Chapter 3: The Move

When I come to, I feel the heavy weight of thick, metal chains holding me down onto a hard platform. I seemed to be moving because I could feel wheels hitting bumps and, with each jolt, I grit my teeth in pain. I try to shift myself, but find out that I am in a cage and bound by chains, constricting my movement. I start to panic and scratch at the bars surrounding me in vain. I stop after a few seconds when the chains fall onto the bruises I gained in the fight. The fight. Nets. G’reth. When I remember everything that happened, I desperately search for our link that connects us to one another.

‘G’reth? Can you hear me?’ I ask the void; a deep agony grows with the knowledge that he could have been taken from me. I feel a faint presence trying to respond to my question and that despair is replaced with a small sliver of hope. ‘He must still be out,’ I tell myself. While I wait for him to come back, I focus on forming a plan to get us out of here; every time I came up with one, it led to a dead end. I’m not the strategist, G’reth is.

Accepting that I will probably be in this cage for a while, I try to relax as much as I can and calm down a bit. But, how can I calm down given the fact that we were both captured by hunters? It’s dark and I am aware of the other dragon next to me, but he still hasn’t moved. Smoke starts to curl from my nose as I start to worry about him. ‘What have they done to you?’ I ask more to myself than to him. I try again with our link, ‘G’reth? Can you hear me?’

‘Mmm?’ came a reply. Definitely his voice. I release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding when I hear him.

‘G’reth, it’s me.’

‘Wha… Where are we?’

‘Well, I don’t exactly know. I just know that we are bound with chains and in cages,’ I recap. Upon his realization, I hear his chains clang against the cage violently.

‘No,’ he protests. ‘This can’t be happening to us.’ Then, ‘They will pay for what they’ve done.’ I believed him. He asks me in a calmer, focused voice, 'Are you okay?'

 'Besides the war wounds, I'm better than before you woke up, because, when I woke up, I couldn’t feel our link and thought they took you from me. I was so scared. I have no idea just how I would cope if that had happened'. I shudder.

‘No one is going to take me from you without a fight from a furious dragon.’ I hear him stop struggling against the chains, finally accepting that they won’t give. I hear a throaty sigh come from the cage next to mine as he accepts the situation. ‘I’m sorry,’ I hear him say.

‘Don’t blame yourself for this.’

‘If I hadn’t have dived out of my tree, you wouldn’t have looked up and cause the tree to shake. And if I hadn’t have kept flying straight, I wouldn’t have been caught by the net,’ agony starts to lace his voice.

‘G’reth, if I had kept climbing up to the top of the trees, none of this would have happened. We could have flown above the trees and away from them, but I didn’t. Stop blaming yourself. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ his voice still depressed. I send a comforting hug through our link and we stay like that until the truck stops moving. When the muffled sounds of three - no, four, car doors slam, both of our attentions snap to where we thought the doors of the cargo crate were. Being unable to move my head, my eyes get wide with fear as I watch a slit of light get bigger as the giant doors open with a squeal. I hear a low growl to my left and I feel G’reth tense as he squints to see four men looking at us; three of them look surprised. The leader seemed quite upset by what he saw.

“Why are they awake, Jake?” He asks the man behind him without looking over his shoulder. “They should still be sleeping.”

“I…I don’t know, sir. This hasn’t happened before,” the guy, who was addressed as Jake said, dumbfounded. I keep a tight hold of G’reth and I’s link and let another go from my mind to Jake’s.  Keeping the link one-way, I touch the human’s mind lightly enough to get a few answers. I quickly sift through recent memories and I find out that we are far away from the rain-forest we were in. Apparently near a place called, Jupiter, Florida. Now, we are many hours North-West, in a town with the name of Baker, Florida. Right before I retreated from Jake’s mind, I felt something deep within the human. It felt like…sorrow. Sorrow at the thought of what might happen to us. I was disturbed by this and retreated from the mind of the two legged; I quickly told G'reth what I found out, keeping my eyes on Jake, still curious. My fear and anger quickly overruled my twinge of curiosity when the leader spoke.

“Get the TRANQ guns. Give them each one dose.” Then, “That should keep them out long enough.” A growl ripped out of G’reth and he sent a jet of blue-white flame towards the men; they dodged it easily.

“You...will...pay,” G’reth’s voice rumbled, shocking the hunters, a rage consumed his whole being. His rage fed into me, making my own anger even stronger; even more so, when, they shot him first. I had enough time to lock onto our link with a strong enough hold that it wouldn’t slip away this time; they shot me. I wince and - too late - let out a blast of flame. The doors of the cargo crate closed before it reached them. The fire hit the metal doors, separating into a circle of flame against the metal.

The glow from the flames gave us enough time to look at what was around us and quickly wished we didn’t; hides nailed onto the walls and hunting trophies mounted on wooden blocks. The hides and horns of my own kin. I was instantly sick and knew G’reth felt the same way. His consciousness came closer to mine in a mixture of fear, sorrow, rage, and helplessness. I snap my jaws together and say, ‘Men are evil beasts.’

‘I will never let that happen to you. I will do everything in my power to keep you from that fate.’

‘Don’t say that, I don’t want you risking your life for mine.’ I continue, ‘I would hate myself for the rest of my life for that. We need to have each other’s backs and get out of this together. You stay, I stay.’ I start to get tired.

‘Grace, stay with me.’

‘I’m trying. It’s just…so…easy to give into it. Ya know?’

‘I know, but you have to fight it,’ he becomes a little more forceful, making me slowly snap back to reality. He said, ‘Welcome back. Now, Stay. With. Me. Okay?’ He is fighting with determination against the effects of the serum.

‘Okay.’ We didn’t hear the men again for, what felt like, 2 hours. When we hear the footsteps, G'reth instructs me, ‘Act like you’re asleep.’ This wasn’t hard to do considering how I could hardly move due to my wounds, let alone the cage and chains together keeping me still. I shut my eyes and make an attempt to relax my entire body while the cages were drug out of the crate. The two cages produced a sound identical to nails on a chalkboard, but louder and it produced sparks. We must’ve fooled them because they didn’t comment on anything about our being awake.

 

Right before they took our cages out, the bright light coming in through my eyelids dimmed significantly and I figured that a sheet was placed over top of my cage; smart. They took G’reth out first. The men attached something to the cage next to me and I heard a monotone beeping and a chain becoming taught as the cage was being lifted off the crate floor; the whole truck shifted to my side from the uneven weight.

“Steady, now. Can’t have two dragons waking up causing a commotion,” the voice of the leader said. I heard a soft thud on the earth. Then it was my turn. I nearly flinched when the sound of metal on metal found my ears; I was hooked to whatever the beeping thing was and had the strangest sensation I’ve ever felt. The first time I’ve ever been suspended in midair and instantly hated it; only slightly relaxing when I was finally set onto the ground. It started moving and I began to panic even more.

‘G’reth, I’m scared.’

‘It’s going to be okay.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince both of us.

 

Suddenly, the air around me got very chilly and a strong, pungent smell entered my nose. I almost sneezed from it.

“Here should be fine. Put them in there and we’ll wait for them to wake up completely.” This time, it was a deep voice I haven’t heard yet. I hear two different doors unlock and swing open; hyper-aware of G’reth’s cage going into a different room that is next to mine - we aren’t being placed in the same rooms. The sheet is taken from my cage and I almost slide my eyelids open.

‘Wait,’ G’reth’s deep voice enters my head before I open my eyes. ‘We need to make it believable.’ The top of my cage lifts away and I feel the chains that lock me to the metal floor come loose and get drug off of me. I resist the urge to move when I am finally free and stay still. About thirty minutes of not moving, G’reth tells me, ‘I think we are okay to ‘wake up’ now.’

‘Okay.’ I slowly open my eyes and am surprised by what I see. A huge area of trees greets me with dark green leaves and a ground covered in shrubbery. The only thing that was missing was the lack of music the forest provides. No song birds, rustling leaves as the breeze travels through the branches. Nothing. Just silence. I was very disturbed by the silence.

I painfully get up, my stiff muscles protesting against my moving. I stand there a minute more, eyeing the silent patch of trees and notice some movement out of the corner of my eye. To my left, I see him pushing against what seemed like air and I get confused. I see that he, too, is free, but he is still fighting against something. I walk over to him as steadily as I can and then see what he is pushing against and let out a high pitched call of despair. I try to break the glass as well, but I stop quickly when I start to hurt and some wounds open. ‘G’reth, it’s not going to give. You’re tiring yourself out. Stop.’ I press my forehead against the glass and sit there wishing I could be on the other side with him.

‘I can’t protect you if we aren’t together. I can’t bear that.’ He stops pushing against the glass and places his forehead on the other side of the glass as if trying to press his forehead against mine. We sit there for a long time; our link closer than it’s ever been.