Everheart

From the Dragon's Eyes: Chapter 4

It was a simple enough question.

“Whats a Dragon Tamer?”

I looked at the shopkeeper’s son confused. Such a simple question. How could four little words have such a confusing answer? “Well, its sort of like...” I struggled to find the words I needed. Across the table the shopkeeper’s son stared at me enthusiastically, not touching his breakfast his mother made him until he got an answer from me. Unwilling to disappoint, I sighed. “All I know is I can tame dragons. I don’t even know what that means. So, I’m sorry, but I don’t know much more than you do. I only learned that I was the Dragon Tamer a few hours before you did.”

The young boy’s face fell and he stared at his breakfast. “But I’ll tell you what,” I whispered. “If you eat your breakfast and grow up to be big and strong, I’ll come back and tell you as soon as I find out. That’s a promise okay?”

“And then I can fight in your army?” all of his enthusiasm rushed back into his face, which made the question even harder to understand.

The question came as a surprise more or less. “My army? Fight?” I echoed, dazed. I looked to the shopkeeper and his wife. The two parents looked at their son, as shocked as I was. When I looked back, he looked as eager as ever and has a glint in his eye. I put an hand on his head and ruffled his hair. “You can’t fight if you’re not big and strong. You have to start by eating your breakfast, but you also have to listen to your parents and do what they say,” I smiled at him.

“But my parents never let me do anything fun,” he complained.

“They’re only trying to protect you. You can’t do anything fun or fight in my army if your hurt because you didn’t listen to your parents. I know it may not always seem to be like that, but my parents saved me from doing something potentially harmful more than once,”

The shopkeeper caught my eye. In the quick exchange of glances, I saw him and his wife smiling.

***

“You did pretty well back there,” Elija said as we walked through town.

“All I did was talk to him the way I remember my dad talking to me,” I stated nonchalantly. Before Elija could ask about my dad, I walked away and began to look through store windows. Every time Elija would catch up to me, I would always walk away to a new store as if he wasn’t there. I felt bad because he had trusted me so openly, and now I was keeping secrets and ignoring him, but I wasn’t ready to tell him about my father. And I know if I let him catch up for long, that would be the first thing he asks me. When I stopped at a grocery stand on a corner, Elija walked over and stood silently beside me. He finally willed himself to ask something about my father. “Do you miss him?”

I looked over, confused. I sighed and shrugged the question off.

Elija was silent. What a stupid question, of course I miss him. I just would never tell Elija that. I picked out a few vegetables that I was asked to get, aid and walked away before Elija even realized it. He was still off in his own train of thought trying to figure out if I hated him for asking me that when I called out to him. “Elija, c’mon. I’m heading back now,”

Elija snapped his head back to face me and ran over to where I was waiting for him. We walked silently back to the shopkeeper’s house. As we turned the same corner we had the night before, I stopped. There had been something on my mind the whole trip and while I looked at the small house and shop, I felt like I needed to say it. Except I stood there, staring at the small white building, the smoke from the fireplace climbing out of the chimney and making its way across the cloudless blue sky, a thin line of grey being the only imperfection for miles around. Elija turned to face me and waited to see if I was going to explain why I had stopped suddenly. When I kept silent, he started to walk over to me. With the first step he took, I began to talk as if to keep him from coming any closer. “I don’t think we should spend the night. We should leave after dinner.”