Prince of Dragons

Chapter Eighteen

The beginning of our journey was relaxing. The weather—for now—was wonderful, blue, clear skies, and it was neither too hot, nor too cool. It was nice. Even the horses seemed rather lovely as they carted Alaban and I down the road leaving my hometown of Ilsar.

And the first leg of our journey was quiet, too, but not uncomfortably so. Every once in a while, Alaban would take out the map he had stolen from Alton and would point us in the right direction whenever we came across a fork in the road.

About twelve hours in our journey—I know, so long, and my butt was starting to go rather numb from being on horseback for so long...not to mention I could tell the horses were starting to slow and tire down—I suggested pulling over to rest for the night, since the sun was starting to crest below the horizon anyway, and it wasn't like I had any secret ability to see in the dark. You would think we could, being dragons and all, but that wasn't the case. Hell, we had very poor sight in the dark.

Now Alaban...who knows what he was capable of. For all I knew, his fancy magic gave him the ability to see into the darkening forest off the side of the road.

We found a neat little outcropping that started just into the dark forest—mostly thanks to Alaban finding it—and decided it was the best resting place for our first leg of our journey.

I climbed off my horse—who I had aptly named Sniffles, since he continuously blew air through his nose—and led him into the forest a little to keep him out of the road—should there be any late night travelers heading between Ilsar and Lemark. I tied Sniffles to a low hanging, sturdy branch and began setting up the tent we had procured as Alaban did the same with his own steed.

Now, back in his normal coloring, those amber eyes burned holes into my back as I worked on figuring out this thing, and I tried not to let it distract me as I set up the tent to the best of my abilities. Now...seeing as there was no instructions to this thing, and I had never really set a tent up before—as everywhere I had visited had an inn, or a motel—things weren't really...well, they weren't looking good. I kept confusing the pieces and trying to fit them in the wrong places, and I could tell Alaban was getting amused at my feeble attempts, because he ended up moving a little in my vision, leaning against a tree.

"Need any assistance?" Said man questioned, causing me to huff and send him a half-hearted glare before turning my attention back to the task at hand.

"I think I got it—ach crap." I huffed when I was smacked in the face by one of the metal pieces, and pursed my lips as I stood up and gestured to the thing. "Why is this thing so difficult to put up? For 500 gold this thing should have came with, I don't know, instructions maybe? Ugh, I don't understand what I'm doing wrong." I huffed once again and crossed my arms over my chest, turning my attention to Alaban as he chuckled and moved from the tree, making his way to my sad, pathetic attempt at putting the tent up.

"Well for one," he mused, kneeling down by the pieces, "you have this one in the wrong place. See how it is bent subtly? This is a roof piece, which means," he grabbed said piece and snapped it into a different thing, and irritatingly enough, the more he worked on it, the more it was bent into something actually resembling a tent.

But I wasn't jealous of him, or anything. I-I could have definitely done it myself had this thing been provided some much needed instructions.

Once it was fully up, Alaban stood to his full height, brushing his hands off on his pants as he lifted his chin—no doubt having a field day that he was able to put it up, and I wasn't. Jerk. How could he know how to do everything?

Then again, my mind supplied, his kind probably live in tents and the like, since they're always on the move, and all. So of course he would know how to pitch a tent.