"This place in weird." Sammy stared at the walls as they walked towards the room the ten of them would be sharing during their stay here. Nothing about the walls was amazingly weird, they were just plain rock, but the friends had seen enough odd, unrealistic stuff in the last hour to last them the rest of their lives.
"I have a theory." Rebeka ran her fingers along the wall as she walked. "I'm dreaming and you're all part of my nightmare."
"I would not call this a nightmare." Chris' quiet voice carried through the hall.
"Besides," Candy added. "If you were dreaming, why am I thinking stuff, and feeling stuff."
Mark smirked. "That's exactly what dream-Candy would say!"
The pink-haired teenager swatted her friend. "Hey Hey!" He carefully protected the tiny egg he was carrying. "You're gonna break my egg!"
"You're lucky I don't break your head!" Candy glared at him, but didn't physically react. She didn't want to drop her egg eihter. They'd been given slightly smalled than ostrich-sized eggs and told that they contained minature dragons. None of them believed it...yet. A'diar quickly lectured them on the proper care of firelizards and found them a drudge to take them to their room. Rebeka had immediately broken into her speech about slavery and how it should be abolished, but Jeremy stopped her before she insulted the entire population of the...whatever they were calling this rock thing.
They walked along the hallway in silence for a moment, Chris oddly being the one who finally spoke out. "What do you think it'll be like?"
"What?" Darien watched the way the light made the shell of his firelizard egg gleam.
"This...impression stuff...having a dragon's mind inside your own." Chris refused to look at any of them as he spoke, obviously he was slightly embarrased.
"Crowded." Kyosei seemed to be the one who was handling this the best. She never let anything phase her. "Like I want some dinosaur in my head, hearing everything I think."
"I think it'll be neat." Sara glared in Kyosei's direction. "A soulmate..."
"Scary." Michelle was quick to add her opinion on this whole business. "Think about it for a minute. Every single thought you think will be picked up by this dragon. What if I think something it doesn't like?"
"What if they attack us?" Candy added her fear in a soft voice. So far the dragons had been really nice to all of them, but who knew what they'd do next.
"Maybe we're the main course..." Jeremy put his arm around Candy's waist.
"Yeah." Mark agreed. "How do we know they're friendly dragons?"
Sammy was oddly quiet. Usually he was the first one to quip about the situation, but obviously he didn't find anything really funny.
"The dragons will not harm you." Their guide spoke softly. "They cannot harm their lifemates. Here is your room. You have free range of the Healing Den until the hatching time. When you hear the call for the hatching, put on the white robes you will find in the trunks at the foot of every bed. Proceed to the sands. If you get lost, just stop and ask someone for directions." The drudge disappeared before any of them could ask a another question.
They entered the large room and found that not another soul was in it. The room was large, made of rock (like everything else on the asteroid) and contained exactly ten beds and ten trunks. Their was a fire burning at one end of the room and pots of sand stood beside the hearth. Remembering A'diar's advice about the eggs they each placed theirs in one of the pots and let it sit by the fire. The ten earthlings then walked to the middle of the room and looked around.
Rebeka was appaled. "The girls and guys are supposed to sleep in the same room?"
Sammy smirked, finally having regained his wit. "On the bright side, at least we don't have to share beds...or is that a dark side?"
Candy glared in his direction. "Girls on one side, guys on the other. Okay?"
"Although I don't see what good it will do." Rebeka murmured and chose a bed.
The others quickly chose their own beds and lay on them. They stared at the roof and waited for the shock of everything that had happened to really sink in.
Sara's voice cracked as she broke the silence. "Do you think we'll ever go home again?"
"I don't know." Mark's voice was softer than usual.
"At least we're all together." Jeremy sounded relieved by that fact.
"Yeah." Oddly it was Kyosei who agreed with him. "I'd hate to go through this alone..."
They all smiled. It was nice to know that even though your entire world could be falling out from under you, you still had your friends.
"Even after we impress...or whatever...we're still all going to stick together. Right?" Darien knew the answer, but he just wanted to double-check.
"Of course." Candy sat up, trying to hide the fact that she was amazingly homesick.
Sammy sat up, a smirk on his face. "Although it'll be hard to fit 10 dragons into this room..."
A pillow flew across the room and hit Sammy in the face. No one ever figured out who threw that first pillow, or why Sammy felt that throwing it at Candy was the right thing to do, but by the time the feather's finally settled, the ten realized they'd almost missed the call to the hatching. A multitude of voices rang in their ears...Our egg s hatch!!
Without another word, they all threw the white robes that were, as promised, in the trunks and raced towards where they figured the sands would be. As they figured wrong at first, they ended up being the last people to make it to the sands. A lot of people were still bleary-eyed and asleep. It was, after all the middle of the night. The teenagers realized how sleepy they were, but the adreniline was flowing in their veins and there was no fear that they would fall asleep before the eggs hatched.
They all held their breath as the first of the eggs cracked. "Well," Candy spoke softly. "This is it."
Who do you want to watch?
Candy
Kyosei
Sara
Michelle
Rebeka
Darien
Sammy
Jeremy
Chris
Mark
These ten are candidates at The Healing Den.
Read about them on earth.
Background from All Hallow's Eve Backgrounds.