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.