Dragon Rider (#Wattys2016)

Weapons

Thea's POV

“Lift that sword higher, a baby could do better at this then you!” Ala shouted at me, I gritted my teeth and raised the tip of the sword so it was no longer pointing to the ground.

“Do you think a break would be good now? I mean we’ve been at this for an hour already,” Fai said, I gave her a thankful grin however it probably looked more like a grimace.

“No! A real warrior never gives up!”

I feel like Ala was teaching me to use a sword instead of Allie who was actually meant to be teaching me, but wasn’t bold enough to tell Ala to… Be quiet and show a bit of empathy, that or she couldn’t be bothered.

“I don’t think this is working, the sword is horrible as well,” I said.

“How so?” Allie said ready to listen.

“Well it’s unbalanced and its weight is more on one side and to the point of the blade.”

“How would you know that?” Ala said, “as if you would know anything.”

Ala’s words made me pause for a second, I knew nothing of these girls besides the fact that there dragons were missing. I knew nothing about their personalities, background or past, who knew the things they had done in order to survive. “Well one of my brothers used a sword, he often showed me it and how a sword should feel.” It was the truth, one of my brothers indeed did use a sword in order to fight in the rebellion.

Allie held her hand out and I gave her the sword with a content sigh rubbing my wrist absent mindfully. “You’re right,” she said with a murmur, a frown appearing her face.  Allie dragged a hand over her face, “we can’t do much about that though. After all we aren’t the ones to make them that’s left to the Scalers.”

“Scalers?” I asked completely confused.

“How long did you say you had been here again?” Ala asked with a sigh, obvious that she was impatient.

“I came yesterday?” I said, the statement sounding more like a sentence than anything else.

“And no one has come to get you?” Ala asked.

“Well if someone had I wouldn’t be here right now asking these questions would I?” I said sarcastically, “Sorry Ala, I’m just feeling slightly frustrated. Just please can you explain yourself instead of asking pointless questions.”

“Well, sor-ry,” Ala said in an annoyed tone her light grey eyes showing an array of emotions. I swear this girl could go from being happy to annoyed to sarcastic to being arrogant. “I’ll tell you the quick version, there are many different jobs here. That’s why you probably haven’t seen very many people and the dragons. Scalers are one of these jobs they are basically blacksmiths, understand?”

I nodded, “how do you get assigned a job?”

This time it was Allie who answered, “well on your first or second day a person comes around and shows you the ropes and for a day you try each of the five jobs; explorer, cooker, butcher also referred to as a hunter, fighter and the one Ala just explained, Scaler.

“And before you ask the oh-so-obvious question, of why didn’t this happen to me? The simple answer is this: we don’t know. Best to ask Spiritus or Dai if they wanted to waste their time with pointless questions of course.”

I scowled at Ala who was ridiculing me, Fai sighed, this probably happened a lot. “Anyway back to this sword business which we were originally talking about.” Allie said dragging the topic back to the original topic. “Have you ever used a weapon before?”