Rainbow Dragonesque

In the land of Noranda, there are dragons. There are also dragon riders, the Dragonesque, as they call themselves. Long ago, when the Sorcerers attacked, the dragons and their riders saved Noranda from being overrun.
But that was a long time ago, and these days, the dragons and the Dragonesque tend mostly to keep to their own territory, Dracos in the high mountains. Truth be told, they're not terribly welcome in the Lowlands, where normal humans live.
That's because everyone knows that dragons are venomous, and if you're bitten by one, you'll die. Dragons may choose humans to ride them and live closely with the dragon rider folk, but they're still essentially wild beasts and they can be unpredictable. Best not to tempt fate.
When Aralaiah Sentin is bitten, everyone expects her to die. But she doesn't. She survives, but she has patches of what look like dragon skin on her body. At first, she thinks that they're just a leftover of the bite, a different kind of scar, perhaps.
But her markings aren't the only change. As time goes on, she finds that other things are changing, too. Some of her senses are greatly enhanced, for one thing. She can hear and speak telepathically to dragons, for another. Terrified that she is losing her humanity, Aralaiah tries to pretend that the changes aren't happening.
The dragons themselves are fascinated by Aralaiah and they hang around the town where she lives in droves, much to the consternation of the other residents. The eight Queens of Dragondom send a Dragonesque, a man named Draken, to Aralaiah, to explain to her what has happened. Like some viruses, dragon DNA has an affinity for human DNA. Aralaiah is no longer fully human. She has become a Dragonesque, someone who is part human, part dragon, just like the dragon rider folk. She is now one of them. Her new, enhanced senses are dragon senses, and she is informed that she now has magic powers, too, or will have when she learns to use them.
Draken and the dragons want her to move to Dracos, where her new abilities can be assessed and she can learn to make the most of them. Aralaiah refuses. Leave her home and her friends and move to a place she knows nothings about peopled by strange dragon people at the behest of the very beasts that were responsible for ruining her life in the first place? Not very likely.
But, as time goes on, she finds that she can't go on denying that she has changed. Her life, she realises bitterly, now falls into two parts; before the dragon and after the dragon. She is no longer the person she was, and as her best friend points out, she needs to go to Dracos and embrace what she now is.
But, Dracos is a world of its own. More or less shunned by the Lowlands, it is insular and inward-looking. The first Dragonesque were made, in much the same way that Aralaiah was, but Dragonesque nowadays are born. Also, every Dragonesque has markings of one dragon colour, and one only. Aralaiah is unique in that she shows all eight. In both her origin and her markings, she's a freak. Will they even accept her? Is there any place at all for her now that her whole life, her whole being, has changed?
Join Aralaiah Sentin, Rainbow Dragonesque, as she struggles to find a place for herself in a world where she no longer fits. Can she make a place for herself in the strange world of the Dragonesque, or is she doomed to live as an outcast forever?

Dettagli