Lost in Everland - The Bougainvillea Garden

Chapter 3: The dragon

Scared.

Should I be scared? 

Usually, if you wake up to a dragon sniffing your face you'd freak out, or faint, or panic. But something about this dragon felt so welcoming, so full of love and kindness, it seemed like it was a friendly dragon.

With its blue eyes, which looked like a pair of sapphires, it stared into mine with curiosity I could only assume was because I was just as much a stranger to it as it was to me. 

It stared at me in awe, wondering who I was and what I was doing here. Wherever "here" was...

"Hey there...", I held out my hand but it jolted back as if it felt threatened, it let out a low snarl exposing its bright white teeth and fangs. I slowly backed away.

"It's ok buddy, I'm not here to hurt ya I'm just lost", I tried to soothe the dragon and it seemed to relax a little bit and returned to being the calm and curious creature who was trying to investigate what I am doing in the middle of who knows where. 

As I stepped back, I realized just how mesmerizing a sight this dragon was. 

Its eyes, a piercing gradient of royal and ocean blue, with a nose of baby pink, it was covered in scales of teal and turquoise from head to tail. A tail that was colored like a maple leaf in the fall. And ivory claws that dug into the ground, all of this was just unreal.

For a second there I forgot that dragons aren't real, but seeing it stand there right in front of me it was as real as it gets. 

In the blink of an eye the dragon flapped its light blue wings and flew off into the bright orange sky.

An actual living dragon, what is this strange land I had found? I began to ask myself as I looked around trying to get my bearings. 

It was not the same place I had fallen asleep before, everything was completely and entirely different. Different as in I have never seen a thing in here ever before in my life, everything was different, the moss, the grass, the flowers, the trees, the sky. 

I was bewildered by this new environment and I tried to find anything that resembled my familiarities with the forest I had been in before I had fallen asleep. And as I failed to do so, I began to notice the small and distinct details of this place. 

The grass was glistening more than usual, the moss had a tiny spray of mist. The flowers, some were humungous and some were small, some were blue and some were rose, some were close to the ground and some were tall. But they were all mesmerizing.

The flower bed I had fallen asleep on had stayed the same but by looking at everything else it seemed like I had been teleported to some land of fantasy. I have studied about parallel universes and theories where we can travel from one dimension to another but I was too spellbound to think of anything. 

Being a natural explorer, my first instinct was to gather as much data as possible from this new world. I saw a small path that seemed to have been used. I wondered if there were any humans here, or fairies, or elves maybe. What if Felice is here too? Maybe he got lost while he was in the forest and came here the same way as I did. 

I saw that there were some similarities between this world and mine. Like the trees grew upwards, gravitational force still felt the same, the sun was up, and the sky was filled with an occasional cloud or two but it was still eerily strange. 

As I was walking along the narrow path I began to wonder how I could return home, are my parents worried about me, how much time has passed, am I going to find Felice? I began to worry if I was stuck here. But I figured if I fell asleep on the flower bed again I would get teleported back to my world and left it at that without much thought. 

I saw that the path was leading me out of the forest so I started to walk faster and as I neared the clearing at the forest's end I was baffled by the vast stretch of land below me, and the small floating islands above. Some islands had streams of waterfalls that disappeared into mist after falling for some distance. I saw houses and buildings and more houses and in the middle of all that, an enormous castle. By the looks of it, this was a kingdom but it didn't look welcoming at all. There was a strange aura to the kingdom, it felt like a dreadful dream. There was something a bit unsettling about the kingdom but it kept calling me, drawing my attention as if inviting me to uncover the dark mysteries that lie within. 

I've read about magical kingdoms in story books when I was younger but this exceeded all my expectations. From far away this looked like it could be a human habitat so I thought I'd go take a look. But this is going to be a long hike, and I was as hungry as a wolf. 

Oh yes my dad's sandwiches, I grabbed my bag and sat down beside a tree to take a small break. And just as I was about to bite down on my sandwich I heard a faint voice say my name. And out of nowhere there was a boy standing on the other side of the clearing. 

He had white hair and a pale face with blue eyes that looked oddly familiar, he was dressed in what looked like a royal outfit, a blue suit with gold buttons and blue pants with white socks halfway to his knees completed with some long laced boots. We both stared at each other in silence and then after a while he broke the silence,

"Oliver what are you doing here?", he asked.

How did he know me? Who was he? He saw my slightly worried face and gave me a reassuring smile and said, "Hi, I am Prince Aidien of Garleia and umm... you might know me as Felice, but how did you end up here?" 

"Wait, Felice... you mean my dog?", I asked puzzled by his introduction.

"Well I'm not sure how to explain this but we need to get you somewhere safer before dark, come with us." 

A girl dressed in something like a Robin Hood costume struggled past a bunch of trees. "Oh man, better watch out for the bushes, these damn things stick to you like Velcro", she said aggressively picking the leaves off her shirt and coat. She had short black hair and a bow around her back, and some well defined muscles. She's pretty fit for a girl... fitter than me of course, I thought.

"Hey who's your friend here?", she asked Aidien.

"Oliver, this is Heisse she's one of the chiefs of our kingdom and Heisse this is Oliver he's my friend from the outside. We'll talk about it later okay, right now we need to get back. Now can we please hurry up?", Aidien introduced us.

"Ugh fine! You scaredy-cat", she complained. "I thought I'd get to beat up at least five of those beasts today but no... ", she said disappointingly. "But it was nice to meet you though, Oliver from the outside.", she smiled at me and proceeded to get a horn out of her coat. She blew the horn that sounded like a deep howl.

"Oh you're gonna love this", she said to me smirking. Out of the clouds a dragon emerged flapping its blue wings and landed on the clearing. Hey it's the dragon from before! 

"Meet Ariel, she's our royal dragon. Never seem a dragon before have you Oliver?", Aidien asked me.

"Actually we've met already, she paid me a visit back at the flower patch", I replied.  

"Well this is gonna be the first time you ride a dragon, c'mon!", Heisse and Aidien hopped on the back of the dragon. Well this is going to be a ride of a lifetime, I thought as I climbed on the dragon as well. 

"Let's go Ariel" Aidien instructed the dragon.

The dragon stretched out its wings and took a few steps back, then with a starting run she jumped off the edge of the clearing into the clouds below. I didn't realize I had closed my eyes until I opened them to find that we were flying over a whole expanse of green trees, with blooming flowers of red and blue and pink. I let myself relax at the sight of the beautiful scenery as the wind brushed my hair and the dragon swiftly flew us to our destination.