"Happy Halloween!" Sammy shouted as he stopped the van in front of a huge bonfire.
"Man," Mark shook his head. "You do know that someone's gonna trash the van if you leave it within ten miles of here."
"Look at it Mark." Candy laughed. "They'll think somebody already trashed it!"
Everyone laughed except for an indignatn Sammy. He rubbed the van's hood, knowing full well that his friend's were probably right. "Don't listen to them honey. They don't know you like I do."
Darien flung his arm around Kyosei. She smiled. "He tucks his 'honey' into bed every night."
Everyone was excited. They hated to admit it, but this was pretty much their first big party. To top it all off they were at the river...and with a group of much older kids. The only thing keeping them on their feet was the fact that if they fell over they would probably get trampled to death. There was a huge bonfire in the little clearing and decorations hanging from all the nearby trees. There was a large make-shift bar that seemed to be serving drinks to everyone, but they decided to stay away from it just in case. An unseen boom-box was pumping the entire area...and a three mile radius...with music and most people were dancing. Candy and Jeremy and Kyosei and Darien began immeadiately dancing, while the other six held back for a while. They would all deny it, of course, but they were all a little intimidated by the whole thing.
The music picked up and eventually even Chris and Beka were dancing. It was then that Michelle noticed something. At first she thought it must be one of the decorations caught in the wind, but it wasn't moving in the same direction as the wind was. She touched Sammy's arm to draw his attention to it. "What do you think that is?" She had to yell over the music.
"Decoration?" Sammy yelled back then smirked at her. "Getting freaked?"
"It isn't." She forgot to yell.
Sammy gave her a blank look.
"It isn't a decoration!" She yelled, loud enough for Sara, Beka, Chris and Mark to come over. They all stared into the woods where Michelle pointed.
"It has to be a decoration!" Sammy yelled back, clueing the rest of them inot what the conversation was about. "What else could be that big?"
"I don't know!" She stood watching it for a few more minutes. It was well disguised, no doubt about that. It was brown black and, from what she could see, gigantic. "I'm going to check it out." She started walking towards it.
"Are you nuts?" Mark grabbed her arm. "It could be anything."
By this time, Candy, Jeremy, Kyosei and Darien noticed that their friends were just standing still staring at something. They looked questioningly at each other and then wandered over. "Whatcha looking at?" Candy yelled.
"Whatever Michelle's going to meet." Sammy called, as they saw their friend walk alone towards the woods. As one, they all headed off after her. She was walking faster than normal and the other nine pretty much had to run to keep up with her. She reached the tree line and kept going, like she knew that the thing was leading her somewhere. After a ten minute chase through the woods, they came to another clearing by the river. This one had many different qualities than the other though. First off it was empty of people, noise and decoration, save for the faint sound of music from the party. Also it had a gigantic brown/black dragon sitting in the middle of it.
"See Michelle." Sammy said, examining the thing closer. "Just a decoration."
I am not. The thing hadn't moved, but they'd all heard it's voice.
"It didn't just say what I thought it did..." Mark trailed off.
What did you think I'd said? It's eyes changed to a deeper shade of blue.
The ten friends stared at the dragon for a second then looked at each other. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..." They screamed as one until they ran out of breath, then they resumed screaming.
"Blasted children!" A man approached from behind the dragon and clapped his leather gloved hand over Sara's mouth, since she had the highest pitch. The other's took the hint and stopped screaming...although none of them had blinked since they saw the dragon.
"That's better." The man smiled. "Now we can talk."
"Th-th-that's a dr-dr-dr-dr-dr..." Darien was stuttering.
The man obviously found this amusing. "Go on. You can do it."
"...dragon." He finally finished.
"Yes." He nodded. "I'm A'diar and the dragon is Doroboth"
"I'm dreaming again." Chris muttered.
"Nope. Sorry. I'm flesh and blood...and bones...and fat..." A'diar smirked, but the ten teenagers didn't find anything overly amusing. The brown/black-rider sighed. "No sense of humour."
I told you this was a bad idea. You scared them too much. Doroboth laid down so his head was level with them.
"I scared them? You're the dr-dr-dr-dr-dragon." A'diar swatted his lifemate.
"Okay!" Sammy lifted his hands. "Freeze. Just what the hell is going on?"
A'diar smirked. "You guys have got to be the weirdest candidates I've ever seen. Do all people on your world dress like you ten?"
They all looked down at their costumes and blushed. Rebeka caught the implication of the rest of the question. "You're not from our planet?"
Sara's jaw dropped. "You're an alien?"
Sammy regained enough wits to crack a joke. "Yeah, from the history book."
"That would have been this planet." Chris provided the lead in.
Sammy grinned. "I failed history...it's all alien to me." He amazingly received a few laughs for that one, the loudest being A'diar's.
"Okay, maybe you do have a sense of humour. Doroboth just knocked it temporarily out of whack." A'diar mounted his dragon. "If you're coming you better come quick. I think Doroboth can carry all of us considering we're only going up 30 ft, between and down 30 ft."
"Going where?" Michelle asked, oddly remembering her grandmother's advice and wondering how the old woman knew.
"To the Healing Den. To stand for impression of a dragon. Baeris will explain it to you once you get there. I'm just a delivery boy."
Although -I- did search you. Doroboth spread his wings and reared, preparing for the flight. That means you have to come.
"Wait a minute!" Jeremy yelled. "Hold everything. We can't just disappear. Our families will worry."
"Already talked to them." A'diar smirked. "Although I don't think they all believed me. They didn't want to let you come, but Doroboth can be fairly convincing." He put his hand to his mouth as if he were whispering a secret. "It's his first search and he wants his first candidates to be good ones."
We're telepathic rider-mine. I heard that! The brown's eyes whirled a soft violet. You must come. Please. Our world isn't familiar to you, nor you to ours, but if you stay here you will be missing the opportunity of a lifetime...severel lifetimes...
They looked at each other, and each weighed the thought in their mind. "We'd be together?" Candy spoke for all of them.
"Of course." A'diar replied. "And if at any point you want to come home, I'll take you."
Jeremy smirked. "Huddle." They linked arms and leaned into a circle. Nobody said anything, but one phrase was written on all their faces. Why not? They turned around, smiling.
"So let me get this straight." Sammy spoke. "You want us to get on a dragon and fly with you to a different world to impress dragons of our own because Doroboth says so."
"Yeah, that's basically it." A'diar could see where this was going.
"Let's go." They all scrambled to try and fit on Doroboth's back. It was a good thing the brown was so big otherwise he'd have had to make two trips. Sara grinned. "It's just like Sammy's van."
Sammy feigned wiping a tear from his eye. "I'm gonna miss that ol'girl."
"And our parents were worried about murderers." Jeremy smiled.
"Murderer?" A'diar asked.
"Yeah. 'bout this time last year a girl disappeared. Everyone thinks she was murdered." Candy had her arms around the rider's waist.
He smiled. "Was she sixteen, short brown hair green eyes, nasty temper?"
"Yeah." Candy was bewildered. "How'd you know?"
"Picked her up last year." He clicked his tongue and Doroboth miraculously managed to get into the air. He didn't fly very far before betweening to the Healing Den. He was used to people from Pern and other worlds with dragons where betweening was commonplace. When he looked for his candidates he found them glued to Doroboth's back.
A'diar grinned. "Takes some getting used to. If you manage to let go of my dragon I'll take you to see Baeris, and she'll take you to see the flit eggs. A firelizard will probably help you adjust."
None of them moved, still frozen in terror at what had just happened to them. A'diar grinned as he felt Doroboth start to get a little grumpy. "Any time now." Another minute passed. "I'm warning you..."
It was too late. Doroboth reared and knocked them all off onto the hard rock. They stared out a black sky, devoid of any stars or moons. A'diar laughed. "First steps a little tricky."
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Mark muttered as he stood up and stared in amazement. This was almost too much for them to take.
Kyosei whistled under her breath when two more dragons made a graceful landing, letting a cat-person and demon-thing get off. "No shit."
All of them are candidates at The Healing Den.
Background from All Hallow's Eve Backgrounds.
They will have special halloween flits, but since I didn't want to put ten flits on one page, I'll wait until I break them up for the hatching (if you thought I was going to put 10 dragons on one page you're nuts). Their flits will be from The Healing Den.