Walking With Yourself
Walking With Yourself By: D. C. Henry ("Ahndeleck")
Other than the wind, there was nothing. There was only sand as far as they eye could see, and I knew that it would go even further than that. I'd long since given up flight here, it didn't seem quite proper in the quiet death-like dunes of this desert. It would have been as wrong as dancing and singing in a gravy yard. That and I needed some time to think to myself.
I left the last town after they had finally gotten fed up with me. I don't know exactly what I had done to deserve it, and I suspect that it was just overstaying my time there. Most humans didn't like my kind to stay any longer than we had to. If they needed one of us they would tolerate us, but after that they pulled out the guns, tools, or any other handy weapon that they thought could take us down. It broke my heart every time I saw them do it. Poor creatures.
My hope is that the next town might have people with a little more understanding and willingness to take in something different. I just wish I knew where the next town actually was. This desert was much larger than I thought it was. Maps can be incredibly deceiving sometimes. I wasn't too worried about drying up from thirst or going hungry. Boredom and loneliness were my chief concerns.
"You're still doing this?"
I heard the familiar voice, but couldn't see where it came from.
"I'm beside you, you idiot."
And there he was, appearing like a figment of my imagination. I'd never quite figured him out. He looked just like me, almost like a twin. Though he could easily be a figment of my imagination, a sort of black mirror image of myself, but he was as real as I was.
"You don't have to be so harsh about it though," I said, "you always manage to sneak up on me is all."
"That's because you're just sloppy. You know that right? You could use that magic to sense me, but you let me just land beside you."
"You cheat though. I know you don't even use the wings for real. You could just fly about-"
"I don't need the wings, right. That's because I use all that power for whatever I want. You keep it aside for other people and helping them. Do you realize just how stupid that is?"
"It's not stupid."
We walked side by side. We were polar opposites. He was black, I was bronze. His eyes were bright red, brimming with all the hatred and malice that my blue couldn't contain. We were both dragons. While some have called me an angel, I know he would have been called a demon.
His eyes narrowed with trivial annoyance. I never could annoy him for very long. Usually I skipped annoyance and jumped straight to infuriating him. I've never been sure why he hasn't tried to just outright kill me honestly, and one day he just might surprise me.
"Whatever," he said, "that's actually not why I came to talk to you."
I hadn't yet actually looked at him, but I finally turned my gaze to meet his for a few steps just to know I was listening.
"I was thinking a little while back," he continued, "that perhaps after that last city maybe I could convince you to take a little bit of a holiday."
"What are you talking about? I've not once heard you talk about holidays before."
"You didn't think that I would take a break every now and then? Of course, you know so little about me that it would boggle your mind."
It was true actually. I knew nothing about him. He showed up one day, and I knew he had been watching me for a while. He didn't need to say anything, just appear, and when he did, I knew our lives were going to be intertwined for longer than I could even fathom.
"Alright," I said, "so tell me something. What's your name?"
"Now that's cheating," he grinned, wicked and cruel, "you already know I won't answer that question. Try another though, I think I might enjoy this."
"Fine, so what's a holiday for you? You said you take one every now and then."
"Hmm, now that is a fun question. I already feel like we're starting to have some nice common ground."
He tipped his head back, his muzzle pointing up into the sky and closed his eyes. The trace of a smile on his lips unnerved me somewhat. Every ounce of the dragon unnerved me.
"Well, I've actually been on a rather long vacation from you believe it or not."
"Really?"
"When was the last time we met?"
"I can't remember."
"I can't either oddly. But I've been off doing other things I enjoy. Just this last week I came up with a great little game. You find a farm or something with a pair of flammable buildings, and make sure that there is a family that lives there. You wait until one member of the family leaves for a while. Then you separate the family into the two buildings. Pets work too you know, but not nearly as well sometimes. Anyway, you step on one person's legs until they pop, and then do the same to the other. Children scream so much when you do that, love it.
"Anyway, then you put one of them in the barn or shed, then leave the other in the house. Then you wait for whoever you're playing with comes home. When they arrive you set both buildings on fire. Oh you should see their face when that happens. Then you show yourself and explain to them-"
"Shut up you monster! How can you be so damned cruel?"
"It's not hard actually, you should try it sometime. You'd be pretty good at it if-"
"Just shut up."
We walked in silence for a time. I wanted him to leave. I would rather have loneliness and boredom than his company. I seemed to draw him to myself, perhaps he enjoyed playing with my personality. It might be that we were so different. Though sometimes I suspected that he tortured me simply for the pleasure of it.
"I'll ask a question next if you don't mind?" he asked.
"I'd rather walk in silence actually."
"Why do I bother you so much? You know there are worse beings in the world than me. Besides half the time the people you try to help are just as 'bad' as I am."
"Because you are so free about it. You just do whatever you want, whenever you want. Because you can just slaughter innocent-"
"You know they aren't innocent." He said pointedly.
"What about the child you stepped on?"
"I was saving her the trouble of finding out."
I clenched my jaw. I hated him. I could see it in my mind's eye now, I could hear the child's screaming. Then I heard him laughing, only it wasn't my imagination this time, he was laughing.
"You are so funny you know that? You're just like me in some ways. You can anger so easily, and you can be just as dark as I am."
"Anger and dark moods are natural, what you are is-"
"Me? Unnatural? I care to think differently. What am I? You think I'm a monster, but maybe I just follow the natural laws of predator and prey. I'll admit that I have a tendency to play a little more than I should, but if you can't savor the moments, why have them at all?"
"You are no predator, predators take what they need to survive. They-"
"I do what I do to survive. How dare you think that what I do isn't. If I only killed what I needed to live on, then life would be pointless and boring. No, I kill for a much better reason, I'm a sense of justice, I right wrongs."
"I find that impossible to believe."
"Truly? What did those people do to you in that last town? What have they done to this beautiful world? Look what they've done to you all your life. Look where the fuck you are now. You think you would be walking like a cow in the middle of a desert to your slaughter at the hands of these animals if you had some justice in you? You think yourself so much better than all these creatures, but you're not. You serve them wing and-"
"And you destroy everything that makes their life good. You have not seen the injustice that they have to live through day in and day out. You can't put yourself in their shoes can you? You can't see how much suffering and pain all those people out there have to live through. I help them because I believe in a better world where-"
"A better world can't exist with animals like all of them, you know that. Look at all their businesses and politics they throw around. Do you honestly believe that all of that will somehow lead to a much better world? You are such a naïve ass."
"I know that all that can change-"
"How?"
I had to stop there. I couldn't shout back at him, because I had no answer. All the answers I had to that failed against any sort of logic. He and I had talked about this before in the past, and I knew some of the logic that he would be using. In a way, I knew everything that he was going to say. He still would surprise me though.
"You will never see a better world," he said, "not until every last one of their rotting carcasses has blown away to dust. They don't have the facilities to live in a better world, other than the wasteland they've made for themselves now. That's why you wander, that's why you serve, that's why you cow yourself to their every whim."
"It still makes me better than you."
"Does it? Look who has more fun, especially when I torture someone's mind clear to insanity. Look who has a place to live, when I take it from their cold dead hands. Look who has a life, as I live it from bloody kill to bloody kill. I like life. In fact I love it. How about you though?
"Look at you. You're so depressed you're walking. Walking! A dragon doesn't walk when he can fly. You own nothing. You have almost nothing to show for your life. You can count your real friends on one paw I'd be willing to wager. You are a total waste of-"
"You couldn't be any better."
"We'll see in the end I think. Why do you do it though? I mean really, what is your whole reason for carrying on this way?"
"When I help others, I help myself. When they grow, I grow."
"Bah, nice try. Let's see just how much you grow when you get to where you're going. I decided to pay a visit to foretell of your arrival."
I started in surprise. He's never done this before, and knowing him the only thing that would greet me would be pain and suffering. I knew the place had thousands of people in it. I turned away from him then, and decided that if he'd already been there, then those people didn't have much time left.
As I kicked off from the sand and spread my wings, I heard him laughing. It was almost a hysterical laugh in a way, and I knew I was somehow the butt of a horrible macabre joke. I had no idea what I would be flying into, but now I knew I had to go.
***
I was tired. From the morning I had arrived till sometime around midnight I sifted through rubble, fallen buildings, and smashed homes. I'd seen bodies through the day to, and it did terror on my nerves. I'd seen it before, but not quite to this extent.
The people of the town were shocked and lost. Their homes, way of life, and families were torn to pieces. There were long, deep furrows in the ground and I could only guess how he made those. When I arrived though, the people of the city had already begun the rescue attempts. I just dove right in without introduction or greetings. They didn't seem to mind, or maybe they were just as shocked as I was at all the carnage.
I chose what might have been a gas station awning as a makeshift shelter for the night. I lay down, my muscles trembling as I lowered myself. I hadn't worked this hard in a long time. I curled myself up and looked at the rubble, trying to comprehend how anything could consciously wish to do so much harm. It wasn't a pleasant line of thought.
"Hello?" It was a young voice that gave me a welcome distraction. She must be a very small little girl.
"Yes?" I replied.
"Jessica," a much older voice called out, alarmed, "leave the dragon alone. We don't want to disturb him right now. He might get angry."
"It's alright," I said as I saw a little girl carrying a stuffed teddy-bear, "are you Jessica?"
The little girl nodded as a young man followed right behind her. The man looked nervous, but the little girl only looked somewhat shy. It brought a smile to my face to see the little shy girl as she grabbed the hand of the person I assumed was her father and pull him with her. She stopped very close to where I lay and stood a couple feet from me.
"You helped my mommy today."
"Is she alright?"
She looked up at her father and his nervousness seemed to break into a sort of exhausted gratitude. He nodded slowly at me, "She's going to be fine. Both her legs are broken, but the doctor said she'll be back to walking before long at all. They said she was lucky you found her, she was bleeding pretty bad they said."
"You found her just like a big rescue dog." The little girl grabbed onto the pant leg of her father and stood a little closer.
"Well, I didn't want her to hurt anymore," I said, "I was worried about her."
"I was too."
"I bet you were. I bet your father was worried too."
The little girl nodded, then looked down at her bear for a few moments. She let go of her father and stepped up to my face. She lay the bear beside me as she said, "This is Tuffy. He said he likes you so I'm going to let him be with you now."
"Well, I'll look after Tuffy for you Jessica. Maybe he can help me find some more people tomorrow."
"He will." She reached over and petted the side of my head. "You will find everyone."
"I'll try."
"Come on Jessica," her father said, "Let's let the dragon get some sleep alright? He's pretty tired."
Jessica turned and ran off back to wherever the humans were sleeping for the night. Her father stood there watching her go. When she was out of sight he looked back to me.
"Thank you. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have her mother back."
"You're welcome. I'm glad your family is alright."
"I'll let you sleep, you need the rest. But thank you again, dragon."
I nodded to him and he turned away to rejoin his family. As I lay back down, I realized why I dove right into the thick of things that morning. I hated suffering, and I wanted to end as much of it as I could. Then hearing thanks from someone, especially a precious child, was one of the best rewards I could ever receive. I closed my eyes to the carnage, and in my dreams that night I could see rays of hope burst from the rubble through the whole city. Maybe here I can start that change for the rest of the world. Just maybe.