Dragon Scales Book Two: Dragonet

Chapter 2

I soared through the air, wings and tail extended behind me. Caelea flew beneath me and, I noted, she had gotten much better at flying since we had arrived here. I looked down. The cave, I had found out, was carved out inside a huge mountain on a floating island made out of the same black and gold stone the Dragon's Cave was. The smaller caves and passageways then extended throughout the mountain and under the ground. The hole in the ceiling was really the exit. The first time Caelea showed me the island, I don't even know how to describe it.

On one side of the island, along with the mountain containing the main cave, was a huge expanse of stones hills and cliffs, with some of the black rock concealed by glittering white stone. When I was finally able to tear my eyes away from the mountains, I saw an expanse of forest. But the trees weren't any I had seen before. They were massive, big enough that the dragons could perch comfortably on the branches. The wood was white with grey veins running through it and leaves that looked like it was the beginning of fall, transitioning from green to yellow, then orange and red.

Caelea and I had been living here for almost two months now, technically four for Caelea, and I had become more or less fluent in the dragon's language. Actually, I only knew enough to just barely grasp what everyone was saying. But the dragons were patient with me, and calmly helped me through any sentences I was having trouble with. I think the hardest part about the language was all the rough, throaty sounds that were required. I had realized that my vocal chords must have changed too, as an average human's wouldn't be able to manage even just two or three sentences without having a sore throat for days afterward. And while my voice was by far way more soft and smooth than a dragon's, it was much deeper and rougher than most humans'.

As Caelea and I practiced flying, I glanced down at the island beneath us. We were flying near the edge of it, and I could see the large expanses of ocean beneath it, spanning in every direction as far as my human/dragon mix eyes could see.

Fin, Caelea said in my head, We've been out here for a few hours, and my wings are still wet from that last cloud we flew through. Can we go back yet?

I sighed and shook my head. Wimp. Nonetheless, I angled my wings and veered in towards the mountain on the island. After a few moments, Caelea and I landed at the base of the mountain in a large clearing.

I had, since leaving the cave system, decided that this was my favorite spot on the entire massive dragons' floating island. It was maybe two hundred feet in diameter, but most of it was taken up by a lake. The most notable thing about the clearing was the waterfall, the water launching off a cliff high above, where each crystalline drop seemed to hang suspended in the air for a moment before plunging into the lake below. The mist from the waterfall gave the clearing an unearthly feel to it. Also notable was the undergrowth. While most plants on the island followed the silver-wood-and-autumn-leaves pattern, the brush here was a rich, vibrant green, and the ground was a combination of soft grass and softer moss. Best of all was that few other dragons ever came here.

I walked to the edge of the lake, rolled up my pants over my legs, and waded in until the water was up to my knees. The lake bed was made of small, smooth, polished stones that seemed to emit a faint mystical blue light, giving the crystal clear water an ethereal blue glow.

I stood in the water, and after a moment, I heard a splashing and felt the little ripples that hit me that said that Caelea was wading in after me. She stopped next to me, and, where the water reached my knees, it only reached halfway up her forearm.

I leaned against her side. "Isn't this, like, the best spot on the island?" I asked, slightly rhetorically.

"Well," she said, actually verbally, out of a need to practice using her vocal chords, "an argument could be made for the feeding cave, but... Yeah, sure."