A Dragon's Bond

First Flight

     The wind rushed past me at an alarming rate. It howled and whistled as it went through my hair and tore at my shirt, flapping wildly in the wind. I grabbed onto the two spikes sticking out above Draioct's shoulders while wrapping my legs around anything I could hold onto. I was positioned just above his shoulders at the base of his neck, as it was the only place I could wrap my legs around. I looked down over the side of Draioct and saw the ground rapidly disappearing as trees shrank to the size of a blade of grass. The air became gradually cooler until I found myself getting goose bumps on my arms and legs. Draioct finally leveled out and slowed down as we soared above the clouds. His wings were so large now he barely had to flap them to keep us in the air, expending far less effort than he would have had to yesterday. I looked below now and saw a sea of clouds flowing beneath us like a bed of cotton. The horizon was nothing but clear blue skies and the sun.

"How is it that you grew to this enormous size overnight?"

     I prodded into my mind in the location I knew I would find him.

"Well I suppose dragons grow quickly at first. I will continue to grow a little more each day but I am almost at my full size."

     I looked across him as best I could. It was hard to see all of him while I was this close and a thought popped into my head.

"Are all dragons this large?"

     He laughed his deep jolly laugh once again and almost slithered like a snake in the air, joyfully soaring in the wind.

"I am a little large for most dragons, I will admit. It is something that will be to our great advantage at times."

     As he spoke I couldn't help but notice the maturity he had gained overnight. It was as if he crammed ten years of growing in ten hours.

"Dragons only grow while they are sleeping. Also, because we are so vulnerable when we are small, we grow very rapidly in the first few days, and then slow to a normal rate."

     We soared around in the air for a while, rising and falling with the currents of the wind, until we made our decent to the ground. Draioct expertly landed within the crater kicking up minimal dust in the landing zone. I slid off his shoulders and dropped the remaining ten feet to the ground.

     We walked over to camp exhilarated from the flight and began our usual ritual of gathering breakfast from the pond, only this time I added some fruit to my diet, I was getting pretty sick of just fish for every meal, it was also doing a real number on my stomach. Draioct would now consume fifty or more fish in a meal. After finishing the small amount of fish we brought over he walked over to the pond and dove into the water, catching the fish in the pond and eating until he was satisfied. He swam around like a giant shark in the water.

     When finished, he returned to me and lay in the sun near our camp. His scales glistened with water in the sun, his bright purple skin hidden beneath the scales except a few small locations such as his stomach and joints, where they too shone brightly.

     We lay there conversing and decided to spend a month here in the crater perfecting our flight and the elements where we knew it was safe.

****

     As the days went on we accomplished so many new things. Learning each other and from one another. Our bond growing stronger every day that passed, we were becoming each other's second half.

     We started off by building some practice dummies from the area's surrounding resources. Little stick men that constantly felt the wrath of our might. We pieced together some branches from the surrounding trees, with stick swords and tree bark shields. They were powerful and mighty foes we vanquished with relative ease.