The world slowed. Juanaflippa looked down, clutching her chest. Her hands came away sticky with blood. She looked at her mother, standing there with a sword in his hand. Her eyes blurred with tears. Her mother had killed her, again.
'Was I such a bad daughter that Mamí decided he and Papá were better off without me?' Juanaflippa thought. Once was an accident, but twice was too much for the dragon hatchling. She thought of everything she could have done better, everything that could have prevented this. Her chest burned. The last time she had died, she hadn't been awake. She didn't know it hurt this much.
'Is this what Tilín felt?" Juanaflippa's mind wandered to her best friend as her blurry vision got darker. It seemed as though she had taken off her glasses to sleep, though she knew that this wasn't just a bad dream. Juanaflippa missed Tilín. She wonders if Mamí would have killed her again if Tilín or her Papí were there. 'Probably not,' she concluded, the pain fading from her mind. 'Tilín was stronger than me and Papí would have stopped Mamí before he even swung.'
Juanaflippa thought of her dad as her body began to feel cold, even though it was spring. She wished she could have talked to him once more before she left again. She wished the last thing she said to him wasn't that she hated him. She wished he wasn't so far away, wished he could have held her in his arms again, she wished and she wished and she wished.
Juanaflippa was on the ground now. She didn't remember falling. She felt sluggish as she looked at the blood surrounding her, the blood spilt by El Mariana. She shed a single tear.
'At least,' she thought, 'at least I'll see Tilín again.'
She closed her eyes for the last time, a small smile on her face at the thought of her best friend.