borrowed time

1. How does your character's elemental power manifest? Draw or write them using their elemental powers.

Kate had never even considered getting a pet. Not when she was in her twenties, nor five hundred years later.

Scossa was no pet, nor a steed like any other.

The first time the young shifter saw the wingless dragon, however, it was kept in a cage that was filthy, and too small for its figure. Numbers, spoken and shouted, crisscrossed the air like trade routes across the soils of worlds. How the creature got behind those bars and became a prized item in the dark market, it never revealed to its mistress. The pride of a dragon was universal, after all - to a degree.

With a single sum that she spit, Kate outbid every wealthy swine that breathed the same air with her. If looks could've sunken a blade through her heart, she would've died multiple deaths in that single blink of an eye.

Not that she had the money. She never even entertained the option of paying off the ridiculous offer she had made. She wasn't going to spare a single florin for someone that auctioned off living things.

When the door of the cage was opened, the creature she had freed ran. It left her to fend for herself, as though it all meant nothing. In the end, the difference between slaughter and a narrow escape became finer than a human hair.

Where a dragon lacked vanity along its pride, it often made up the difference with loyalty. Hearing the young woman demand the filth to let her go in a pitch nearing a scream, the creature with a heart made of lightning turned on a dime. It steamrolled through the men like they were nothing, and carried its battered savior to safety. They were now even.

Yet, that wasn't enough for the dragon's heart. Driven by a pull around its ribs like a glowing hot iron chain, it latched onto the young eternal like a starving dog.

When that pull finally subsided, it had already gained a companion like no other, and gotten a name so obvious it almost stung to speak it out loud. Shock. How unimaginative.

With that companionship came a bond. It wasn't of blood or of trust, but of unspoken power and protection. Scossa was able to make lightning itself course thought its mistress' veins, and in turn, Kate kept the dragon hidden in plain sight as a robust equine. They became dependent on each other, both for their own, varying reasons.

Thus, breaking that bond became an option that no longer was one. Taking the life of one, would mean the downfall of the other. Both unwillingly and by choice, the two were bound to each other like two leaden balls on a chain.

Eternally.