Chapter 2

Dayton watched as his father slide from the back of the black dragon. To assist him, the black knelt on one knee and turned his head so his rider could grasp one of the protruding horns as leverage as he stepped down. The black touched his head to Dayton's father, gently pushing against his chest. They seemed to commune for a moment and in fact that is just what they were doing. Man and beast shared a special telepathic link which only was seen between a dragon and one human. Some dragons lived through three human lifetimes before they found the one with whom they were destined to link. This did not mean that one couldn't communicate with a dragon. They were exceptionally bright creatures and responded to spoken commands or hand signals. They didn't really communicate through a language, rather when bonded with a human, the two felt a strong connection and shared more of an empathic link. Dayton's father told him once that he had to guard his thoughts and emotions sometimes because of the link. Many years ealier, shortly after linking with the black, he had become angry with a villager who was abusing his children, making even a five year old toil in the dirt, pulling weeds. This was bad enough, but Dayton's father witnessed the farmer take a whip to one of the children, roughly nine years of age, for dropping a bucket of corn he had just harvested and was carrying back to the farmhouse. It was over in an instant. Dayton's father felt the anger, thought how it would serve the farmer right if he was to feel the weight of the whip, and before the thought had time to fully formulate in his mind, the black had whipped his tail and thrown the farmer nearly 20 feet against the side of a shed. The farmer suffered a broken arm and had the skin from his back nearly ripped from his body as the black's sharp barbs penetrated his clothing, hooked into skin and then ripped free as the farmer flew out of reach.