A story I wrote a while ago.

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Eyes of red and teeth of white
Guide me, guide me through the night

As a part canine, and a social part canine at that, Pika knew that she was being ridiculous the day she left her pack. She really had no idea what she’d been thinking…but then again, her pack had been telling her not to do that for ages.
Don’t think, Pika, your ideas are foolish, and hindering. Don’t think, Pika, your hunting is unimpressive, and you are always in the way. Don’t follow, Pika. We are going to fight the bordering pack, you are too weak, and must stay and hide with the three pups.
That’s always how it is, right? That’s how they helped her. So, if Pika had hunted, then elaborate hunting plans would have been ruined, and no moose would have been caught, instead of the stringy calf. And if Pika had fought, then many brave warriors would have been killed, and the battle would have been lost. And if Pika had thought, then the elaborate plans would be ruined, and so would the pack.
She realized that she was useless as anything but a pupsitter. And Pika grew to hate pups, for they were more stupid and useless than she was, but were endeared and fed first. Pups are our future, they said. Pika listened and obeyed, because Pika was not supposed to think.
Eventually, the violet wolfdog-catdragon left her pack, like she had left her pack before them, and her parents before that. Because Pika wanted to exist. She was smothered by her parents and oppressed by her pack, and often found herself wondering whether she was really there at all.
If Pika-pika was really there at all.
A pack of wolves is no place for a freak, is it? It is a place for those of one species to protect one another, be dedicated to one another, and most importantly, care for one another. Packs are formed to ease the burden of hunting, to further the raising of pups, to help the injured, who would otherwise die.
‘Now, where was any of that?’ thought Pika, as she stalked out into the white world. Icy snow crunched under her pads, entrapping the still-green blades of grass. Pack Leader Rose had once said that it was always white in the Winterlands. She’d said that there is no spring, no summer.
Pika had come from a pleasant, temperate meadow. Then, she had thought the winters were freezing. The Winterlands was worse. It was a white place, stuck in winter by the magic of dragons or Faedogs or wizards or god-knows-what long as anyone could remember.
The wolfdog-catdragon had staked her claim seventeen miles west of the edge of the Winterlands. It was a tiny area, a bit bigger than a square mile, but good territory none-the less. Yes, it was a rich winter indeed, and Pika was a light eater for her species. Which wasn’t saying much, considering what she was. Vaguely, she wondered how long this food would last as she crunched on a large black weevil.
There was a river that ran through the territory, so there were fish, and the occasional hibernating mud-dwelling turtle on the bank. The black saber-toothed rip-squirrels preserved fruit and nuts in the frozen ground, and the squirrels themselves were occasionally prey. Birds were also eaten, though they were hard to catch, and eating them left piles of bloody feathers.
So, Pika survived. To feed herself, she had to think. Was thinking all that wrong? Pika affirmed that it was not as she swallowed the bitter insect. Thinking told her where to hunt and when to feed and when to forage. Thinking was keeping her alive.
Yawning, she padded back to her den, a hole under a large pine tree. She’d managed to dig it in only three days. It was neither the biggest, nor the most comfortable of dens, but she would not freeze. That mattered.
Winter continued, and snow fell, making food harder to find, making it harder for Pika to prosper. The weeks were tedious, and passed slowly. The wolfdog-catdragon, turned white by winter, found that she hated to be alone. Her territory remained unbothered for the most part, except for the occasional polar tiger or northern jackal, which she wisely avoided. One night, a wyre Faedog happened across her den while she slept, and Pika allowed it to stay and recover. Very few words were exchanged between the two, but Pika was happy for the company, doting on the creature.
He left as he came. In the night, without her knowledge. There were no goodbyes.
Pika had not howled in a year, since the end of her puphood, and halfway into her adolescence. Her howl had distinctly changed from the feeble squeak that could not even carry for a mile. It had matured, now that she was older, growing deeper and mournful.
And for the first time, something answered back.
In the end, it was not hunger, but loneliness that drove Pika out of her territory. She wandered the wilderness, padding behind pack after pack in the hope of joining. None accepted her. After a week of this, she returned to her own territory, defeated. She discovered her former pack there.
Approaching submissively, she wagged her tail.
They snarled, they growled. She looked into their eyes, and saw the lines of forever written in their pupils. Face after face she peered in, to find no signs of recognition. Not even in the blue-flecked eyes of the pups she had helped to raise. They were sunken eyed and starving. Dying. Haunted.
Did anyone care about Pika, the mix bred loner who showed up one day, and asked to be in the pack? She was a part-dragon, so they accepted her, hoping for the strength and fire that dragons are known for. Unfortunately, Pika had none of the famous dragon strength. She also required a ludicrous amount of food to keep her inner fire burning, and without that her flame was limited to miserable puffs.
Barely enough to fry a rat. That’s what Pack Leader Rose had said. Leader Rose was not a small wolf, but she was smaller than Pika by a few inches with fur that was such a dark brown that it looked black. She usually avoided Pika, but would sometimes talk to her…when no other wolves were around.
Honey was just mean, always snarling with her yellow fangs. Her fur was the color of polished cherry wood, and her claws were brittle and as yellow as her teeth. She had been the Omega wolf before Pika came alone, and relished any chance she got to pick on the purple mixbreed.
Clover was Honey’s wheat-colored younger sister, who actually liked Pika, and played nicely with her upon her coming.
Of course, the pack would not have that.
Clover was taken aside by Honey, and after that would not play with Pika, or even look at her again.
Pastel gray Caje and red Rayle were wild, disobeying Pack Leader Rose and often wandering off on their own. Once, the two had tried running off and having pups of their own, but their effort were thwarted, when their litter was killed, Pika had no idea how. They had come back within seven months, starving and more than happy to rejoin the pack, much to Leader Rose’s chagrin.
Rose’s pups, Root, Flag, Sun, Sun, Gonje, Nig. She had mothered then better than Pack Leader Rose, though she hated them, and they learned from the pack to hate her as well.
Now they stared at her, calling for blood.
And she left. Pawstep after pawstep, no destination. Pika walked out into the snow.

Beat from me my life’s true breath
Tear my flesh after my death

‘No destination. How odd that seems.’ thought Pika, her white coat collecting snow, hiding the purple trimmings. The snow was wet, that soggy thick king you get when spring is coming, and the smell is ripe in the air, even though winter still has a tight, unholy grip on the land.
There would be no spring in the Winterlands. And though she did not know it, she was headed to the frozen heart. And thus, she did not notice when the temperature changed, the sparse evergreens became almost nonexistent, and the soft snow that was steadily turning into ice, pillars of it rising from the ground, like stalagmites.
And she did not notice when her frostbitten pads, dead numb and purple, happened upon the skull of a sleeping frost dragon. The skull itself was the size of her body, the nostrils as large as pine cones, the long neck snaking from between two huge pillars.
She stood mutely, with glazed eyes as the mighty head reared from a crack in the ice. Its booming roar echoed out into the Winterlands, face covered in layers of dirty snow and icy rime, which formed around his snout. He was trapped between the stalagmites, the ice forming a cage around him, a cage so small that the dragon could barely move.
“What want you, mutt?” he growled, steam billowing out of his gaping maw, frozen drool glistening on his tongue.

“Tell this one a story,” said Pika, as if she had come to hear one. “Dragons are famed as prophets, so tell this one a story of something that is yet to come, and has come, and is here.”
“Is this something you truly wish for?” hissed the dragon.
“No.”
“Very well,” said the dragon. Then, as a last thought, it added; “It is a sad day that a creature such as myself is reduced to telling fortunes to a mutt.”

There was once a dog, which disguised itself as a wolf. All before it grew fearful, and fled into the night. The dog found joy in its deception, and abused its power mercilessly.
One day, the dog happened upon a wolf disguised as a dog. The dog tried to frighten the wolf, but the wolf stood strong in face of the deception, and the wolf, because wolves are fickle beasts, told the dog what it was. The wolf warned the dog that it could see through its disguise, and that a wolf could easily kill a dog.
Instead of heeding the wolf’s warning, the dog instead decided to love the wolf, for the wolf was the only one to stand up to it, because dogs are both stupid and loving creatures. The wolf warned the dog not to trust it, but the dog was far too stupid to heed the wolf’s warning. The dog dutifully loved and obeyed the wolf, and the wolf grew the slightest bit fond of the dog, though its heart remained hard.

“So what is the conclusion to this tale?” asked Pika blankly.

Eventually, the wolf grew sick of the dog, and drove it away with fangs and claws. The dog came back time and time again, with its heart full of love. The wolf met it with hate. Eventually, the wolf’s patience grew thin, and it slew the dog, ripping out its soft throat.

“Did it feel any remorse?”
“No. Such is the way of wolves.”
“Ah. I see.” said Pika, her tail drooping. “That was quite the sad story.”
“Of course it was.” chided the dragon. “Most of the stories in the world are sad ones. Did you think life was full of easy kills and healthy dragonlings?”
“No.” said Pika softly. “I know this first paw. I recently lost my pack.”
“That, now, is a sad story. A poor little mutt bitch all alone, wandering about in the core of the Winterlands.”
“Yes.” said Pika. “It is a sad story indeed.”
The dragon laughed, age-old icicles breaking from his beard and shattering beside Pika on the icy ground. His body rose slowly and laboriously from the ice, thick webbed wings rising between the ice pillars until they hung above him like a halo. With a great flap, he sent a rush of icy wind at Pika, so powerful and cold that it froze her breath to her whiskers.
“What else do you want?” rumbled the dragon. “No-one comes to the heart of the Winterlands for a mere fable.”
“Is that where I am?” said Pika. “I’ve been traveling for a very long time.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“What have you lost, that you want back?”
The wolfdog-catdragon laughed bitterly, spittle flying from her open jaws.
“What want I that I have lost? This one wants the sanity of her pack, which she was forced to leave. She wants her territory, good hunting and healthy pups. A full belly, a warm place to sleep…someone to talk to. Even the wyre Faedog has left me!”
“The wyre Faedog? Who was he?” said the dragon, his tone faltering slightly, his breath starting to come faster.
“He was beautiful. He was mine.”
There was a loud, earth-shattering thump, at the dragon’s legs buckled under him, and he fell back into his icy prison. A loud moan of pain escaped the dragon, ice shattering from his scales like breaking glass, a trickle of cold blue blood dripping from the great nostril. Frost from the stiff hairs in-between his pale blue scales rained down on Pika, solidifying into crisp bristles on the ice, freezing to her white winter coat.
Winter winds blew past, ruffling Pika’s fur. The dragon lay motionless on the shattered ice, shallow breaths escaping his wide muzzle, weaving between the jagged red teeth. The eyes, bloodshot and yellow, shot open to survey the unchanged world around him.
Pika had not moved.
The dragon’s neck snaked up, curiously watching her.
“What manner of beast-” growled the dragon loudly.
“-The manner of beast that feel they have nothing to lose.” interrupted the wolfdog-catdragon, easing even closer. “Frost dragon, what know you of Faedogs?”
The dragon glared at her, the yellow eyes bulging for their sockets.
“Is there something you really want to know?” huffed the dragon.
Pika thought for a bit, her retractable claws sliding in and out of her sheaths.
“Yes.”
“Then, I shall offer you a price.”
“What will that be?”
“Free me.”
“How?”
“That is up to you. And I will wager this, little mutt. If you can free me, not only will I tell you all I know of Faedogs, but I will accompany you on your aimless journey.”
“Agreed.”
Facing one of the huge ice pillars, Pika took a deep breath as the dragon watched in wry amusement. One huff produced a blast of flame that brought a surprised smile to the dragon’s face. Pika continued. Second huff produced a wisp, the third a match-flame. The fourth huff brought forth only smoke, though Pika pushed and pushed for more fire.
The icicle was less than halfway melted.
“It appears as if I have exhausted my magic,” she said, as the smile dispersed into the air. “I cannot pay you, so I will continue to travel until I am me again. Until I am something.”
And the dragon laughed. “If you have magic, then I can help.”
It rumbled across the ice, shattering the beast’s own teeth, a purplish red-brown like drying blood. They fell, like spears from the old dragon’s wide mouth, landing in front of Pika’s paws. The surprised wolfdog-catdragon looked down at them, then, up into the dragon’s mouth, where she found to her surprise that the dragon had a new set of teeth. They were smaller, pearly white, and bleeding blue at the gums.
“That which you see before you is the blood of I and my prey alike. It has been freezing in my mouth for months and months, and in it is a good quantity of magic. If you eat them, there may be hope for me yet.”
And the wolfdog-catdragon nodded.
The frozen blood crunched in her jaws, stubbornly refusing to melt, even as she bit them to pieces in her warm mouth. It tasted of deer, of fish, of rabbit, and of something cool and burningly sour, that she assumed was the dragon’s blood.
Five of these she ate before her stomach was sated, and the flame inside her awoke once more. It burned in her gut, and she let it loose at the ice. It burned hotter than ever before, and left before it a huge steaming crater. Lightning crackled in Pika’s fur, and a wild expression came to her face.
“You never had so much power, have you?” roared the dragon.
“No.” said Pika. And her flame burst from her maw, and melted through the towering pillars, one by one. The dragon roared once again, and broke away at the ice that entrapped him. He stumbled up on shaky legs.
“I, Rekka, am freed.”
“Now, dragon, of Faedogs!” hissed Pika. “This one fulfilled her bargain.”
“Darling, Faedogs have stopped living in the Winterlands for an age and a half.” said the dragon meekly, almost guiltily. “When they did, however, the Kingdom was called Brightglacier, and their naming was ice. The remaining Kingdoms are Greenglade, Darkroot, Morningmoon, and Starfall. Each one of these is to the west of the Winterlands. Your Faedog came a long, long way. Unless he was a Ruma Faedog.”
“A Ruma Faedog?”
“The Ruma Faedogs live up in the mountains, at the edge of the Winterlands. Many wyre Faedogs flee there.”
Pika stared indecisively down at her paws, her body sagging for a bit under what seemed to be the weight of the world. Then, fresh as a daisy, she pulled her self up again.
“Dragon Rekka…let’s go.”
My Rotting Corpse Stalks in the sun
And still all you before me run