Eclipse

by

A short, light hearted contemporary fantasy tale, presented for consideration in the Lunar Awards. “Eclipse” first appeared in the Dragon’s Hoard 2 anthology, June 2024.

(Read Time approx. 12.5 Minute Read)

Jessica threw her travel bag onto the floor as she looked around the entryway of the short-term rental she had booked and let out a long sigh. The place looked exactly as the online photos had shown it would, back when she and Bailey had scoured the Airbnb app looking for the perfect romantic and fun getaway.

For a moment she wasn’t sure what to do next, then she lifted her left hand and stared at the exquisite sapphire ring on her finger, the deep blue stone surrounded by diamonds. For a moment her lips formed a sad smile as she remembered Bailey placing it on her finger, telling her the sapphire matched her eyes, making it the perfect engagement ring. But the smile quickly faded from her face, and she picked the bag up from the floor and headed into the bedroom, her eyes glancing over the Orlando brochures featuring the many parks and sites.

###

It was on her third night of the vacation that she came back and plopped on the couch, exhausted from how hard she had pushed herself to have fun, see the sites, enjoy the amusement parks, anything but think of Bailey.

She had already ordered dinner from the delivery service and was waiting as she marveled at all the pointless souvenirs she had picked up over three days when the doorbell rang. Quickly getting up to retrieve her delivered sushi and fries, she tipped the delivery man then settled back on the couch with her food on the coffee table and watched some TV as she ate. It was then she glanced back at her pile of souvenirs and noticed the cute silver pendant of Tinkerbell she bought wasn’t there. Her brow furrowed as she stared at the various curios she had picked up and wondered if she had left it in the rental car, or worse, lost it from her bags in the park. For a moment she felt around her neck to see if she had put it on and forgot, but nothing was there but the slightly sensitive skin around her neck from the hot Florida sun.

Pressing her lips together, she got up and went out the front door to the parked rental car and checked it over—nothing. With an annoyed sigh she went back into the condo and flopped back on the couch and reached for a fry when she realized half the fries were gone. She was sure there had been more there, she really hadn’t touched them yet. Her eyes blinked a few times, and she looked around the living room.

“Okay, I’m losing my mind,” she said to no one.

She took out her smartphone and looked up the short-term rental listing for this place and scanned past the high ratings they had read up on half a year back when they booked the place and saw a few mixed reviews that were more recent.

Wonderful place, very clean and well stocked. Within ten minutes of most parks. Had a great stay but a bracelet my daughter bought vanished from the place. We looked everywhere but it was simply gone.

Then another.

Fantastic location, close to the parks. The owner was very good with communications, and the pool was very clean. The only odd thing was some missing pocket change, and a pair of earrings somehow vanished from the place.

Jessica found a few more similar comments, but only in the last two months.

Her thoughts of a possible recent burglary were interrupted when she caught some movement out of the corner of her eyes. She flicked her eyes over to the corner of the room where the air vent was on the floor, but nothing was there.

“Odd…”

She ended up trying to put it out of her mind by watching TV late into the night, finally dozing off on the couch. However, it didn’t take long for her dreams to turn sour, and she came awake with a start and felt a watery sting in her eyes. For a moment she lay there in the dark, only illuminated by the muted TV as she tried to shake the remnants of the dream from her mind. Then she heard a light scraping sound on the coffee table near her. She opened one eye with just a squint and froze. There on the coffee table, the silver hoop earrings she took off earlier were moving…sliding across the table. Slowly she opened both eyes and sat up in the dark, just as the two earrings fell off the table and started to move across the tile floor, seemingly on their own. She wanted to get up, to run over to them and grab them, but she felt transfixed, frozen.

Once the earrings reached the floor vent, she was finally able to spring into action and darted across the room, dropping down on all fours and reaching out. She missed them as they slipped through the vent, vanishing below.

“What the…”

She put her fingers through the oversized vent and pulled it up from the floor, exposing a rectangle hole just big enough to fit her head, which she considered for an instant and immediately rejected as visions of rats popped into her mind making her shudder. Before she really thought it through, she stuck her right hand down into the hole and felt around, half expecting to find the missing jewelry. It wasn’t far to the bottom of the vent, just a foot or so and she easily felt the bottom. It was surprisingly clean, as she expected to encounter a lot of dust or crumbs, but no, it was clean and smooth. For a moment it caught her off her guard…until she felt the tiny teeth sink into her index finger and she pulled her hand back sharply.

She stared at her finger for a moment. The bite hadn’t drawn blood, but she could see the ring of depressions outlining a tiny jaw. All the marks were even, not the pronounced bigger front teeth she expected a rat to leave. For a moment she stared at her finger, waiting for blood to begin to seep. Her mind raced with different possibilities, and she quickly decided if it was rats, she was going to a hotel right away—but if she expected to get her money back from Airbnb, she’d need proof.

She went back to the table, retrieving her phone and returned to the vent. Then she activated the camera and switched to video mode and activated the phone’s light. Taking a deep breath, she put the phone into the hole and slowly faced it towards where the bite had come from.

Trying to hold her hand steady, she slowly counted out, “One…two…threefourfive!” Quickly she pulled her hand back, turned off the video and hit ‘play’. “Okay little rat, let’s see those beady eyes and my missing stuff.”

The video showed her sitting on the floor next to the vent, then slowly going into the hole. At first the picture was dark as she was facing the vent wall, then it turned blurry as the image quickly moved around and settled on the biter.

Jessica let out a gasp as she watched the video.

“No way,” she whispered as she reversed the video back to those two long seconds the image had somewhat cleared up. Her biter was surely there, but it wasn’t a rat. In fact, she really wasn’t sure what she was looking at, as she used her fingers to enlarge the image. It looked like a little lizard sitting on top of a pile of stuff. At first, she assumed it had to be one of the anoles she had seen all over the place outside. But unlike those cute little lizards she had seen around the walkways and fences, this one wasn’t green or brown…it was red. And were those little wings along its back?

She sat there for a few minutes watching the video over and over and freezing the picture repeatedly. Then she glanced back at what was left of her food. There were still two fries left on the paper. She picked them up, but they were cold and hard, so she went into the kitchen and popped them into the microwave for a few seconds. Once ready, she took them back to the hole in the floor and shined her phone’s light down into it. All she could see was the bottom of the vent, so she dropped both fries down.

“I think you’ll like these,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

Her lips parted slightly as she saw a tiny red, scaly arm reach into the light and grab one of the fries and pull it back into the darkness. Then she heard the munching. Without a second thought, she grabbed the last piece of her spicy salmon roll and came back to the vent hole, noting the second fry was gone as well. She reached down and left the sushi piece there and was just about to pull her hand back when she felt the flick of a small wet tongue on her index finger. She quickly pulled her hand out of the vent and looking back down, saw the sushi was gone too.

“Hungry little thing, aren’t you?”

She placed her phone down on the bottom of the vent, face down and light on, then slowly lowered her head into the hole, hoping there was enough light to see.

The light was bouncing off the sides and the top and bottom of the vent that stretched back under the floorboards, but there, upon a pile of things was a tiny…a very tiny…dragon.

The pile was filled with all sorts of things: Many loose coins and not all of them American, a few earrings, a few silver rings and her pendant was there, as well as her hoop earrings, and a sparkly bracelet. But sitting up on top of it all was a tiny dragon…there was simply no other word her brain could come up with to explain what she was seeing. Its long scaly neck rose up from its body to its long snouted head with two sparkling yellow eyes. Long wings were folded along its back and its long tail went down and curled around some of the treasures, but even with such detail the red scaled lizard couldn’t have been more than five inches long.

Her lips parted slightly, and she realized she had forgotten to breathe.

“You look like you’ve been crying,” it said with a quiet whisper.

“Did you just speak?” she asked as she felt the blood starting to rush into her head.

“Of course I did,” it replied with a touch of indignance.

“But you’re a…a…”

“Dragon,” it finished for her, a smile curling its long lips. Then when it saw her continued look of doubt, it let out the tiniest little roar that ended in three quick chirps. Then it raised its head up high towards the vent wall above it, and it breathed a little spurt of flames which quickly dissipated.

“Wow,” she said, blinking a few times then smiling. “You bit me.”

“You were about to poke me, and I apologized after your nice gift of food.”

Her smile turned into pursed lips as she looked at her earrings and pendant. “Why are you stealing my stuff?”

The lizard cocked its tiny head to one side and smiled. “I’m a dragon, this is what we do. Haven’t you ever heard of a dragon’s hoard before?”

“Sure, in movies and such, but you’re not really what I’d expect a dragon to be like.”

The little creature let out a sigh. “Oh, I was, once, long, long ago. But we dragons needed to live in the minds and hearts of many to stay as we were, and I faded from all memory many of your years ago. I only woke up again recently, but I was just this…this tiny thing you see before you. But that will change one day, when my hoard gains enough value. Then the dragons can return.”

“Well, you have some nice stuff there,” Jessica said, trying to sound more helpful than she felt.

“Silver is nice,” the dragon admitted, “but much of this is common, and many of the coins are just coated copper. People bring a lot of junk here.”

Then the dragon’s head seemed to bob up and down a few times as the little yellow eyes met hers. “Looks like you were crying.”

“It was just a bad dream,” Jessica admitted, suddenly feeling a bit embarrassed. Then, for no reason she could explain, the words suddenly started flowing. “This was supposed to be our special week, Bailey and me. We were supposed to have fun at the parks and dinners and shows and…and plan our wedding.” Her eyes started to water again, and she shut them tightly. When they opened again, she realized the dragon had moved off its hoard and came up to her, practically touching.

Then the little dragon leaned forward and pressed its tiny face to hers, nose to nose and a strange warmth flowed through her. The pain and loss she had felt didn’t vanish, but didn’t hurt nearly as much anymore, as if a great amount of time had passed, allowing her heart to heal.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper as her mind tried to take in the fact that the hurt just didn’t hurt as much anymore.

“Not sure you’d really understand,” the dragon admitted. “But let’s just say your soul was stuck a bit too deeply into reality and needed a little fantasy to heal it.”

Jessica lifted her head out of the hole and sat there on the floor, a flood of emotions coming to her, and she just smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel much better.”

She watched as the dragon came into the light then spread its wings and lifted up to the floor level, though as the light hit it, its scales seemed to shimmer and refract the light and she instantly realized if she didn’t know he was there, she would not have been able to see him at all.

“No wonder I couldn’t see you before. What do I call you? Do you have a name?”

“Hmmm,” the tiny dragon seemed to think. “I’ve been called many things in ages past, but you can call me Eclipse.”

“A strange name,” she said as she reached out and let it land on her hand. “But I like it.”

Then suddenly her smile grew. “How long will it take your hoard to reach the point where you can return?”

“With what I’ve been gathering, a decent amount of time,” its voice said with a touch of sadness. “Really expensive items for my hoard are rare here it seems. So much junk.” Then his glowing yellow eyes caught the light as it reflected off the large sapphire and diamonds of her ring.

Jessica’s eyes followed the dragon’s, and her smile broadened as she slipped the engagement ring off her finger. “Bailey didn’t ask for this back, hasn’t even spoken to me since the breakup.” Then she placed the ring in the palm of her right hand next to the dragon.

“Will this help?”

The dragon’s eyes sparkled and almost seemed to glow as it reached with its front claws and picked up the ring. “Are these real? Set in white gold?”

“Yes, they are all real, and it’s platinum,” she replied.

The dragon’s breathing got faster and faster as it held the tiny treasure. “You really are giving this to me, willingly?”

“Yes. I hope it helps.”

“Oh, little human, it does much more than that.” The dragon said with a tiny laugh and darted off her hand and back down into the hole to its hoard. Then its small head popped back out for a moment, and it said, “Eternal thanks.” Then the dragon was gone again.

There was a flash of light from the vent opening and Jessica quickly stuck her head back into the hole…but the dragon and its hoard were gone. Nothing remained in the vent but the years of dust that had suddenly re-appeared.

She pulled her head out and frowned for a moment as if confused. But then her smile returned. “Just needed a bit of fantasy to heal it,” she repeated what Eclipse had said to her.

###

She didn’t remember finally going to sleep, but when the sunlight came through the window she sat up with a smile and got ready for the day. Before long she was dressed and heading out to the rental car, ready to make the most of the four days remaining. Before she left, she checked the vent once more, but now not only didn’t it look like it had been cleaned, but it was also difficult to pry up, as if it hadn’t been opened in a long time. She half wondered if she had dreamed the whole thing, but then looked back at her left hand and noted the slim band of pale skin, marking where the ring had been for the last half year.

“Sun is shining, the Mouse is waiting, and I’m going to have a great time,” she said to no one and everyone. “Thanks, Eclipse.”

A large shadow suddenly loomed high above her, and she shielded her eyes as she tried to see what had blocked out the sun when she heard a mighty roar…followed by three bright chirps that echoed through the palm trees below.

Jessica’s smile returned. “Oh, there you are.”