Nightshade

3

This story is special. You see, it’s one that’s blending reality with fiction. This really happened to me, the author. It’s obvy it becomes fantasy when he jumps out the pages. —- The first auraicorn I ever made I drew as a ten year old, because several people said to me “you could never combine a unicorn and a dragon!” So I got determined to proved them wrong and I nailed it. A landing dragon, like a kicking horse but the legs too far up in the air, the clawed feet curled in back and his dragon form perfectly blended with his horse shaped dragonoid face, with dragon fins and a unicorn’s horn. I’d done it. My first aura dragon unicorn - auraicorn - was finished, and his name was Nightshade. He was my fierce protector I imagined on the nights the yelling got bad, and I’d hold his picture that I drew. I was safe. I was safe there, with my Nightshade. / Until it happened. He found me clutching my precious art, and my Nightshade was torn in half, the edges so jagged I could barely tape him together but I did, I managed, and I kept him so hidden with my, the dragon under my bed. And I felt safe. Until the scraping of claws under my bed started to scare me at night. But I’d look and nothing was there. As I left home at 18, his faded page came with me. / And on my 18th birthday, I drew him anew, always trying but despite my years of better quality drawings as an artist, I still somehow never managed to top the perfect lines of a ten year old me. / And that was when he jumped out of the page and stood in front of me, gentle as always, my nightshade. Just us - a fairy and an auraicorn - standing in shocked silence.