1. Blaze

Iapproached a dragon's territory. The boundaries began to push back at me long before I reached the edge of the territory, because that's what a lot of the defensive spells did: they misdirected and encouraged people to back away, not to get near it at all. Only people with magic inside them could even reach the border.

Luckily for me, I was a fire spirit, which meant I was magic.

Closing my eyes, I let the feeling of flame take me, becoming flame and light and heat. To anyone else, it would burn. To me, it felt warm and comforting.

Just like earth spirits could become the earth and meld with nature, fire spirits could become fire and meld with flames.

I made myself as small as possible, becoming barely a flickering. Nobody would see me and I wasn't exactly solid. The only solid part of me was my wick, the very core of me. It was small and slender and delicate and most people wouldn't see it among the flames. I couldn't become only flame. Part of me had to be anchored to the world or I'd just… fizzle out. Flame needed something to burn or it ceased to exist.

Only when I was sure that I was small and barely noticeable did I start to creep forward. My flame limbs moved, and I knew that I looked like a little walking camp fire.

I tried not to give off any smoke and I shuffled forward, feeling for what I knew would be there. A spell to keep out intruders.

Dragons guarded their territories fiercely. They had to have spells all over the place, layered up. The boundaries felt old, which usually meant many generations of protections, all layered up.

I didn't feel any, though.

No, that's not true. I felt one. One defensive spell, and then some crumbly old spells. I flickered and danced, squeezing my slim, tiny wick between the cracks of those spells and into the territory.

Then I ran.

I needed to get out of sight and I needed to get something to eat. Something to burn.

Those trees were calling to me.

I was small and stealthy. They wouldn't even know I was there, as long as I could get to those woods.

They seemed a long way away, though. From the outside, it hadn't looked that far at all but now I was running towards them, my legs didn't seem to carry me fast enough.

All I wanted was to reach them and be safe.

My body pulsed with anxiety, making my flames flicker and burn brighter with each anxious pulse. It was as though my whole body became my heartbeat, beating too fast.

I was so close to the woods.

In fact, I was so focused on those trees as they drew nearer and nearer that I wasn't paying attention to anything else. My body suddenly flared with heat, the same way it did whenever I was near to fire. I could sense fire, always sense fire, the same way that earth spirits could sense the earth and the trees and the animals. I could feel heat.

I stopped moving and shrank down. That wasn't difficult because I was so scared that my body practically collapsed in on itself, flickering as a tiny little flame, barely bigger than a candle.

Above me, a shadow passed. It made me shiver with cold as it blocked out the sun and it took such a long, long time for it to pass. That was one big shadow.

I glanced up. There was a dragon in full flight, gliding along above me. I could feel the warmth of it, the gathering of its flames inside its belly, ready to strike. I wasn't afraid of fire. But I was afraid of dragons. They couldn't burn me but they could still kill me, if they wanted to.

Perhaps entering a dragon's territory hadn't been the smartest thing, after all. I'd thought it was. I'd sensed their fire from miles away, the heat of it radiating out in a way only a fire spirit could sense. I'd been drawn to that heat. I'd set off towards it before I'd even realised I would, and I walked all through the night and the morning. My only plan had been to get here, to step into the dragons' protections and be safe and warm.

With the cold shadow passing over me and the realisation that dragons were much bigger than I'd remembered, I considered trying to slip away again, out of the boundary and finding somewhere else to live.

But I stayed exactly where I was, hoping that I looked like some sunlight sparking off a shiny blade of grass. The dragon swooped overhead, circling. They were looking at the boundary where I'd snuck in. It seemed that one spell had been enough to alert it to my presence.

It circled wider and wider, looking for an intruder.

If I'd been human or even any other kind of creature like a gargoyle or a sprite or a dryad, I'd never have stayed hidden. Only a spirit could remain undetected from those keen, hunting eyes. I made sure I didn't look up in case my flickering eyes gave me away. All I could do was wait, feeling the heat of the dragon as it soared overhead, swooping low to the ground and passing along the boundary.

I thought it was going to find me because even a fire spirit couldn't disappear completely, but suddenly it sped away. I looked up because I couldn't help it and saw it streaking away, slender like an arrow, and heading directly for the castle in the distance. I watched it until it was just a dot in the distance and then I grew just a little and began to hurry towards those woods once again.

Behind me, there was a charred little patch of grass where I'd nestled, but I hoped it was small enough that nobody would find it.

Now I was inside, I was safe. As long as nobody knew I was here.