Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She isn’t a princess, but she would often pretend that she is. Prancing around her tower in her dresses and plastic heels with big pink jewelry decorating her arms and neck.
Little did she know, she was about to become a real princess. In other stories, a dragon is guarding the tower of the princess.
The little girl never had a dragon before but she found them to be important, protecting the princesses from evil, however, her story was different from the others.
She had two dragons that circled her tall tower, but they weren’t dragons at first. At first, they were her mother and stepfather who tucked her inside the tower to protect her from evil until one night they showed their true forms.
That night, she saw her parents change into dragons. That was the first lie.
Finally, she thought, they were here to protect her. That was the second lie.
One night the little girl needed help so she decided to trust her dragons. In the blink of an eye the greedy dragons that were once her parents stole her childhood right from under her. Making her towering well-built tower crumble to the ground. It was in pieces on the ground with the little girl blissfully unaware. She had no idea what happened because she didn’t understand what happened to her. It happened the next day as well.
The dragons were quite greedy, taking advantage of the little girl’s innocent mind and body without her realizing it. They took her tower and built it with cardboard on the inside and iron on the outside, blocking out the birds’ songs, but she was finally a princess, even more so than the others in the stories she read, for she had two protectors.
The little girl slowly grew up in her tower, thankful that she had the constant circling dragons to keep her safe from the real world. They would pick her tower up and fly somewhere new. She never understood why but she assumed it was to make her happy.
Years would go on, and she got older.
Day by day she would be tormented and threatened by the dragons. And day by day she would see the flaws in her tower. One day she would notice the iron walls outside her window, painted in the outside world to deceive her. Another day she noticed the grass on the ground, which confused her. Why was her tower on the ground? It was a room now.
As she uncovered the lies in her room she would think back to the night the dragons arrived. She remembered the attack that she tried to cover up with her lies and imagination. She realized that her parents were always dragons, except they didn’t protect her, they hurt her. They stole from her. They were greedy dragons.
By this point, she was a young woman. The birds weren’t heard from ever again after that point. She had no friends, just the greedy dragons. When the greedy dragons would sleep, she would lay on her mattress and cry, her heart shattered into pieces. Her tower wasn’t a tower anymore, nor was it a room. It was a prison cell. She wasn’t a princess, she was the dragon’s prisoner.
The young woman spent years building up new walls within her prison cell, decorating it with art to please the dragons. She didn’t want them to know she remembered their attack.
She got tired of showing her art, so her walls became empty instead. There is nothing to show, nothing to please the greedy dragons anymore.
The greedy dragons pretended to worry, so she did what they taught her. She lied. The young woman was slowly becoming a dragon too. She was angry, but she was only a dragon when alone. With the greedy dragons, she was still a young woman who continued to love them and fill them with whatever kindness she could muster.
The young woman grew up fast, becoming a woman in a child’s body. This confused the greedy dragons but they hardly noticed or cared. The woman has been trapped in her cell for as long as she can remember. Her bare walls and empty room surrounded her with the only comfort she had, herself. She was no longer a woman around the greedy dragons, she was a full dragon now. Her wings were cut off and her voice was lost. She could only breathe fire now.
One day she sent a letter to someone she met. A pen pal. They had never met before but she needed to trust him because she loved him. The greedy dragons became suspicious of the woman’s new pen pal, so they set a trap. They found her letter one day.
The woman would be forced to talk about a letter she sent out to the one person who cared to listen to her. In this letter, she described the greedy dragon’s attacks and how hopeless she became in her cell. The greedy dragons became scared, so they deceived her once again. They pretended to be her parents again, but the woman wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t the same little girl they fooled in the beginning, however, she was not old enough to leave yet. So she fooled them, pretending it was her imagination. She lied as well. This pleased the greedy dragons for a while until the woman was an adult.
She finally left her cell for the first time. The birds sang to her once again, and she was finally free to sing with them again.
She was no longer a dragon.
She never looked back at the greedy dragons, and she still hasn’t.
What happened to that woman?
Rumors have been heard saying she is still free, and her story is still being written today.
Maybe one day she will share her story with you.
Until then
The End . . .
~from Maryah
About the Creator
Maryah
I am a young woman making it through this world carrying my trauma on my shoulders. Still lost in my hurt with no sense of direction. I am healing it day by day, slaying my dragons, and taking back control of what I lost at such a young age.