#8sunday, The Twitch 16/07/10

Greetings, Weekend Writing Warriors! For the next few weeks I will be sharing one of the first short stories I wrote. Its was inspired by a collection of short stories The Itch of the Twitch , by Harvey Tyson, a South African writer. This week we meet the target of the main character’s hunt: the rare and elusive Xenica.

This story takes ‘twitching’ into the future, and the Multiverse of Homo Galacticus.

For continuity, the preceding paragraph started:

Suddenly, a diamond-shaped, bronze-scaled head popped out between the foliage fringing the cave.

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“Stay” my partner signalled, silently and slowly. It was at that point that I realised that I had lost voluntary control of my body. I lay paralysed as the two dragons continued to stare at us intently. They shrugged through the tangled curtain of branches and vines and came to stand, facing us, just outside the lair.

They were still well over a kilometer  away, but that did nothing to diminish the size of them. The adult was at least nine meters long, and although classified as a lightweight, came in at a solid eight metric tonnes. The white flash along her crown, nape and mantle were unmistakable, as were the distinctive black edged white bars across her primaries. The youngling was half her size, and mottled in shades of brown.

© Kim Magennis

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In case you are wondering:

The  Xenica is actually a breed of dragon as detailed in the Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik. Little is known about this breed, other than when ‘tamed’ it prefers female riders and, is a lightweight. Below is a diagram of the adult Xenica.

source:http://naominovik.com/w/images/thumb/d/d6/Xenica.jpg/300px-Xenica.jpg