Mystical One-Shots

Familiar

At the age of fourteen, everyone would find their familiar or their familiar would find them. They came in all different shapes and sizes; from animals you saw in your daily life to living myths.

The most common ones were dogs, cats, small birds, rodents, farm animals, and insects. Then there are the ones less common, but many other people had that were big cats like lions, tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, birds of prey, snakes, wolves, and big animals from the African savanna.

Sometimes there were even extinct animals that appeared out of nowhere. Those would be wooly mammoths and rhinos, sabertooth tigers, dire wolves, terror birds, giant sloths, even entelodonts, the pigs from hell.

Then came the rare ones, familiar in which only one in one thousand had. These were the mystical being such as unicorns, Pegasi (plural of Pegasus), griffins, and the rarest of them all, dragons. And the rarest of all animals, even dragons, was the golden dragon. Legend says the last familiar to have been a golden dragon was over four hundred years ago.

It was now my sixteen birthday, and I still haven't got my familiar. My parents are a bit disappointed at me, even though they won't say it I can see in their eyes when they look at me. My older brother, who has a golden eagle named Bane, says it's okay and that some of his friends haven't found theirs either.

But my younger sister who got a white dire wolf as her familiar, called Avril, rubs on my face every chance she has. Her friends also do the same to me while their parents allow them to do it freely as mine don't try to stop it.

I lost one of my friends because of it. She said we would always be together no matter what. When she turned fourteen, a few weeks earlier than I did she got a beautiful white Arabian horse she named Felix.

A person's familiar has the ability to talk to them, and only they hear them. So when she got him, she started to hang out with me less and less but didn't stop. She would let me pat her familiar as I always had a soft spot for horses, I always thought them as magnificent creatures.

I usually go out of the village on my horses. There are animals in our village who are normal animals instead of familiars. So my friend and I would ride all day long on the high plains around our home. But she stopped seeing me after my fourteenth birthday, the day after.

She said since I didn't have one she couldn't be my friend. She said it with the most emotionless face I've ever seen as if all our years of friendship had gone right down a well. From that day on I had no one that I could call a friend, I was alone.

However, in my loneliness, I found exciting and adventurous things to do. I would ride my horse to the plains and hunt for injured animals such as rabbits, mice, even snakes. Then I would take my stuff from the bag attached to my saddle and take care of them.

Sometimes I wished any of them were my familiars so I could hear them thanking me. It would make my life the best ever. But I think some things are not meant to be. Maybe I am to stay alone without a familiar by my side.

I would also ride out to the mountains in search of pretty rocks for my collections, and if they were valuable enough, I would give it to my parents. Disappointed or not they still loved me, but I think I loved them more.

I was making my way back home from the mountains, finding a couple of shiny tones here and there when I saw a group of older men talking with each other for what seemed to be old tales and myths. The elders didn't care that I didn't have my familiar, they knew some of their family member who had the same unfortunate as me that even lost their lives.

I climbed down my horse and let it rest while eating wheat and drinking water as I made my way to the group of elders.

"Great to see you lad, how was your day?" One of the men greeted me.