Chatterbox: Down to Earth

Pzun had woken up in the middle of the night, feeling something was wrong. He slid out of bed and slowly walked over to the window, not knowing what he would see, but knowing he wouldn't like it. But he didn't see anything, just the cold dark night with a single breeze blowing through the treetops. Pzun pushed open the window and listened for odd sounds. Still nothing, but the feeling of dread hung over him like a dark storm cloud, ready to rain. Pzun leaned out the window, and grasped a branch, slick and wet from the deluge that afternoon. He remembered Cloud had asked Moon to make it always sunny, but Moon had shook her head. "Rain makes things grow," she had said, "and makes the birds sing, and makes the earth smell like warm wet love and adventure."

Pzun clambered up onto the roof and looked at the stars. Constellations across the sky, silvery and bright. Then, he heard something more then the wind in the trees, or his own sounds of a seven year old boy trying very hard to be quiet. He heard a wingbeat, then another. The sounds of a dragon lifting off. There was only one dragon, in the forest with its babbling brooks and its hills made for climbing. "Drae?" Pzun whispered, as quietly as a leaf falling to the earth. "Where are you going? Why are you flying?" Pzun heard no answer, but a memory flooded his mind. He had found Drae a year ago. In a high mountain peak, he had clasped his arms around Drae's silvery neck and exclaimed, "Will you stay with me forever?"                                                                                   Drae had looked up at the stars sinking below the horizon with the sunrise. "Forever is a long time," they had said. Then he smiled a dragon smile and asked, "Have you ever wanted to fly?"

Pzun had been distracted, and had the most amazing ride of his life, first holding on tight and then rising upward with wobbly steps until he stood on the dragon's back, laughing into the sunrise. But Drae had never answered his question. "Forever is a long time," Drae had said, and he was right. But there was a long time of laughing and picnics and sunlit rides before 'forever' had to end.

Across the sky, a dragon flew, into indigo and black painted skies. Pzun looked up, and not knowing what to say, raised his hand goodbye. And Drae waved back as they flew up and up until Pzun couldn't see them anymore. A scale fell out of the sky, and landed in his lap. It didn't have a message on it. Just a scale. Not Drae. Just one of his scales. Cloud climbed up out of her room, and they sat together looking at the stars. "What happened?" Cloud whispered. 

All Pzun could say was "Forever is a long time."

"Yes," said Cloud. "It is."

Drae was gone. But when Pzun looked at the stars, there was another star that he hadn't seen before. It was part of a constellation, finishing it. The constellation was the shape of a dragon, and the new star was where the heart would be.