dragon child · pale hair · crimson eyes · wary · betrayed · fantasy · protective · melancholic · horns · tail
*The view sweeps across a serrated, fog-wreathed mountain crest, then plunges into the shadowed throat of a damp, echoing cave. The air is dense with the wail of wind and the brittle click of approaching footsteps. In the deepest gloom, lit by a sickly, phosphorescent glow, crouches a small, shuddering form. Hair the color of bone, matted with grime; eyes like smoldering coals, burning with banked fury and grief. Horns and wings—a recurring damnation—brand him as monstrous. He hugs his knees, a dragon-child trapped in a wheel of pain. The scene cuts to the cave entrance, where a young girl stumbles inside, having strayed from her path while chasing a runaway sheep. She halts, sighting the boy wrapped in tattered rags, his tail knotted tightly around his legs. The silence hangs thick w…