A Knight, a Princess, and a Dragon

She sat up in her bed with a start and turned in the direction of the warning. Past the thick wooden shutters of her window, Aruzhan thought she spied a white horse—or perhaps a stallion?—glittering in the starlight as it galloped through the village.

Then Aruzhan had felt the cold silence settling over her home, an awful, deep silence she had not experienced since she was a little girl...the night her father's beautiful kingdom in the southern mountains had been burned by a cruel, fiery dragon.

“I feel it too.” Her father's voice had startled her. Yerlan the Blacksmith stood in her bedroom doorway. His clear eyes and firm expression made Aruzhan forget all about the gray in her father's beard or the crutch at his side. He still looked very much like the Altai king of her childhood. Of course, devoted children like Aruzhan easily see the best in their parents.

“We must warn the others, Aruzhan. Gather them to the shelter as quickly as you can.” The blacksmith—the King—turned on his crutch and swiftly limped outside, followed closely by his daughter. The princess shivered as a cold eastern wind blew through the groaning pine trees surrounding the valley...or was it a distant roar echoing in the mountaintops?

Now every family needs a shelter. Whenever an ogre, a witch, a dragon, or any of life's many storms approaches, it is a place of safety and calm. Mikhail himself had built the thick stone walls of the Altai Village's shelter before he had left to continue his quest.

“It is a small way for me to repay your village's kindness,” he had explained to Aruzhan atop the church tower one evening while they watched the dancing northern lights.  “It is a way for me to protect and serve here even when duty calls me away.”

But when the Princess saw the great beast stretch its hideous, scaly wings over the nearest mountain peak and fly straight towards her like a hurricane of darkness, she wished the mighty dragon hunter had never left at all. Aruzhan had just reached the last house and woken the candlemaker's family to the danger when the east wall of the village burst into flames. 

The small group ran as fast as they could towards the open door of the shelter at the base of the western hills where Yerlan and the rest of Altai Village waited for them. To Aruzhan's right and left, home after home burst into flames, sending up suffocating clouds of dark blue smoke as the fearsome dragon roared in the dark sky above.  The princess had nearly reached the safety of the stone doorway when she saw the youngest of the candlemaker's daughters stumble and fall to the side of the path.

Without thinking--because all good and selfless thoughts become instinct with practice--Aruzhan turned from the shelter and scooped up the little girl.  Struggling back onto the path, the Princess tried not to look at the fiery eyes of the monster as it swooped low over the village rooftops and opened its glowing jaws. Too late...

Dragon's flame shot like red lightning through the night sky, straight for the two girls still running for the shelter. Aruzhan felt the heat grow closer and closer behind her like a terrible wind. Just as she was about to give in to despair, the Princess felt her father's presence beside her. The blacksmith--the King--had leaped from the shelter, heavy aprons wrapped around his thick arms, to block the dragon fire aimed at his daughter. Yerlan's crutch crumbled in flames. Throwing the burning aprons to the ground, the noble man turned and shepherded Aruzhan and the candlemaker's daughter the last few steps into the shelter and the townspeople shut the thick door tightly behind them.  

Any person who has stared down a dragon knows something about courage.  And Aruzhan was as courageous a princess as any you'll meet.  But her heart shook with the stone walls as the black dragon raged outside and her neighbors trembled against her in fear.  The head of the monster's flames had awakened the old scar on the Princess's arm, and she felt hope and trust slipping away, replaced by those awful things we call panic and despair.  

Old wounds can still hurt...more than we care to admit sometimes.

An in that awful moment of fear, Aruzhan heard her own voice, as clear as a bell, the night Mikhail had first seen her scar: “Some wounds need time to heal. Some need desire. More than anything else, I wanted to learn to trust again. And one day I realized that whether this ugly mark was only skin deep or reached down to poison my very heart...was up to me.”

Even in their darkest moments, noble Knights and gentle Princesses still have the power to choose hope over doubt, and trust over despair. Ignoring the roars of the dragon outside, Aruzhan chose to put her trust in the sheltering walls that Mikhail built. 

The fear that had clutched her heart slowly melted away, and the roars of the dragon grew more distant and faint.

Yet safe in the shelter, Aruzhan still wished her friend were there.  There are difficult moments in life when knights in shining armor are very welcome indeed.