3.1: Dragon Dreams
Now there was a boy whose head was filled with dreams of dragons. Basking in the sun with a dragon. Flying upon the back of a dragon. Hunting alongside a dragon. He was only five years old. The boy had heard numerous tales—too many, his parents would say—of people living alongside dragons, all throughout the Kingslands. It was his hope to one day be able to travel there to witness this. Perhaps, to even become a part of it.
Alas the people in his town still hated dragon-kind, and did not want to hear a word about his dreams. So he kept them hidden in his heart like treasure. He collected his stories fervently, as one gathers a hoard.
In turn, these stories protected his little heart from the harshness of reality.
You see, in the short number of years that he had lived so far, he had already begun to understand that good things were very hard to come by. It was what his mother told him. It was what he experienced. In the day, he was bullied. He knew it was his lip, and the way it made him speak, even though his mother told him there was nothing wrong with him. At night, his parents fought. His father earned little, but gave away much. His mother hated it, and she taught her son to hate it too.
The day came when his mother told him that they were leaving their home for good. They were going, and without his father. His mother had been crying, so he tried not to look too happy as he packed the sum of his belongings into a single rucksack, and waited for her at the door to go.
They travelled westward, and a little south. The aim was to get to Kingsland, where his mother believed the chance of a better future would be more within reach, and where the boy would be able to start his education, become more than a son of a solar engineer, maintaining panels in the solar fields day after day. The boy liked the sound of that, of becoming more than the son of his father, a weak man who did not even try to convince his family to stay.
As they passed through town after town, the boy’s mother made every attempt to procure a shard. It was a wide, wide world, she explained to him, and with a shard she, no, they—she used ‘they’ now, for everything—would be able to communicate with others in order to obtain information that was vital to entering the land. She managed to, one morning. She left the innkeeper’s room after staying the night for important business, a grin on her face, and a quartz shard clutched in her fist. The boy celebrated with her.
Everything was going as planned.
Until they were stopped at a gate. It was a very important gate, as the boy understood. One had to pass through here to enter the town, then traverse the mountain pass via an electromagnetic train—the boy had always wanted to ride on a Kingsland Cross-Continental Train—before finally reaching their destination. The alternative was to try going around the mountains, skimming the border of the Kingslands. It would take weeks, and his mother was worried about spending so much on transport that they were left with nothing to begin their new lives.
So she tried everything to get the guards at the gate to let them pass. She smiled shyly. She whispered coyly into their ears. She spoke firmly as she quoted the laws that she had found through the shard: that entry into the Kingslands was completely free. Yet they were unmoved, saying that since the land she was in now did not belong to the King, she was still under its law. A fee was a fee, whatever else she was willing to give. At this they sniggered, mocking her as she seized her son’s arm and left in a huff.
Try making some coppers at the Circus, pretty! It’s just down that road.
Master Voracious would find your body just perfect for the work that is needed.
The boy caught them making rude signs at his mother, but she pinched and twisted his ear till he turned away from them.
Send him your boy too.
With a face like that, he’d fit right in with the freaks.
“Don’t listen to a word they’re saying,” she hissed.
Their whooping followed them till they were well out of sight. When his mother looked away, the boy’s hand wandered over to his mouth, tracing the large split of his upper lip that met at the bottom of his nose, leaving his front teeth exposed. What did they mean, that he would fit right in with the freaks? Did it have to do with the way the other kids in his old home town would laugh at his face? The large gap between his lips? He tugged at his mother. “Na-na, We’re not going to the Circus… Are we?”
His mother looked eastward. “We might have to,” she said grimly.
© May 2026, Leira Loong AKA the Circus Dragon. All rights reserved.
Poor thing... But, at least he'll get to meet a dragon?
Great world building in such a short piece!