Chapter 32: Running away from home.

Kalon sat still and watched as the woman forced the wooden spoon towards his mouth. He looked at her with a gaze of confusion as she continued to push the spoon towards his face until it hit him in the lip.

'What is wrong with this woman? That's food, not a dragon.' Kalon thought as he took the meaning of her words literally. He didn't have a clue what she was doing, but whatever it was, he didn't appreciate being hit in the face with a spoon full of food. But just as he was about to confront her about it, she retracted the spoon and looked at him with pity.

"Didn't your parents ever do that with you? I wanted to make you feel at home while you recover. Are you not hungry or something?" She asked, confused as to why he didn't open his mouth like she expected that he would.

She began to stand up with the tray of food in her hands, but just as she did, Kalon spoke out.

"Sorry, I'm hungry." He said, realising that she was trying to feed him. He was initially confused because she mentioned a dragon, but as he thought about how she was swirling the spoon around, he could see that she was trying to make it look like a dragon flying through the air.

Despite never seeing a dragon before, Kalon knew what one was due to storybooks thrown out along with him and his mother. Although he couldn't read very well, he remembered the pictures of their long serpent-like bodies and the drawing of them wiggling through the sky.

"You are? Why didn't you say so earlier? Here we go, let's try again. Here comes the" The woman stated once again and lifted the spoon to Kalon's face.

"I'm sorry, lady, But I can feed myself, thank you very much," Kalon said bluntly before taking the spoon from her hand. The woman stopped in her tracks in disbelief. She felt as though a child disrespected her. It was humiliating, but she was glad that no one was around or else she would have to punish him for taking that tone of speech with her.

"Kid's these days. They are becoming more disrespectful as time goes on. I would never have dreamed of speaking to an elder like that back in my youth. My parents would have thrown me in the lake and then hung me out to dry in view of the whole town." She began to think but then remembered that Rover town had been destroyed and Kalon's parents were most likely dead.

She sympathised with him a little and decided to forget the fact that she felt disrespected and focused on her job. She was tasked with getting more information out of him about what happened. But she wasn't supposed to cause any mental trauma since he was just a child. So she decided to let him eat a little more before asking him anything.

She watched as Kalon ate the food and then suddenly asked about what happened when he had stopped.

"What was the last thing that you remember in Rover town? You had to have run a long distance on your own, and it looked like you managed to pack up all your things. So I guess the village guards were fighting them off and gave you time to run away. But then again, from the body placement, it looked like they were caught off guard.

So can you tell me what really happened?" The woman asked and then pulled a sandwich wrapped in paper from her coat pocket. It looked as though she had been saving it and now thought that it was an appropriate time to eat it.

"Tell you what happened?!" Kalon asked, caught off guard by the sudden question. It seemed as though they had given him food so he would feel more inclined to tell them what happened, but Kalon had no idea what had happened, so he was stuck as he knew that he would have to make a story up.

"Well, I-" Kalon said and then stopped. He thought of something to tell her but didn't quite know how to phrase it to sound believable.

He had told lies to his teachers before about why he couldn't do his homework that they assigned, and he became pretty good at it. But under this much pressure, he crumpled and didn't know what to say.

"You did what?" The woman asked with a look of suspicion on her face. To Kalon, it looked as though she was looking right through him and could see that he was thinking about lying to her, which added to the pressure that he felt even more. His chest became tight, and his throat restricted a little bit as he looked the woman in the eyes.

"What's your name, miss?" Kalon asked, changing the tide of the conversation suddenly. He thought that if he could misdirect the conversation a little bit, he could think of something to say.

"Roah, Now tell me what happened, please. I need to make a report by tonight, or I will get chewed out by those muscle heads upstairs." The woman complained and then once again looked at Kalon and awaited a response.

"Well, I was running away from home," Kalon said while trying his hardest to make it look like he was telling the truth. But during his response, Roah had taken a bite out of her sandwich and choked as she laughed at what he said. She wasn't expecting him to say that at all.

"Running away from home? What made you want to do such a thing?" Noah asked, buying his story because she thought his story was so unbelievable that no one would lie. She also didn't suspect that he was up to no good, but she had to be thorough for the people in charge.

"Yes, I was sick and tired of the monsters coming to eat us when they got hungry. So I wanted to escape and go to the human kingdom." Kalon said and then looked down to the floor in defeat. He thought for sure that she had seen through his lies and he didn't know what to do. It felt as though his life was about to come to an end already.

"That's understandable. I would have done the same if I was in your position. Let me guess. Your parents were against moving into the kingdom because your ancestral home was in Rover town. They have lived there for generations and were hoping that things would get better in a few years?" Noah asked as though she was talking from experience. But Kalon still thought that he had been caught in a lie, so he just nodded his head as she spoke before suddenly feeling something warm around him.

He turned his head to see that Roah had wrapped her arms around his shoulders and brought him into an embrace.

"Oh, you poor child. That's not something someone your age should have to bear alone. I was just like you when I was younger. My parents never listened to what I had to say, and it ended up costing them everything they had." Roach said with a sad smile as she held her arms around him.