Bone Valley.

Chapter One Torren

There weren’t always dragons in the valley and thank goodness for that! Their poop is so flammable, one spark on the wrong pile and no more Bone Valley!

Our story begins on the high squalling, barebone ridge of Bone Mountain…

Okay, no it doesn’t.

It starts on the top of slightly breezy Bone Hill; with Torren irritably adjusting his leather and steel helmet for the hundredth, actually… gods only knew how many hundredths of times.

The glass eyeholes needed a clean. He wasn’t stupid enough to do it here on the waste fields. If Torren didn’t keep his helmet firmly on with its drawstring, drop-down leather face covers tied tightly, ensuring his helmet was kept as airproof as possible, the poop fumes would not only burn his eyes... they would sear his face right off.

He’d already begun to develop a nasal drip that only seemed to disappear after a few days away from the dung ponds…. and Torren was sure his general health was suffering. But he couldn’t afford a proper Doctor, so the helmet could remain with dusty and foggy eye holes until he finished off-loading.

Not much to really see through the glass anyway. Once you’ve seen dragon poop slide down a hill once, you’ve seen it a thousand times!

With drooping shoulders, Torren watched unenthusiastically as the silver sludge slid down the already silvery hillside. Toxic fumes vented upwards, molesting the cool ocean breeze and creating a haze over the ever-increasing lake of muck. If dragon poo wasn’t so repulsive to smell and toxic to be near, the lake would have been an unusual and interesting tourist attraction. But, due to the high mercury content in dragon doo-doo, anyone who touched it with their bare skin was quickly sent mad. So understandably, most people of sound body and mind didn’t want too much to do with it

Torren gave the lake one last dusty look and for the millionth time, wondered why any government in their right mind would have let the Witches meddle in the business of men. Torren would never know, but it always ended the same… trouble for him and everyone else in Bone Valley.

Bunch of stupid old bags.

The witches… not the dragons.

The dragons were too smart for their own good. Well actually, for everyone’s good. So here he stood, on the top of a stinking pile of dragon manure; all thanks to the witches and their grand ideas of modernization!

Admittedly, if we were talking about modernization, since the arrival of Dragons, life had been turned upside down and possibly, if push came to shove, you could say it had been improved.

Admittedly, the little ones were very handy. Good for keeping your house warm and dry. Good for shoving under a cast-iron sheet and turning that into a cooking top or oven. Good for burning… anything. Good for melting… anything. As long as you didn’t expect a regular flame and could put up with the toxic poop and an odd explosion and its aftermath, then dragons were a relatively cheap heat source, fuel source and industrial helper.

But… and here’s the very large and ever-growing but… everyone was having to ‘find places’ to ‘deal’ with the poop and come to terms with, shall we call it, supplying the ‘dragon’s food’.

Once again, the little ones were easy. A mouse or chicken was all they needed, as long as it was fresh, or even better… wiggling! And, because they were smallish, their poop was in-turn small and could be stored in steel plate buckets; which were collected once a week by the likes of Torren. Then that poo-poo was driven over to the other side of Bone Hill and dumped, creating the ever-increasing environmental ‘butt’ problem of Dragon Poo Lake.

Simply, the dragon guano was not ‘breaking' down in an environmentally friendly manner. In fact, the lake was setting any water bird who was silly enough to be tricked into landing on its surface… on fire. Which undoubtedly didn’t happen too often because the birds usually combusted in mid-air; quite sometime before their little flappy feet even got the chance to touch its silvery surface.

The big dragons though… Well, it was true that they liked fresh and wiggling food too. It made Torren squirm just to think about it. The big dragons weren’t satisfied by cows, donkeys, horses or even elephants. No! They liked to eat… people.

Undeniably, the residents of Bone Valley didn’t have much in the way of imagination. The geographical names of everything tended to be an amazing epitome of this. Bone Hill, Bone Valley, The Big Mountains, The Really Big Mountains. But even though they were collectively a bit of an imaginative desert, since the dragons had arrived, the people’s imaginations had… evolved. Rapidly!

A prime example… when the big dragons first climbed out of the hole, the rumour was they liked to eat virgins. That one took off like a scrub fire. It really pushed the populace's imaginative evolution into high speed… and it definitely created a couple of very interesting weeks. But not, unfortunately, for Torren!

Getting the smell of dragon poop out of your skin, hair and clothing took a few weeks. Even with the protections the thick steel and leatherwork suit offered, the vapours still crept into your pores and stayed there like an unwelcome guest.

Sadly, no one was that desperate to ‘protect themselves’ to even consider Torren pre detoxed. Unhappily, by the time he’d gotten a bit cleaner, the rumour had passed and he had to go back to work; otherwise, the rent would be overdue and no one likes living on the street.

Putting this disappointing turn of events to one side, this particularly interesting and imaginative fallacy had been proven further wrong when one of the big reptiles flew down from the mountains. The Really Big Mountains! And it had eaten an old, but big and bulbously-fat lady; who remarkably, could run at quite a high speed when under threat. She was reasonably well known around Bone Valley to have been a… How do we say this tactfully… Very ‘experienced’ lady who peddled her wares at night! So, after her death, everyone stopped trying to lose… something personal and began trying to lose weight.

Oh, the imaginative ways people had come up with how to do that in a hurry!

So, after the virgin rumour died, for poor painfully shy and imaginative Torren, he had no reason to hang onto a dream… ‘cause dreams don’t put food in your stomach.

Poo does though!

Torren had initially thought getting into the sewerage business would be a breeze. And it was. A bit of light lifting… get your own horse and cart, little dragons equal little poos… easy! It had left him a lot of spare time to… imagine stuff.

Then the flood of dragons happened. And with that, the big dragons came through the hole… or portal, as the witches liked to call it. But in fact, it was a hole. Nothing more nothing less. It had nothing wiggly, sparkly or special about it. It was black and dull and now and again a dragon would come through it. The longer Bone Valley had it… the bigger it got… the bigger the dragons got and the bigger the problems got.

Torren lifted another empty bucket of poop onto the back of his steel-reinforced cart, locking it into place. Twelve big dragons were now out and about, and the witches were desperately trying to close the hole.

“Twelve bloody big dragons too late!”

That was another thing Torren had noticed.

Because he… smelt a little bit. Okay, Torren smelt like dragon muck and no one really enjoyed talking to him. And he certainly didn’t enjoy talking to any of the other dragon poo carriers because they smelt like shi… poo too! So, Torren had taken to talking to himself. He rationalised and then agreed with himself that if there was no one else to talk to, he might as well talk to himself.

The heavy wooden cart was pulled back to the horse parking station. All the horses needed to be left at least a kilometre away from poo lake. So, this caused the crappy part of the job, pulling the cart up and down the mountain… okay, hill! But it felt like a mountain; especially when the cart was full.

Sally, his grey mottled mare, was old and infirm and waited patiently as he made his complaining way down the muddy tracks. It didn’t matter she was old because young horses soon became old and infirm when near dragon dung. That was one thing that kept Torren up at night. If that’s what dragon doo-doo did to the horses, what was it doing to him, his insides, his life force, his… potency? Torren was starting to develop into a hypochondriac. It was a worry which kept him company all the way back to the valley.

The city soon came into view… well it’s burnt, and cindered bones came into sight. Anything that was not made of stone was now made of charcoal. Everyone not living in a stone castle had turned to live underground because an earthen roof meant it was a fireproof roof.

Yes indeed, life was ‘a changing’ since the dragons came to town.

The witches and their advertising crew said it was a wonderful modernization of how people lived. Earthen houses were insulated and warm and wonderful. Torren was waiting for winter to come and to see how warm and wonderful a hole in the ground was once it filled up with rainwater. His hole… I mean home, was an experiment on how to keep a fleapit in the ground warm, dry and rat-free.

Buying his dragon had helped.

As much as this ‘non environmentally friendly’ purchase annoyed Torren, life without a little dragon was unbearable! It had required him to work that little bit harder to afford the down payment and then the monthly payments for the small green and scaley creature; but after a hard day out collecting droppings, coming home to a comfortable hole was now something he couldn’t live without.

But in turn, this luxury had required him to work harder to make his home more comfortable and less… combustible. This is what led him to drive down Potters Lane in the potters and brick makers section of the city. DIY hole improvement!

Torren found the very man he’d been looking for, stopped and pulled up his helmet to ensure his earnest and hardworking face could be seen. Especially by Norman the local brickmaker who was busy staking bricks hot from the kiln. Which incidentally was fired by 4 midsized ruby red dragons.

“Hi Norman, can I have a load of bricks in the old cart today?” Torren was cheerful and happy… nothing like his normal disposition.

“No, bugger off!” Norman didn’t even bother to cover his builders crack as he bent his fat bald head down to allow his large girth the room to bend over and deliver another 6 bricks to the cooling ground.

“Aw come on mate, I’ll do ya a deal with your dragon-by-product. Let's say 4 buckets for a load of brick. They can be seconds, I’m not fussy!” Torren desperately kept smiling, hoping the wind would carry his scent in the opposite direction from Norman.

The middle-aged brickmaker stood up with his layers of fat, which he hoped looked like muscles, wobbling back down to his stomach like an avalanche of lard. “You can have a load, for four buckets and a delivery.”

“Aww, that’s awesome mate. Anything for you! What and where can I deliver for you?” Torren couldn’t contain his merriment. This meant he would have enough bricks to finish his hole in the ground, sorry hovel, I mean one-room home.

“Me. I'm the load, so hurry up and get on with it Stinky.”

Torren’s heart sank as he watched a black-cloaked woman under a dark broad-brimmed pointy hat bustle out from the doorway of Norman’s small underground office.

A witch.

This was not going to be his favourite afternoon.

It was quite evident he should have asked for two loads of bricks. Norman's smile was wide broad and full of business acumen.

“Terribly sorry Miss, but the smell only gets worse the closer you get to me and the higher up you get on my cart.” Torren hoped this would be enough to put off his potential passenger. He shouldn't have even bothered, false hope always hurts the hardest when it fails to deliver.

Norman put his big rough meaty hands on his wide girth in the search of some form of bone-related to his hips. “Well Stinky”, he said as his grin became sharklike, “If you want them bricks, this is the delivery you need to do!”

“Is this going to be a problem?” The wide black pointed hat bobbed about below the passenger side of Torren’s cart. “I'm not exactly thrilled about being seen in public with you or having to be in proximity to your person. I've heard the rumours you know. It's not as if we live like cloistered nuns. Is it true what they say about you and your homemade soap?”

A pair of big blue eyes appeared from underneath the witch’s black hat. They belonged to quite a pretty face if you were into self-flagellation.

Torren voiced a confident, “No!”, in a baritone voice, before the nervous sweats appeared, adding another layer of discomfort to the situation. “Must be some other dragon waste disposal unit you're thinking of. Just climb up and let's get on with it.”

The blue eyes narrowed as her red lips hardened, she commented loudly, “No it is you. I remember your voice. It was a lot higher when you came to see Mother Harper. I remember it quite distinctly when she applied the cold cream to your…” A quick red blush exploded onto the witch's pale skin as Norman burst out in an echoing laugh.

“Oh yes that would be our Stinky, he's always trying to get on the good side of the ladies. The pity is, he just hasn't met one without a sense of smell!" Norman's fat rolls jiggled and wiggled as he barely contained his mirth inside his large form.

Torren gritted his teeth. Looking down at the now beetroot red witch, he didn't bother to attempt to change his voice but spoke with all the deep and welled up depression that all dragon poop collectors wear as a badge of honour. “Let's get going.”

The witch climbed up and sat on the buggy's front wooden board, in the process trying desperately to touch the least amount of cart as she could.

“Bye Uncle, if I don’t see you again, it’s because this one,” she flicked her disparaging blue eyes in Torrens direction, “is holding me captive in some skanky dungeon!”

If only Torren had known it was this very moment that would change his life, some would say for the better, he may have marked the occasion with more than a depressed sneer.

If he too had only known that this very moment would lead him shortly to a point in his life where he stood facing the 12th dragon with little more than a branch and a pocket full of pebbles, he may have pushed the brick makers witch to the ground, given up any hope of losing his virginity and joined a monastery deep, deep, deep underground and learned to put up with cold, wet holes. Because if he had, his future certainly would not have held the moment where he regretted not doing so whilst looking up the wide and broad nostril of one very angry dragon.

We live... and be BBQed by our own choices!