Portal Rocks

Date: September 30rd, 2010
Location: The orchard
Written by: Cole, age 10

Ok, so I know this record book thing belongs to Jeremy and Smokey, but I'm stuck here now, too, and I figure I've got a right to add my thoughts, especially since I know about dragons and stuff. Sort of. I know they exist, but I can't see or talk to Smokey like Jere can.
So, I guess I should introduce myself for the record. My name is Coleman Parker, but I go by Cole.
I'm not from this dimension.
Originally, anyway. I think I'm stuck here for good now.

Jeremy already mentioned it before, but there's tons of dimensions that all run parallel to the one we live in, and they're all different. The one Jere is most familiar with is populated by dragons, but my dad says there's one that's all shrimp, one that's got all these weird, zombie like people, and one that's just like ours, only the industrial revolution never happened so they've been kind of stuck in the 1700s for centuries.
My world is a lot like Jere's, but people back home have a lot more magical abilities than the ones that live here, and we're all a lot more open about our abilities.
In fact, it seems to me like Jere should be from where I live. I find it very strange that he's not.

Despite all the differences in the dimensions, they all do have one thing in common; they can be accessed by something called a portal, which is essentially a bridge into the dimension you want to travel to. Very few people know how to open a portal; it's really hard to do and you have to have something called a Portal Rock, which is mined on some moon somewhere. They're really hard to get.
Anyway, my dad is one of those rare people that can open up these portals, and people pay him big bucks to do it (he gets a lot of business from shrimp fishermen).
He gave me my portal rock for my tenth birthday last week, and told me I was old enough to start learning how to do it too.
With him telling me what to do, I'd opened up my very first portal and was feeling pretty good about it... until I tripped on the rug and fell in to the darn thing.
It closed up behind me, and that's that.
Here I am.

The big problem is that since I opened it myself, my dad probably doesn't know what dimension I fell into, and can't really open up a portal to bring me home. I guess he could try searching through all of them, but there's thousands of them, and he probably doesn't even know where to start looking for me.
My best bet is to keep trying to open my own up, but something keeps going wrong. It's like a vacuum to other worlds, not a full bridge... I've sucked in the most random assortment of junk I've ever seen!

I'm so frustrated, and homesick. Jere is nice, and so is this new kid, Joah, but... I wanna go home!
I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.

I guess it could be worse... at least I didn't fall into the shrimp world.

New Kids in Town

Date: September 23rd, 2010
Location: The Bottom Bunk
Written by: Jere, age 9

I told Smokey I was really going to be bad at updating this journal thing, but he wouldn't listen. So sorry about not writing in a while.

THERE ARE TWO NEW KIDS HERE THAT KNOW ABOUT PORTALS AND DRAGONS!!!
Well, one kid knows about portals, the other knows about both portals and dragons.
Their names are Joah and Cole, and they've kind of popped up in kind of an odd way. I don't want to rewrite the story, so here's where Cole's arrival story starts. He's cool, but I don't think he really knows what he's doing.
Actually, I KNOW he doesn't know what he's doing, but without him being a total klutz, I never would have met him OR Joah probably, so I guess it all works out.

Joah showed up the same way Cole did, but for different reasons. Joah says his family is descended from a long line of dragon hunters, and he's chasing a really bad one through the dimensions.
Joah says people like me, who can see and talk to the dragons outside of their own dimension are really rare, and he had something called a watcher look for me. He already knew about me and who I was before he even showed up here! There's a story there, too, so go here to read it.

All right, I have to get some sleep. Apparently, I'm hunting dragons tomorrow.

-Jere

Portals and Mess Tins

Date: September 11th, 2010
Location: Under a Pile of Cozy Furs
Written by: Jere, age 9

The portal has been really quiet lately. I have no idea what's going on, because normally we get a new dragon every week at least, but Smokey and I haven't had a new little buddy to follow us around in a month or so.
Smokey and I are still keeping watch as much as we can, but it's really starting to bother us that we've had no activity. Smokey doesn't think they'd suddenly quit using our dimension as a dumping ground for unwanted dragons, and it almost seems like the portal might be broken.
Can portals even break at all?
It's frustrating, I know nothing at all about portals or how they work.
I just talk to dragons, who also know nothing about portals, except for the interesting (but fairly useless) fact that all you see is sparkling purple mist as you fly through them.

I've been saving up my spending money and finally got myself a mess kit for when I go out camping. There's a fry pan with a lid that doubles as a plate, a cup, and a dutch oven. I think it'll come in handy.
Since it's quit raining for the most part, Smokey and I went out tonight and caught some fish to try out the new frying pan with. I thought it was pretty yummy and the evening as a whole was nice, but Smokey complained the whole time that his feet were getting muddy and the wood smoke was making his eyes burn and itch. Later, I found out he just wanted to go home because he was missing some television show he likes. Sometimes I'm not sure why he hangs around; we don't have anything in common.

He hasn't shown any signs of forgetting about this log of our adventures, so I guess I have to keep writing all this stuff down. I probably mentioned it before, but I really hate writing.

Smokey

Date: September 8th, 2010
Location: The Attic
Written by: Jere, age 9

There's been a tropical storm over most of the state of Texas for the past couple of days, and it's been raining nonstop. The attic leaks, and I feel like I'm about to mildew 'cause it's so damp up here.
Smokey curled up in the pile of furs we use instead of blankets, and says he isn't coming out until it warms up and dries out. Since it's just the beginning of September, he might be in trouble.

Smokey came tumbling through the portal about a year ago with another little dragon I called Fred. Out of all the dragons I've helped out, Smokey was the only one that's really been interested in getting to know me and the only one I've become friends with. After I finished teaching the pair of them everything about our world that I could, they hit the road and I never expected to see them again.
I was really surprised when Smokey popped back up a few weeks after he left, but he told me that Fred was obnoxious and that he liked it here and wanted to stay with me. It took a little getting used to, but I didn't mind too much. Like I said earlier, it's been nice having someone else that understands about all this, even if that someone is small, green, and speaks with a smokey lisp.

Smokey's named Smokey (and he hates me for calling him that) 'cause that's all he really does when he tries to breathe fire. He can't conjure up flames like a 'proper' dragon, he just smokes like a freight train every time he tries. He won't even think about giving it up, either, and I hate it when he practices up here in the attic. For one thing, the smoke isn't the kind that smells good, like wood smoke from a campfire. His smoke stinks like you set a big bundle of hair on fire, and it's thick and choking and the smell just sticks to you for days.
For another thing, this old, wood house will go up like a tinderbox if he throws a couple of sparks.
The lack of fire is the main reason Smokey got banished here, and why he won't quit trying to learn... as long as he just smokes, he'll always see himself as a failure.
I don't quite understand why it's such a big deal, because he's already here and there's no way they'll let him go back, even if he got the fire breathing down.

I'm glad he has a hobby besides bugging me, but I wish he'd give that one a rest and take up knitting or collecting postage stamps... anything a little less smelly. My favorite blue hoodie is only going to last through so many more trips through the washer before it falls completely apart, and then I'm really going to be sunk.

Where We Live

Date: September 5th, 2010
Location: Under a pear tree on a bright, sunny day
Written by: Jere, age 9

I mentioned it last night, but Smokey and I reside in the attic of a place where orphaned kids come to live.
It's a huge, rundown old house in a very rural area, and half the windows are boarded up because the two Ladies who own it are very elderly and aren't able to repair things like they used to. For some reason they won't hire anyone to do it for them, either, so the windows stay boarded up and broken. It gives the house a pretty creepy look, but it's clean and dry, and that's all that really matters to me.

The Ladies are sisters who inherited the house and the land around it from their father many years ago, and have filled the place up with kids who had no place else to go. With the exception of me, the kids come and go pretty regularly, and I doubt they know just how many kids they have here at any given moment, which is something that suits me and Smokey just fine.
We can slip away and be gone for several days and no one realizes we've ever left. To be perfectly honest, I might have even left for good by now, but there's that pesky portal that's always sending us new dragons to help. As much as I love living on my own in the woods, fending for myself, I can't walk away and abandon the dragons that need my help, and it's easier to help them if I have an actual roof over my head and a steady source of supplies.

It's a nice enough place to live, I suppose. I've lived here as long as I can remember and I'm not sure when I got here. I'm also not real sure what happened to my parents... The Ladies say they don't remember who left me here, and they won't tell me when exactly I showed up, either. I know they know, but whenever I've asked, they've just looked at each other with this weird expression on their faces and told me approximately how many years ago they thought I arrived. I used to pester them for info all the time, but I've stopped now. It doesn't do any good, and I don't think about my parents much anymore anyway, although I used to lie awake every night and wonder what they were like; if they could see dragons, too. I'll probably never know the answer to that one.

I get to do odd jobs around the home, and the Ladies give me a little spending money for helping out (most of it goes to buy matches for the dragons who can't breathe fire and fishing lures.). For the most part, I pitch in by tending to our enormous vegetable garden and helping with our orchard... the Ladies may have inherited a boatload of money along with the house, but they believe in self-sufficiency whenever possible, and I like this about them.

When I'm not working in the garden, I'm mostly hanging out around the portal or down at the creek, fishing.
Smokey is under the impression that fishing is one of the most boring ways to waste time, but I love it, and I'm kind of glad he hates it and never goes with me. It's peaceful and quiet, and I love being outside, alone with my thoughts.
Smokey is great, but he never shuts up.

Talking to Dragons

Date: September 4th, 2010
Location: A drafty attic in a home for orphaned kids.
Written by: Jere, age 9

So my best friend, Smokey, seems to think that one of us should be keeping a detailed record of what happens to us, and since I'm the only one who has the ability to hold a pencil (Smokey doesn't have thumbs), I got elected.
Honestly, I really don't see why we even need a record of this at all, because it's not like anyone either cares or would believe me about my life if I told them about it, but Smokey is insistent and at this point I'll do anything to shut him up. He thinks what we do is interesting and that we might like to go back and read about it when we're old and senile.
I think what we do is mundane and something of a hassle, but then, I have been doing it a lot longer than he has. I'm hoping he'll lose interest soon, I hate writing.

He's pointing out to me that future readers of this tome might like to know what it is I do exactly, and this is the part I really hate to write down. The few times I've told people about me and my life, it's always come back to bite me in the rear, so mostly I don't talk anymore.
Actually, I don't talk about much of anything, and I definitely don't talk about the dragons.

Yeah, I said dragons.
Smokey is one, as a matter of fact; a rather small, annoying green one. He hates that I've described him like that, but he needs to be quiet since he's the one that wants this to be factual.

Here it is in a nutshell:
I'm not an expert on this, but as far as I can tell, there are a bunch of other dimensions running parallel to our world, and one of them is a world populated completely by dragons. I've never been there, and I wouldn't go for a Ferrari and a pile of cash, but Smokey says the dragons there are as big as houses and viciously mean. They have a strict code conduct, and anyone who doesn't live up to this code gets banished to our world.
Since their code apparently requires all dragons to be huge, mean, fire breathing monsters, the dragons that get banished here are, for the most part, like Smokey. They're small, scared, need a box of matches to light a fire, and have absolutely no clue how to make it in this world.
Most of them are very gentle creatures who are relieved to be away from their home world and they do quite well here once they adapt.

Which is where I come in.
I live in a home for orphaned kids in Texas that has a portal to the dragon world on the property.
I'm not sure how it works, but every so often, it opens up, spits out a scared little dragon, and I swoop in to help them learn to live in our world. I've been told that Earth is way different from their world.

I show them what kinds of food they can eat, how to catch fish, make shelters... survival type things that I enjoy so much.
Most of them move on, but Smokey has hung around. He's slightly obnoxious, but since I'm being forced to be honest for this record, I'll admit I'm glad he's here. I was really lonely before he showed up.

Here's the thing. Because these guys are from another world, not everyone can see them or talk to them like I can.
In fact, I'm not sure anyone can see them besides me. I know they're here, and I know I'm not crazy, but sometimes it's easy to let yourself think you are, because that's how the world sees you when you talk about talking to dragons.

So that's my, well, our life in a nutshell. More soon, it's time for bed.

Jere