NOTE: This is an example post. You don't need to give this story constructive criticism. (However, I'd appreciate it if you do.) You can read the full story here.
The farmer woke up to the sound of sobbing. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the near-darkness inside his simple hut, and rolled over to see his youngest child at his bedside, sniffling.
"What is it, boy," he grumbled, with justified irritation- a poor farmer like him needed all the sleep he could get. The air in the hut was stagnant and left a bad taste in his mouth. He coughed.
His son, who was old enough to totter around but not quite up to articulating himself, pointed to the pallets where the farmer had put him and his sister, who was ill with fever, to bed hours earlier. They were both empty.
The farmer wondered what he'd ever done to deserve such a troublesome daughter, always ill yet never ill enough to stay put. "Where is your sister?" he snapped at his son, pointlessly. The boy shook with a fresh bout of sobbing at his tone. The farmer grunted, feeling somewhat sorry, and coughed again while he ruffled the boy's head before pulling on his boots. The door was slightly ajar, letting in a crack of grayish light, causing him to frown. It was later than he'd thought if the sun was up. Too late for him to still be abed.
He pushed the door open and was met with a thin drizzle. At once he knew something was wrong. A foul, thick smell was in the air, making him cough even harder. His little boy began coughing as well, and he gently pushed him back towards the hut.
"Stay there," he told him. He could hear a distant sound- the terrified lowing of a cow. He walked around his hut, towards his small barn, and momentarily forgot about his missing child. There was a gaping, splintered hole low on the wall of the barn, and he could see through the hole that his cow was gone. There weren't many creatures the farmer knew of that could make a hole such as that, and he hadn't ever desired to meet any of them.
The trail of flattened, bloody grass starting by the hole led him a slight rise. The air was even thicker and fouler here, and he found he could hardly stop coughing to breathe. From the other side of the hill he could see a faint mist rising- yellowish mist. The sound of a child's laughter made his heart quicken. He reached the top of the hill and the sight he saw nearly made his heart stop.
There was his daughter. And there, too, was a huge, ugly reptile, breathing poisonous mist. A wyvern.
The wyvern was crouched over the fallen body of his cow in a muddy ditch, snout glistening with blood. Wyverns were lesser cousins of dragons, less noble, more vicious. They did not have the dragon's four limbs, only two talon-tipped hind feet and huge wings. Rather than fire, they breathed poison. This one was not so large, only about the size of a horse with wings folded as they were, and he judged it to be merely a juvenile. Otherwise, undoubtedly, the poison it breathed would have been much more deadly.
The ugly gray beast hissed warningly and half-spread its batlike wings. It had not yet spotted the farmer, rather, it gazed at his daughter. She stood, covered in mud, a few feet away, hands outstretched.
"Here, bird," she said in a sing-song voice. "Here, bird."
The wyvern snapped, narrowly missing her fingers with its needle-thin teeth. It curved its long neck and squalled.
The farmer could see that his daughter's eyes were still feverishly bright. She had a silly smile on her face. "Nice bird," she said. She took a tottering step forward- the creature growled- and then she saw her father standing, frozen with horror, at the top of the hill.
"Daddy!" she called happily. "Daddy, look at the bird!"
At once the wyvern's head swung to look at him as well, and he saw sly intelligence in the amber eyes. The creature knew it was in danger now that more than one human had appeared. He could practically see the gears turning in the thing's head. It raised its tail, tipped with a surely-poisonous sting, arching it like a scorpion. The farmer found his voice.
"Bryony!" he roared, charging down the hill. "Bryony!"
But he was not faster than the wyvern's sting, and his little girl fell from the force of it, bleeding bright red on her pale cheek. He could not reach her- he stumbled, fell, overcome by a fit of coughing that shook his whole body. The rancid smoke had weakened him. He crawled forward, through the mud, still infused with horror and rage. The wyvern stepped towards him, preparing to strike once more, but something in his eyes deterred the beast. Instead it spread and flapped its huge wings, knocking him flat with a clap of solid air. He was momentarily stunned by the force of it. The last he ever saw of his daughter was her tiny body clutched in the wyvern's claws as it flew away. Her mouth was moving slightly, trying to form words.
To the grave, the fact that she was still alive would haunt him.