A soft whirring of the air above announced that the entity had coalesced back into visibility. “The reflection is complete. That which was written on this one’s soul has been made manifest into the world. Now my duty here has passed; having fulfilled my task I will slumber for some time until new travelers come across me. I bid you farewell.” And with that, the entity swirled out of existence, and the grove darkened. Even the spring water that had been glowing a most magnificent violet become subdued and faded into nothing, leaving the only source of light in the dark woods the shining beam of Angel’s flashlight. Peter, however, could see his family clearly. He must have been seeing the heat that their bodies gave off, and he knew that in all likelihood his eyes didn’t even look human anymore; they were in all certainty the sort of slit eyes that one found on a snake.
The following silence was as succinct as the darkness, with the only sound that of Peter’s now substantially larger body breathing in and out. He was now on all fours, standing on elongated, clawed feet that could probably shred a tree into pieces with one blow. Standing just a little shorter on four feet than he did on two, he made up for it by extending over twelve feet long, and that was probably without adding all there was in his new elongated neck and tail. His skin from what he could make out from the flashlight’s ambiance was a deep rust color and presumably lighter on his wide scales from his neck to his belly to his tail. Above and behind him he felt his folded pair of new limbs, his wings.
His tail, by far, was the most intriguing. It just... responded to him like he had been born with it, it felt so alien yet so familiar at the same time. Experimentally he swished it back and forth, watching it trancelike as his tail moved; feeling it as it rubbed over the ground and the brush, sensing every prick on it as it passed.
His newfound fascination, however, was quickly brought back down to Earth as the flashlight was brought to bear on his eyes. He could see now that it was Winter, not Angel, who now wielded it. Her face, all of their faces, was a study in shock. Squirming uncomfortably, Peter tried to say something. His throat at least felt familiar enough, he instinctively knew that he could speak, but... he didn’t know what to say. What could he say? What could possibly do this moment justice? They had watched him transform into a massive monster while he enjoyed it...
“Guys, I...” He finally managed to mouth, but that was it. There was literally nothing that he could think of. That’s not to say he didn’t try; he desperately needed to say something to them, but all he got was “I...” over and over again, except that instead of his normal tenor voice even his softly spoken words were boomed out in a resonating heavy draconic voice.
The deafening silence was broken when Merar started chuckling. “You know, should of seen this coming. I just should of seen this coming. I have no idea why I didn’t,” he chortled ruefully.
Swallowing, Peter looked his brother right in the eye. “Lo...look, Merar, this-“
“Oh, this what, Peter?” his brother interrupted. “Leave it to you, Peter; leave it to you to just royally screw us over.”
In spite of his own shock Peter felt his anger rise to the fore. “Maybe you should just keep your own mouth shut Merar,” he said defensively.
“Really, now why the Hell should I do that?” Merar suddenly burst out in anger, “It seems pretty obvious to all of us that you just had your deepest wish granted, and whoa, gee whiz, you didn’t send us back to Kansas, Toto!”
Fuming, Peter narrowed his eyes. “You think it was easy in there?” he demanded, “You think it was easy keeping track of my mind in there? Cause I’d hate to see what sort of crap that cloud thing would’ve dredged up from your mind.”
The words stung just as much as Peter hoped they would have, but the argument was picked up by Winter instead. “Peter...” she began softly. “How...?” she gazed at him pleadingly. “How could you do this?”
Her ugly question silenced Peter, who let out an uncomfortable sigh, which of course was now as loud as a car engine. “I...” he began. “I’m sorry, I screwed up. I-“
“SORRY!?” Winter screeched. “You pull off a goddamn stunt like that and all you can say is sorry!!? How the Hell do you do you think saying sorry is going to fix anything!?” she spat. “I really expected better, Peter. I really did. Instead you go off and spite us; you ended up spiting the rest of us just like your good for nothing father.”
It took a surprising amount of sudden resolve not to take a step back from that comment. It was a line she had approached many times before, but never crossed. Until now. Peter clenched his elongated jaw in anger. “You leave Dad out of this, Winter, and don’t bring him up again.”
“You aren’t the parent, Peter,” Winter snapped, “You don’t get to make any rules. If I see the need to bring him up I sure as Hell will. You want to know why? Because he always cut everyone short, even you.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Peter retorted. “I remember a Dad that was there for us and would give his kidneys for us, something you always seem to want to forget.”
“Forget!?” Winter demanded, “Do you even remember who your father was? He was a drunk, spiteful bastard who always took out his problems on everyone else. Your father was a failure at everything and he couldn’t handle the responsibility, that’s why he left us.”
“Liar!” Peter boomed with his draconic voice. “Dad never had anything to do with it; you want to know why he left? Maybe you should pull out that mirror you’ve carried with you this whole way.”
Winter’s face became flushed, and with Peter’s new vision it was clearer than ever, with all the heat making her face a beacon of hate. “You take that back, Peter, because you don’t know anything about wha-“
“I know enough!” Peter snapped back. “You’ve always blamed Dad for everything. Everything from car payments to global warming, it was always Dad’s fault. Well I’ve got news for you, Winter! You’re the one to blame, you can take the whole load; Dad may have had faults but I guarantee that you’ve got ten times as many as he ever did.”
“How dare you!? How dare you, Peter!? I’ve taken care of you all these years, when your Dad wouldn’t lay-“
“Shut up,” Peter said, “Just shut up with your lies; you’re so full of them that you even believe them yourself and you’ve done nothing but try and fill your kids with them too! You never cared at all about any of us; all you wanted us for was so you could get your child support money and get back at Dad.”
And now Peter had crossed a line, and the gloves were off. “You sick little bastard,” she spat, “You think I spent all that time raising you children, sending you to school, keeping you out of trouble so I could get some child support money?”
“Why not? It’s what you do best, Winter. You leech off everyone else to make yourself feel all inflated so you can feel all wonderful about yourself, but the moment anyone tries to break free you turn into a psycho on them.”
“You know what?” Winter said rhetorically, “You re just like your father. Just the same bag full of miserable pathetic excuses! You’ve got your head so far up your ass you can’t tell left from right and you blame it on everyone else.”
“Look who’s talking? Seems to me you’re the one that wants to play the blame game all the time. You know what happened? I’ve kept it quiet for a long time cause I at least try not to be a petty jerk, but you know what really happened? Dad was a great Dad, but you drove him out because it’s all ‘you,’ all so you can get all the benefits without having to do any of the work yourself.”
“You brat!” Winter shouted, earning a dark smile from Peter; if she was degenerating to name calling it only proved his point that she had no real point to make. “Maybe I should have left you with your father and you could have seen what it was really like for yourself!”
“It would have been better than living under your household!” Peter shouted back. “Maybe that’s just what you should have done, cause I know for a fact it would have been better because anything’s better than you!”
Peter’s barrage stung hard enough that it stunned Winter into silence. But Peter was too angry with his bottled up feelings to back down. “You know what, you wanna be a good mother? You wanna make things better? Fine! You just go dig yourself a grave and die so you can join the rest of your asinine side of the family so the rest of us can just get on with our lives!”
The spew of bitter insults shut up everyone. As the utter silence stretched for more and more seconds, Peter began to feel a twinge of guilt at what he had just said. It was true, all of it, but he could have phrased it less hurtfully than he had.
“You don’t have any right to any of that, Peter,” Merar declared suddenly, the anger and hurt bleeding from his eyes. “No right! You stand there thinking that all the sudden you’re so big and powerful that you can do anything, but that’s just arrogance, that doesn’t make you right in a hundred million years.”
Angry that his brother arbitrarily decided that Peter’s new form had any bearing whatsoever on what were old, deeper grievances, Peter restrained himself from doing anything too suddenly. “You aren’t in a position to judge anything, Merar.”
“The Hell I’m not! I may not be the world’s most qualified person to judge anyone, but it doesn’t take a supreme court justice to tell that you’re being a self righteous hurtful scumbag. I’ve seen a lot of different stuff in my life, and you’re just-“
“You’ve seen?” Peter asked incredulously. “You’ve seen things in your life? What a joke,” he couldn’t help but add disparagingly.
“My life isn’t a joke, Peter! But you’ve never been able to look past your own pride to see that. You’ve always looked down on me just like you look down on everyone, and I’m sick of it.”
“Ha!” Peter laughed. “You want to know why I don’t like you, Merar? You want to know why I treat you like crap? Are you that dense that you can’t figure it out? It’s because you’re a pathetic whiner, Merar. You just sit around sulking the whole time, feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Well, I’m sorry if I somehow have offended you by happening to care about the world!”
“You’re so full of it,” Peter said, offended by Merar’s attributing his pathetic nature to something so supposedly grand. “You call sitting on your bed listening to your so called ‘music’ and wallowing in your wangst caring about the world? That ain’t caring, Merar. You just can’t fess up to the fact that you’re just another pathetic emo who gets all weepy and upset about everything when he doesn’t really even know a thing about real life and real work.”
“Better than what you do,” Merar shot back, “Better than pretending that you’re a good guy who can do no wrong when you’re so busy hating other people for having to deal with flaws you don’t know anything about.”
“Flaws, huh?” Peter challenged. “You call being apathetic to someone else dying just another ‘flaw,” do you?’’
Merar instantly knew what he was talking about. “Don’t you dare, Peter, you promised.”
“You know what he did?” Peter demanded of Winter, not so much because he wanted to convince her than to break Merar’s little secret out into the open. “That party he went to six months ago, that one where that kid died of binge drinking? He could have stopped it.”
“Peter!” his brother shouted at him.
“Yeah, he told me himself in one of his whiny fits; he had told this kid to keep on drinking even though he had wanted to stop. Merar sat there on his butt and egged him on the whole time until he ended up on the floor, dead.” He turned his attention back to Merar and chose his words deliberately. “That sound like just another flaw to you?”
“Peter!” Winter shouted. Clearly she was upset at Peter, predictably, because he was the one challenging her rule, but he could see that he had sown a seed of discord between her and Merar, one that would be difficult if not impossible to get over.
“You think you’re all that, don’t you you arrogant son of a bitch!” Merar shouted.
“Hey, watch who you’re calling your mother, Merar,” Peter said with dark mirth.
“Shut up, Peter,” Winter jumped in, “I think he’s allowed little things like that when you’re so busy tearing the family apart.”
“I don’t need any instruction from you about tearing families apart.”
“Maybe you could use some instruction about being a decent human being,” Merar challenged, “seeing as how you’re lacking in that respect in two ways now.”
“At least I know how to go on living rather than rotting in my own crap and despair,” Peter retorted.
“Well thanks to you we’ll be living in this god forsaken wilderness for the rest of our lives, all because of you!” Winter shouted, so angry that she thrust the flash light to the ground.
“You’ll just find someone new to leech all the life you need off from.”
“At least I didn’t leech off all my family’s hope of ever returning home!”
“Not much of a home to return to as long as you’re in it!”
“I wish your father could have been here so he could have seen just how bad his influence on you was!”
“Screw you!”
“Go to Hell!” Merar shouted alongside his mother. “You’ll even be able to fit among those demons now that you’re showing your true colors.”
Peter’s blood was boiling and he was starting to doubt whether he should hold back from physically harming the two of them at all. “I swear, you keep up trying your bull to hold the moral high ground I’m not going to hold back with these new ‘additions’ I have.
“That’s the way it’s gonna be? All right then,” Merar declared, reaching for the crowbar and marching up to Peter. “You wanna make this into a fight you bastard, you just come on. Come on!” he shouted, and charged forward at his older brother with reckless abandon. “COME ON!!!”
That was the last straw; Peter simply wasn’t going to put up with this anymore. Enraged he instinctively breathed in; he didn’t realize what was happening until the last second. But even as he did, he just smiled grimly and let loose with a stream of flame that erupted from his throat. Immediately it flew forward and, while it was pretty small and pathetic for dragon flame, was more than enough as it engulfed Merar’s leg and set it ablaze.
The fire engulfed Merar’s leg and quickly started spreading up the rest of his body as his clothes ignited. Winter stepped back in horror and Merar ran around panicking and screaming in agony. The spring however was only a few feet away so he instantly bolted for it and threw himself in. He managed to stop from being covered in flames, and the burn marks only extended up to his lower torso. Unable to contain his dark glee, Peter roared. He roared until Merar had exhausted the flames and pulled himself out of the spring. Winter hesitated in shock but ran up to him to help him up.
A smaller blob of fire flew and struck Winter’s purse, knocking it over and spilling out the berries that were inside which were quickly set upon by Peter’s flame and burned to ashes in short order.
“Not so tough now, are you,” he said, taking a dangerous step forward. “Where’s all your bravado now, huh? Where is it now!?”
Peter was stopped as he was momentarily blinded in his left eye. Blinking, he realized it was the flashlight and looked over and saw Angel, who had kept out of the argument and had watched the exchange unfurl, probably picking up the flashlight when Winter had thrown it in anger. She was backed up against a tree, squeezing her teddy bear so tightly it looked like its head was going to pop off. She stood there, absolutely petrified and quaking in terror.
And she was waving the flashlight through the air, like she had done two times earlier that night when beset upon by frightening creatures.
Except now she was waving it at him.
And, in that moment, as he looked with his now serpentine orbs into his baby sister’s soft blue terrified eyes, he saw his own reflection in them.
It wasn’t what he thought it would be.
The reflection he saw was something that had robbed her. It had taken something precious away from her. It had taken something far more valuable than mere piece of mind. It had stolen, cheated her out of her future, a future where she could learn a normal life and learn to read and live with other kids her own age, do things like eat cake, watch TV, live without having to worry about if she was going to be able to eat that day.
It was a reflection that had threatened her, menaced her and her family and had actually attacked it, forever shattering whatever security of mind she had ever had up to that point.
It was the reflection of a dark, serpentine, monstrous beast that had shown itself to be a spiteful, hateful creature that struck out in rage and destroyed everything that she had ever wanted.
The monster froze, unable to move, breath, or it even seemed, to think. It just stood there staring at the little girl, stunned. Slowly, however, it started backpedaling, and every pass of the flashlight beam that the girl passed over it seemed to wound it, sending it back farther and farther in pain. It appeared to hurt so much that the monster’s eyes started to well up as tears began rolling down its face. It kept its monstrous gaze on the girl though, unable to tear away until she shone her light right in its hideous eyes. The monster hurt so much now that it started choking on its tears.
After what seemed like forever in a second, the monster suddenly bolted. It didn’t rush upon her, or her mother, or her brother, it just ran... away. It disappeared into the brush and head to the western ridgeline of hills. Its passage could be heard all the way up as it rammed its way through the foliage, and a minute later the beast emerged at the top of the hill. It was leaving the garden, running full speed to get away. The girl stood up, holding her flashlight up in the general direction of the monster.
Just before it disappeared over the ridge, the monster stopped, and turned its head to look back down into the garden, staring in the direction of the girl. She stood there, immobile, holding up her flashlight as though it were an enormous flaming sword. The monster stared for a moment longer, then lowered its head and darted quickly over the hills, leaving the garden behind and heading out into the foreboding wastes beyond, leaving her alone with her brother and mother.
