Chronicles of Carnezia (Book 2): Wilderness

Chapter 1: Ideas

Chronicles of Carnezia: Book 2

Wilderness

Chapter 1: Ideas

            Since leaving my home and indeed all of my world behind, I had entered an entirely new one. All my fantasies had been shown to me to really exist. It all began from being shown this Carnezia by the owners of my favourite trinket shop. I hadn’t seen them or my mum for three years straight now and I was fully blended into the life of being a Tamer.

            A Tamer was a person who was born with a specific bodily marking on one of their shoulders. It was elegant and intricate in differing tribal patterns and the colours matched to the colour of dragon that the Tamer would forever take care of. Tamers were known, in the land, for being the protectors and guardians of the dragons they were connected to and lived with. Although the real definition to ourselves was that we bore the colourful tattoo.

            Over the time that I had spent here, I had brought up my own dragon, made a very close friend, met my father (unknowingly though the meeting was), become friends with a handful of other dragons, gained a mentor (as had my dragon, Frain), gone on an egg-hunt and find out that my own (adopted) brother was a part of the thefts. Indeed that all happened within the first few months of my arrival here but now things had settled down a lot and I was now lounging in the sunshine in one the outlying grass plains.

            Now and again I would be shadowed over as my marvellous purple dragon glided on the air currents above. He was so much bigger now than when we had gone hunting for the stolen eggs. Back then his head was just at my shoulder height when he was relaxed (dragons can extend their necks like a snake stretches out); now, he was over seven feet tall now but was still not large or strong enough to carry me in flight.

            As I lay there, I had one leg bent up at the knee whilst my fingers combed through the blades of grass. The sun was high in the sky and I was careful to roll over every hour or so that I spent there to shield my skin. It had taken over a year to become comfortable enough to wear my vest tops that I had brought from home. My shoulder mark caught my attention some days but most of the time I forgot about it. Like my dragon, it was purple and I never knew it existed on my skin until visiting the trinket shop on a particular day.

            A roar from above rattled in my ears, opening my eye, I looked up and saw Frain rapidly flapping his wings as he dropped down to land. When he touched the ground, he curled his head up from using it to balance out. ‘Having fun?’ he said. Dragons had learnt centuries ago to communicate with us but it took young dragons a good year or two to master it from their elders.

            Standing up, I reached my hand up for him to lean his head down again. ‘Yes, thank you. Have you eaten?’ I asked him as there were still traces of blood around his scaly lips.

            ‘Mmm, yes. The sheep are tasty round here. We need to go see Mya and Storm,’ he told me.

            We began walking towards the high city walls; my hand rested on his muscular neck and his paws pounded on the ground near my own feet.

            ‘So why are we going to see them?’ I asked him.

            ‘I thought it would be a good idea,’ he replied with a soft nudge into my shoulder; he sometimes did that but he was much more aware of how much strength he put into it. Once he tried it not too long ago and I ended up being pushed to the ground.