Once Again, Once Again
Raven darted forward, almost throwing me off backwards this time. "Sorry," she mumbled to me. I had only saved myself by grabbing ahold of the spine in front of me, almost cutting a gash on my palms from where I grabbed the edges.
"Jeez, your spines are like knives!" I yelled back.
She rumbled with laughter. I hunkered down as a piece of my hair whipped my face. The wind that slammed against my face from Raven's run was almost blinding me. My windburn was going to hurt like heck.
I looked down at the blurred, dark ground. Just because Raven was a relatively small dragon, doesn't mean that I wasn't a good seven feet off the ground. I had almost gotten over my fear of heights (because seriously, who's afraid of heights when friends with dragons?), but that doesn't mean that it wasn't disturbing to see the grass a very long way away.
Raven ran for another good hour before she put herself on autopilot. Then her pacing changed, jerking me awake from a doze. She had been going fast before, but now she was lightly running along the ground, barely creating dents in the grass. Simply a silent shadow.
My head jerked as I looked at her wings. Half open. Raven's tail lashed like an excited cat's. I ducked my head, hunkering down, not wanting to impede her progress. Raven's eyes were distant.
She launched herself into the air. I gasped as Raven snapped out of her thoughts and was engulfed in panic, froze, and we dropped a good twenty feet.
"Extend your wings!" I screamed at her. "Flap!"
Fear shining in Raven's eyes, some small part made her wings extend to their full extent, jerking us from plumeting to our deaths to a controlled descent.
"Flap!" I yelled less desperately.
Fear still evident in her eyes, Raven cautiously flapped her wings, freezing as we dropped a little bit. "Again!" I shrieked, startled as she was. The ground rose up to meet us. "Now!" I screamed in her ear, fear probably stamped all over my face.
Raven's eyes were wide in fear and determination as she flapped. "Get up to an air current!" I told her over the wind. She flapped again.
I sagged in relief. We rose above the forest, gliding on the newly-found air current. The half-moon provided enough light to see a dragon-shaped shadow soaring on the towering forest.
My heart sank as I recognized a landmark from my mother's stories. "Fly towards that mountain!" I said, pointing to the specific mountain.
Raven rumbled to show that she heard me. She tilted, banking to the right, towards the mountain.
There was quite a few more seconds of panic as Raven struggled to land without breaking anything.
"Where are we?" she rumbled in astonishment. We had landed in the center of a hollowed-out mountain.
"There is no way we've walked this far," I said weakly, feeling sick to my stomach.
"Rani?" Raven asked in concern.
I sank to the floor in astonishment. "No way. Not possible," I denied to myself. "No way we walked under an ocean."
I shook my head adamantly as I kept staring.
"Rani?" Raven said, nudging me with her nose. "What's wrong?"
"We aren't in Rolaini territory," I told her faintly. "This temple...comes from my mother's stories. This is the Temple of the First Mother."
I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm really, really, really, really sorry! I got deathly sick, then I had pages of homework to catch up on (38 pages of homework and 12 tests, if you were wondering), then as soon as I got that done, I started killing myself over exams, which I finished today. I promise that it'll get better from here. I'll probably update tomorrow, even. More like later today.
I'm really sorry!
~Lou