“Did you hear the new reports yet?” Skylight asked.
“No, I hardly ever pay attention to the reports, unless I’m looking for relatives,” Flamewing answered. “It’s really depressing to listen to who was killed in the last week.”
“It is sort of depressing,” Skylight agreed. “But one of my relatives, Sunwing I think it was, was killed four days ago at Isthilion (which is another dragon city).”
“How do they do it?” Flamewing asked bitterly. “Those stupid… humans!” How are they managing to wipe out so many of us?”
“I wish I knew,” whispered Skylight. “Look at us. It used to be that it was a huge thing if five dragons were killed within a year. Now at least that many are killed weekly.” She spread her wings and soared off.
Chloe gritted her teeth as she dumped the bucket of slops into the pigpen. She wondered for the 10th time that day why she was doing this and not her brother Geoffrey. And for the 10th time that day that since he was off training to be a knight, she was stuck doing his chores. The pigs grunted and slurped the stuff up from the trough. She grimaced at the sound.
“Everyone and everything in this village is stupid,” she said to herself. “Why am I the only one with any sort of intelligence?” She brought the pail over to the well and washed it out. That wasn’t entirely true. That boy, Peter, was actually pretty nice. And had enough intelligence to carry on a conversation for more than five minutes, which is more than she could say for the other 99.999999% of the village. The door of the cottage slammed.
“Hello, Geoffrey, darling!” her mother exclaimed, voice slightly muffled by the house. “How was your training with Master Edward?”
“It was alright,” said Geoffrey slowly, as always. “I learned a lot. I’m tired. I’m just going to sit down for awhile.” I’m pretty sure he was dropped on his head at birth, Chloe thought, giggling. It felt good to laugh at him, he being the favorite in the family. She stopped laughing and thought bitterly, like you could tell in this stupid town.
Flamewing clutched the edge of the cliff with her talons, pieces of it crumbling and plummeting to the base of the mountain. It used to be… it used to be…was echoing in her head. She thought about Skylight’s words. It used to be…Had things really changed that much? She tried to think back to when the heavy killings had started. One hundred years ago, she realized. It hadn’t been that long ago. It used to be… Why did this have to happen? Why did it happen?
Chloe walked back into the house.
“Chloe! Chlooee!” a voice yelled from the back of the house.
“Yes, Mama?” Chloe called back.
“Start dinner! And feed the chickens!” Chloe dragged the iron kettle from it’s corner by the fireplace, muttering softly to herself that she had to do everything around the house. She grabbed a bucket and ran outside for water. After drawing the water from the well, she ran back to the house, put the kettle on the fire and poured the water in. Another two bucketfuls filled the black kettle. Chopping carrots, potatoes, cerlery, and herbs. She poured it all in and started stirring the pot. Everything else had been made, salvaged from last night’s dinner. She could hear her mother talking to Geoffrey about what wonderful things he’d do once he was knighted.
“You’ll slay dragons and ogres, and rescue ladies,” her mother was saying. “Oh, soon you’ll be all grown up!” Like he’d have the brains to do it, Chloe thought savagely. Even a dragon, annoying and stupid as they were, was smarter than Geoffrey.
Flamewing was completely and totally bored. She didn’t want to help sort though all the scrolls in the public library and Skylight was off visiting a friend in Enlasico, yet another dragon city. The world was so boring. Flashes of boredom went through her mind. A glimpse of blue appeared on the horizon, dragon shaped. It looked a lot like Skylight. Wait a minute, it was Skylight! The blue grew closer and closer. Yay! Thought Flamewing, a reason not to be bored!
