drabble involving a grilled cheese. I don't care what it is as long as a grilled cheese is involved
I was thirteen the first time I ate a grilled cheese sandwich. That day changed my life.
Apparently I was a werewolf, born and bred and raised to be half human, half wolf, and all monster. Apparently cheese is what starts a werewolf’s first change, or maybe I had just coincidentally eaten a grilled cheese right before the full moon rose the day after my thirteenth birthday. I don’t know.
My first change was wondrous, though. Living my whole life in human skin had been hard. Dreadful. I hated it. But living as wolf, that was the light of the sun at the top of a deep dark cave. Wolf-skin sustained me, and I thought that grilled cheese was my link to it.
I went wild, demanding that grilled cheese sandwiches be made for me. When there was no one around to make them, I stole into the pantry and devoured cold cheese on bread. When I was fourteen I learned to make them for myself, but I had no money to buy the bread or cheese. I kidnapped the school librarian once during my free period and made him buy a month’s worth of ingredients for me. I had to be wolf, I had to have fur and claws and sharp teeth and a nose that could smell anything, I had to have wolf-skin. I had to have grilled cheese.
I was growing fast, much too fast, and the amount of cheese and bread available to me was shrinking by the day. I got into the habit of taking my wolf-skin and finding my way into restaurants where I terrorized the patrons into feeding me their sandwiches.
Grilled cheese was the key to power, to wolf-skin, to strength, to control, to insanity. I needed it, so I terrorized my city until they decided never to put cheese and bread in one place.
And that’s the story of why the city of Someplaceineurope never ever serves grilled cheese sandwiches in any of its homes or restaurants or anywhere.
memoriamedusa replied to your post “My stepmom just texted me a picture of her attorney’s (haha abogado)...”
What kind of bulldogs?
i'm notttttt really sure and I can't find my phone rn so I can't ask for updates, all my stepmom said was "some kind of bulldog" and he looked pretty cute, I can confirm that he was not a french bulldog and not a bull terrier but other than that I have no idea
drabble about a character with wings and it can't involve murder huzzah
under the cut for length2032 words:)
She and her sisters flee the capital city on their feet, just barely managing to escape the notice of a group of drunken southern soldiers, celebrating their victory over the long-standing middle kingdom.
Halia is not as fast as her three sisters, as she is the youngest, and an injury she sustained three years before has left her unable to walk or run without pain shooting up her right leg.
The eldest sister halts for a moment, looking back on Halia with an expression that mixes worry and pity.
"Go on!" Halia wheezes at her. "Keep going, I’ll make it!"
Her sister looks unsure for another moment, then turns around and herds her other two sisters onward. Before today, Halia has never broken a promise, but now she knows that she will have to; there is no way for her to continue with her sisters with her right leg in such a condition. She keeps running, though, she runs as fast as she can until her sisters disappear into the dark of the forest. Once they are gone, she slows to a walk, panting. Behind her, the forest echoes the screams emanating from the city.
She walks a few steps more, then stops and looks around, more out of habit than any actual desire to make sure that she is safe. Halia is a princess, and princesses should not be driven out of their castles and into the forest. Yet here I am, she thinks, crippled and alone and ready to die.
She sits down heavily on the forest floor -happy to relieve her leg of her weight- and scoots over to the nearest tree, leaning against its trunk. She hopes that her sisters will not wait for her, they should know better than to risk their lives for her sake. She is seventh in line for the throne, assuming that her niece and nephews are still alive. For her kingdom, she is worth next to nothing.
~(~)~
She wakes the next morning to birdsong and to the chattering of squirrels. Her leg aches and her back is sore from sleeping on the hard ground, but otherwise she is happy to be alive. She stands and stretches, yawning as she does so. A chipmunk chirps in the tree above her, and her stomach rumbles in response. Her sister-in-law, the wife to her second deceased brother, had taught her some things of the herblore that she knew as a child, but it was only enough to mix tinctures and salves, not enough to know which berries are food and which are poison. None of her knowledge will help her to survive in the forest.
She sets off on an empty stomach, walking away from the city and toward where she believes her sisters have gone.
She walks all day, stopping only to sate her thirst at a stream that is small enough that even her limp does not stop her from crossing quickly.
Around midday a mountain edges into her view, its peak hundreds of times taller than the trees so that it is easy to see it through the canopy of the forest. She makes that her destination, if only to climb up some to be able to see where she must go. She has lost all hope of finding her sisters, but that does not mean that she will give up.
She stops walking when the sun dips below the horizon, knowing that it would do no good to keep going and possibly hurt herself trying to navigate through the trees in the dark. The large mountain is still visible in front of her, and she sets her tired eyes on it as she drifts off to sleep. She is determined to get there, however long it takes.
~(~)~
The next day carries on much like the one before it, although nearing high afternoon she happens upon a ripening mōrberie tree just when she is becoming lightheaded and near desperate for food.
She scarfs down as many berries as she can reach, then laments her lack of thought to bring a satchel with her. She sets out again toward the mountain, but this time her spirits are higher, now that the worst of her hunger has been appeased.
~(~)~
She spends two more days walking toward the mountain. She finds no more berry trees, and only once is she able to wet her lips with water. She eats drinks nothing more. Her limp becomes more pronounced as her strength lessens. Her body becomes weak and her thoughts become incoherent. She forgets why she has been walking so far and for so long. She knows only that she needs to reach the mountain that looms ahead. The mountain has been her goal for days, the mountain is where she must go.
She does not know how long it has been when she finally gets to the base of the mountain, she only knows that this is where she is meant to be, and this is where she will die. The hunger that claws at her gut is ignorable, but her thirst is impossible to forget.
When she stands at the bottom of the mountain she looks up and sees a cave. Shelter, she thinks, but her leg crumples underneath her when she tries to take a step, and she falls to the forest floor, feeling the rest of her strenght sap out of the cut that has opened on her forehead. She tries to get up twice, but each time she pushes herself onto her hands and knees, her arms buckle underneath her weight
She finally gives up, resigned to lying on the bed of leaves.
After a while -she does not know exactly how long, her sense of time has been warped in her weakness- a loud beating sounds in her ears. She assumes it is her heartbeat, counting down the last seconds to her death, but it continues for a great long while. Eventually the beating grows louder and the trees begin to stir in a great wind. The animals grow silent within the forest and the beating begins to sound less like a pounding drum, and more like the flapping of great wings.
Halia has been told stories of huge creatures with leathery wings and hides like precious metals and gems. Creatures that have no mercy and breathe fire on all who anger them. She has been told many tales of dragons, but she never thought she would see one.
The creature lands next to Halia with a thud, shaking the very earth that the princess is lying on. She can smell the smoke and blood on its breath, and the odor makes her gag, although her dry throat turns it into a fit of coughing.
So this is how I will die, she thinks, killed and eaten by a dragon.
She closes her eyes and cringes as she feels the dragon’s huge snout sniffing the crown of her head. She moans weakly when she hears the creature stand back, and she can sense when its maw opens wide.
She is bathed in flame, washed in white-hot fire that wounds and cauterizes at the same time. She loses consciousness before she can scream.
~(~)~
Something is moving near her head. She can hear it snuffling at the ground. The sound annoys her mightily. All she wants is to sleep for another thousand years so that she can get rid of the exhaustion she feels in her bones, but the sniffing of the animal close by is preventing her from doing that.
She reaches out without looking and snatches the animal up in her hands, ignoring its distressed hissing as she opens her eyes to look at what had been annoying her so. A grey cat-like creature is struggling to escape her grip, hissing at her with renewed ferocity once she meets its gaze. She bares her teeth and growls back at it, effectively frightening the animal into silence.
"Good." She tells it. "Now stay quiet."
She lays down again, preparing to fall back asleep with the cat-thing still clutched in her hands, but another noise disturbs her from getting her much needed rest.
She listens to the pounding of large feet as the noise draws closer to her, yet even as the huge animal stops next to her head and exhales into the air above her, she refuses to open her eyes.
"Let the cat-beast go, hatchling." The words come into her mind at the same time the creature next to her makes a rumbling noise, like that of a low growl, and she understands somehow that the words and the rumbling correspond with each other, and that the creature is talking to her.
She opens one eye to look at the huge eye of a dragon peering down at her. She recognizes the color of its scales, and she knows that somehow the dragon is familiar with her.
"Let it go."
The dragon repeats. Halia does not want to give up her catch, but the dragon has obvious authority over her, so even though she can feel heat building up in her throat, all she does is blow a puff of smoke into the dragon’s face before she releases her hold over the cat-like thing.
The creature bounds a few yards away from the two of them, then it sits, grooming its fur. Halia tries to think of how this dragon is familiar to her.
It found her, the last time she remembers being awake. She remembers being hungry and thirsty and in so much pain. She remembers being content with death. Why am I not dead?
She stares at the dragon for a moment more, then sits up and refuses to look at it.
"Hatchling," the dragon rumbles, but she will not answer. It breathes smoke into the air around her, but she doesn’t acknowledge it other than to get up and walk to the other side of the clearing. There are things attached to her back. They are heavy, like weights, and she can feel them dragging on the ground as she walks. She stops once she believes she has walked a reasonable distance away from the dragon, then she looks behind her.
She screams, a long, loud shriek that causes the birds in the tree above her to take flight.
"Hatchling! Quiet yourself!" The dragon commands in response to Halia’s screech, but she cannot be calm. She should be dead. She should have died of thirst in the forest. She should have died like every other crippled exiled princess would have. She should not have-
"They are just wings, hatchling. I should think the scales on your skin would alarm you more."
Halia ends her scream and reaches a hand up to feel the skin of her face. Her cheek feels as it always does, but as she slides her fingers up to the bone and over to feel her nose, she can feel the scaly ridges of lizard-skin. She shrieks again as her fingers come into her sight, as half of her hand is covered in the shiny, metallic scales that dragon hide is made from.
She looks at the dragon, takes in the kind eyes and exasperated puff of smoke that exits its nostrils.
"What did you do to me?" She demands, and even though she knows they are understandable, the words come out of her like the rumbling of a growl deep in her chest. "Why am I like this?"
"You were dying," the dragon explains, "I took your body and forged it anew so that you would live. I saved your life."
The creature seems quite proud of its accomplishment, and although the horror at her half-monster body is still curdling her insides, Halia has to admit that the shimmery sparkling of the scales on her hand is pretty, beautiful even. She looks up at the dragon, comparing its scales with her own.
"What does that make me?" She asks, her voice softer and more human-sounding. "What am I?"
The dragon’s pride seems to increase tenfold, and it looks at her like a mother would look at a child.
