Dragon's life in college

Meeting the youngest

Nigel beat his wings even faster, ascending into the sky as quickly as possible. Not until he had passed the first layer of clouds did he finally slow. After living his entire life with this teasing one would think that it wouldn't bother him anymore. But it did. Every single time it bothered him. The only difference that had occurred since he was a dragonet to now was that he was better at hiding how much the teasing hurt him.

He knew his siblings weren't purposefully trying to be mean. But it still hurt every time they teased, or picked on him because of his fear and his love of math. It hurt worse when Father was disappointed in him, which was all the time. The only time in his entire life when Father had not been disappointed In him had been a few hours after he had hatched. When he first hatched, his parents had thought he was a perfectly normal dragon. He certainly looked like it with his blood and flame red scales and larger than average size. His fire also hinted at him being a normal dragon, a bright, venomous green. His fire was what had given him his name. Nigel was only a nickname that he used, as he hated his real name. No one ever called him by his real name anymore, unless his siblings were teasing him again. Father had named him Deathflame, but Nigel had never been able to measure up to the status of that name. Nigel, a name he had come across in one of his dragonet books, fit and suited him much better.

There were times when Nigel wished he fit his name. When he wished that he was a normal dragon so Father wouldn't look so disappointed in him at all times and Mother wouldn't always have to come to his rescue. Mother was the only reason why he was still here. After Father had discovered his fear of everything, he had wanted to leave him to fend for himself. But Mother had been determined to keep him, and as everyone knew that the mother is the real authority in the family, Father had agreed. On the condition that she raise the scared dragonet and he could raise the others. Mother had agreed. So Nigel had been pretty much raised by his mother while his siblings had been raised by their father. Mother had helped raised them as well, which was why none of them ever bullied him. Nightroarer had done so once and Mother had punished him severely. None of them ever tried it again. Now they at best tolerated him. But Nigel knew once they arrived at college even the tolerance would vanish and they would want nothing to do with their scared, math nerd of a brother.

By now Nigel had flown for over twenty minutes. Slowly he began his descent through the clouds. Below him, the sea lashed itself against sheer cliffs which rose hundreds of feet into the air. Behind the cliffs, the land fell away sharply into green valleys and rocky hills. This was where he came whenever he wanted to be alone, which had been more than normal recently. There was one cliff in particular that Nigel loved and he made his way toward there now.

The cliff appeared the same as the others, but this one had a cave at the top. It wasn't really a cave, more of an overhand with a rock shelf underneath large enough for Nigel to fit in. The rock walls were covered with various scribbles from math problems he had worked on while here. Fresher marks showed where he had last left from his most recent problem, calculating the distance between two stars.

Nigel stared at the work he had already done. Normally a good math problem or two was enough to send all his worries away and leave him feeling at least comfortable not confident. But today, with the fear of college and change and everything looming on the horizon, he could barely get his mind to work let alone focus on a complicated problem like this.

After a few attempts, Nigel eventually gave up and settled down on the rocky shelf, staring out at the ocean below him. He wondered if there were any dragons down there right now, not other fire dragons like his family but ocean dragons. There would be ocean dragons at college he knew. At least they wouldn't tease him about his lack of fire control.