Mages And Dragons

Awkward Silences And Near-Death Experiences

The long halls waited endlessly for us as we walked along them silently. It was deserted, only with an occasional guy or girl quickly getting out of our way.

“Err, is there any reason why people seem to be ignoring me, err, us?” I whispered. Not that it would make a difference, no one would want to overhear our conversation.

“One reason.” He responded very chill, “They’re afraid of you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You’re new, meaning you came from the Ground City, right?”

“Errm, America, maybe.”

“Well, yeah. Anyways, you’re basically human, right?”

“Well, I’m a freak, but you could call me that.” Without noticing, my head clashed into some rod with a speaker at the top. What, you thought every conversation was crash-less? Aaron, with his quick and swift movements, caught me from crashing onto the floor and dropping the books and things in my hand. Strange thing is, when he caught me, his hand was on my…you know what, let’s skip that part. I can tell you the way he grabbed me was like in those fantasy movies, where the night saves a princess from falling over, or something like that, and when they look into their eyes, there’s that romantic awkwardness. Yeah, well that’s basically what happened here.

“You alright?” He whispered, almost inches away from my mouth.

“Err, yeah.” I quickly stood up from my leaning back position, matted my hair down and looked back at him with a nervous smile. I didn’t mean to be awkward or anything, but being a hooker was not the impression I was hoping for.

“Listen, you’re not a freak. You are human, one of the nicest I’ve met so far.” Aaron spoke in a clear, stutter-less voice. I found it odd that he didn’t stutter, fidget, or anything, like they did in those old, romantic movies. He just stood there, body straight and with the same tone and expression through the whole conversation. Almost too normal, this world of Semora.

“Err, thank you.” Was all I could think of to say. I was still in quite shock of the confidence in Aaron. We resumed walking in more awkward silence to the end of the hallway, making a sharp right to the outside world.

I had another view of the flying world I was on, and found it more beautiful than at first glance. We came to a courtyard, surrounded by perfectly spherical and off-blue trees. At this point, I didn’t find odd that trees were blue here. They also had different coloured crystals of some sort, but were either pastel or very, very dark. It seemed warm in this sanctuary-like place. Maybe it was because of the trees, who knows? In the middle was marble formed in a large circle, and where some students and a teacher were discussing things. The sky was blue, like I first saw it, only brighter, it seemed. As if the sun decided to give it’s light to the sky, or something like that. The grass beneath my shoes was very comfortable to walk on, and I almost forgot I had any at all. Flowers came after every tree, but they were flowers that didn’t seem native to the world below. Some had eyes and watched your every move, some had circular mouths and ate the grass below them. Some even spoke to themselves and to some students every now and then.

“Doooooom.” Said one talking plant as Aaron walked me to the students, possibly referring to me. I tried to ignore it, but his friends chorused in and giving me a headache.

“Don’t goooo.”

“It’s a mistaaaaake.”

“Go baaaaack.”

“It’s better if you don’t listen to them. They always say that when a new kid arrives.” Aaron said, not looking back at me. I had that strange feeling like in those horror movies, when something strange tells you not to go, and you go, you get murdered or something. I felt like that, only I didn’t know whether to believe the plants or not. I feel strange just thinking about

plants giving me aid to get out of here.

The students looked up, all being different races, with their different multi-coloured eyes. The teacher, half human, half horse, looked at me with her big, brown eyes and smiled.

“Welcome, Kyra Laona, to the school, and this class.” The teacher started, “I shall be your draconian teacher, Elena.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t bother to ask how she knew my name and went with the conversation. I still wondered why a horse-woman would be teaching us about dragons. Wouldn’t a lizard man or something teach us?

Elena probably heard my thoughts, because she replied, “There aren’t any more lizard men or any other reptile race to educate you on these creatures, so I shall be your, let’s say, mentor, for these few years you have here.” She smiled, swishing her long tail, possibly trying to swat the flies out of her way. One thing I noticed was that Elena was wearing nothing else on her human body, except a forest-like breast-plate of some sort. It had vines and leaves all weaving in and out of each other, making some sort of tree or leaf symbol in the center. It looked pretty cool, though I’m not sure how much damage that could take. Her hair was a dark mahogany brown and flowing freely and reached the sides of her shoulders. If anything, she looked like some kind of character from a fantasy novel.

“Are you ready to start, Kyra?” Her voice was smooth and flowing, quite nice to hear on a “quiet” morning. I bobbed my head up and down as I joined the group of children. To my surprise, I found myself next to Aaron without me noticing. He just gave me a slight smile and gave his attention back to Elena. She explained the origins of dragons in all that in a short, five-minute summary, for my benefit, and led us to a large balcony opposite of the outside classroom I was in. The white-washed balcony was cold to put your hands on, but would have to ignore that to take in the picturesque view from it. The view showed the edge of Semora, I could predict, and had many caves and ledges where different scaly creatures perched, flew, and screeched, as if enticing us to come down to their homes. From what I could tell, this was probably where they sent bad kids to; where they can get eaten alive by a dragon in front of their friends. That definitely sounded like fun.

“Alright, guys, you know what to do. Get on the ledge and call your dragon. Come on, no delays now!” Elena instructed. Everyone obeyed, sat on the cold, white ledge and made odd sounds with their mouth, some sounding like screaming, others sounding like squirrel calls.

“Okay, basically, every summer term, the dragons here come to do their business, as in have leisure time, mate, look after their children, etcetera. The rest of the year, they stay with you, and are assigned to be your guardian and all that lovely stuff. Your dragon stays with you until you choose to leave Semora, or perhaps you may be burned alive, or have died. Basically, if you’re not around, neither is your dragon; they just vanish into the thin air. Ready to get started?” She explained in quite a hurry and slowly pushed me towards the ledge. I mimed what the other kids were doing and sat on the ledge, though I wasn’t sure what to do or say. In my state of muddled-ness, a force pushed me off the cold ledge and forced me to a free-falling state. You could say I was slowly dying, or maybe you couldn’t. I screamed my head, and possibly everyone else’s eardrums, off as I plummeted down the rocky cliffs beneath me, getting larger and larger too rapidly for me. Almost too quick to see, another force shot me upwards and gliding sideways. I couldn’t see anything, too terrified to open my eyes, but it felt like I wasn’t going to die at that moment. Slowly opening my eyes, with great difficulty from the wind rushing past me every millisecond, I found myself dangling on a muscular foot. I couldn’t yell anymore because I took out all my energy into the free-falling scream, so I basically opened my mouth and made a slight “ahhh” noise. The foot then threw me upwards and onto the creature’s back. It slowed, landing on a flat surface and letting me down, reaching my gaze with his yellow, scaly one. A dragon, I thought, wait ‘till I tell everyone back home that I got eaten by a dragon.