It was a beautiful spring afternoon. The birds were singing. The flowers were just begining to bloom. My brother, Lynt, and I were playing in the backyard of our house. We lived in the mountains, alone. It was just my Mother, Father, Lynt and me. I was seven and Lynt was three. My parents had gone out to hunt and look for berries. They trusted me enough to leave me alone with my brother. We were playing "Dragon and Rider", a favorite of ours.

"You're the dragon and I'm the rider," Lynt said to me. "Alright," I said. "What color dragon am I?"
"You're a...a...White! Yeah, you're a white dragon, and I'm your rider and we live in the North Pole," Lynt answered. We played until the comeing of dark forced us to retire inside. I was not worried about my parents, for they had said to me that they might be out late. I cooked diner for Lynt and I, and then put my brother to bed. Soon after I followed, tucking myself in and blowing out the candle. I closed my eyes and the blackness of sleep overcame me.

I awoke to the promise of a new day. Sunlight was shining though my window and the birds were chirping, telling me to awake. I rose up out of bed, and dressed quickly, for Father liked everyone to be at the table on time. I walked to the table. Oddly, no one was there. I decided that they had found a lot of berries, and had stayed the night. I made breakfast for Lynt, and began to clean up. By lunchtime my parents had still not come back. I made the decidion to go search for them, for they would not be out this late. I packed some food and supplies which took the rest of the day, and went to dreamland with visions of worry in my mind.

Waking Lynt after a restless night, we set off into the small forest that my parents hunted in. We treked for hours, following a distant trail that my parents had forged. We came to the edge of the forest, where the foothills to the mountains were. The trees where quite sparce here, and my parents' trail was quite evident. We followed it to the bottom of a cliff, where there was a curious pile of rocks piled there. 'It must be from a rockslide,' I thought to myself. I was about to continue on, when I spotted a glint of sun on metal coming from within the rock pile. Wondering what I could be, I began to dig. After a few minutes of digging I found what the glint was. It was my father's ring of gold. And it was still on his hand. I had found the bodies of my parents. I thought that I would die from grief. I sat down on the cold ground, hugging Lynt to me and weeping. But I knew in the depts of my mind that I could not give up. Mother and Father would want me to care for Lynt. I headed back to our home with Lynt in tow, determed to care for us.

The next year was hard. Learning how to servive while greving over one's parents is tough, but I did it. I learned how to chop wood, hunt, cook, and keep warm. We lived well for that year on our own, but that was not to last.

One day a man came to our house. He was a friend to my father, and though his name is lost to my childhood memory, I do remember that I despised him. Whenever he would come he would tell father how we should act, and how he was raising us the wrong way. He came riding up on his horse, and asked where Father was. "He and Mother died a year ago in a rockslide," I told him. "I take care of the house now. He simply stared at me for a while. Then he spared his horse and ran off in the other direction. A week passed. Then Lynt and I heard the rumble of many hooves apon the ground. Most of the people of the nearby village had come. They came and took Lynt and myself apon their horses and took us back to the village and into the worst time of my life.