The Prophesy of Sahana

Chapter One: The Beginning

Maria glanced up at the sky. The clouds were building up, fast. Soon, there would be a thunderstorm, a big one by the size of the thunder already sounding. Walking faster, the girl barley made into the cave where she lived before the rain started to pour down.

The short fifteen year-old shook her head at the falcon perching on a small natural shelf in the cave’s wall. She had long blue-black hair, kept in a braid that reached all the way to her waist. Her pale face was dusted with freckles, and her bright sage-green eyes stared out under slim, thin eyebrows. She was wearing a white, sleeveless shirt, a pair of dark brown pants tucked into the tops of soft leather boots, and a thin leather belt with a simple clasp, on which a hunting knife, with a small blue stone in the pommel, was suspended in its sheath.

The falcon rustled its feathers in a rather annoyed way. The peregrine was spectacular, much larger than the normal birds of her kind, more the size of a medium-sized eagle than the more natural size of a large raven, with a blue-gray head and wings, and light gray under her neck and body. She had been looking forward to hunting today before the storm blew up. Her name was Joyful Flyer.

“Don’t look at me that way. I brought you dinner, since you can’t fly in this weather.” Maria threw the peregrine an already skinned rabbit, the falcon’s favorite meal. “It’s freshly caught and skinned, you can’t complain. Is Eladar back yet?”

The falcon “nodded” in a very human-like gesture which made her entire body move in a comical way, though Maria was careful not to laugh. The peregrine was not a bird you wanted as an enemy.

Instead, the girl turned to the very back of the cave, where, in a sheltered alcove, a twenty year-old man sat. He was tall, almost seven feet, with chestnut-red hair he wore long, tied back into a tail at the nape of his neck. His clothes were simple, a green tunic over a tan shirt, black leather pants, soft leather boots like Maria’s own, and a thick belt made of deerskin reinforced with metal bands. His walking stick was propped on the wall next to him, by which a large haversack was lying.

The girl squealed and ran to him, saying, “I knew you would come back, I just knew it.”

The man smiled in a tired, yet brotherly sort of way. “Yes, of course I came back. You didn’t expect me to just leave and make you have to defend for yourself, did you now?”

“No. So, Eladar, did you find what you were looking for? Did you find the Stairway to the Land of the Immortals?” Maria was trying to sound casual, but Eladar knew that the girl had probably been waiting to ask him this question since this morning, when she had received the feeling that he was coming back.

“Well, it is a very long story, so why don’t you fix dinner while I show you what I bought from the Traders?”

The girl looked disappointed for a moment, then brightened, smiling at him happily. “Sure. But I won’t let you go to sleep until I get the full story, got it?”

Eladar laughed, and said, “I wouldn’t expect anything else, little sister.”

Deep inside a very different cavern, this one so large that one hundred large cathedrals could fit inside, a gigantic black dragon looked into a pool of water. He sneered at the young man and the even younger girl inside the cheery cave.

“You won’t be coming back to this place, insignificant little human. I will not let that girl into my realm. I will have to deal with both of you in time. I will.”

With those words, the dragon let go of the magic that held the image on the water, and the little cave melted from sight, the light from the scene extinguished, leaving the larger cavern in darkness, a darkness that was broken only by the sound of low, cold laughter.