Okay, I'm starting over my dragon. He seems to be injured.

Firemight~

I lay in the forest, blowing a few smoke puffs into the sky. I'm bored. There is no slayer to fight, and no one to talk to. Life has its bores and excitements, doesn't it?

But alas, the bores seem longer than they should be. Life is a bore. I'm a bore. Slayers are a bore. Humans are a bore.

And I'm not making anything better. 

~ Keliska ~

Keliska followed the girl to the Academy Of Riders, then turned away. Hower ever much she wanted to meet the dragon, it would have to wait until he ventured past the outer wall.   

~Cobra~

This is the day. The judgment. The Choosing. The one day whose events will determine the rest of my life. Whatever happens today, it will decide who I am. And wouldn't you just know it? I happen to have stepped on a caltrop in Terrains class yesterday, and must meet my fate with a bandage and a limp. 

Oh, shut up, Cobra. You know you shouldn't be feeling sorry for yourself. All Academy-born dragons go through the Choosing! Yes, you have a right to be nervous. No, you do not have a right to flap around whining. I need to be on my best behavior. I need to be strong, and fast, and smart, and charismatic, and everything that a dragon is supposed to be. Because if I'm not...well, some pathetic silver dragon failed to be Chosen two years ago, and some say her screams were echoing around the halls for weeks. 

Everything seems to be a blur. The enormous Great Hall is packed. The dragons to be Chosen are in single file. Now I'm ascending the dais at the head of the Hall with as little of a limp as possible. Now I'm assuming the ceremonial position: on my hind legs, wings half out, tail curled around my rear claws, eyes closed, front talons outstretched to receive the Talisman of Aeon.

I feel the solid gold egg, humming with all the power of the Academy dragons, descend into my claws. But it's there only for a moment: I feel a sickening lurch. I feel the world tilt sideways, and I'm spinning, faster and faster, unable to move a muscle, magic fizzing and sparkling through my hearing and vision...And then I can move again, and gravity returns, and I'm free-falling through open sky.

~Jamie~

Why, oh why did we have to move? I had it all back in Arizona! I had friends, good grades, the respect of teachers and peers alike, even a few lackeys who seemed to like nothing better than to stumble behind me on their way to Algebra 1, obeying my every command. I didn't need them, but the move destroyed everything else too. Everything from my parents' marriage to my self-confidence. It's clear that at Cole Public High School, I am a nothing by definition. And to top it all off, I don't even know how to get to English class.

Asking the boys clumped together and laughing by that little back stairway was a mistake. I tried twice to make them notice me; on the second attempt, one of them raised his eyebrows and treated me like a baby, explaining in a simpering manner that "Noobie English" was in Room 106B. Which just happened to be around the corner. So I scurried away like the invisible little mouse I am in this school, realizing only after I rushed in with my head down that the sign outside reading "ROOM 106B" also read "JANITORIAL CLOSET."

But instead of banging some miscellaneous part of my body on a mop or a bottle of Clorox, instead I find myself racing into dazzling sunlight. I'm at the edge of a forest clearing, not in a closet! How did I get here?! Where is the closet anyway? Where's English class? And what's that green thing in the sky up there? The last question, if not the others, is answered within a few seconds: the green shape is a dragon. Teleporting closets and dragons. I am temporarily in shock.

The only reason I can tell that the dragon is a dragon is the fact that it's falling. Fast. I quickly begin to recognize details: flared nostrils, white fabric tied around one foot, a crestlike formation of ivory-white horns behind its head. The falling creature grows alarmingly closer; all the while my brain is screaming at my legs to move, but they aren't responding. Just when I think it's going to hit the trees, just when I think I'm going to be a Jamie pancake, a shiver runs through the dragon from nose to tail. It suddenly spreads its wings, flapping desperately in an attempt to avoid a crash landing and sending gusts of stinging wind across the entire clearing.

No such luck, however. The dragon makes landfall hard on its right shoulder, eliciting a roar of pain. Up close, I'm a little surprised by its size. I always expected dragons to be at least twenty feet tall, but I come up to a bit above this one's "elbows." The dragon is emerald green all over, with acid green eyes that look surprisingly snakelike. Suddenly, I feel a new and unsettling sensation: something is touching my mind. I mean that literally. Something is looking in my mind, and seeing what I think, and I see what that something thinks in return: Well? You're my Chosen. My Rider. Aren't you going to get on?  

*Penelope* 

 
I walk into the great hall, ready to be instructed what to do next, and they say to go to the blacksmith, and I do. There I am given a blue sword, made of platinum. There I see a fellow rider. "Who are you?" I ask. 

Penelope

"Wow!" I say "You're an elf!" She looks shocked. I whistle and Blaze comes. "Whoa...." She stumbles. "You're the prophecised one, AREN'T you?" she questions.  "I guess.... I don't know what this all means though," I say.  She explained everything to me, then a buzzer goes off. Dylan smashes the gates of the academy. "Dragon slayers....." the elf says "what's your name again?!?" I yell but I don't hear her over the buzzers. "Hide the dragons!" a voice says. 

* Penelope * 

i start running towards the bunkers protected with spark shooters, ice-a-pelts, and things that tangle you with vines. Blaze is not far behind me. All the dragons from the riders academy fly off into hiding in the forest. "Go on. I will find you after. Remember my whistle." I whistle it, and he makes a humming noise that repeats it and flys off. The guards close the doors to the bunker as a dart hits me in my arm. I see Earane a foot away from me. And I fall unconscious.

* Blaze*

To the forest, the winds say. They say to hide and stay. I find a waterfall of rainbow water and fly through it. This is your hiding spot, the winds say. I know that, winds; then I hear dragon wings coming towards the waterfall.

~Cobra~

The girl gapes at me in open-mouthed astonishment. She's made no response whatsoever to my proposition. I cock my head a little, fix her in my acid green stare, and try again: What part of "you are my Rider" don't you understand? Of course, I'd never let anyone else ride me, and I know I don't have a saddle, but this place is only a short flight from the Academy. I'll say this one more time: are you, or are you not, going to get on? This time, the girl moves languidly to place a hand on my shoulder. A jolt suddenly runs through my body, almost as if her touch had been a bolt of lightning. I can feel through the fringes of our erstwhile connection that she feels the same thing. I am content to stumble sideways, but she's thrown straight off her feet! Immediately I'm by her side, where she landed in a bush. She woozily disentangles herself from the shrubbery (good, she's not hurt)- but it's what I see on the palm of her left hand that causes me to stare in abject wonder. The center of it bears a blaze of lustrous silver, right where she made contact with my scales. A bondmark! A real one! This solidifies beyond a doubt what I had reasoned before: she and I are Rider and dragon. Partners of heart, mind, and soul. Whatever happens now, we will create our destinies together.