“Grandmother! Grandmother! Please tell us the story about the dragon lady again!” Marry pleaded the old woman sitting in the ancient rocking chair engraved with wondrous shapes. The small girl hopped around like a bunny on an Easter egg hunt.

   “Haven’t you heard it enough times, my little ones? We hear it every time you come to visit me. Wouldn’t you like to hear a new story?” The old woman’s voice warmed the room with its melodic softness, while a sigh escaped her cracked lips, withered with her great age.

   “No, Grandma! We want to hear the story of the dragon lady again! Only you know how to tell it right!” Timothy protested by crossing his arms clumsily and pouting with his lips pressed tight.

   “Oh, alright, little ones. I’ll tell you the story of Miranda or how you call her, the dragon lady, but first I need my book.” The old woman chuckled with delight and pointed with her dried, bony fingers to the bookshelf resting in the far end of the room.

  The small boy raced to the endless rows of books as if they were going to disappear in a puff of smoke. He stopped rashly and let his almond-colored eyes circle along the monumental wall of hard covered books towering over his small frame. A second of innocent uncertainty passed before he directed his round, chubby hands to the target of his desire. He pulled out a thick book with a hard cover, which a long time ago was once blue. A trail of sparkly, gray dust lingered in the air and played upon the boy’s nose, flaring up a sneeze with their teasing dance. The sharp sound cut through the cozy silence and manifested a cloud around the small boy with silky, cinnamon-colored hair, giving him the appearance of a cherub angel.

   Timothy danced back to his grandmother carried by invisible wings of excitement. Back near the fireplace, with flames crackling soothingly between a concrete embrace, his sister lay curled up in her grandmother’s lap. Marry gasped in delight and widened her ebony, dark eyes, drinking in the intricacy of the ornaments adorning the book. The little girl, with rosy red cheeks warmed by the gentle touch of the fire’s kiss, lay captivated by the wondrous illustrations. Marry grasped her golden streaks of hair intertwined with the silvery rivers of her grandmother’s. She held her breath at the secrets hidden within the pages of the storybook; secrets uncovered many times before.

   “Every story has a beginning; those starting words that take your breath way and let you fly to wherever you wish, carried by a pair of huge wings. Well in my case, I flew on a pair of dragon wings…” The old woman’s voice weaved a mellifluous melody that set the trio on a journey they made countless times, but which always brought joy and smiles.

* * * *

   A solitary figure, distanced from the time and space she was in, sat on the dead stone with eyes transfixed on the statue. Like a living masterpiece, the young girl’s body rested under the smoke-colored branches in this graveyard of memories. She ran her uncoordinated, long, fine fingers around the cool material, marking the grim events that had played on these now accursed grounds. She nervously followed the lines and cracks of the rock. Her eyes, pools of darkened sadness, enveloped every engraving on the bedazzling remnants of a sculptured dragon. The maiden stared in sorrow, seemingly drilling further into the material, easing the grip of time, letting it steal a few more grains from the mighty dragon’s smooth surface.

   “Miranda!” A distant muffled cry echoed in the lifeless garden of buried feelings. The sound of her name shook the young girl awake from the eternal slumber nestled in her soul.

   “Miranda! Come out now from wherever you are hiding! Do you hear me?” The high pitched voice shrilled again, ripping apart the last shreds of mournful peace.

   “Yeah, I’m here, Lila.” Her low whisper swam between the gusts of fog curling on the moist chilly ground.

   Miranda slowly stood up, every movement drowned in inborn grace and oceans of raven-colored hair swayed under her ministrations to adorn her shoulders with waterfalls of this dismal beauty. The rough, linen cloth, which held her youthful figure in a firm grasp, spilled on the ground melting away in the ghastly lake below. The seconds lingered in the air, prolonging the ethereal glow of eerie innocence.

   “There you are! In the name of the Great Father of our land and kin, you should stop coming here alone and at this time of the year!” The authoritarian tone of her sister, younger by three years, pierced Miranda’s ears. A slender female figure emerged from the embrace of the fog.

   “You know this is no place for us to be especially during the Festival of the Swarming Fogs!” Lila’s flame of arrogance burned brightly. She rambled on about the potential dangers of ‘taking pleasure walks in the demon’s den.’

   “Yeah, I know that,” was Miranda’s reply accompanied by a sigh of defeat.

   How could Miranda forget that even by thinking of coming here, let alone standing on these tainted lands in the flesh, was a challenge faith could never resist accepting? She knew after the Ages of Massacres, the once glorious with its brilliance temple, had become the haunting of the souls that could never pass into the womb of the Holy Mother. Abyssials, her people would call them, were abominations, who exited their eternal place of slumber during the Months of Darkened Skies. This time marked the most gruesome of massacres that had happened on this very ground.

   But, how could Lila understand that she needed to be here? Her younger sister could never comprehend the cryptic charm and enchanting mysticism of these ruins, especially after turning her back on their heritage–their mother’s heritage. She never paid the needed attention to those legends, which were left out by the majority of her own people. Lila always wanted to achieve the glamour of magic, whose shine lost its power over her, and she had become ignorant. Miranda felt her heart being positioned on scales, swaying between both extremes, compassion for her younger sister, and despise for the insult she had inflicted on their mother’s memory.

   Now, at this time of the year, these ominous meadows had a whole new meaning. Miranda hoped that by being close to these violated grounds, they would help her see. She desperately wanted to see what was beyond, to fulfill one of her most burning craving haunting her mind, and prove another legend true.

   “Look, Miranda. We all had it rough after mother passed away and went under the waves to the womb of the Holy Mother, but you can’t keep living like this.” Lila spoke in a soothing tone and placed a delicate hand on her sister’s bare shoulder.

   “And how will that be?” Miranda asked, her voice cold and hollow, already knowing the bitter answer. She wouldn’t allow the attempts at kindness smother the shame and disdain Lila had brought to the family.

   “In delusions! That’s how!” The strength of the young one returned to cut with her razor sharp tongue. Lila narrowed her eyes in the rush of power bursting from within and stretched her face into a mask of sternness, untypical for a young girl.

   “In delusions you say? You don’t understand. You never understood anything in your entire life! You were constantly walking blinded!” Miranda raged with the ferocity of the rivers during summer storms.