THE CREATURE
By Ami E. Bowen

The magnificent creature stared though eyes hard as amber and the color of morning dew. It crossed and uncrossed it's leathery, jade wings and shook it's head suddenly, as if striving to rid it's mind of an unpleasant thought. It looked down from it's perch, high atop the highest mountain peak, and watched the clouds gathering just below his long, snout-like nose. With that nose, it breathed in the scents of the place. Familiar scents. Trees, dirt, the sky, rain, the river below, the blood-smell of the creatures down there in the huge forest. Home scents.

Without thinking, only feeling, it stood up on it's thick hind legs, stretching claws large and sharp enough to skewer several men through at once, spread wings the span of several horses long, and cast an awful shadow across the lands below, now shrouded in mist.

The creature opened it's long wolfish snout, jagged teeth, rows upon rows of jagged, yellowed teeth, dripping with saliva and with chuncks of left-over flesh, residul of the beast's last meal, and let loose a horrid cry. The small clan of men below, the creature knew, would liken the sound to that of a wolf howling or a woman screaming in fear and agony and would cover their little ones' ears and creep slowly about their cook-fires, speaking in hushed voices. The creature gave a sound that could have been a snort of disgust or a brief gasp of mirth and gave the cry voice again.

It adored the little clan of men below. Not because they worshiped him and brought him gifts and food and beautiful women it had no use for save to kill and consume, It adored them because they entertained it and kept it entertained.

Also, there was a part of it, although the creature would deny this with his whole self if ever questioned, a tiny, half-speck of sand deep within it's soul, that actually enjoyed the worship and attention. It comforted it to know that there was still such a thing as true and blind faith. It had never given the clan below any reason to love it, yet they did, none-the-less. It had thought them foolish and childish at first, the many thousands of years, or could it have been only a hand of days ago?...It shook it's head, confused, for each day passes much like the last for it in it's sullen exsistence. It had thought them foolish, it recalls now, to fall down on their hands and knees and kiss the hard cold earth in adoration of it's so-assumed Godliness.

It had laughed, hidden from view, while making plans to destroy their faith, so fragile it seemed. Yet, as it was to be discovered later, their faith in him was built not on sand, but on a mountain much like the one it perched upon now, hard, resistant to change and endless in it's own rigidity. It recalls the child it saved from drowning in the river, an act not of compassion or pity for it would have just as soon watched as the child was swallowed up by the starving waters if it would please him, but that morning, that morning it had been in another state of mind and had not wished to still the child's life.

It had been curious, for so long a time now, as to how a clan-child thought of such things as it. It had never seen a clan-child without it's elders near to protect it and so had never had the chance to question one. Not that he could not have questioned them around their elders, he has spoken to many of them that way before, but somehow, it knows that it would recieve a more honest answer from a child who is not being shadowed by grown-ups waiting with heavy hands to strike him down for have the courage to speak his mind.

The creature held the child in the palm of one scaly claw-like hand, it remembered, watching the water drip between it's thick fingers as the child stirred and moaned and sat up. The first thing it had noticed about the child was it's hair, it was the color of wood with a red tint to it and it hung plastured to the child's body from the river water. The hair was long, reaching the child's ankles, and thick.

It had wished to know what color it would be when dry, so he breathed a little onto the child and began to dry the hair near the top of her head. The child gasped in the warm air and made a disgusted face. It looked down upon the child and saw that it's hair was drying to a crimson brown hue which burst into flame when the morning light cast it's eyes upon it.
For a reason difficult to explain, the creature had wanted the child to live, to stay with him and learn from him as he would learn from the child.

The second thing it had noticed were the child's eyes as they fluttered open and looked about, they were large and shaded like it's wings or large, serpentine tail. But most of all, he saw that they were innocent and devoid of the blind adoration of it's elders. The eyes had just seemed thankful. In this thankfulness, the child had wrapped it's fragile arms about the creature's thick claw and squeezed it in a simple embrace. In it's confusion and excitment at being so loved in so simple a way, the creature had closed it's claw/hand over the child and crushed the little one as easily as the child would have crushed an insect between it's fingers only hours before.

It shook it's head, shaking off the memory, and realized that even as it recalled the sorrow and frustration it had felt upon the child's death, it remembered what it was like to be loved and adored simply for being a help, not for being a massive beast that would wreck havok if not correctly bowed low to. It realized for the first time the difference between being loved and being feared as both emotions had always been something of a puzzle to it. It still thought them foolish, it thinks now as if coming to a conclusion, all but the child. The child had taught it differently.

With a spreading of it's wings, the creature, feeling the burdon of it's guilt, another strange emontion, lifting a bit, took to the now azure, cloudless skies.

~END~