Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen - Dragon Rider of Bun

I was so excited I was trembling. I knew this because Orange, who I was cuddling close to my chest, was staring up at me as if I was a mouse poking at the wrong kitty.

Not that she was that much of a kitty anymore. At some point Orange had grown into a juvenile tabby cat, her fur growing longer and her body getting bigger. Maybe spirit kittens grew faster than normal kittens? That was a shame; kittens were cutest when they were small.

We gathered just on the outskirts of the town, the mayor, a few guards, old Yoland and a bunch of onlookers. Most of them stayed well away from us as we waited with eyes towards the skies.

“Stop wiggling so much, people will think you’re bizarre, and it will taint me by association,” Amaryllis said.

“But we’re going to ride a dragon!” I said.

Awen giggled next to me, it sounded halfway between excited and nervous, which was exactly the right thing to be feeling about the prospect of riding a real-deal dragon.

“Moron,” Amaryllis said. “Can’t you at least pretend that you have some decorum in you?”

“No!” I said. “Oh, I’m going to go say bye to the mayor.”

With that said, I skipped over to the gathering of people by the gate. I saw kids pointing and more than one person shied away as I approached, as if I was dangerous or something. Maybe I should have been more careful with my reputation, I didn’t want it to get between me and my ability to make friends.

“Hello,” I said.

“Ah, Miss Bunch,” the mayor said as he squished his hat. “You’re, ah, heading out now, yes?”

“Yup, we’re just waiting for Rhawrexdee to arrive. I hope he didn’t break too many things?”

“A few, but, well, we had something of an emergency meeting of the town council, and we decided that we would all pitch in to repair the damages.”

I sighed with relief. “Good. I’d hate it if our visit left a bad image.”

“No, no of course not,” he said in a hurry. “Nothing of the sort.”

“Neat! So, um, we’ll be heading out now.”

“On foot?” he asked. “I could hire a coach.”

I blinked. “No? I thought you were all gathered here to see the dragon.”

“That dragon is returning?!” the mayor squeaked. Some of the guards nearby tensed and I heard a murmur spreading through the crowd.

“Yeah. Why else would you all be here?”

Yoland cackled. “They’re here to see you off. The daft morons decided that you’re the source of all their troubles. Can’t see the obvious when it’s right in front of them.”

“But we only tried to help,” I said. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. As soon as Rhawrexdee lands we’re taking off.”

“You're going to ride the dragon?” Yoland asked. “My, if I was a few decades more spry... bah. Good luck lass. I’d say be safe, but that seems unlikely with the life you lead.”

I lifted my arms for a parting hug, which Yoland returned with a cackle. Then I hugged the rotund mayor too, for good measure.

My goodbyes were cut off with the fwomp of huge wings beating against the air. “Gotta go!” I said before bouncing back to my friends. “Hello Rhawrexdee!”

The dragon landed with a ground-shaking crash onto his rear legs. A squeak escaped from his arms. He uncupped his huge hands to reveal a dishevelled but grinning Booksie. She laughed and stood up onto Rhawrexdee’s hand, then hopped the dozen feet to the ground, landing with bent knees and a burst of stamina. “That was brilliant, Rhawrexdee,” Booksie said.

“It was merely a small flight,” the dragon said. He did sound a little bashful about it.

“Did you have fun?” I asked Booksie while she fixed her clothes on straight.

“Oh, yes! Flying with Rhawexdee is, well, it’s nothing at all like being aboard an airship,” she said.

There was a shine in her eyes that I think my own were reflecting as she reached up and fixed her ears on straight.

“I can’t wait!” I said.

The dragon huffed and looked down at our little group. He was wearing Awen’s vest and ascot and his new tophat which had somehow stayed affixed to the top of his head despite the flight. “I won’t be able to carry all of you in my arms,” he said.

“I can ride on your back!” I volunteered.

“We’re not stopping to search for your body when you inevitably fly off his back,” Amaryllis said.

“I’ll hang on tight, I promise!” I said.

Rhawrexdee shrugged. “If you die It’s no scales off my back,” he said. “One less humanoid that I need to care for mid-flight.”

“Alright!” I said. I took off my backpack and gave it to Awen. “Can you watch over this? I think the drag might be dangerous. Oh, and Orange too.”

Awen nodded, and after a moment spent coaxing Orange into my backpack, she hugged it close. “Awa, please be careful,” she said.

I gave her a thumbs-up, then skipped over to Rhawrexdee, bunched my legs under me, and hopped up and onto his back.

He didn’t so much as twitch at my weight landing on him. Unlike the dragons in my books, there wasn’t a nice spot to sit on along his back. Rhawrexdee’s neck was all overlapping scales that stuck out with little points at their tips and his spine had foot-long spikes sticking out of it from his upper back all the way down to his tail. His new vest had cleverly crafted holes in the back to make room for all the pokey bits.

I walked around his back a bit, careful not to hurt him, but he didn’t even seem to notice that I was there at all.

Being a dragon must have been awesome! I wish I had a Cinnamon Bun Dragon class instead of just Cinnamon Bun Bun.

I found a nice spot to lay down flat on my tummy just between his wings where there were fewer spikes and where I could hug one of the spines before me and wrap a leg around another.

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“Hang on,” Rhawrexdee said.

His wings unfurled, huge leathery things that looked even bigger from how close I was to them. Then he beat down and the world filled with rushing wind.

One beat followed the other and I tightened my grip on his back as hard as I could while also holding back the urge to whoop and giggle.

We took to the air, Rhawrexdee’s entire back bending around as he spun and dove across Rosenbell, the town shooting past below a moment before giving way to the perilous drop into the yellow-brown desert.

Rhawrexdee raced forwards, gaining so much speed that my friend’s screams--part joy and part panic--barely registered over the roar of the wind. I felt the dragon chuckle though my chest as I pressed myself down lower.

His wings beat again and again, the world faded below, faster than any airship I had ever been on. My grin was frozen in place as Rhawrexdee began to coast along, wings catching onto unseen thermals tossing us up and down through the air.

I had no idea how fast we were going, but it certainly felt a lot faster than any ship I’d ridden on. The Shady Lady had been a quick little ship, but compared to a dragon she was a real slowpoke. It was no wonder that the skies belonged to them.

I saw Rhawrexdee turn his head to look off to the side, and with a bit of a stretch I was able to see what he was looking at. A whole flock of flying whales was wiggling through the sky as quick as they could, like fish that had spotted a predator.

I hoped that he wasn’t feeling peckish while we were with him or else things would get interesting.

After a bit, I felt comfortable enough to climb onto my knees--with one hand still firmly gripped onto a spike--to look around a little. The Harpy mountains to the East were approaching fast, and the desert behind us was fading away into little more than a brown line over the horizon.

Dragons could really move when they wanted to!

I laid back down, just in case, and hugged Rhawrexdee’s back close.

Time passed in a bit of a blur, the air grew a little cool for a bit, but Rhawrexdee soon dipped down beneath the clouds and into warmer air. The distant mountains became not-so-distant, and then they were outright close.

And then, quite suddenly, I heard something that was rather unnerving.

“Oh no,” Rhawrexdee said.

My heart skipped a beat. Had one of my friends fallen? That would be... But no, Rhawrexdee didn’t seem that irresponsible.

The dragon tilted his wings down, and with the next beat, I could see Port Royal approaching fast ahead. For a moment I thought that he was disappointed that we had arrived already, then I caught a glimpse of something green in the skies high above.

I had barely craned my neck back to see the tiny fleck in the sky that it came rocketting down and blew past with a hurricane-like gust of air.

I screamed as I scrambled to hang onto Rhawrexdee’s back and just barely managed to hang onto a scale as Rhawrexdee began to swoop down himself. I caught one of the spines with the back of my foot and grabbed onto another for dear life as the dragons began to spin around each other.

“Rhawrexdee!” the green dragon roared.

I caught a glimpse of it as we spun again. It was massive, easily twice as long as Rhawrexdee was and it had a lot more going on in the gut area than the lean blue dragon I was hanging onto.

“Hi mom,” Rhawrexdee said with a draconic sigh. “Can we talk on land? I don’t want to drop these.”

“And what are those?” The green dragon asked. An eye the size of my arm span tilted around and then the dragon made a pleased sound. “Oh, sweetie, you found a princess! Come now, let’s land so you can show your mommy.”

The green dragon wiggled her tail and a huge flap expanded out of her back, beginning at the nape of her neck and ending at the very end of her tail like a strange leathery sail.

Rhawrexdee grumbled something that I was pretty sure was rude, then flapped forwards a few times, his flight a lot smoother.

The green dragon, the green mommy dragon, led us towards Port Royal, then past the port part of the city and up towards the seven massive towers at the back. She tucked her wings in close and aimed for a plateau a little ways up the mountain where a waterfall covered a hole into the side of the mount.

I ‘eeped’ and hung on tighter as we splashed through the curtain of water.

Everything shook as Rhawrexdee landed on his hindlegs. “There, none of you died,” the dragon said. Then he paused and twisted his head around to look over his shoulder. I waved. “Forgot about you back there,” he said.

“Rhawrexdee!” the green dragon said. “I’ll not have you killing a two leg by accident, not when we haven’t decided if they’re guests yet.”

Grinning, I hopped off of Rhawrexdee’s back and landed on the stony ground. The cave we were in was huge, with pillars holding up a smoothed rocky ceiling with magical rune lights embedded into it. A large carpet, marred by a few scratches, lined the edges of the entrance.

Deeper in, I could make out a few tunnels that presumably dug into the core of the mountain, or maybe went to other rooms.

“Introduce your little friends, sweetie.”

Turning, I gazed up at the biggest dragon I had ever seen. She had a face like some sort of prehistoric nightmare, all jagged teeth and sharpened scales. Her claws were longer than I was tall and she had to stoop a little, even in the huge cavern.

She was, in a word, beautiful.

“Hi! I’m Broccoli Bunch,” I roared. “Let’s be friends!”

***