The Timetraveller

• Stella Luu, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2018

A time-traveller. That was what I was. Not fully human, but not alien, either. Persistently, I could feel sleep tugging at the edge of my consciousness. Sleep often equaled dreaming and dreaming, for me, meant time travelling.

This time, instead of travelling into the future like normally, I went into the past. How far back, I couldn’t tell. A very, very long time.

I saw dark shapes flitting about in a dark cave. The creatures looked like apes: an early human. It had dark hair and skin. Tentatively, they raised their noses to the air sniffed the air hungrily. Almost like what an animal would do! Another ape-like creature stumbled into the cave. ‘Reek-raaak. Reeeeeeeek!’ It squealed and grunted heavily. Faintly, I heard crashing behind the creature. Someone, something, was coming. And fast. And it sounded big. The apes raised their sticks and stones. A large, scaly reptile crashed into the cave. Almost the size of a bus, I noticed grimly. The apes were no match. The reptile had large, grey scales and a round snout. Its fangs stuck out of its mouth like shiny daggers while razor-like claws raked the ground. Two stubby horns stuck out of its head. A pair of leathery black wings folded neatly on its back. Two blood-red eyes stared out fiercely at the cavemen. A dragon?! How much it resembled the fabled beast!
‘RAAAAAAARssssssssss,’ the dragon being hissed. Fiery breath came smoking out of its jaws.
‘REEEEEEEEEEKKKKKK!’ the ape roared and thumped its chest menacingly. A movement outside the cave caught my eye. Another ape-creature was arriving, carrying a sharp stone. The dragon didn’t seem to notice. The newcomer caveman drew back his arm, and in one quick, fluid action, he threw the stone right at the lizard’s neck. Bullseye! The stone pierced one of the numerous veins on the ancient creature’s neck. The lizard’s eyes blazed bright gold for a moment before dying out. It shuddered, before crumpling into a heap of scales.

Something ancient, something old, came writhing out of the dead creature. A wisp of smoke of some kind.
The dragon’s spirit.
The dragon’s slayer reached his hairy hand out greedily. The smoke dissolved into his palm. The ape’s eyes blazed blood-red once, before fading. I knew immediately what had happened. It was like an instinct at the back of my mind. That was the dragon’s spirit, and in it, contained all of it’s knowledge and cunning, strength and majesty. And that got sucked into that ape.

Suddenly, the caveman spread his hands and blasted fire out of his fingertips onto some dried sticks! I gasped, shocked. So did those other cavemen. They stood in wonder and awe at the sight of the blazing sticks. So this was how humans must have learnt to make fire- actually- not learnt, but basically stolen. This was also probably how humans had evolved such an intricate brain!

What exactly had I just witnessed and why?