a new beginning

The little blue dragon was only a century old when she experienced her first heartbreak.

If she’d been less blindsided, she might have been able to laugh at how cliché the whole thing had been, telegraphed by charmed talisman and delivered by the realm’s most hapless wood sprite. But she had been too caught up in honeymoon bliss, cocooned safely inside euphoric daydreams that had blushed her whole world a little brighter and softer since they’d started dating. She didn't see it coming.

At first, she had been delighted and relieved to see the chubby messenger, clad in royal gold robes, arrive at her pagoda following days of foreboding silence. Finally, this must be the dragon prince's next invitation! But when she opened the door, the wood sprite had instead knelt, quivering, producing a talisman from its robes, and extended it to her in shaking hands above its head. The talisman glowed, sensing the presence of her qi.

“Look, I’ve really enjoyed carving mountains and chasing the stars with you,” the dragon prince said, his booming voice muffled through the enchantment. “You are a wonderful dragon. But if I’m going to pass the trial to become the God of War, I won’t have time for both you and my training. I am sorry, Storm.”

At first, Storm didn't register what he'd said. Slowly, as the meaning of the words sank in, Storm’s anticipatory smile froze on her face. Her heart thumped erratically, dizzyingly. Then it dropped from her chest into her stomach. The messenger must have heard it, for it bowed and stammered a panicked apology. But Storm couldn't hear it through the sudden roaring in her ears, the pressure in her chest, the pain squeezing her lungs. It was unbearable.

With an anguished wail, the little blue dragon leaped skyward, her lithe serpentine body thrusting violently upward as if desperate to shake off an invisible foe. The force of her launch flattened the earth around her, leaving a crater the size of a village. The wood sprite never stood a chance.

Storm wept and the heavens raged, shedding great rivers of tears like an ocean descending from the sky, drowning the mortal realm in her sorrow. After a year, the humans rushed to the temples to pray and present offerings to appease her anguish. After two years, they stopped and started building ships. After seven years, entirely new oceans and islands had emerged.

Finally, she grew tired. Her ferocious, all-consuming sorrow gave way to a heavy sadness.

Storm found a remote cave on an island in the middle of the sea and crawled in. It was dark, and cold, and barren. She liked it. She slept.

-

The little blue dragon was three hundred years old when she next awoke. As consciousness seeped into her mind, she stirred and blinked the fog of depressive drowse from her eyes. For a moment, she held still, waiting for the sadness to realize she was awake and latch on again, braced herself against its ensuing force that would crush her.

But that terrible dread, which had for so long felt like thunderbolts tearing through her gut, had receded to a dull, thrumming buzz, like the charge in a dormant cloud before the rain.

Relief swept over her. She could live with this muted version of feeling. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. It would be better. Perhaps she would even re-emerge and return to celestial society in her former glory, restored to the grandeur -

Bzz. Bzzzbzzz.

The interruption, faint and irritating, jarred Storm from her reverie. Did caves even have mosquitos? It couldn’t be. They wouldn’t dare materialize in her presence. She was a mighty dragon of the harvest, a bringer of bounty and abundance, a disher of catastrophe and despair, a –

“Oh my god. Bryan, look. What is that?”

“What? Where?”

“Oh my god, I think it’s a dragon! Run!”

A panicked scuffling, and high-pitched screams fading into the distance. Storm looked down in time to see two tiny figures fleeing to the exit, dim shadows receding to ant-like specks.

She'd forgotten about mortals. How could she have forgotten about mortals? And curse the audacity of them, to intrude on her saintly presence!

But that was okay. In her new, more generous state of mind, Storm could forgive them for approaching her without the customary offerings. She brightened at the possibilities. Yes. She would bless these mortals, repent her disastrous rampage, and turn over a new leaf.

With great effort, Storm lurched after them towards the cave entrance. Sure, her muscles were a little stiff after her sleep, but compared to a dragon’s hundred-year meditation retreat, it was nothing.

At the mouth of the cave, she squinted as the first rays of light in two centuries seared her vision. The brightness was dazzling.

“Jesus, look at that thing! Are you sure it’s a dragon? Its scales look like stinky tofu! It’s as yellow as piss! It looks like shit and smells like it too!”

“Quick, get a photo!”

Storm blinked, confused and very offended. Yellow? Impossible. She was the most beautiful cerulean dragon of her generation. She invoked celestial serenades from songbirds and phoenixes. She was the muse of celestial painters and artists, the subject of glittering tapestries and chiseled sculptures. They couldn't possibly be talking about her. Just how much damage could two hundred years in a cave do?

She was so distracted that she didn’t see the mortals sneak away, shaking hands clutching camera phones, a trail of rustling foliage marking their escape. But she wasn’t distracted for long.

In thirty minutes, they had descended the mountain upon which the cave rested. In an hour, they would post it to all their social media. In two hours, the photo would ignite interest across the internet, like a spark before the wildfire.

In a day, Storm would be Insta-famous.

-

#dragonsneedselfcaretoo #glowupgurusneeded #dontwakeuplikethis

The photo spread faster than the blackout challenge on TikTok. Online media outlets fell over themselves to publish the first photo of a real dragon captured in over fifty years.

We thought they were merely endangered, one declared. Based on this

never-before-seen photo, they may have already gone extinct and revived from fossils!

BREAKING NEWS, screamed another. CLIMATE CHANGE CONSEQUENCES MORE DIRE THAN WE THOUGHT - NOT ONLY MELTING GLACIERS AND HERALDING THE END OF THE WORLD, NEW EVIDENCE SUGGESTS IT MAY ALSO BE CAUSING THE REVERSE EVOLUTION OF DRAGONS INTO TOADS

“I, personally, feel for her,” Naying_in_Shanghai quipped in her latest story, the lambent glow of her ring light cast upon dewy skin and meticulous #mobwife cat-eye befitting a top influencer. “We all have bad days but imagine being a living example of when Mercury is in retrograde and you’ve neglected your tretinoin routine in the same week? Devastating.”

In the celestial realm, too, the older dragon sisters lamented their misfortune.

“We never reveal ourselves to the mortals,” they wailed, clutching their pearl-encrusted iPhones. “Imagine the first time they see us after all this time, and it’s that!”

Even Storm’s elders chimed in. She barely had time to process the fact that she seemed to have slept through the Dragon King of the East Sea himself hopping on the latest iPhone train.

But he had been kind.

My darling stormcloud, he’d texted, the three little text bubbles undulating as she imagined his giant, kingly claws tapped over miniscule letter blocks. Don’t be discouraged. I know you were hurt. You are the strongest rain dragon in the sky and cannot be cowed by this unfortunate incident. Go show those mortals the true you. Show them what you’re made of.

Storm had long since moped herself into a despondent spiral of nerves. It appeared viralism wasn't the only thing she'd missed, so she’d spent the last week catching up on other mortal inventions. Capitalism. Doom-scrolling. Crypto. It was enough to send even the bravest god into the throes of draconian misery.

But when the notification pinged, she perked up from under the little rain cloud where she’d taken refuge. As she scanned the wise words of the Celestial Emperor, a dormant surge of prideful anger and indignance welled inside her. Finally, someone who understood her. Show them what she was made of?

Storm could oblige.

-

“You ATE them?”

Storm winced and wished she could press herself deeper into the ground.

“Yes, auntie.”

That’s not what the Dragon King meant. Got it.

Her aunt sighed, graying whiskers drooping as the venerable dragoness sagged against West Sea throne.

“Little stormcloud, you’ve already spent the elders’ patience on your antics in the East Sea last age! I’m afraid they will have no sympathy left to spare for you, and our house cannot afford to anger the East Sea again! We must get ahead of this. You shall take a mortal trial as punishment to show remorse for what you’ve done.”

“It will help you grow,” her uncle agreed. “All mortal trials make better dragons when they return.”

And just like that, Storm was banished.

-

She chose New York. It wasn’t the greatest or prettiest city in the mortal realm, and in fact it smelled and looked like its deity might be called something like the God of Trash and Sewer Rats. But it thrummed with the same schizophrenic energy that possessed her when she lanced through the sky, weaving between thunder and lightning, focus and fear concentrated behind her mind’s eye like the tip of an arrow, when she was at her strongest.

Her mortal form was a banker, the same as the wretched human who had snapped her photo (and who had been an entirely mediocre meal, thank you very much). It was a miserable, soul-sucking job, staffed with miserable, lonely people. Luckily Storm had left her soul at home, so she was great at it.

She was a dragon of the harvest, summoning rain and sun to flourish her valleys with rich verdure, so it was easy to strategize what benefits a target company might yield even before the ominous seeds of M&A potential had been planted in the minds of its board. She had clashed with monstrous devils on the battlefields of celestial warfare, so the puny men in expensive suits on roadshows couldn’t faze her in the slightest with their feeble questions. Storm was the best investment banker Goldman Sachs had ever seen, and she barely had to try.

But she did have to try at other things.

Storm had always known that human life was a fragile thread to the tapestry of a dragon’s life, apt to be cut short by the most trivial mishaps. A misplaced foot while hiking. A miscalculated step into oncoming traffic. A neglected cough or sniffle that snowballed into a disease. Constrained by such a tenuous existence, mortal accomplishments were nothing against the immortal wisdom of dragons. She had doubted she would learn anything here.

What she hadn’t expected was that despite their insignificance in the universe, or perhaps because of it, humans could freely feel. They had to, with so much joy and loss concentrated in their brief time, and it seemed to give their short lives more meaning than some immortals could find in centuries.

Dragons, in particular, were frigid paragons of pragmatism. Emotions, rarely felt, were even more rarely acknowledged. Instead, they were quietly dashed against the unrelenting wall of celestial logic.

Don’t be sad, they’d said. How could you be sad over someone who doesn’t want to mate with you? You’ll find another easily enough.

But enough was not something Storm would ever be content with. So she vowed to learn.

-

Alan was her friend. At least, that’s how Storm understood the word in the divine classical literature, though she had never met one in real life.

Alan was another banker, also a woman, and Chinese – and that was apparently enough to bind them to each other in the eyes of their colleagues. Inexplicably drawn to each other in silent kinship, they supported each other, sending Bloomberg snips and market reports for each other’s deals and covering for each other when they were sick. In an industry where the cut-throat barbs of competition regularly adorned the mantle of the hard-earned title investment banker, Alan and Storm were immune.

“My mom works in private equity in Shanghai,” Alan offered once, as they wolfed down salads together during a lunchtime lull. They’d just witnessed a director eviscerate his new analyst’s work, reducing her to tears. “I saw how it messed her up. I like the work, but I don’t want to perpetuate that same kind of toxicity.”

Storm suddenly thought of the Celestial Palace, where innumerable lesser spirits, in search of immortality, regularly submitted to being berated, kicked, or even worse, incinerated by fire in their servitude to dragons. She thought of the chubby wood sprite who had brought the news of her breakup from the dragon prince. She felt ashamed.

“Me neither,” she said. Somewhere deep inside her core, a tendril of a new belief unfurled.

-

Alan and Storm soon spent most of their time outside work together, too, because at least they understood needing to drop everything for work. Far more understanding than the men Alan tried to date (Alan had asked once, politely, if Storm was dating anyone – and was met with such a vehement shake of the head and maybe even a quiet snarl – that she had never broached it again).

Once, Storm went to the ladies’ room to find her friend washing her face at the sink. When Alan saw who came in, she tried to smile, but red-rimmed eyes and the puff of her undereyes exposed her. Storm looked at her, the question unspoken.

“He dumped me,” Alan confessed. Speaking the words seemed to condemn her to the realization of the truth again, and she burst into fresh tears. “He said he needs more time and attention than I can give!”

A familiar searing hurt flashed, a memory unlocked that Storm buried away in her past. As Storm folded her friend into a hug, she wondered if she should offer to eat the mortal man who had hurt her friend. But she didn’t think it would make Alan feel any better, and besides, it was uncool these days to consume processed junk with little nutritional value.

-

A few months later, Storm and Alan huddled over their desks, a new investment idea propelling a flurry of excited whispers and frenzied keyboard tapping.

But they were suddenly interrupted by a deep guffaw of laughter two rows over.

“Guys,” an associate said, waving his phone over his head. “Remember that photo of the dragon from two years ago? It’s trending again!”

Murmurs of glee and amusement rippled the trading floor, but Storm froze, hands hovering over her keyboard mid-stroke.

She thought she was over it. She really did. But she couldn’t help it. Her brain, which had until now taken refuge in the novelty of her new life, began its familiar spiral. The photo. The cave. The sleep. The storm. The message. And - she stopped. She didn't dare recall the next memory.

“Storm? Are you okay?” Storm started. Alan was looking at her, concern and – understanding? – in her gaze.

“I’m fine!” Storm said, peeling her lips into a cheery smile.

“Okay,” Alan seemed unconvinced. “Just tell me if you need something, okay?”

Later, as they got ready to take the elevator down to leave the office together, Alan paused.

“You know, that photo reminded me of some old memories,” she said casually.

“Really?” Storm asked, suddenly wooden.

“For sure. Back then, I was just rejected for my dream job. I took it so badly and was really at my worst.” Alan turned wistful.

“But when I saw that photo, I felt better – and not because it was so ugly, or anything,” she added quickly, glancing askance at Storm. “I’ve always loved dragons, and you know we Chinese worship them. Anyway, it made me realize that everyone goes through shit. Even the most majestic, magnificent immortals in the world. It helped me to think that if that sad dragon could pull herself out of that cave and keep going, even with whatever happened to her, then I could too.”

Storm felt warmth prickling her eyes.

“That’s really lovely,” she whispered, inexplicably grateful.

 Alan beamed, relieved.

“I know, sorry, enough with that sentimental crap. Before I forget to ask - what are you doing for Chinese New Year? Do you want to come to Shanghai? My mom would love you, and it’ll be so fun to have you there.”

A rush of surprised delight. Shanghai. She, absurdly, in three hundred years, had never been. “Really? You’d want to?”

Alan glanced at her with that strange understanding, as if she’d already deduced why Storm sometimes failed to grasp such basic human concepts. “Of course,” she replied. “That’s what best friends do, isn’t it? We go on vacations together.”

Storm stared back for a moment, then smiled.

“That’s what best friends do,” she repeated.

When the elevator dinged at lobby level, the two women stepped off together, laughing, and bade each other good night before departing into the bustling night of the city.