Though the cold crisp air in the boarding house had little to no substance, the slight scent of car exhaust caught the attention of a roguish teenager relaxing a few stories up in a window seat. He sat up and looked over the rooftops and trees to the front gate of the school which, though surrounded by a mess of greenery, had many older people walking about. A squint of his eyes down, a few guards patrolled the forest road and a black car was parked out near the front building. He stood with a crooked grin, yawned with a howl, and threw on a thick green hiking jacket when out of the pocket fell a pen. It shattered on the floor. “Damn it!”
The silver and glass glittered into his eyes as if to mock him, but he left it all behind and ran downstairs in a rush. Before he could shove the double doors of the boarding house open he spotted a young towheaded teen sitting against the glass, a glittering codd bottle in his hand. He shifted in his green hiking jacket and kicked the door, voice shouting, “Harken! Get out of the way, I have things to do ya know!”
Harken, a sagely middle teenager with a heart-shaped face and sharp eyes to match, turned back to him from behind the pane and gave a rough glare before hopping to his feet and running down concrete steps. The older teen sighed and shoved the door open and ran down, nearly falling with an ankle-biting stumble, but continuing on. Rather than go along the path and then back up the sidewalk, he briskly ran through thick grass, past a few trees to make his way to large concrete stairs that led up into an old brick school building.
He burst through the double doors, found himself out of breath- heaving even- and took the time to scan the gardening room. Plants hung everywhere. Vines, ferns, vegetables, flowers, and herbs of all sorts gave the room a fresh scent of earth and wind. No one was in, save the twins who sat together watering a small sprout half to death. They grinned at him with wide eyes and he smiled back, though a streak of unease plucked at his heart and he quickly scurried out of their line of sight, only to look back for just a moment just to see if they were still watching him. The two smiled at him again as he peeked over a rack before he slipped and knocked into a few containers. Snickering to one another, the playfully destructive duo merely continued on torturing the sapling that so desperately struggled to grow.
Ull pulled himself off the floor and made his way through the mess of greenery and silver shelves to a glass door on the other side of the room. It led out to the courtyard, but something struck him. Sitting in the middle of the muddy grass a fierce older teen- about 18 years old in yellow ski goggles- pulled a canteen of water from his pack and tossed it to someone else.
Shaking his head in frustration, the roguish teenager behind the door stepped back and looked around the room. To his right there was a door leading down one hall and to his left was another. With a final huff, he decided on the door to the right and ran up the hall. Many classrooms flew by, doors divided in half down the middle; glass and wood.
At the end of the hall, he turned left and continued on until he hit the double doors that lead out into the front of the school. The thin path before him was nothing more than old concrete tiles that one of the guards set down years before thus every winter they sank deeper into the muddy ground and every spring grasses, clovers, and flowering weeds often pulled the tiles away from each other, a constant reminder that Nature simply didn’t give a fuck and today, there was little exception. The teen, having fallen one too many times over the damned things, watched his step. (You can rest assured that if those tiles were people, he would’ve undoubtedly flipped them off.) There was only one small building before him and the old grey brick wall that divided the grounds from the forest connected to it. So, he snuck up near the side, taking care not to be too close for guards to see as those self-proclaimed indomitable men paced along through tall green grasses sprinkled with flowers white as baby’s breath which glittered along in the breeze.
How poetic.
He greedily pulled a silver wrapper from his pocket and with a short pop, shoved a piece of chocolate into his mouth. Peering past the overgrowth of fanning ivy, he spotted a tall guard whose hands wrung together behind his back and stood before the others talking in a low sustained growl before throwing his hand out toward the car. Though little was heard over the engine, it was clear that something ‘fun’ was about to happen. A sly grin made its way on his face when the car door finally opened. Out came three new students.
One was a boy wearing a bright red jacket with transparent galoshes. Another was as uninteresting- But the last… The chocolate bar fell from his hand. Seconds, minutes, a young teen, short as could be, stood tall among the three with a sort of authority. His clothes were clean and his notebooks remained neatly held in his pinkish hands.
Beyond the tall grasses, past the overgrowth, under the shadow of the maple trees, it happened. The well-dressed boy met his eyes.
A bout of shock.
A smile!
It curved on the boy’s lips and he seemed to acknowledge the teenager behind the wall…thump- tha-thump- tha-thump- tha-thump- tha-thump…
‘W-wh!?’ the crooked teen ducked down immediately and looked at his hands. His face grew hot, but he shook it off in anger. They were wet and jittery. They had never done that before. Pressing them against each other his thoughts rambled, ‘What the hell- who the hell is that!?’ His breaths choked out as he stood again and looked over to the boy in a neat blue shirt but the younger didn’t bother to look at him again. A wrong step and the older teen slipped backward over a misplaced stone tile and fell to the ground with a crack. “Ach, Fff- moth- fkn- fffh!” he half whispered to himself as he reached down to his ankle and pulled a sock down. Blood.
He shook off the pain, sucked air through his teeth, and stood to wobble back to the double doors. Once in, he made his way to the corner of a hall and sat on one of the bottom stairs, observing the scratch. It didn’t look too bad to him, being only a faintly bloody cut that oozed and clotted; he simply wiped it with the rough sleeve of his jacket and pulled his somewhat torn sock over it once again, then he walked halfway down the hall to another set of doors. The guy with the goggles was still out there, a smile wide on his face as he laughed.
With a sigh, the young man lumbered down the hall, back through the gardening room when he noticed Harken, sitting on one of the benches and using a switchblade to pry open a peach core. “Ull. I need to talk to you about something really important.” the younger boy voiced as he popped the greenish inside of the seed out.
Ull watched as he took the small green core and placed it into a milk carton half filled with soil, “What?” Harken took a deep breath while he covered the seedling with clumps of brown and gave it water from a nearby cup. He looked around with some hesitation, a whisper escaped his lips, “I saw... a dragon...”
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