Chapter 16 A new home

I awoke to silence.

As I gradually came back to conciousness, I wondered sleepily if my parents had forgotten to set the alarm. I opened my eyes to see a blurry expanse of gray stretching across my vision, and then it all came rushing back. I sat straight up, nearly bumping my head on the underside of the gargoyle's wing. And I looked out to see... nothing. Blank whiteness stretched in every direction. Even the ground on which I sat faded away after a few feet. It felt like sitting in a cloud.

Then I realized... we were.

I turned to Raven, who was snoring like a house full of satisfied cats. "Wake up!" I said loudly, the fog seeming to muffle my voice. I shook her. She rolled over and muttered something about pajamas and penut-butter sandwitches. Then she sat up and shook out her hair. "Ug!", she muttered,"I don't think other dragon riders get woken up by their dragons." I giggled, and she raised an eyebrow. "What? I am your rider, or at least I was last night, right?" I just shook my head, laughing.

Raven and I crawled out from under the stone wing, stretching and yawning. The fog was still just as thick, and it was hard to tell which way was up or down. I stood up. "Well, now that we're in Chicago, we should find somewhere more permanant to stay, don't you think? Maybe I could find an abandoned house around here and we could turn it into our secret lair, or something."

Raven agreed, and we decided to look in the suberbs, since it would be a little too easy to trace me if I lived closer.

I shifted to dragon, holding a sleeping bag in each hand, and concentrating on making them dissappear. It took me two tries. Apparently a lot of focus is needed to 'reabsorb' anything other than the clothes on my body when shifting.

Then we flew.

I soared up through the clouds, flapping hard to gain height. Raven clung to my scales, leaning low over my neck to keep out of the wind. I circled once around the Sears tower, reveling in the sight of the tallest building in America poking through the clouds below me.

Then, the sun shining warm on my back, I turned and headed southwest. A slight breeze sprang up at my tail, and I coasted, feeling as if I was floating instead of flying.

We flew on, until I judged it was far enough from the main city to keep anyone from following us, at least on the ground. I decended through the cloud cover, which was thinning, and when I reached the cloud's base, circled for a moment, before spotting what I was looking for, and diving straight down.

I backwinged to a stop in front of an old barn on a seemingly abandoned woodlot. Raven jumped down. "A barn? We're going to live here? Are you sure this place is abandoned?"

I nodded, "The sign on the gate was so moldy I almost couldn't read it, but it says; 'wilderness area, keep out.' I'm pretty sure no one owns this place, so we are not likely to get kicked out unless the state somehow finds out."

"Humph. Well, at least it's far from the road, so no one can see us if we make a fire or something. I bet they don't even know this place exists. Hey, how did you read that sign without looking at it?"

I grinned, forgetting I was a dragon for a moment. Raven looked startled, and I hastily smothered it. "I read it from the air." I said simply.

"Oh. Wow. Okay" She shook her head wonderingly, then turned and began to walt toward the old gray barn.