Bareth & Ophelia: Two lost souls

This is Bareth, a baby blue dragon. (Picture donated by Erika)






And this would be the wounded Ophelia, who takes her name from a shakespeare play. My Ophelia didn't go as crazy as the one in "Hamlet" but she almost did and it sprang from the same cause: both are driven mad by the madness going on around them.
"Ophelia is the symbol of the loss of identity that so often strikes girls as they reach adoloscence and are pressured to define themselves by everyone's standards except their own." -Dr. Pipher in Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls







This is Bareth a few years later when he grows up. (Picture donated by Joshua Marvel)

MEETING OF KINDRED SOULS

Ophelia ran along the green pasture, crying tears of loneliness and repression. Only in her early teens, her mother had thrown her out into the world an hour earlier. Tossed aside like leftovers from a sour meal.

She wiped the tears from her despairing eyes, eyes that had seen how much the world hated her kind. Prejudice and hate were the only things the human race had to offer her.

It wasn't supposed to go this way, not this far. Ophelia had tried to control her inner fire, the powers given to her from her father's heredity. He was the only one who could have taught her how to direct the fire source, but he was dead. Living in a completely human environment, Ophelia's neighbors saw her as sub-human, a half-elf who needed to be locked away until all memories of her were forgotten.

As a child, Ophelia's powers had manifested themselves only as little lightening sparks from her fingers occasionally, resulting in a tiny blush in her cheeks each time fire energy was used. Used but not utilized. As she grew into a pre-teen her fire abilities were out of control. Balls of fire and light would come from her hands when she was angry, and her body would turn blazing red.

Classmates started making fun of her, calling her nicknames like "Scarlett". The nickname stuck to her, until all the townspeople started calling her that. It was an existence of ridicule.

Her mother saw her as a reminder of Ophelia's dead father, something neither of them wanted brought to mind.

The last straw came just that morning. Ophelia had burned down the small human school accidentally. It was just a lack of command of her inner fire. And so, there she was, running to somewhere. Somewhere to escape the pain. The repression. And humans.

The pasture reached the cliffs of the beach and Ophelia followed it, but realized too late in all of her troubles, that the cliff ended before she stopped running. Tumbling down to the sandy shore of the beach woke Ophelia from her emotional pain as she toppled to the bottom.

Her dress was torn and so was her fair skin. She yearned for the healing magick her father had known. Someday she would teach herself how to use more of her half-elf magick. There was always a someday, but the present looked as bleak as always.

Off to the right, Ophelia heard a soft chirping. Suddenly curious she pushed her self up to a standing position, drawing her crimson hair out of her face and wandering over to the sound.

At first she saw a broken blue shell, bigger than any egg she had ever seen. Then her eyes beheld a small blue dragon, about as big as a wolf. It looked up at her with beautiful eyes. Ophelia jumped back, frightened.

As soon as the initial shock wore off, Ophelia inched her way over towards the tiny cobalt dragon. A cautious hand reached out to pet the leathery skin of the newborn creature.

"You're all alone, aren't you?" Ophelia asked the baby, looking around for any bigger dragons that might be more harmful, but finding none. "Poor little guy. Well, don't worry… I'm all alone too. World's turned it back on us, so we might as well turn our back on it, right?"

Suddenly Ophelia started to scream out in pain as her whole body turned bright scarlet red. Her breathing became irregular as a psychic "impression" formed between the half-elf and the dragon. Throughout the ordeal Ophelia held onto the dragon, leaving a dark hand print burn on its back.

When the torturous ache that coursed through Ophelia's body came to an end, she leaned against the dragon, catching her breath. From what she had heard about dragons, they had just formed an impression. It usually didn't work like hers just had, but her powers must have gotten in the way again, she mused.

A voice called out to her, //My name's Bareth, who are you? Can you get me food? I'm hungry! Please find me something to eat.//

"Oh wonderful, it's speaking to me in my head," She thought to herself. Still, she didn't know whether this was a good or bad thing. And besides, what did dragons eat? For now she was content to walk besides the placid beast, and see where the dice landed.