Dragonstar

"Hather!!.......Haaaather!!! Wake up," my mother yelled at me from down the hall of our little two bedroom house. She didn’t hear me reply so she walked down the hall and into my bedroom, showing a big smile as she entered my room. Before she said anything I had an idea what this early awakening was about. It was going to be my birthday today, and due to my rapid development of my speech, maturity, and other areas of my personality and character, I was to be admitted into my Fledgling Dragonmaster training three years ahead of any of the other children that were accepted. I was six years old finally and my mother was standing before me with a beaming gaze, she was very proud. She reached out a rather shaky hand that clutched a gold sealed piece of parchment paper. She looked from me to the paper and then back to me, "It's finally here! Are you as excited as I am?" I looked at her with a discontent and rebellious feeling, but she stood there with her arm still outreached, awaiting my answer. I stared back at her with a cold look in my eyes, "I don't want to go." She met my cold gaze and her arm fell to her side, limp as a wet noodle.

Ever since word had spread of my early training acceptance, all of the other older children had started telling me that Fledgling Dragon trainees were tortured, taken from their parents, never allowed to see them again, and were starved. All of these stories had culminated in my mind to for an unreal idea of the horrors of what the training had in store for me.

My mother continued to look at me with a cold, empty stare in her eyes. She lowered her voice, "I don't want to hear you say that ever again. Not very many children get into training and you are one of a handful that has ever been accepted early in the hundreds of years of Dragonmasters. You are going to go through your training and that's final." I had never heard her speak in such a cold and unfeeling voice before. Her voice remained the same, but tears came to her eyes, "Besides.....it's what your father would have wanted." It had almost been burnt out of my mind, but she had to bring it up.


Flashback
My father had been murdered about two years ago, cold blood and all, by our rival clan. I have never found out why they would do such a thing, and any time I bring it up with my mother, she changes the subject or stops talking.

It was a dark night on that date two years ago. There wasn’t a moon to be found in the vast sky and I remember my father sitting on the front back porch of our little house out in the woods. He was smoking a sweet smelling cigar in his wooden chair. I had awoken for no apparent reason and used my new ability to get out of my children's bed and walk out to him. I pushed through the screen door and my father peered over his shoulder at me, smiling gently. He turned to me and took me by the under arms, lifting me into the chair with him and onto his lap. I looked up to him and didn’t say a word before he gently started speaking of days gone by. There was a gentle feel about his gruff sounding voice, something that had always comforted me. He told me about how he used to live the life of an adventuring young man. He talked about the different sights and sounds to be heard all throughout the world, nirvana taking over his complexion. He seemed to have a sense of longing when I was looking up at him, but the gentle feeling of his voice made my eyelids heavy and hard to keep open. He took a long, slow drag from his sweet scented cigarette and exhaled into the night air, it smelled of vanilla. He continued to on with his stories for a while, and then noticing me nodding off he whispered, "I have finally settled down and hope that you follow your own path in life." He picked me up off of his lap and cradled me in his arms; he headed back to my room and set me down in my bed. He took the top covers and put them over me, tucking me in. Sleep engulfed me and I drifted into my subconscious. I opened my eyes once or twice, trying to fight off the sleep that was inevitable but it overcame me and I fell into darkness. Dreams came that I didn’t know I could muster in my mind.

Dream
I was standing in a field of grass; vivid green, bright blue sky with no clouds to be found, and a gorgeous, lush forest could be seen in the distance. I was standing in this beautiful scenery when the ground began to shake lightly beneath my feet. I could hear off in the distance, a thud that grew louder and louder as it approached me, the ground shaking more and more also. I looked around in all directions but saw nothing as the shaking and noise worsened. Just then I spotted a scaly forehead and two horns, forking away from each other, headed skyward. It kept coming into view and I was transfixed on it. The dark blue creature continued to grow in size, as did the shaking and noise. I couldn’t look away from this dark creature and finally looked him over as most of his body came into sight.

I noticed a dark plated figure riding on this creatures back, carrying a sword and shield. They kept walking in my direction as though they notice me so I kept watching their approach in wonderment. I studied the rider on this dragon intently as he and his dragon came to a stop under a tree. "Caitian, lets rest here for a while," said the rider. I watched the rider get down from Caitian, walk a little bit from where the dragon had stopped and the rider stopped walking and stood there. He took of his helmet and set his sword and shield on the ground next to him. He looked up from his possessions on the ground and looked out into the distance, towards me. I stood still and stopped breathing, hoping he wouldn’t see me. I looked hard at the rider as he stood there looking in my direction, I knew his face from somewhere. He breathed deep and sighed, "Caitian, do you ever wonder how my wife is doing?" He looked over his shoulder at his dragon and watched him intently. Caitian had been lying down with his head on his front legs when he looked up to meet the riders stare. The rider watched the dragon and nodded as though he were listening to something the dragon was saying that couldn’t be heard by anyone else. The rider watched the dragon and finally nodded and smiled, "I find you quite humorous my friend." The dragon snorted and lay its head back down and sighed, smoke seeped from his mouth as he exhaled and the dragon closed it eyes.

The rider continued to watch Caitian as he lay his head back down. The rider smiled and watched as Caitian got more comfortable on the ground and began to take in the sun. My mind suddenly swept me back to sitting on my father's lap, him telling me of days gone by. I remembered him telling me of how he used to adventure through the world, near and far. I remembered his words vaguely as I was engulfed by sleep on his lap and I shook my head. My eyes went wide as I stood there unmoving before the rider and his dragon; I was looking at what I believe to be my father. I knew the landscapes were too vivid for me, I was simply dreaming about my father and his days of adventure, seeing the parts of adventures gone by that he didn’t talk to me about. He had never mentioned a dragon and I became curious about the reasons behind it. I was intrigued by the fact that I was seeing my father in the days of his youth.

My father looked away from Catian, towards the tree line. "My days of adventure are soon to end, Catian." He said this with a slightly bothered look on his face with his back to the dragon so it couldn’t see his facial expression. Catian's head shot up and his eyes bore into the back of my father's head. He turned to meet Catian's gaze and said, "I know you don’t want to separate from me, as I don’t from you, but it’s for the best. My wife and child need to have a brighter future where I am with them more than I have the chance now." The dragon snorted, looking away, and a puff of black smoke spiraled and dispersed as it came from his nostrils. He was shunning my father but my father stood before Catian with an unyielding drive to go home to his wife and soon to be child.

My father looked at Catian a little more gently now and a look of pleading came across his face, "Please don’t be cross with me Catian. You can believe me when I say that I have thought this through and wish I could take you with me to settle down but the laws of this current time and age prohibit having a dragon as a guardian to a family, especially when that dragon has been in a relationship with his rider where they fought in battles together." Catian released the tension that was just then apparent in his back and looked up at my father slowly. My father kept his eyes locked on Caitian as another puff of smoke came from his nostrils. Catian was looking surprisingly distraught by this decision that my father had reached, so he turned away from him and lay his head back down. "I want you to go to the wild and be free like nature intended you to be. Go live a long life, when I release you back and return to your native lands." Catian wouldn’t look back at my father, instead he looked skyward and opened his mouth with a loud roar and spouted rich, yellow and orange flame skyward in anger. The light was intense and made all of the area around him turn dark in comparison. As the fire continued on, I fell to the ground and with a jerk I found myself being distanced from this scene and as the distance increased it started to look like my father and Catian were in a picture. The distance continued to increase and the whole landscape I had just been witness to, darkened completely.


Awake Again
Darkness was about me as I noticed that I was lying in my bed again, my eyes closed to the world. I felt a weight at my feet and I slowly opened my eyes to the sight of my mother at the foot of my bed with her head on my top covers. She was crying softly and didn’t notice that I was awake at first. She finally realized it and looked up abruptly to see me sitting up in bed. She watched me sitting there and tears welled up in her eyes once more and she didn’t say anything. She just continued to watch me and I gazed around my room in a half conscious state of mind, unaware of what had happened recently while I had been sleeping. My mother watched me and looked down at the bed as I sat there looking at her for a while.

She didn’t want to tell me what had happened but she must have figured it was easier to get it out of the way. He sky blue eyes clouded by tears, looked up at me and said, “Your father,” she whimpered, “they killed him….. It’s been three years…. But they finally came for him.” My father was gone and I didn’t believe it. None of what she was saying was sinking in. I didn’t have anything to say so I looked out the window and the sight that my eyes looked over seemed farther from reality that what my mother has said. The standing trees of the forest were glowing with a bright orange of napalm and what wasn’t standing was glowing like embers as they lay on the ground smoldering. I finally took it in and realized that our woods had been burned down and it was all in ruins. Diminishing napalm glowed on our back yard and the glow of our still burning forest made the night sky seem to glow lightly as though the sun were about to rise. The smell of burning wood and other material hit my senses and finally made me realize what had happened. As soon as the realization of my absent father staying absent forever hit me, the tears of loss came.