Dragon Ties

Chapter 5: Day 2

“How is your head feeling” mum echoed like a broken record. She now sat across the breakfast table from me staring at my head with fixated worried eyes. 

“I promise you, I’m feeling alright” I answered, pouring myself some Lucky Charms. Looks like they hadn’t been very lucky to begin with. The truth of the matter is that my head is still rather soar but I dodn’t want her to worry. Besides I know, if she still thought my concussion was bad she wouldn’t let me go to school. It will be embarrassing enough returning today, not having even made it through my first day of school. I know people would be staring, whispering, judging. I don’t care. I am not going to miss a week of school. Besides, I wanted to figure out who that boy with the hazel green eyes was. 

Mum insisted that she walk me to the bus stop and I accepted looking for anyway to get her off my back. Now on the bus however I have a chance to think. 

Since yesterday I have not been able to stop thinking about what exactly had happened to me. Ok so, I passed out, that was pretty obvious but what about me dream. That wasn’t nearly as obvious. The only time I had seen slashes like those seen in my dream was long ago at the abandoned park in the woods. Then there had been the clocks. I could have sworn that the clocks were jumping back and forth but was that the result of the concussion? I think If I want more answers I’m going to have to track down that boy, whatever his name is. 

It hadn’t taken me long to find room 221, my homeroom. First up was History. I had already drawn enough attention to myself yesterday so I moved silently to find a place to sit in the back of the classroom, away from wandering eyes. From my seat in the corner I see the long blonde hair that I knew only one girl to have. Natalie. I was about to go talk to her but as I rose from my seat the bell chimed and a tall, thin man walked in. 

He was smartly dressed in white collared shirt and black cacki-pants fastened with a thick leather belt. His hair was jet black, combed over to one side and I wondered If he was covering a bald spot. His piercing blue eyes stood out on his sharply sculpted face that sprouted a small goatee. Over his shoulder swung a beige book bag which he placed on his spacious desk and looked up, sending his dashing eyes upon us. He was the sort of man that sent teenage girl’s into mad obsession and got teacher’s suspended. Although, as he began his lecture it became clear that he had no tolerance for anything other than history. 

“ Good morning class” his deep voice boomed around the classroom. 

“Good morning Mr. Matteo” the class answered and I lowered my head as I realized I had been the only one not to answer. 

“Today we will be taking about Cartography. Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Before the invention of our advanced technology today that helps us travel the globe with ease, our ancestors created maps that would eventually help us today. Using the land formations, agriculture, and exploration of new territory they constructed detailed maps, some of which can be found in historical museums around the world. Of course there were complications that went along with this method of collecting data, making our maps and GPS’s much more efficient today. One fundamental problem was map projection, which was to represent the terrain of the mapped object on flat media. Another was generalization, which was a result of eliminating characteristics that were not relevant to the map’s purpose. Finally there was the challenge of the terrains that had not yet been explored. One happened to be the ocean. Remember students that long ago these explorers thought that the world was flat and that if you sailed too far on the ocean you would fall off the edge. We know in the twenty first century that this is not the case but in the past this made cartography challenging for our fore fathers. You might find this next fact to be quite interesting students, but I assure you we will not be going too deeply into myths and legends. It is believed that early cartographers used the Latin phrase “ hic sunt dracones”, or “he be the dragons” to mark dangerous or unexplored territories. This was the imitation of the medieval practice of placing sea serpents and mythological creatures in the blank areas of maps.”