The Flayr of the fire

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Well. As far as people could tell. They had sort of just come one day. Just come to Blackhaven from, well, nobody really knew where.

Kella was lying on the ground, soaking up the sun. Sunda ran up to her and, without a word, sat herself next to her.

“Well?” Kella didn’t turn, she didn’t need to. Not for a conversation like this.

“Well, what?” Sunda giggled. Kella must have known why she was here, but victory was sweet and Sunda was planning to let it simmer.

“How’s 14 treating you?” Sunda asked with an unsincere smile.

“Same as 13 did.” Kella mumbled angrily. “I didn’t think you would win.”

That was quite obvious. You don’t make a bet you think you will lose.

“Neither did everyone else.” Sunda walked away, smiling smugly.

Kella didn’t move for an hour and in that time the grand total of one person passed—it was Ms Mcreary, obviously. She walked back and forth, patrolling for any neighbours she could snoop on.

Many of the town’s residents admired Ms Mcreary: here was a lady who had decided her life’s purpose and stuck to it adamantly. She was on her daily rounds to see what was happening in other people’s private lives. It was tough, though. Blackhaven was a ghost town. There may have been people, living and breathing, but it was a ghost town nonetheless. Some days, Kella felt she was the only one with dreams. Maybe Sunda did, too, hidden deep down. Very deep.

Kella was sweat-soaked on her mattress. Dreams were never easy. *She was flying on something large and red. It whispered to her something she didn’t understand. She shushed it, she didn’t want the music to stop. She couldn’t tell when it had started but there was gentle singing coming from the world below. She finally breathed out slowly and looked down: it was huge, a beast with giant wings and shiny scales. They were a deep shade of crimson and if you looked closer, you could see white specks glittering gently in the moonlight*

She groaned and woke up. Ugh. Dragons. Again. She saw them all day, she didn’t need to see them all night too. Some people have recurring nightmares. She had recurring dreams. But you couldn’t ride dragons. You just couldn’t. Kella rolled slowly out of bed and glanced absentmindedly at the time. 10:00. Oh shoot! 10:00! She was late, she was super late! She threw on her uniform and brushed her teeth—no time for breakfast today. While running frantically, she tied her hair up in to a lopsided, makeshift bun. When she arrived, she collapsed on the floor, panting. She was not a born athlete, nor a practised one.

“Kella, you are so late!” Sunda stared at her, wide eyed.

“Thanks, I didn’t realise,” she retorted angrily,

“Ok, then, I guess you don’t want my help then,” Sunda smirked and skipped off. It took a moment for Kella to understand what Sunda meant. Ugh! Sunda was currently a walking ‘get out of jail free card’. That stupid bet. Everyone owed Sunda money. Everyone. Even Colon Argyle. Kella was pretty sure that Colon wasn’t really a position of power, but nobody was planning to tell that to Argyle any time soon. Speak of the devil, here he came.

“Kella. Do you know how late you are?”

Obviously, she did.

“Well, are you going to answer me?”

“No.”

No point being nice. Argyle already hated her. He’d also tried to get rid of her multiple times, but he didn’t have that power. Yet. As he liked to remind her, one day he would. He liked to remind her a lot. Besides, losing your work experience may make your CV a bit worse, but it was better than working for Argyle. Anything was better than working for Argyle. So why did she stick around? Simple. Stupid dragons.

She was on Flayr duty. She already knew it.

“Well,” Argyle grinned. He was sadistic. “There’s only job available, so I suppose I’ll have to place you on Flayr duty.”

Here it came: “Remember Kella, the early bird gets the worm.”

The early bird may get the worm, but the early worm has to spend more time with Argyle, which, in Kella’s opinion, was a fate worse than death. She hated that phrase so much. Then again, that might just be because Colon Argyle used it. She trudged angrily over to Flayr’s stable. She didn’t hate Flayr like everyone else did, but she did agree that it was much harder to train a hyper active baby dragon than—

Flayr immediately jumped on her, knocking her over into the mud and, possibly, other brown substances in the stable.

“Hi, Flayr.”

The dragon hiccuped happily in response. At least she didn’t breathe fire like the rest of the dragons. Well, she might be able to breathe fire. But she never roared. She hiccuped instead. So nobody was really sure what she could do.

Kella led Flayr out of the stable gently and onto the field. She took out a whistle from her pocket and blew it. This was Flayr’s signal to fly, but Flayr tilted her head sideways and stared at her, baffled.

“Look, Flayr,” she tried to explain. “Tourists like to see dragons fly. That means you need to fly.”

She was never really sure if Flayr understood her when she spoke. She blew the whistle again. Flayr still didn’t fly. She could fly. Kella had seen her do it. She just didn’t seem to know when to. She tried to mimic the action of flapping wings, which earned her some odd looks from a passing coworker. However, it seemed to do the trick. Flayr flapped her wings, although she didn’t rise towards the sky. Kella did the flapping motion again, but also jumped this time. Flayr finally understood and flew for a few seconds.

“Yes!” Kella punched the air joyfully. This was a huge victory. Flayr tried to replicate the movement and promptly fell over. Baby steps were clearly needed here. Very small baby steps. Kella blew the whistle then jumped and pretended to flap her wings, then she blew the whistle again and Flayr rose in the air gently. They would work on flying for longer stretches of time, but that was a big breakthrough for today.

Sunda sauntered over to her.

“On Flayr duty, I see. I thought it would be worse.”

“Thanks,” Kella replied drily.

“What? It’s better than Clover duty!” Sunda nodded over to a light green dragon that was snoring gently, using Ernie, a fellow coworker, as a pillow.

“It’s because I’m the only one who can ever get anywhere with her,” Kella said. “Now, what did you do to put Argyle in a bad mood?”

She pointed to Shadow, the black dragon Sunda was meant to be training. Shadow was the worst behaved dragon of the lot, even worse than Flayr, because Flayr didn’t really mean to behave badly, she just didn’t understand. Shadow did. She was smarter, though, so when it came down to it, she was easier to train.

“Oh, you know, it’s Argyle. He’s always in a bad mood.” Sunda shrugged, then grinned at her. Clover flew overhead. Clearly, Ernie had succeeded in waking her up.

Clover, Shadow and Flayr were the worst dragons in the stables. Shadow was naughty, Clover was extremely lazy and Flayr was—well, Flayr was Flayr. Just then, Flayr came over and nudged Kella. She was more agitated than Kella had ever seen before.

“What is it?” she asked. Flayr nudged harder and pushed her over.

Sunda helped Kella up as Shadow strutted over, too, and knocked Sunda, making her stumble forward. Both girls still didn’t understand. Flayr hiccuped and then gave up all attempts at communication. Instead, she hooked her long red tail around Kella’s wrist and pulled her towards the fence, hard. Shadow flew over the fence to join Flayr and Sunda ran over to Kella.

“I think they want us to follow them,” she said.

“Really? You only just figured that out?” Her face hurt a lot and she was currently not in a kind state of mind.

The girls clambered over the fence and ran after the dragons all the way to the woods at the edge of the town. Kella stopped.

“Oh, no way I’m going in there! Argyle is already going to kill us for leaving work and with two dragons, I’m not leaving town altogether.”

“Come on, Kella, if you think about it, we’re already in trouble with Argyle, no point getting in trouble for also losing a dragon.”

Sunda was right. If Flayr went in there and Kella walked back to the stables without her, Argyle would go crazy.

“Fine.”

They walked in after the dragons.

“Yep, this was a really bad idea,” Sunda stated around half an hour later, after they had walked in three large circles and were very lost and dragon-less. “Sorry, Kella!”

Something roared in the distance. Kella got up and began running toward the sound.

“Hey where are you going?” Sunda asked angrily.

“Don’t you hear the roar?”

Sunda said nothing, but quickly got up and began to follow her. They reached a clearing where Sunda stopped abruptly. She had seen something through the trees, Kella could tell. Something huge. A dragon. But it wasn’t red. And it wasn’t black. It was blue. Wylde dragon.

“Oh shoot,” Sunda whispered, her eyes wide as saucers.

“I didn’t know there were any Wylde dragons left!”

Kella was fascinated. She knew she should probably be scared, but there was no way to outrun a dragon, so there was no point really being scared: everything was out of her control. If she was going to die, she was going to die. Besides, dragons were technically herbivores, right? Technically? Nobody planned on testing the limit to just how herbivore-y they were. Nobody felt like figuring out what they had huge, sharp teeth for.

“There aren’t supposed to be,” Sunda replied. Dragons weren’t like normal animals. They could only be found in Blackhaven and there were only around a hundred, so they were theoretically endangered but then there had always been very few.

The first dragon had been found in the mountain above Blackhaven by a travelling merchant, who had been carrying some fruit and vegetables. The merchant walked down the mountain into the valley where the town was, terrified by the giant monster that was following him. Little did he know that more and more were joining and by the time he reached the bottom, there had been around twenty dragons. The town didn’t know what to do, but the beasts seemed tame. Well, tame-ish. So, being humans, they decided to make a profit and so ‘The Blackhaven Dragon Shelter’ was established. Tourists were charged to go visit the dragons,watch them fly and just generally be dragons. It didn’t treat them badly, like some zoos that force animals in too small cages. They had a huge field with lots of things for the dragons to do and they could leave anytime. There was no real barrier and it wasn’t like anyone would be willing to actually attempt to stop a dragon, but the dragons seemed to like the food. And the attention. So they stayed quite happily. Countless journeys had been made all over the world to try and find any other dragons. The mountains had been scoured, so it couldn’t be possible for there to be undiscovered Wylde Dragons. And yet. And yet here it was. Wasn’t it?