Fear

The whispers started as a low hum, a background noise that I’d learned to tune out. School was my sanctuary, a place where my powers, so overwhelming and chaotic in the outside world, could be channeled, understood, even praised. But lately, the hum had crescendoed into a roar, a cacophony of judgment that clawed at my senses. Every averted gaze, every hushed conversation that ceased the moment I passed, was a fresh wound. They saw me, or rather, they saw what they *thought* they saw: Moon, the effortless prodigy, the dragonet who could do no wrong. They didn’t see the fractured pieces that made up my life, the constant gnawing fear that underlay every breath.

It was the stares that were the worst. Cold, assessing, laced with an envy that felt like a physical blow. They’d look at my scales, shining under the school lights, and I’d feel them dissecting every curve, searching for a flaw, a crack in the facade they’d built for me. And then, the whispers would follow, insidious tendrils of doubt and suspicion. *How does she do it? Is it really natural? There’s something unnatural about her.* My heart would pound, a frantic drumbeat against my ribs, and my instincts would scream at me to shrink, to fold myself into nothingness. I’d try to make myself smaller, to blend into the very air, to become as invisible as I felt inside. Sometimes, I almost succeeded. The world would blur at the edges, sounds would recede, and for a blissful, terrifying moment, I’d be gone.

The only time the roar faded, the only time the stares softened into something akin to genuine warmth, was when I was with Flame. He was everything I wasn’t. Loud, boisterous, a whirlwind of reckless energy. He tripped over his own feet in the corridors, his academic reports were a consistent source of exasperated sighs from the instructors, but on the sports field? He was a force of nature. His frost breath could freeze a rival in their tracks, his fire could melt through any defense. He was pure, unadulterated power, wielded with a joy that I could only dream of.