2710

There weren't always dragons in the valley. Thea's favorite childhood memories were of the long lazy evenings she'd spent held snug in her grandmother's lap, fighting sleep as Gram brought the past to life through her stories. Tales of mystery and adventure of war, tragedy and finally peaceful redemption. Stories of a long ago time when humans ruled the earth.

Born just after the meteor definitively ended the "Last War", Gram had never shared her world with them. Her own parents were among the first of their kind to be born of earth and like many from her time, Gram believed it was her duty to keep their stories alive for future generations.

Thea had only existed in a time of peace and ease. It was hard for her to accept the horror and strife that filled Gram's stories as reality. As a small child she hung on every word, filled with awe and imagination. Later she'd seen them as fantastical, cautionary tales. Fables meant to invoke a sense of gratitude and appreciation in a younger generation.

There were many theories, but no one understood why their ancestors seemed to vanish from the Earth thousands of years before. Great cliff cities abandoned and their way of life forgotten. The reappearance of Dragons 600 years ago, nearly 1500 years after they had disappeared, was just as mysterious.

Modern Dragons blamed the humans for their kinds' first extinction, much the way humans blamed the Dragons for their own extinction 600 years ago. "The circle of life", Gram would always say.

There was no record of the first Dragon to re-appear, many, including her grandmother and parents, believed that dragons never truly disappeared completely. The common beliefe was that the great wars with the humans in ancient times, simply wiped out the naturally small population leaving a lonely few to live in seclusion. Hidden from sight until the climate began to shift favorably in their direction.

The first "Modern Dragon" was discovered in the desert of what was then known as "North America" in the year 2110, where temperatures in the area rarely dropped below 175 Degrees Farenheight.

The air-traveling vesel that had crashd in the scorched desert area near the region that Thea's family called home had been documented on the walls of the ancestral caves, a new chapter along side the stories of their "Ancient Ones". The dragons that tried to save the strange, delicate beings were ultimately hunted and destroyed, rather than revered.

Unlike her twin brother Timothy, Thea struggled to find her place with others her own age. More comfortable around the elders of her village, she rarely spent her time at play, learning how to "be" with other children. She lived for her excursions to the ancient caves with her grandmother where Gram would interpret the ancient cave paintings bringing history to life before Thea's eyes.

Now, standing on the threshold of adulthood, she often took the long trip up to the caves alone, hungry for solitude and time for reflection, rather than the adventure she'd craved as a child. The paintings on the cool stone served as her link to something greater than herself. Proof that life was bigger than her small, easy existence.

Gram had believed that Dragons and humans were too similar - causing a false sense of kinship for Dragons but fear in humans. All Dragons stood upright at less than 5 feet tall on average, with shimmering skin, thick hair and scaled feet and palms. Strange eyes, and their ability to adopt spoken language quickly only spurred fear and suspicion, rather than comfort at the ability to communicate. The strange new creatures seemed to speak of an extended life span of 200 years or more only added to the humans' fear.

Gram explained that the name "dragon" had come from human fairy tales and Thea had been amused by the thought of being named for mystical fire breathing beings that flew through the air, striking terror in the hearts of all who encountered them.

When the humans captured entire villages of Thea's ancestors, only the "heaters", those like Thea's who had the unique ability to produce their own heat, event "spit" a secretion of extremely high temperatures when their body temperature dropped too low or they found themselves in great distress, were able to survive once taken into captivity to be studie. To be tortured. In time they were referred to as "Dragons" rather than "Aliens". The race chose to adopt the label as a symbol of strength and pride.

As the Earth continued to grow hotter and more barren, the population of Dragons grew as the humans's declined. Over time the humand began to focus more on finding a way to leave the planet and save their own kind, rather than destroying Thea's.

The caves illustrated a story of great ships carrying humans to a new world while great masses of those left behind perished. Gram and the other elders warned that humans would one day return and Dragons must be ready to abandon their peaceful ways, learning from the mistakes of the past. Destroy them as they arrived to protect their way of life. Younger generations, like her parents saw the threat of humans as fairy tale and lore. They believed the "old ones" like Gram were simply traumatized by a bygone war.

Thea didn't know who was right. She never thought it mattered. What she knew for certain is that there weren't always Dragons in the Valley, and that the strange vessel she discovered, crashed in the mountains near her ancient cave would change her world forever.