The Depth of a Lagoon

Deep under the sea; where no living man has ever been. Deep down there, in the darkness laid fearsome beasts. And these beasts only came out of the dark to terrorize innocent sailors, and eat the catch of hungry fishers.
They weren’t lazy monsters, no they were preparing for war, and they had prepared for a couple of years when a blue, baby dragon named Lagoon was born. A child was good, it could turn the whole war around.
Lagoon had a brother, a smaller dragon, but with no wings. He loved his brother Speedy more than everything. But as Lagoon grew stronger and bigger with each year, the leader of the Ravine, a fearsome dark dragon, decided that it was time for him to prepare for war. He was told that he could go home as soon as he finished his training, but Lagoon was too big and his scales were as heavy as a mountain dragons, so he scarcely managed to do any of the required training. Standing on the opposite side of a raft he watched his family live their lives peacefully while he fought as hard as he could to be with them, to be peaceful.
For a long time Lagoon felt miserable. He had no time to be with his family, he had few friends and the other soldiers teased him for his clumsiness. But in everything bad there is something good.
One day, when Lagoon was a young teen, his eyes fell upon a beautiful dragoness, her scales shone in the stripes of sunshine that fell into the depth, her eyes glittered lovely every time she looked at him. But he didn’t fall for her beauty, no, he fell for her because she was the first dragoness that showed him some kind of “more- than- friends” attention. So they became a couple.
For a while life was sweet. They would go out exploring the sea together, something he hadn’t dared to do alone. He managed to get more friends because he became more outgoing, and he trained even harder so he could impress her. Slowly but surely fell in love with her.
One day, when Lagoon was done training he decided to take another path home. He turned the corner of a house and saw her standing in a coral reef, a green male dragon in front of her. She didn’t see Lagoon coming; because she was too occupied exposing herself for another dragon.
Lagoon was shattered, his heart broken and his pride sunken and stepped on. He broke up with her without another word, because he suddenly knew she had been cheating on him from the start. That’s the kind of dragoness she was, he thought.
Isolating himself from the world he began going up to the surface regularly to see if there was a meaning in all this madness. It wasn’t forbidden to go up, but it wasn’t socially accepted in the Ravine either. Slowly he became more and more an outcast because of his lack of fighting skills and because he would much rather explore the world than train all day. Sadly the only dragons that understood his adventurous nature were his parents, but even his brother was skeptic to begin with.
One day the cold water he had grown up in and lived all his life disappeared. He had broken the surface for the first time alone and adrenaline rushed through his body. Part of his training had been to learn how to fly, but they had always been in groups and he had never really understood the meaning with learning how to fly when he lived under water. He didn’t need to be over, he didn’t need to know how to do it, yet he knew.
A boat, four times his size came right in his direction. Swimming away carefully he watched it float peacefully on top of the sea. Strange shapes appeared on top of it, talking a language he knew by heart but it somehow felt different. They pointed a finger in his direction and some of them began running around on deck. Lagoon felt his heart beat faster, but he wasn’t sure what to do. He was scared yet curious.
The men on the boat began screaming now, yelling things Lagoon couldn’t understand because of their thick accent. He turned his head in confusion and a harpoon flew right between his find and horn. He wasn’t hurt physically so much as psychically. In a blur of water he threw his body down into the deep, noticing for the first time how scary the place really was. It was pitch black if your eyes hadn’t adjusted to the light, and even then there were places you just couldn’t explore because of danger of wild animals and simple darkness. Closing his eyes he felt something rush just a few feet in front of him. It was huge, bigger than him and with tentacles. It was one of the pet octopuses of the Leader. Before he knew it three dragons, with the Leader in center, swam rapidly towards him. One of them muttered something like “good job” before slamming his body into the ship.
Lagoon could do nothing but watch in amazement as the Leader of the whole Ravine flew up in the sky and fell upon the ship, ripping and tearing the wood with no effort whatsoever. But when the humans jumped into the water the pet octopus attacked them at once, leaving no man alive. The sight of blood made Lagoon flitch. He came to his senses and swam back to the Ravine as fast as he could.
Even though the dark was uncomfortable he could bare with it just one more time. His stomach ached and his head was spinning, he could think of nothing else but the massacre he had just witnessed. If they had asked him to kill them he would never have managed it, even though they attacked him first. He knew he was stronger, although not skilled in the martial art, he knew he could crush them as easily as the Leader did. And it scared him.
Standing in front of his parents nest he knew what he had to do. It was destiny. None of the others understood him and he didn’t want them to because they were a totally different species than him, he could somehow see it now.
He told his parents he loved them, that it was time for him to leave, and without protesting they agreed. They saw in his eyes that the darkness of the Ravine choked something inside of him. They knew he wasn’t meant to be a soldier. Not because he couldn’t fight, but because he was an adventurer, a curious dragon with wide wings. Speedy smiled at him as he walked out of their nest.
“There’s no need to hold back anymore.” He told his older brother. There was no need for further words, because all was said and done between them. Lagoon promised he would come back and visit them when the time came, but they all knew it was a lie. They all knew Lagoon had been scared of the dark since the day he was born.

He walked most of the time, rarely using his wings for swimming because he needed the energy to fly. It was a long walk, and it took half a day for him to get to the shore. By then he had managed to settle down with the idea of leaving. No one was hurt, and no one was mad. Not even the Leader would be mad because he would only have gotten himself killed if he had been his soldier.
The air was fresher than he remembered; it must have been because of the trees. There had been trees in the Ravine so he knew what they looked like. There was almost nothing that could scare him... except the fact that he had never been so far from home in his whole life. He saw a river and began following it. He tried to fly, but his body felt heavy on land so he didn’t have much strength to go on for long. So he swam in the river when the trees were too close and flew when he had the strength. Just when the night was about to fall he found a waterfall and a pond. He decided it was enough walking and flying for a day and wanted to make the place his resting camp for the night.
First he wanted to swim to the bottom of the pond and lie there, but it was rocky and when the twilight it was quite dark. He explored the waterfall and found an untouched small cave with just enough place for him to lie comfortable. Listening to the water rushing beside his ear he knew he had found the right place to rest. He fell asleep instantly.