When There Were Dragons by Eliza Gorek ’25
When there were dragons, there was war. The legends and the myths all say so. There are hundreds of stories of dragons and the wonder and horror they carry. But none are as known as the Thousand Year War. This story is known throughout the kingdom of Alisk. It’s a tale of strife, chaos, and myth. It has never been proven to have happened, yet almost everyone believes the story to be true. This myth belongs to the dragons. It is their story to tell. This tale belongs to the humans. It is our story to tell as well. Most importantly, this story belongs to the wild: to the biggest forest, to the deepest sea, and to the creatures, who bear the markings of cursed blessings. The Thousand Year War has spread through even the barest of deserts; you can hear the reeds whispering the solemn words as the wind blows and mountains sing the tunes of the olden songs, which are forbidden from the minds of the youth. A cruel hierarchy forbade the songs of our ancestors and stopped the spring of tradition, but the legend of dragons still exists. A flame cannot be extinguished with a drop of water. There are those who secretly tell the tales, in a deserted alleyway or deep in the forest. If you know who to talk to, you may have a slim chance of hearing the wonders of the old world. The old world was one worth living for. Songs could be sung without the worry of treason and stories were told every night to the little minds, who longed to hear and know the ways of our elders. There were no walls keeping humanity in and no laws preventing adventure and life. The mountains were the tallest you’d ever seen and oceans deeper than one 28 | Spring 2022
could imagine. The forest held secrets that mankind could only wish to know one day. Wild horses ran alongside wind spirits and untamed cats held the power of the gods. You were free to run through the world without a care. You could climb these snow-capped mountains and swim in the shimmering waters of the ocean. You could run free with the horses, even riding bareback on some. On some nights, in the woods, if you were lucky, you could hear the roars and snarls of a wildcat killing its prey. The world before this one was made of bliss, laughter, and wilderness. But now, there are plenty of minds that would prefer death over a cold-hearted hierarchy. The king who rules this land is cold and cruel and untrusting. They say that he can put fear into the hearts of any he looks at. Most people believe them. He is a king with iron in place of his heart and emptiness in place of his soul. He built a wall around the kingdom’s limits and sealed out any sense of joy or happiness. You can no longer climb to the tip of the mountain and sing praises to the wilderness. You can no longer swim to the shallows of the ocean and collect pearl-colored seashells. The horses do not trust mankind and no longer allow you to run with them and the wildcats attack any man who gœs into the forest. This world is made from the screams of children that you hear in the night and the maniacal laughter from the dictatorship of hatred. The gods are gone; they have left us in this horrid place. They were never physical, or maybe they were. If they ever did have a physical form, no one was present to witness. They were purely spirits that could be found anywhere you looked. They were the wind that swayed
