Jessica looked around the side alley she had just found herself in, after the crowd of people had (not too gently) pushed her in there. Her twitching right hand finally found its way into her bag, and emerged once more with her quill clasped between her fingers. The alley itself was dark, dank, and damp, with the waste and refuse of the street and the buildings that created it tossed carelessly into the shadow of the road. Not that it was much of a road, either. In fact, it was perhaps wide enough for two people to walk abreast of each other - if they could avoid the rubbish that polluted the ground. Jessica looked around, and felt her lips turn down in disgust at how anyone could leave any place like this...but she had to write it down before she could go.
Words and phrases buzzed around the inside of her head, and if she had someone to relay that particular bit of information to nearby, she would have said that it was as though each one was like a tiny person, dressed up as a clown, or in brightly colored clothing, and each one danced to get her attention until she wrote it down. It was almost like a little party inside her head.
Jessica chuckled to herself as she perched on the edge of a discarded wooden stool, and took one of the many notebooks that she carried out of her satchel bag. Flicking through to a clean page, she started to record her adventures of the day so far in a looping, elegant hand. The words seemed to melt from the quill as though they were already there, on the paper, and all it took was the touch of the golden nib to bring the words to light.
So focused on her craft was she, that two pages later, she didn't notice the slightest quivering of the darkness she sat beneath. Humming to herself, she was so involved in her work that nothing could have distracted her until...
...BANG!
The rickety stool that she had perched herself on cracked, and splintered, so that she landed in a most unladylike fashion on the ground, in the dirt, with a resounding thump on her backside. Jessica gasped, and would have squealed in indignation had she not finally noticed the shadows tugging away from their source like a disobedient dog on a leash. And then, that leash snapped, and the shadows whipped past her in one direction - the direction that the general populace were walking in, from the thoroughfare before she had been rudely pushed aside.
Jessica snapped her notebook shut, trusting that the ink was dry, and placed it cleanly back in her bag as she rose, and ran. The heels of her boos landed noisily on the ground as she pursued the shadows, with her quill held protectively in her hand still. Jessica ran, and continued to run, until she found herself in the very center of Wing City itself. In one sweeping glance, the writer took in the sheer beauty of the gardens and the buildings arranged around her, unable to focus on the creature that was manifesting itself in front of her, until she looked at it.
The mass of shadows was under its final construction by now, with a body forged out of concentrated darkness, and Jessica immediately understood what it was, or at least the form it took. Dragon. Lightning flickered up and down its length as it observed the puny characters around it, and instinct alone had Jessica's hand groping the market stall the she had frozen next to. She feared this creature, and its power, and so did all of the other fear-frozen spectators in her vicinity. The only thing that parted her from these was her determination not to become helpless.
From the stall, Jessica pilfered an apple, with her gaze fixed on the dragon creature as though mesmerized. Tears of awe, or fright, or anger trickled down her fair cheeks as her hand immediately moved to the apple, and the quill worked its magic.
'The sweet flesh of the fruit bore protective powers, granting the consumer a temporary shield from the power of light, in all its volatile states'
And then Jessica brought the apple to her mouth, a second after the rouge colored skin had absorbed the black ink of the quill, leaving only the vaguest tracing of a possibility of the words that she had written upon it. Her hand writing was awful, shaky, but the enchantment would hold true.
A single bite of the apple was enough to protect her from the dragons lightning. But then its roar struck her, and the very ground beneath her feet rumbled, and her head vibrated as though she had been struck from all angles with a hammer. Pain lanced up and down her body; red hot, and white at the same time as her sight faded and went black. Everything was color, but there was no light as her ears rang and she was sure that she would never hear or see again. The roar seemed to last a lifetime, and even after the destructive dragon had shut its great mouth, the sound still echoed wickedly off of the remains of buildings.
Jessica never found out how much time passed between that moment, and the moment of her wakening. She was on the ground, her cheeks soaked with the wetness of her tears, with her hands clamped over her ears. And there was silence. Deathly silence. Forcing her body to work through the pain, Jessica forced her head up, and held her hands tightly over her ears as though her head would fall from her shoulders unless she held it there.
Everywhere, buildings had crumbled. People lay in the streets, frozen, either dead or paralyzed with the force of the roar that had been unleashed upon them. Everything was blurry, and nothing made a sound. Shuddering, Jessica wondered if she was deaf. Taking several deep breaths, Jessica took her hands from her ears. Silence still. Until she softly tapped the ground that she had unceremoniously fallen upon. Tap, tap, tap. She heard it. Her once pristine finger nails made the softest sound on the stone floor, but it was sound.
And then, there was a crack of thunder, and a flash of lightning, and Jessica screamed again as rain pelted her, and soaked her quickly through her clothes, expecting to receive another attack. But it was just the weather, and she marginally relaxed.
Forcing herself to her feet once more, Jessica pushed her hair out of her eyes as she looked up at the sky, the golden quill held tightly in her hand still. All was blackness, except for the occasional flash of lightning, and the crash of thunder. But she saw it again, then, that mass of dragon. It was a permanent darkness, refusing to be lit by the lightning that inhabited it, or the lightning that was outside of it. And Jessica knew then, that she had to follow.
She ran. Somehow, the woman found the energy to chase the creature that could cripple her with fear with a single look, and she followed it. Her skin, despite the rain, was warm, she suddenly realized. Her enchantment had held.
And then she froze once more as she tumbled out of a street into a once beautiful plaza that the dragon creature was hell bent on destroying. Lightning flickered from it's maw, and bounced from vehicles, and people, and buildings alike, but she held no fear of it. Protected as she was, Jessica whimpered, and hid herself in the arch that had once been an entrance to a garden. There, she simply allowed herself to be content with watching the monster.
Perhaps when all this was over, assuming she survived, she would write an epic poem about the event. Assuming there was a force to stop this creature, of course.