Aquamarine: hope, health, fidelity.

I was destroyed when she left me. Broken, angry. And when a dragon’s angry, the world shakes. I was young and sad. I had burnt down to the ashes at least 10 miles of green forest before the eldest put me down and imprisoned him. 
When I was a youngling learning to fly, the older ones used to tell me stories about ‘The End of the World’, a place for those of us, dragon shapeshifters, who couldn’t control their power or deliberately tried to expose the existence of the dragons to the humankind. If a dragon feared anything, it’s perhaps losing its freedom and treasures; but I didn’t feel a thing inside that small cage. If anything, I was exhausted. Then, I met a very strange kid. 
“Why are you here?” A boy asked me, softly. 
“Because I wanted to burn down the world”. I couldn’t see him since we were in different cages, but the silence extended for so long I began to think I had scared him 
“Why didn’t you do it?”. The voice belonged to a youngling certainly, but the tone made him sound so much older. It sounded broken, full of something I couldn’t quite understand, but my dragon senses detected an intense emotion: pain. 
“Well, I’m here.” Locked in a cage, with nothing but that boy to somehow keep my sanity from breaking in an otherwise quiet place. 
“I would’ve burned down the world, but that wouldn’t bring back what is lost.”
She used to tell me people can teach us a lot, but it’s up to each person to decide whether to listen and understand those who speak from the heart and then a treasure can be found: a life lesson. 
The kid’s words were true, I knew it -I always did, but I chose to let my rage and pain out in the shape of wildfire. Even if I destroyed the entire planet, what was death could never be alive again. I had lost her, the love of my life, the one whom I gave my heart, the one who took it with her as she died -leaving me to become nothing but a heartless, lonely dragon.   
My beloved Sooyun. 
Thinking about that brought back the numbing pain of her absence, and a jolt of pain rolled down my spine as my Dragon tried to come out. And then, I understood how the prison had earned its name. Screaming in pain, I realized I couldn’t shift to my Dragon form and the idea of what that meant terrified me. 
It’s the end of the world for a dragon shapeshifter stuck in just one half on himself -it was hell.

It smelled like coffee and fresh-made bread. The people suddenly didn’t bother me as much, and I felt relaxed -such was the power of coffee. Through the years, everything had changed but coffee still felt familiar and warm, thus I had decided that out of all the crappy jobs he could’ve ended up doing, working at a Cafeteria wasn’t too bad. 
“H-hello, sir.”
A young girl was standing in front of me, at the other side of the counter; biting her lip, stubbornness shining in her eyes even though she was nervous to talk with a stranger. 
“Ah, hello, kiddo.” I greeted her. There was something in her smile, a softness and innocence that pushed the walls I usually lifted to interact with the customers. “Would you like to order something special?”
She nodded, placing the money she was holding in her hand on the counter. 
“Can I… can I have one of those orange little cakes with… very yummy pink cream?”
I chuckled, completely delighted by her cuteness as I realized exactly what she wanted. But when I handed her an orange colored vanilla muffin with whipped cream, I made a bigger discovery.
They say eyes are windows for our souls, and in bright y/e/c eyes I saw what I thought was gone forever. She was a different person, a human, but she was what my heart and soul needed to stop wandering around the world without purpose.
Was it a miracle? I had a second chance… I was not alone after all the pain, loss and years of missing my dearest one. The owner of a dragon’s heart, my kind called it, because there was no other way to describe the way a dragon loved. Deeply, forever, those souls that were connected once, in the beginning, were meant to find each other in each life those two souls had. 
And there she was. 
“Y/n? Honey, we need to go now”. The girl’s mother called, and that was the first time I heard her name, and a smile spread across my face when the kid grinned a thank you and a 'See you soon, pretty sir’. 
Y/n was a miracle, and I didn’t care if she was human or a dragon. She didn’t even have to know about my nature; for me, knowing she was somewhere in the world, breathing and smiling, was enough.

Bleeding and confused, I thought I was never going to feel the air kissing my face and wings again. 
A dragon shapeshifter is not immortal like non-shifter dragons are (some call them purebloods or purebreeds), but our longevity is different to a human’s. Years felt like decades, and they probably were, as my soul grew weaker; and pain and longing became constant as the cold cage and the voice of my only friend tried to remind me that I was still alive.  
However, a possibility came, for me to taste the freedom of the skies again- The Clan, it was called. Some shapeshifters are special, powerful, brighter -some had a bigger purpose regardless of the color of their scales. The Clan was also an announcement of desperate times for the dragon shapeshifter kind, but back then, after so much pain, I didn’t care for one second if I had to fight an army of thousands or kill a legendary deathly dragon, once the words ‘leave the cage’ were said.

“Hyung, they’re fighting again!”  Daehwi, one of the maknaes of the Clan (as well as one of the last ones who joined), whined. 
I was the Administrator of a Cafe sometimes. Other times I was a babysitter - or ’the leader’, as the rest of the group called it. 
Outside our house, in the green yard behind it, two dragons (one red, one green) were covered in dirt as they growled and ruined the grass with magic and fire.
“You two will fix what you’ve destroyed. Now. Or there will be no dinner for either of you tonight.”
It wasn’t the first time, though. Dragons of different colors were naturally competitive, and both Jihoon and Seongwoo were the clear images of that. I was the one who had to make sure they didn’t leave all of us homeless in one of their 'you , I’m the best at (insert here anything that can be argued about. The more ridiculous, the better)’ arguments; but after a couple years I discovered that food was always a great incentive to end any discussion or fight. 
The Clan was a family, however. There was a necklace hanging around the necks of the members, a symbol of unbreakable loyalty and brotherhood. It also marked us as different: stronger, powerful, a more imminent threat to those who hated our kind: the dragonslayers -the deathly existence that had caused my first love to leave me once. 
For instance, as time went by, and y/n grew up into a gorgeous girl; my territorial nature made me a bit overprotective. She was human, and the soulmate of the Leader of a Clan that had gathered together exceptional shapeshifters of every color of dragon. Wanna One was considered too powerful and too much of a threat by many, and those who wanted the Clan to disappear were, of course, waiting for weaknesses to use against us. 
I loved y/n too much. I had seen her grew up into a beautiful woman, and I had fallen in love with her smile, her way of thinking, her liveliness. I was a friend, a brother, a confidant… everything she could ever want me to be. Y/n made me stronger, she had pushed me to follow my dream of opening his own Cafe, she always knew what to say or do when I felt like he wasn’t worthy of leading a Clan with great purposes that required great power (even back when she didn’t know me and the rest of the boys were dragon shapeshifters). But she also made me weak -I had lost my love, my heart, once, and I was terrified of that happening again. 
“Are you sick, Jisung?”  Y/n asked me one night, concern filling her eyes as they walked down the sidewalk in silence. 
“I’m not sick. I feel great when I’m with you, kid.”
Her cheeks turned pink and she punched my arm. 
“You’re so cheesy!” She said but there was a small smile on her lips. However after remembering I was 'acting strangely’, she became serious again. “You’re too quiet today, Oppa. Usually, you talk nineteen to the dozen. ”
I raised a hand to my chest, fakingly offended. 
“I do not!”
“You’re also very clingy, but today…”
“Like this?” I placed my arms around her shoulders, smiling.   
“I know you’re strong and that you’re a leader, Jisung. But you don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your back. I know I’m a kid next to you, but you’re not alone. ”
“Thank y- wait. Did you just call me old, y/n?”
I stopped to look at her mildly offended, but Y/n simply shrugged with a smirk on her face.  
“Yah, y/n! My spirit is young!” 
“That I can’t deny” she nodded, her fingers playing with mine while the conversation faded into a more serious one. “But you look exactly as you did when I was 12, Jisung-Oppa. You’ll probably look younger than me in a few years. Just wait.”
Sometimes, the differences between us felt like an ocean. And it hurt. I had always tried to hide it, but y/n wasn’t who she was for anything. She knew. 
“Don’t be sad, my beautiful dragon. I’ll still love you no matter what.”
She froze after those words left . She hid her face in my chest, making me smile and I couldn’t resist the urge to ruffle her hair. 
“Who’s being cheesy now?”
She groaned, trying to move away but I refused to let her go. 
“I love you too, y/n.” 
I was clingy, she said, but she’d always fall asleep next to me or ask me to let her see my dragon form just to curl up in a ball next to me because 'how many people get to sleep next to a dragon of the color of a sunset?’. I was cheesy, she said, but she adored to call me hers. 
And I am.
She was human, and she was mine. And no one was taking my heart, my beloved y/n away from me ever again.