Dragon Tamer

Chapter Nine

Rae woke up to someone kicking her. "Get up," said Sarah.
     Rae groaned. "It's too early to wake up"
     "You need to start training. Chase and I have created a schedule. You and Searose will train with me in the mornings, you'll  talk about history and culture and stuff like that with Alex during lunch, and Chase will teach you how to defend yourself in the afternoons," said Sarah.
     "What does this have to do with me waking up early?" asked Rae, still waking up.
     "It means that since I am in charge of you as of right now, I have the right to wake you up early," replied Sarah, "although it does take 15 minutes to wake you up."
     "Ok, whatever," said Rae. This was going to be a long... what do you even call it when your running from the evil king with a group of kids (and a dragon)? A camping trip didn't quite cover it.
     "We're going to start with some simple flying exercises," said Sarah, "Rae, have I taught you how to put the saddle on Searose?"
     "No, not yet," said Rae.
"Well, it's time to learn," replied Sarah.
* * *
It was finally the afternoon. Finally finally finally the afternoon, right before lessons with Chase. Sarah was harsh. She would have Rae do a maneuver on Searose until Rae literally couldn't do it anymore. Learning the history was kind of interesting, but she wouldn't be able to remember much of it, and, if she was being honest, Alex was kind of boring to listen to. He and Sarah were pretty much polar opposites when it came to teaching styles. She hoped Chase would be in the middle. Of course, in the middle might be bad, too. Once she had a teacher that would either give them 10 pages of workbooks or let them watch YouTube videos. Rae never did like Mrs. Jones. But I'll never see my classmates again, most likely. That didn't really bother Rae right then though. You're still doing it, Rae thought at Searose.
Maaayyybe, thought Searose back.
Please stop, thought Rae.
Are you sure, thought Searose.
Yeah, thought Rae.
Ooookkkkk, thought Searose.
Rae was hit by a sudden wave of sadness. Her mom, Veronica, all of her other friends, she would never see them again. She choked back a sob. Make it stop, she thought to Searose, I can't take it. Suddenly the sadness let up. Am I going to have to live like this for the rest of my life? Rae wondered, having my dragon stop my sadness? What is wrong with me?
     I have an idea, thought Searose, the reason you can't take it is because you didn't have this pain at all since you had time to think about what everything meant. After a pause she added, That's my fault. But if I stop stopping that pain slowly, then you should be fine.
     Ok, thought Rae. Just then, Chase walked over.
     "You ready to get started?" he asked.
     "Sure, I guess," Rae replied. Please please please PLEASE don't be like Sarah. She kept thinking in her head.
     "Ok," said Chase, "let's start simple. Have you ever trained with any weapons?"
     "No," said Rae.
     "Ok then, um, I guess we'll start with sword then, because that's the one I'm most comfortable with so I will be best able to teach it to you," said Chase.
     "Sounds good to me."
     "The first step is finding a balanced sword. I hope that your mom's old sword will work. If not, we'll ask the Wise if they have any we could borrow."
"Is there a reason you have my mom's sword with you?" Rae asked, half teasing.
"I thought it was the most likely one to work for you."
"Oh."
"Here, see how that feels."
He handed her a slender sword with a leather hilt. It was fairly simple, but it was clear that a lot of effort had been put into making it balanced. When Rae held it, she finally figured out what "balanced sword" meant. It just felt right. She couldn't quite put it into understandable words.
"Think it'll work?" asked Chase.
Rae smiled. "I think it will work great."