Random Writing Friday: Finding Dragons in blank verse…

It’s the last Friday of the month again, so here is a finished piece from my personal archives. I’ll be posting my AtoZ: Y dragon later this afternoon, don’t worry!

A few years ago, I was given a writing assignment in class: I needed to write an emotional scene from my story, Finding Dragons, in blank verse in order to get a different perspective. I’ve never claimed to be any good at poetry, but I liked the idea.

I knew the perfect scene to write — I’ve always known this was going to happen early on in my story, and I was quite happy with how it turned out at the time, although I’ve made a few tweaks today (I can’t help myself). Even though this might not be the exact way it happens in the book, the tone is right anyway.

A quick bit of background:

In the vast plains region where Azur and Kite’s hunter-gatherer society lives, huge dragons are thought to have once roamed the skies, but none have been seen in so many generations most people believe this is a myth. A different species of mid-sized dragons, the size of large modern lions, also shared their environment, but they have steadily disappeared over time, and people now generally agree they don’t exist anymore. A third species of tiny dragonettes have always coexisted with the native bird population, but even sightings of these have been getting rarer and rarer lately, and no one knows why.

Azur and Kite have come with the rest of their band to the Gathering, which is held at the base of a large freestanding rock formation on the open steppe. It’s the traditional yearly visiting, competition, and trade event that brings all of the other bands of Sky together, a time when an otherwise widely-dispersed nomadic people can be all in one place in a peaceful setting.

Suddenly, an actual mid-sized dragon appears from around the rocks, near where the girls are sitting with their friends after the evening meal, apparently chasing something and not realizing all the people were there. And this is where the poem picks up.

The great beast took off
Possibly more startled
Even than we were
To have come
Face to face with a legend
Face to face with its doom

After it! Sandpiper shouted
And the other hunters
Hungry for renown
Grabbed their weapons
And jumped to their feet together
Forgetting petty squabbles
To chase the dream we’d all seen

The elders cried out
Some in protest, some encouraging
Not even their parents
Had ever seen a dragon
A lion with immense wings
Shining, pale scales tinged
With the color of every bird we’d ever seen

Some of us
After snapping out of our shock
Realized we had to protect
What very well might be
The last dragon in the world
So we went in pursuit of the pursuers
Charging across the plain
Following the sound
Of the hunters
Following our destiny