Chapter 11: Soaring

            Much later that day, Frain and I were back in the sky. It was a lot cooler now and prettier than in the daytime. The lights of the city glittered out of the darkened landscape below. The stars shone down from above and it was a very serene and peaceful world for the time being. Frain didn’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular and we slowly glided through the chilling air, circling above the city.

            There was a little more activity in the way of dragons; there were a couple that we passed closely. There were at least ten and most of them seemed to be of the darker colours; purple, dark blues and greens, blacks and greys and because of this they were hard to spot. It was only if they flew above us and blotted out the stars that we could spot one.

            Frain landed in the street outside my house. I hopped down and said thank you and goodbye to him. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Frain. Thank you for today,’ I said again.

            ‘My pleasure.’ Then he jumped and flew into the sky, the first time I had ever seen him become airborne without taking those few running steps.

            I immediately wanted to go with him but I had had a long day too and needed my sleep in my comfy bed up the stairs. Opening the door, I went inside and there was a surge of meaty smells pervading the air. Doran must be or had finished cooking; nevertheless I headed straight to the kitchen having not eaten much all day.

            ‘Is that you, Carly?’ came Doran’s voice from in the kitchen; he had heard me come in the front door.

            ‘Yeh, I’m home. Are you cooking dinner?’ I asked, not being able to help myself.

            He was just taking a large cooking pot off the iron stove when I walked in. ‘I am and you are just in time. Oh, this is my friend, Greg if you remember him.’

            Greg was stood to the left of the door, leaning against the worktop. ‘Hello, it’s good to see you again.’

            ‘Er, hello,’ I said back as Doran handed me a bowl of beef stew. As I smelt the aromas, I wondered what Frain would think of cooked meat; as a carnivore, he ate fresh, raw, bloody meat straight off the animal.

            I had often come downstairs to find that Doran had a friend over but I had always left before I got too caught up in any conversation. There was little reason for me to get involved with Doran’s business and most days we would only share a few short sentences. Right now, I ate my dinner as the two men continued talking.

            Greg spoke to both of us more than just to Doran. ‘There are some things that you two share, so I can believe your story, Doran. It’s just very strange.’

            ‘Hmm, it is and quite a shock but Carly does what she likes. We keep out of each other’s way mostly,’ Doran told him to which I nodded.

            ‘You don’t make sense most of the time,’ Greg commented and then they both started laughing and I felt like tucking away into a corner.

            Doran put down his bowl (there were chairs but no one was using them) and tried to stop laughing. ‘Sorry, Carly,’ he apologised to me though there wasn’t reason for it. ‘Just something from years ago.’

            I gave him an awkward smile and nodded my head. Finishing my stew, I left them to it and went up to my room. Maybe it was just me feeling weird but I didn’t want to bring our two worlds together too quickly after over twenty years of never knowing each other. Up in my room, I went into one of my drawers and found my large book and notepad. I would often look through the aged pages again in case there was something I might have missed from the last hundred or so times.

            After washing and cleaning myself up, I looked at my body in the mirror. I hadn’t got a top on yet so I could see the tattoo over my shoulder. It was the same shade of purple as the majority of Frain’s scales and it was very elegant though I never showed it. The older adult Tamers always had them covered up as well but those around my age or younger would wear very short sleeved tops. Girls would always wear their hair up to keep it from covering their marks. I wasn’t like that; it wasn’t being ashamed but I hadn’t grown up with this life.

            That might have been part of why I spent a lot of time trying to avoid explaining where I came from to some of the teenagers I met. There wasn’t ever very many of us that passed paths around the centre but now and again I had bumped into a few of Ky’s friends that I had met a couple of times before. The first time we had met only one of them had their dragon, the other two were still waiting for one to be ready to hatch.

            Jeta had been about a year old when I first met him so he wasn’t that much taller than myself; they hadn’t got on however, Jeta had growled at meeting Frain and there were still tensions between them whenever I was talking to Jan (Jeta’s Tamer). We were sort of what I’d class as friends though we didn’t meet up on a regular basis. Whenever we did meet, Jeta would always be with her or at least close by (like Frain was with me); however, there was grumbling and tensed muscles from both dragons.

            Jeta was jet black, much blacker than Torrin was though I guessed that was from the age that the elder dragon was. Jan’s hair matched her dragon as well as her shoulder mark. She had very tanned skin which I was a little jealous of and she was fairly pretty. Nate and Pit, the other two (boy and girl) that I had met with Ky and Jan that time were hardly around; I had met them a few times since but nowhere near as much as I had with Jan.

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            Not much had really happened within the last few months and nothing was about to change by very much within the next three or so. Most of my time was spent flying with Frain and learning how to move my weight to help him manoeuvre with more ease. He was starting to get bigger again and was showing signs of getting stronger, as he had told me. Doran even gave us a harness from when Hydra was much smaller. It was a little big but that was the purpose of the straps. I had asked him why leather and Doran’s reply was that it was the only material that lasted long enough rubbing against the hardness of a dragon’s scales.

            It was also a lot more comfortable for Frain and I no longer had any small patches of intense fear thinking I might slip off. There was also the case of my diminishing fear of heights that slowly went away completely and Frain could fly as high as he wanted. He couldn’t fly as high as Storm and Hydra, not yet as his lungs weren’t big enough to fill with enough air to sustain him. There was also the fact that I couldn’t fly past a certain height but we didn’t come close to that and never would.

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