somewhere down his flight. The wounds bled freely for only the first day.
From then on, he vowed never to mix with humans again.
His vow lasted only two tendays.