Chapter One - The Dragon

I’d been flying for hours, longer than I should have been. I needed to find a place to sleep, or else I’d land somewhere on accident and somebody would find me. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere… There!

A large field, with a small lake. It was at least seven miles away from a town, and didn’t look too important. Hopefully, I could get some sleep there. My eyelids were already trying to forcibly close themselves on me, so I really needed to sleep. That lake would come in handy when I woke up, too. I was always thirsty after sleeping.

I made my landing and curled up a good fifty feet from the lake. I tucked my tail underneath me. If I didn’t, it had a habit of twitching while I slept. The sun was just starting to creep over the mountains when I closed my eyes.

It couldn’t have been twenty minutes later when I heard something nearby. I opened my eyes and saw a boy in the lake. The boy was too busy washing himself in the lake to notice me, it seemed. I couldn’t exactly blame him. I was lying down, sleeping when he arrived. It must have been the cool splash of water that he made when he decided to dive in that woke me up. I didn’t move, though, I simply laid there, and watched him. The innocence of youth… Not something his kind afforded mine. The boy climbed back out of the lake, ready to jump again.

Something moved. Oh, crap… It was my tail. I must have moved in my sleep. Sometimes, my tail has a mind of its own, especially when I’m trying to sleep. My tail hit the ground, shaking the ground and sending the boy face-first into the water. He surfaced a moment later and looked around. He noticed me for the first time, and crawled out of the lake. Would he run? It would be kind of funny if he did, seeing as he was naked. Humans hated being seen naked when they weren’t making babies.

The boy walked over to me and realized for the first time just what it was he was looking at. If he’d never seen a dragon before, I could understand his surprise at finding me near a lake in the middle of a field, but this was a common place to find us resting. Maybe he’d just never seen a dragon up close. That was common, too. I’d only ever seen a few humans up close, so the feeling was almost mutual.

I flared my nostrils a little, singed the grass near my face. The boy jumped back just a little bit, but his curiosity must have gotten the better of him, because he didn’t run. Instead, he leaned a little closer to me, studied me. I fully opened my eyes, which startled him again, then lifted my head up. My neck was long for my age, something I’m sure my parents would mention, if they were still alive.

“You’re being pretty rude,” I said, lowering my head again to look him in the eyes. It didn’t come out the way I expected it to. Clearly, I was still too tired to sound as annoyed as I felt. “I was sleeping.”

“I didn’t even see you there, until you opened your eyes.”

I chuckled. “Don’t know much about dragons, do you?”

“Only what I’ve read in my dad’s journals.”

“What’s that?”

“Pretty much boils down to dragons are dangerous.”

I wasn’t that surprised. It was the reason my kind were hunted, after all. “I look dangerous to you?”

“You just burned grass.”

“That’s what I do when I snore.” I moved my head closer to him. “Wanna see what happens when I’m tired of humans asking me questions?”

“So, are you dangerous?”

I shook my head. “Not to you. I don’t wanna make an enemy out of humans.”

The boy sat down in front of me. How did such soft skin deal with such hard ground underneath it? I had scales, and the dirt and grass around me still made it feel like I was sitting on a thousand tiny rocks.

“You’re not like the dragons my dad told me about.”

I laid my head back down. “There aren’t any dragons like the ones your dad has told you about.” Leave. Leave. Leave. “Why are you staying here if you think I’m dangerous?”

“You said you’re not.”

“It’s what I said, yes, but you’d be an idiot if you just assumed I was telling the truth.”

The boy stood up. “I can tell you’re too weak to stand, let alone kill me.”

“I know,” I growled, “I was sleeping.” I closed my eyes and pretended to get back to sleep. Hopefully it worked.

It didn’t. “Why are you sleeping here? The whole town uses this lake.”

That opened my eyes. I stood and looked around. There wasn’t anybody else in sight, thankfully. I knelt down and looked him in the eyes again. “What do you mean the whole town?”

“Well, mostly just the kids. We like to swim here.”

“Nude?”

“I like to skinny dip.”

“When will they be here?”

“I don’t know, it’s early. Some of my classmates might be here later.”

I leaned closer to him. “Do you any place I could go to get some sleep? I’m still exhausted, I was flying for almost an entire day.”

He smiled. “I do, actually.”

---

I wasn’t pleased at all with his ‘hiding place’. The boy instructed me to fly to the northeast, then come back south. When I arrived where he told me to go, I discovered a small town by the ocean, an ocean I hadn’t known was nearby. I could have found a nice, peaceful cave to sleep in.

In fact, a cave was exactly what I did find. A cave by the ocean, with a tunnel that led to a building, looked like the shed to a house. A few minutes after I got there, the boy walked inside and quickly shut the door, then did the same to a door that covered the tunnel I’d just come through.

“You can sleep here,” the boy said, sitting down on a pile of farm equipment. “My dad hasn’t been home in a few months, we haven’t heard from him in awhile. I’m about the only one that uses the shed.”

“Why?”

“Well…” He sighed. “My dad hunts dragons.”

I snorted out a laugh. “I should’ve guessed. So why do you want to help me sleep?”

He shrugged. “I’m interested in dragons. Dad hunts you, I’d like to study you.”

I curled up on the floor. “We’re not that interesting. We fly, we eat, we sleep, we crap. Other than the flying part, you humans do the same thing.”

“That’s not all you do. I couldn’t see you when you were sleeping in the field, and you’re pretty hard to miss.”

“That’s something humans don’t know about us. We’re like… How do I put this? We’re like chameleons, in a way. We can camouflage ourselves when we sleep, but only when we sleep.”

“Why would dragons need to camouflage themselves?”

I closed my eyes. “Because we want to sleep. And speaking of, you’re supposed to be letting me sleep, remember?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’ll be back in a little while to open the back door for you. Just don’t make a whole lot of noise, okay?”

I yawned. “I’m too tired to… Make…” I couldn’t even finish my sentence before I was out like a light.

---

Why did I smell fire?

I opened my eyes and saw the ground near my face was now burning. I quickly blew on it in an attempt to put it out, then stamped on it with my left hand. It hurt, but it didn’t take long to put it out that way. Yet another involuntary thing with me, one that had gotten me caught many times. I wasn’t lying when I’d told the boy that I burned things when I snored.

There was a rattling at the door to the tunnel. I lifted my head and watched the door. Did any of the boy’s friends know about the tunnel? Was his father, the dragon hunter, finally coming home? Crap. I couldn’t deal with that. He’d probably killed older, more experienced dragons than me.

The door to the tunnel opened, and the boy came in, carrying a fishing pole and two buckets. He quickly shut the door to the tunnel and set one of the buckets down in front of me. “Here, I thought you might be hungry.”

I looked in the bucket and saw three fish. Three small, wriggling, very puny fish. “Thanks,” I said. It was, sadly, a bigger meal than I’d had in days. “You got a stick?” I asked. He walked over to the corner and pulled what looked to be a simple metal rod out.

“Will this work?”

I grabbed it and shoved one of the fish onto the end, pulled it toward the center, then did the same with the other two. “Got one for you?” I asked. He pulled another rod and did the same to his fish as I’d done with mine, except that he only had two fish. I took his from him, and handed him mine. “You’re the one that caught them, you get more.” I coughed up a little fire on each rod and cooked the fish, something I did every time I caught fish.

We ate in silence. I ate slowly. I was hungry, but I knew it’d be awhile before I got another meal like this, so I took my time. The boy ate just as slowly, for whatever reason he was doing so. Maybe he didn’t get too many meals, either. No, he was too well built to be underfed. Maybe he just wanted to share a meal with me, I dunno.

I set my rod down and laid back down. “Thank you,” I repeated. “I haven’t eaten so much in awhile.”

“Why not? You’re… Y’know, huge.”

I glared at him. “Thank you for that most helpful comment.”

He laughed. “You talk like a girl.”

“I’ve been told that.”

“Are you… Gay?”

I glared at him again. “That’s not a question to ask when we’ve barely known each other a few hours.”

“So you are?”

“If you’re asking if I’ve been with female dragons, the answer is no. I haven’t been with male dragons, either.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t know many more of my kind. Most of us are dead.”

“I know. I’ve read my dad’s letters and journals.”

“Let’s not talk about that.” I stretched a little bit. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Kineas. My parents call me Kenny.” He moved a little, but not a lot. “What’s your name?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a name. My parents were slaughtered before they could name me.”

“How old were you?”

“Less than an hour.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You didn’t have any reason to know. You might not have been born by then.”

“How long ago was it? I’m eighteen.”

“Oh. In that case, you would have been a year old.”

“You’re only seventeen? I thought you’d be smaller at that age.”

“I am small for my age. I’ve seen a few dragons that are younger than me, but bigger.”

“So,” Kenny said, “what kind of name do you want?”

“Huh?”

“You need a name, after all. What would you want to be called?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I hadn’t put much thought into it.”

“How about a simple name?”

“How about you name me? You’re the closest thing I can call a friend, so go ahead and find a name for me.”

He stood up and reached into a drawer over on the west side of the room, then walked back over to me with a notebook and a pencil. “I’ll make a list, and you pick which one you want, okay?”

If I had human skin, I’d be turning what humans called ‘red-faced’. “I don’t know how to read.”

“Oh. Yeah, that does make sense. Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“Okay, an easier way to do this… I have a c…”

“What?”

“I said have again. My cousin died six months ago, he was on the front lines of the war with the Seles Plains tribe.”

“Sorry.”

“No. I just haven’t been able to accept it yet. Riley was like a brother to me. My dad’s not home a lot, my mom doesn’t really care too much about what I do as long as I’m not getting myself into trouble, and Riley actually paid attention to me, actually talked to me.”

I could tell this was painful to him. I’d never known anyone that I had that much of a connection to. I envied him for it, all the while being sorry that his cousin had died. Hell, the person I knew the longest was Kenny.

“So, do you mind the name Riley?” he asked.

“Are you trying to replace your cousin with me?”

He shook his head. “Not really, but it’s not a bad name, right?”

“No, it’s fine. If you want to name me Riley, that’s fine.”

He smiled. “Cool. Now, if you don’t mind me treating you like a dog, I’ll go get you a collar, okay?”

I lifted my head and glared at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Of course I’m joking. Jeez, you act a lot like a girl.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He walked over to the door. “I’m gonna head home for now. My mom is probably wondering why I’m still fishing. I’ll be back later if you’re still here, okay?”

“Okay. I’m still a little tired, so I’ll probably stay. Nobody’s gonna bother me, will they?”

Kenny shook his head. “Nope. This shed is pretty much ignored, since a lot of people here respect my dad. He’s the only one besides me that uses it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Kenny.”

He nodded. “Yep. See ya later.”

I laid my head back down and closed my eyes. The last thing I heard before I drifted off to sleep was the sounds of children playing in the town 

---

Riley! Riley! C’mon, wake up, we’ve gotta go!

Was Kenny actually talking, or was I dreaming? I couldn’t tell right away. I tried to open my eyes, but it was difficult. Why did I feel sleepier than I had earlier? I was struggling to open my eyes, and that had never happened before. What was going on?

Wake up, Riley!

There it was again, like the sound of a distant train horn, you think you hear it but you’re not quite sure until it happens again. Kenny was calling out to me. Why did he sound like he was so far away? The shed wasn’t that big. I kept trying to open my eyes, but I just couldn’t. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone was holding my eyelids shut.

“Get away from him!”

Things were clearing up. I could actually tell that Kenny was close by. I still couldn’t open my eyes. What the hell? I tried to lift my left arm, but it felt numb. Everything about me felt numb, right now. I tried to push past it, to get up anyway. I managed to make it to my feet, but I was shaking, and I fell back down quickly.

“He’s not going to kill anyone!” Kenny shouted. I managed to open my eyes and saw a shape in front of me, standing there with their arms spread out. I imagined that was Kenny, trying to protect me from someone or something. I couldn’t hear or see anyone else, though, why? “Just leave him alone! He’ll leave!”

Finally I heard someone else: “Out of our way, Kineas, or else!” Another shape stepped into view, someone taller than Kenny. “What would your father think if he saw you keeping this beast as a pet?”

“I’m not a pet,” I said, though my speech was slurred. Had I been drugged? Did the people of this town have something that could drug a dragon? What the hell was I gonna do? I tried to shake it off, to get myself back to at least fifty percent, but it was difficult. “Let me leave, and I won’t hurt any of you…” I was gonna fall down, I was gonna fall down, I was gonna fall down… I could practically feel the floor already.

The other shape pushed past Kenny and pointed something at my face. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I didn’t really care, either. This guy wanted to kill me, and I didn’t want to die. I tried to build up some fire in my throat, but I was too weak, whatever they’d used on me was too damned good. “Your kind killed my son, scaleface,” the man said, “don’t think I’ll let you just walk out of here.” He knelt down in front of me and did something that I couldn’t quite see thanks to the glaze over my eyes. “I’m gonna carve ya, stick your head on my mantle and your wings over the empty bed that used to be my son’s. But not until after you’ve felt real pain.”

I bared my teeth. “You’d kill me for something I didn’t do? By your own logic, I should kill you for the harm your species has done to mine, softflesh.”

I felt something now. There was something in my hand. It was obviously a dagger or a knife, but the drugs were still disorienting me, so it felt more like a spear. I went to pull it out, but the man in front of me twisted it, and it hurt. I screeched, a sound that would normally hurt a human’s ears, but these people were clearly driven to see me dead. It looked like Kenny covered his ears, though.

The fire was building in my throat. I reached out for Kenny and pulled him to the ground, then spat as much fire as I could possibly muster at the dark shadow group ahead of me. It was about then that my eyes started to focus, and I swatted away the guy that had stuck his knife in my hand. I pulled the knife out and dug it into the floor beside him. “I told you to let me leave, and you’re gonna do just that, understand?”

I turned around and made my way through the tunnel to the ocean. I dipped my hand in the water and let it soothe me. It stung like a bitch. I couldn’t stay there, though, and needed to leave. The only problem being that I could barely keep my focus on anything to fly, I didn’t know how to swim, and if I tried to walk away, I’d likely be hunted down and killed within a couple hours.

In no uncertain terms, I was screwed.

I heard a noise and turned back toward the cave. It was Kenny, roughed up but otherwise unharmed, and I might have done that to him when I pushed him down. “You probably shouldn’t be here,” I said. My speech was starting to get back to normal. I still sounded somewhat drugged, though. “They’ll probably wanna kill you for harboring me.”

He shrugged. “I surprised you don’t wanna kill me.”

“You didn’t do anything to me. I don’t see the point in hurting people that don’t deserve it.” I laid down. I knew I didn’t really have the time to, but I needed to. I kept my hand in the water, it was helping. I’d heard stories from what few other dragons I’d met that water had special properties to us. Whether or not that was true, I didn’t really care at the moment. It was at least psychologically helpful.

“I know some place you can go, if you can manage to fly,” Kenny said as he sat down beside me.

“They won’t come after me?”

“I told them not to. Told them my dad wouldn’t harbor a dragon, but if one asked to leave, he’d let it.”

“Is that true?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I hope so.”

“Me too.” I turned to him. “So, where can I go?”

---

My hand still hurt like a sonuvabitch, but I managed to keep moving. Kenny had led me up a series of short paths to a forest on the outskirts of the town. There wasn’t a lot of space between the trees, but I kept following Kenny to wherever it was he was leading me.

I distinctly remembered Kenny saying I’d have to fly somewhere. “I thought you said we’d have to fly.”

“I forgot about her summer home, sorry.”

“Summer home?”

“Yeeeeeaaah, she’s kinda weird.”

“Why am I almost afraid of this?”

“No, no, she’s cool. She has a lot of fun using potions.”

“Potions? She’s a magic user?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, I’ve never seen her use any actual magic, just potions.”

“And you’re sure she’s safe?”

He smiled. “C’mon, Riley, it’ll be fine.”

“I still don’t even know what’s going to happen here, y’know.”

We continued through the forest, where I knocked down more trees that I was too big to fit between. Finally, we found ourselves at the doorstep of a small cottage that looked like it would barely fit Kenny, let alone anybody else.

Kenny knocked on the door, and the whole time we waited, I looked around the forest, hoping not to find some of Kenny’s neighbors following us. My hand was still sore, and since running required I be on all fours, that made running away from anyone practically impossible. This forest was so dense, I’d never be able to fly out.

The door to the cottage opened and a thirty-something woman appeared in the doorway. “Kineas, Kineas, Kineas… What have you done this time?”

Kenny was pretty obviously flustered seeing this woman. I had to admit, for a human, she wasn’t all that bad to look at.

“Can we come in, Sharena?” Kenny jerked a thumb at me. “He needs a place to hide for the night while his hand heals up.”

The woman - Sharena - moved out of the way. “Please, I’ve always enjoyed entertaining the company of dragons.”

Kenny walked in first, then I poked my head inside. On the outside, the place barely looked big enough to be an outhouse, but on the inside, it was more than twice the size of Kenny’s shed. “What’s going on here?”

Sharena smiled. “Trade secrets, sweetheart. Just come on in, okay? I promise you’ll fit through the door.”

I sighed. I don’t know why she thought I’d fit, because I was clearly bigger than the door. I moved a little bit of me in, and then I was suddenly in the middle of the room and Sharena was closing the door behind me. She walked over to what looked like a small drink bar and poured a drink into a glass. “So, Kineas, what can I do for you today?” she asked.

“How’d you do that?” I asked, interrupting Kenny from answering her question.

“A simple spell, even Kineas could do it, if he just tried.”

“So you are a magic user?”

She took a drink of whatever she had in the glass. “Everyone on this planet is a magic user, even dragons like yourself, it’s just that only a few people have the ability to cultivate enough mana to use the bigger spells.” She walked over to me and held her hand against my forehead. “You’ve got quite a bit of mana in you, Riley.”

“Sharena,” Kenny said, walking up to us, “wait a sec, how did you know Riley’s name?”

She was still smiling. “I can read your friend’s life through his mana, I can see his pain, his fear, his fury, his sorrow and his joy. You’ve had a relatively difficult life, Riley, even for a dragon. You were only hours old when your mother died, is that correct?”

I nodded.

“It was eight years before you met another of your kind, and the one you met was the white dragon.”

I nodded again.

“The white dragon?” Kenny asked.

“Your father doesn’t speak of him in his journals, Kineas, something I asked him to do. There’s only so much a young boy can learn about dragons before he starts to hate them, all because of the white dragon’s actions.”

“Every dragon knows who the white dragon is,” I said, “he’s a monster, born from pure hate.”

Sharena continued: “If the white dragon wasn’t around, humans and dragons would be able to live in harmony. He was the first of your kind to draw human blood, correct?”

“Only after he decided to kill my parents.” I took a deep breath. I was getting too angry.

“How’d you meet him?” Kenny asked.

“I was bathing in a lake near a small town. I don’t remember the town’s name anymore, and the town’s not there anymore. He tore it to shreds, burned it so far into the ground that the grass can’t even grow anymore.” I looked over at Kenny, who looked horrified. Sharena was right, thanks to this very story about the white dragon, he’ll probably start to hate us. Hopefully not me, though. “I don’t know how many people survived, maybe just me, a boy my age and his sister, and the white dragon.”

Sharena nodded. “I remember that day. I was there. So was Kineas’s father. We were hunting the white dragon, and we just barely managed to make it out of there alive.” She walked back over to her drink bar. “I don’t have anything to outright heal your hand, there’ll always be a scar, but I can make it look and feel years old.” She took two bottles from under the bar. “And I have something else for you, as well.”

“What?” I asked.

“Obviously, you’re going to stir up quite a bit of racket anywhere you go by virtue of just being a dragon. If you drink this,” she held up a bottle of orange liquid, “you’ll be hidden. By all accounts, you’ll be a normal teenage human. You’ll be able to move freely.”

“For how long?”

“As long as you choose. Should you decide to acquaint yourself with the finer points of potion making, you could make yourself a reversal potion quite easily within a week with simple things from your local pharmacy. Just, for the love of all things sacred, don’t forget the drain cleaner, it’s one of the most important things, and too many would-be potion makers decide to skip it, it causes their basements to explode.”

That was just… Yeah, I was confused. “Is this gonna hurt?” I asked.

“You’ll fall asleep within seconds, and when you wake up, you’ll be a new human.”

“And the other one?”

She held up the bottle with light blue liquid. “This is the one that will heal your hand. I suggest you take it first, since it’ll take effect immediately.”

I took the bottle from her hand and gulped it down instantly. It tasted funny, but I didn’t feel anything. “Nothing’s happen - “ I was cut off by a sharp pain in my hand. It hurt about as much as the knife blade, and it was concentrated right on that spot. I screamed, loudly, and nearly fell onto my side. It was sheer pain, and it wasn’t stopping.

And then it did. It didn’t hurt anymore, and it really did look and feel as though I’d gotten the wound years ago. “You didn’t say it’d hurt,” I said, wiping away the pain sweat I’d worked up.

“Sorry, sweetie. You’ve got a pretty low pain threshold for a dragon, Riley.”

“I’ve noticed.” I wiped more sweat from my brow and then looked at the orange potion she had in the second bottle. “I’ll be indistinguishable from any other human?”

“No one will be able to tell the difference.”

“Not even if I step on a scale? I weigh a lot, y’know.”

She smiled again. “This is magic, sweetheart, it can do much more than people think. You step on a scale, you’ll weigh no more than the average teenage human.”

I took a deep breath. “So, what am I gonna look like?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“This scares me, y’know.”

“You’re one step closer to human already, Riley, just take the next one.”

I took another deep breath. Take the plunge, take the plunge, take the plunge… I took the bottle with the orange potion and poured it into my mouth. After one quick gulp, I set the bottle down on the table beside me, and then I was on the floor with my eyes glazed over, and I was out like a light.