Chapter 27

The day turns into night. The night turns into a week. Christopher doesn't stop to rest. He doesn't stop to eat. All he knows is he wants to go home. He no longer notices the people around him. Believe me when I say that is probably a good thing. Christopher no longer notices the weather. Every once in a while he will hear screaming through the fog in his mind, only to find out that it is he.

"Precious is the girl whose heart shines brighter than life itself. Silence. Endless silence. Eternal silence. Deafening silence. I'm coming home, baby. Daddy will be there just as soon as I can, my dear daughter or son. I'm tired. So tired. I want to go home."

Christopher had studied the maps that the northern army had of his country and the world overall. He knows his country better now than he did when he was just a schoolboy. Christopher had already picked out the route Gabby and he would take to go back to his home village of Diffident, and he is sure he is following it now, subconsciously of course, because he doesn't know if he is alive or dead.

"I didn't know if there was only this or did something else exist. I don't know how long I had walked, or how much time had passed without food or drink. The world no longer sang to me. I was dying and I could feel it. I didn't know what it was or why, but I felt it growing like sweet relief. Maybe I didn't know. The only thing I did know was that I was tired and I wanted to go home."

"Christopher?"

"Yeah, mom."

"Grab Sarah and get cleaned up because dinner is almost ready."

"Okay, mom."

As usual Christopher finds Sarah out back in the garden playing more with her bug friends than actually tending the garden.

"Mom?"

"Yes, son."

"Do you think I'll grow up and be a professional soldier like dad someday?"

"Of course, honey, you can do anything you want to. Your destiny is wide open."

Pain. Pain. Christopher notices his feet and then he notices he is walking down a trail. More pain. He is outside.

"Why am I outside?"

"Hey, boy, didn't your mom and dad give you enough sense to get out of a hail storm." says a spindly looking gray haired clean-shaven elder man with one arm, sitting under a tree just off of the trail. He is wearing a mixture of old Hisperian military clothes and patched up brown winter clothes.

"What? A what?" Christopher says, as he keeps walking by.

He comes out from under the tree and grabs Christopher's arm and pulls him under the tree and onto the ground next to a little campfire he has made.

"You hungry? You look hungry. Here, eat this, boy." he says, throwing Christopher a piece of warm meat without waiting for him to answer.

Christopher catches the food and starts eating it without taste or thought. He stares into the flames of the fire. He starts to reach into it.

"Hey, son, don't put your hand in there with those embers, you'll burn yourself."

Christopher stops with his hand just short of the flames. Ember? Embers? He takes another bite from his piece of meat and his hands fall into his lap as he starts seeing things in the flames. Christopher sits back a little, hesitates, and then leans in close to the fire singeing some wayward hairs."

"That was weird."

"What was weird?" If Christopher would have been cognizant even a little, he would of heard the concern creep into the old timer's voice.

"I just saw a little girl in the fire and she was crying."

"Are you okay, son? What did you say your name was?"

Christopher looks across the fire at him as if just noticing him for the first time and he smiles. "I'm the Dragon King!"

"Where you headed, Dragon King?"

"I'm going home." Christopher says, getting up and heading back out into the hailstorm.

"When I closed my eyes the most beautiful girls popped into my mind's eye."

"Wow, I wish I could meet a girl like that. Someday if I'm good enough, like mommy says I am, I'll travel the world meeting all kinds of majestic creatures. I can see them now."

One minute Christopher is walking through a forest, and the next he is out in a gently rolling plain of endless green grasses and sporadic groups of trees and bushes.

"I don't know if a day and night went by or it just shimmered into existence, but when I looked up it was light, and to my right I saw an endless beautiful field of flowers. Some how it reminded me of a dream."

Christopher glances across the field and he sees a very pretty lady holding the hand of an adorable little girl, and she has a baby nestled in her other arm. They are looking at him. He smiles to them and looks away because mom always says it is rude to stare.

"Stars, aren't they so lovely? Sarah says there are whole other worlds out there. I don't know myself, but I think she reads too many books. Dad just looks on with a knowing smile and mom will love us no matter who we are.

"I can't wait to get home. I'm tired and I want to go home."

"Through time and space I flew. I would go so high and so far that my despair wouldn't know where to look for me. One moment I was a crying child with a loving mother holding me tight. Next I was a man on the battlefield of life."

"Super sure someday I'll be worthy. I'll love my neighbor and pray to God. When I grow up I'll change the world."

And change the world he did. A warrior. A boy. The Dragon King. He brought magic back into the known world. Amazing creatures again call man friend. From his pain and suffering does a world grow into a more realistic and kind place.

"Caitlin," Sara says, as she is sobbing. "I'm worried, we have to find him and let him know we love him."