I hate when this happens

[elfs]

So, two nights ago, I had an idea. I awoke in the middle of the night and wrote it down, then went back to sleep. This morning, I fleshed it out. I've noticed that fantasy seems to go in cycles: for a while, it's dark themes and vampires, then heroism and monsters, then surrealism and cthuloid horrors, then on again. I'm hoping I'm right and heroism and monsters are on the rise.

The Sun, The Moon, and The Dragons

Preface

I was twelve when the dragons came for my father. A survivor described it to mother. I wasn't supposed to hear, but nothing could have stopped me. Nothing has ever stopped me. One of the maids had herded me into my bedroom and bed, but after she was gone I slipped out of bed, pulled on my darkest robe, and ran in bare feet on cold floors to my father's study.

A man's voice described the attack. Five dragons had come-- one mage, two swords and two arrows. Dragons are precise and predictable in that fashion. They had attacked on the borderfront between Coisland and Vodanka during the ascent to the top of the high pass. The mage had cast a spell that darkened the minds of my father's guards. My father had had his own spells ready but that hadn't mattered. The arrows had appeared out of the darkness, up close, and cast their vile flames so close they had been injured themselves. The arrows then wheeled away, the swords descended upon the caravan and tore my father to shreds.

It had been the arrows' willingness to be so close that had taken the defenders by surprise. Arrows cast their burning spit from a distance and swords rarely got close enough to them to be injured. The four dragons had been willing to face the heat of their own flames, to take their own wounds from their own weapons, to kill one man. They had believed-- we all had believed-- that my father could push back the war, could win a peace. And so the dragons had killed him.

I was sixteen when the dragons came for me.

I'm looking at this and already thinking of improvements. It actually needs to be both shorter and punchier, more brutal, while preserving the heroine's voice. (Not even sure about her name yet, except that it's going to be vaguely French-sounding.)

I'm not even sure where I'm going with this, other than that the Dragons are basically your social Darwinist types, this world's not big enough for both species, that kind of thing, and the humans are split between those seeking peace and those who know there will never be such.

All I know is that I need to read a lot more fantasy before I go anywhere.