Summit felt like he had only slept for an hour or two. His back felt twisted in many knots, his eyes could barely open. But they did, because they had something to show him. There was a dragon looking down at him.
The dragon called out somewhere else, and with that little bit of time that Summit was not watched, he got his balance and stood up again. His back made a lot of cracks and he made a painful hiss as he got up. He blinked a few times as he became fully conscious. He could see the bright morning sun contrasting on the grass and trees and mountains. He could smell the dirt and morning dew from the earth below. He felt thirsty and hungry. He could feel dirt and grass on and between his scales; he felt dirty after last night. And he could hear two more dragons jogging towards Summit to observe him.
They were very large compared to Summit; about four times his size when they surrounded him nearly entirely. "Hello? Who are you? What are you doing? What's going on?" He asked the mountain dragons.
The dragons were confused by what he said from what he could gather from their communicative growls. I guess that I still can't understand what they say? Maybe it's their own language? I wonder if I could learn it? Maybe then I could live out here and get some help, Summit thought.
The dragons above him continued to discuss. Summit couldn't gather much because he knew nothing of what they were saying, but their tones helped communicate across languages. He felt that they were not taking him seriously, and possibly making jokes at his expense.
"Can you understand what I'm saying?" Summit said in a low, gravelly voice to try to mimic their voices. The dragons only laughed harder.
One of the dragons exclaimed some string of gibberish and knocked Summit in the back of his head. Shock ran through him. What are they doing to me? Are they trying to acctually hurt me? Or are they just random bullies from around here? He got back up before getting hit in the head again, but by one of the other bullies that time.
"Ugh, leave me alone!" Summit exclaimed.
One of the dragons said some phrase and they all laughed again. He did not know what they were trying to say, but they did not care about Summit.
You know what? I'll stop them with my own hands! Or talons I guess, Summit got up on his hind legs, formed his right claw into a four-taloned fist, and in a wobbly fashion threw it at the dragon who had just joked about him.
Summit could not grip himself to the earth below him, and he jerked himself forward and tumbled flat on the ground, barely making contact with his adversary. He laid on the ground; powerless. He was gasping for precious air to refill his lungs. Until he felt a strong, sudden heat burn through his tail and hind legs like a fuse. He was on fire.
Adrenaline flew into every fibre of his being. The back of his body hopped out of harm's way, and he rolled onto his belly, but the dragon did not stop then, instead it went to burning his stomach. Layer after layer of skin burned off like melting butter, but only after a few seconds, the dragon ran out of fire and closed its mouth.
Summit was in terrible pain (again), but he refused to give up; his body would never let him. He quickly turned himself over and began to run in the area between two of the dragons and towards the nearest lake: the one that he fell into last night.
By the time Summit got to the lake, he was starting to bleed. When he finally leaped into the water, there were several spots on his soft underbelly that had a steady stream of blood flowing out.
The water immediately soothed every scale on Summit's body that it touched. It was bliss. Steam slowly radiated from the lake as a result of his heat dispersing. He could hear hissing sounds as the result of the quickly changing temperatures. The pain was going away as fast as it came, and the dragons were gone from his sight now, he could be calm.
I lost them, Summit thought as his eyes were barely open.
Summit spent a few more minutes bathing in the lake. Not only did the heat disperse from him, but so did the dirt, grime, and grass on his body that he accumulated last night. Once again, he could feel clean and in control of himself. All is calm, all is calm… wait… where's my bag‽ He started to splash inside the lake in distress.
Summit quickly swam out of the lake and retraced his steps for his bag all the way to the tree where he slept last night. He looked and looked and looked, but there was nothing. Where could it have gone? It's not on he ground, it's not in the tree, where could it be? Summit walked over to the nearest tree, and it must have been where those dragons were before because his bag was right there! It was still a little damp from last night and the morning dew, but hopefully the things inside were fine.
So Summit opened the bag from the top to find everything still there, but not quite intact. The bread was beyond salvageable or edible. The water gave it wrinkles, holes, and many more gross qualities that were less palatable than starvation. Summit took out the bread and tossed it as far as he could.
After removing that culinary travesty from sight, Summit took out the only other thing he had brought: his writing supplies in his little school bag. Just like he imagined, the leather bag held up better thanks to its waterproof nature, and with the tight seal, hopefully the contents held up well too.
Summit opened the little leather bag. And just as he suspected, everything of his in the bag was in great shape. The book's pages were a little moist, it was nothing that would not dry in the day's warmth. The iron dip pen, being made out of a waterproof metal, was completely unfazed by the elements. It was still as pristine and shiny as ever. As attracting, as irresistible… maybe he should stop looking at shiny things for now. After putting away his little pen, he looked at his bottle of ink. The glass was fine, it was not porous after all, and the label survived, despite the humidity that Summit presumed was in the bag. Then he inspected the little cork holding the ink in the bottle. Just like everything else though, it was perfectly okay. He started to wonder why he was even looking at all those things just to put them away. He closed the bag.
Even though Summit had barely gotten any sleep that morning, he was still very awake. Between the cold water, the rush after rush of adrenaline, and all the running around he did to escape those bullies, his body was doing everything it could to keep him awake, because he was afraid.
Three Moons, what's been happening‽ I almost died! Again! I'm all alone now! I can't talk to anyone! And I'm going to starve! how am I supposed to live a day here? Summit wondered while his broses, burns and wounds continued to fester in his scales and underlying skin. Well, I guess first I need to get something to eat, he planned while he breathed deeply to calm himself.
Summit looked around for anything that looked edible. The first thing that he spotted was a sheep grazing on grass. That doesn't look too good, but I think that sheep is edible. Well, here goes nothing, he put his bag on his back and began to walk towards the sheep.
The sheep was about half of Summit's size as he slowly walked toward the sheep from behind. It was being rather ignorant of the world around it, only focusing on the grass it was eating below it. He stood right behind the sheep, looking at it, wondering how he was supposed to kill it. It had quite a bit of protection in the form of its wool. The wool probably made up a big part of its size, so if he tried to grab it from the side, it would be hard to get a firm grasp of it. With the side not being an option, the only thing he could really do to kill the sheep from the top, but how was he supposed to do that either?
Summit's first idea was to use his talons, so he began to he up on his hind legs and prepare to claw the sheep to death. Right before he was supposed to kill it though, he got back down, Summit could not bring himself to do it.
"I can't do it!" Summit exclaimed. "Why would I use my own two claws to kill something? It's wrong. Why did I think I could do it?" Summit asked himself. "Why did I think I could kill a little cute sheep like that? With it's floppy ears, curly horns, and fluffy wool, why would I ever think that I would have such a change of heart? You know what, I'm just going to eat something that isn't an animal. I'm just a squeamish reptile."
Summit walked away from the unaware sheep in defeat. It lived thanks to him, but it meant that he would starve if he did not find some food. When he got back to the tree, he began to look again for something to eat. Again, he found nothing on the ground, and anything in the trees were too high for him to reach from the ground. Without any other options, Summit began to feel around the dirt for a plant that was living beneath him. Maybe a potato, carrot, or really anything to prevent him from dying of starvation.
Summit searched for minutes on the notably flat ground beneath him in search of nutrition. But finally, he felt a patch full of bumps with little stems sprouting from them. In excitement, he pulled one of the stems as quick as he could to find that a long carrot was attached to the green stem.
Finally, Summit thought tiredly. Something to eat. Well, hopefully these carrots aren't poisonous. He took out the carrots from the ground as fast as he could. Which was quite slowly because they were incredibly big. Each individual carrot was about the size of Summit's leg and then some, unlike the carrots back home, which were only a little longer than his whole claw. Why are these carrots so big? Do the dragons make them bigger? How do they do it? It's not like they can magically change how things are. Wait, they can, it's probably how they turned me into one of them, Summit thought as he continued to take the enormous carrots out of the ground and laying them out on the ground.
After a minute of harvesting carrots, Summit managed to get out five of them that he stacked up in a big pile, which he thought would be enough to last him days. He grabbed the huge carrots, or at least tried his best. As it turned out as he tried to collect his food, a dragon who never worked to develop muscle, and rarely ate meat did was not very strong, and definitely not strong enough to carry five carrots bigger than his legs. So when he did try to do it, Summit feel on his stomach, bringing him a lot of pain as the dirt made contact his his burns and cuts on his underbelly from the fire, making him make a sharp hiss.
What should I do? Summit wondered to himself as some of his carrots began to roll on the small incline.
"Hey! Get back here!" Summit started to chase his cultivated carrots as they slowly rolled away.
Summit power walked ahead of the carrots and stood in front of them, and then the carrots halted at his front claws as they bumped into them. Hey wait, if I can make the carrots stop moving, maybe I could move them too! I could roll them! He realized.
Summit began to roll the dirty carrots towards his tree. The carrots resisted every inch of progress that he made, but with enough time and effort from his tiered talons, he got them to his home tree.
And finally, after all that work and effort, Summit had dirty carrots. Oh great, now I have to clean them, or else I'll get sick, and then he started to roll the carrots toward the lake.
The second trip was quite a bit easier. That time Summit was working with the incline, not against it. But all that meant was the trip back would be very difficult.
Once he got down by the lake, Summit laid out the blanket that he used as a bag and put his carrots beside it. One by one, he put the carrot in the water and used his sharp talons to scrape off the dirt, leaving a clean carrot, which was good to eat. He shoved his talons in and out of the cold water. Weird, Summit thought. My hands don't wrinkle in the water now. That's nice, I guess. I hated how my skin wrinkled in water.
Once the carrots were finally clean, Summit wrapped them all up with his sheet into one big cylinder and rolled that all the way back to his tree, where he then unwrapped the bundle.
"Finally," Summit said tiredly. "I can finally eat."
Summit took one of the carrots and quickly began to take bite after bite of it. It felt amazing to eat for the first time in the day after working so hard for it. He gobbled up the large carrot as fast as he could, finally satisfying his hunger. His stomach was as full as it could be. He was calm. He wrapped up his remaining carrots, and sat down to digest his food and get energy back from all the work he put in for his food.
Summit looked around him while he leaned on the tree. He was bored, he had nothing to do. Gee, how did people live out here for so long? There's nothing to do, he looked around him for something to do, and quickly reached for his bag of writing supplies. He opened the little leather bag and placed all the things on the floor. He flipped the pages of his blank book to the first blank page. He was presented to make anything.
What should I draw? I could doodle a little, but that's useless to me. I need something useful, Summit dipped his dip pen into the ink bottle and held it up in front of the paper. The ink was starting to dry a little. If he did not figure out what to do in a few minutes, he would have to dip his pen again, which would be a waist of ink in his opinion.
Whatever, Summit thought. I'm ready to go, I digested a good chunk of my breakfast, and I think that if I'm close to the Indestructible City any longer, the guards will probably spot me, and my totally human self that is total ly not a drago n.
Summit packed up his things and began to walk. In what direction, Summit was not too sure. He had a few options: he could have gone go south into the rainforest, but the rumours said that nobody that went into there came out alive. He could have gone north towards his old home of Talisman, but who knew what the dragons had done to that place, and what they would think of a dragon that sounds like a human. So really, he had two options: east or west, and going west would entail traversing the mountains in his horizon, so Summit started to walk east, into the unknown.
After but a couple minutes of walking, Summit looked back. Where will I know where I am without a map? I need a map. Wait! I have everything I need for a map! I can do it myself! He quickly stopped rolling his carrots and pulled off his writing supplies from his back. He inked the pen, flipped to a blank page, and slowly drew out a map of what he remembered.
Summit drew out what he could remember from what he walked near. The mountains that surrounded the trees up north and out east, the lake by the overhang. The two trees that sheltered him. And the big city near it all.
Summit drew the mountain in the middle, and then added the walls around it. He drew a couple of the buildings up top, and then wrote out the name. He wrote down the word "home" on first, but then he scratched it out with one bar, replacing it with "The Indestructible City," before crossing that out too, that time with two bars and replacing it with "home" again. But he still could not figure out a name.
It's not home, and it's not the Indestructible City, what is it? Summit thought. So, he wrote out what it was, the "large dragon-protected residence where I once lived but not any more because of my new circumstances," in very very very small handwriting.
Far above it, near the top of the map, Summit drew a little town, and labelled it "ruins of Talisman." His map was complete, for the time. Now that he was done drawing, he put all his equipment away and continued to roll his food on the ground and got moving again, towards what only the moons knew, and hopefully towards someone that could help him.
Hills and trees dotted the landscape at every turn, blocking Summit at every turn. Taking his energy away, little by little. His back was killing him. His forelegs were killing him. His stomach was killing him. The injuries of days past came back to haunt him, like a spirit was seeking revenge on the little dragon. Was it what I did to that guard that is giving me this pain? Are they seeking revenge? Because honestly, I think I deserve it. I'm a monster anyway. I killed someone, even if it was on accident. Is that why I almost died? Is the universe just playing tricks on me now? Or do I just deserve everything that's coming to me? Well, I don't think I deserved to have to leave Talisman. If Talisman was still here, I would still be happy. Maybe I would still be human even! If it weren't for those two scoundrels. If it weren't for them my life would be so much better. If I see them, I'll give them a piece of my mind! He thought.
Summit continued to walk after he contemplated the could-have-been. Tree by tree, they started turning from oak to mangrove. The hills stopped appearing as often, and the ground slowly got wetter, creating patches of mud that dotted the landscape like everything else.
What's going on with the ground? Summit wondered. Why is everything so wet? Summit looked at the sticky ground beneath him. Oh, it's mud. Why is there so much mud? Why is it everywhere? Where is it all coming from? The rain? A lake?
It only took a few more meters for Summit to find the source of the mud. It was a river. A river like he had never seen. A rushing series of rapids that would send him to his demise if he ever fell in, and he had to cross it right then, right there.