It was another dreary day. Kyle looked around the classroom. About a quarter of the class had lost their eggs. The project was due the next day. The two weeks prior had been nothing but worrying and isolation to make sure the egg was always safe. It had been so long since he took the bus that he had forgotten which number the bus was. Kyle was even more protective of the precious egg than he was the first day. Bad things always happened last minute.

The teacher appeared before him. "Well Kyle, I can see you still have your egg. I'm impressed."

He grew a little red and looked around the room to see if anyone else had heard that.

"So how's the worksheet coming along?"

His eyes widened as he realized he had done none of it. "Almost done," he said.

She nodded slowly. "Sure, it is." Then she turned and started walking to the next group, one of the eggless groups. At least he was doing better than they were.

In between taking notes, Kyle answered a few of the questions on his worksheet. When he could not finish it in home economics, he took it to history. When he could not finish it in history, he tucked it into his backpack and said he would finish it after art class. Eventually the school day ended and he realized the worksheet was not done. Most of it was completed, but there were a few unanswered questions. He just had to finish those, and then there would be one less thing to worry about.

Kyle jogged briskly across the field to the forest. It was a bit cooler than the day of the assignment, so he really wanted to get home as quickly as he could. He was wearing a thick jacket that had large pockets on the inside. As he got closer to the line of trees, he slipped the egg into one of those pockets and zipped the jacket up. He hoped it would be a safe place.

The wind started to blow and a light mist began to fill the air. He shivered and looked around. The swaying branches, though they had no leaves, filled the atmosphere with an eerie noise. He expected someone or something to leap out from behind a tree and attack him.

And even so, when it happened, it scared him to death.

"Dragon boy!" an old man hissed coldly as he reached for Kyle's arm. He was wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans.

Kyle's blood ran cold and he was instantly paralyzed. "Wh-Who! What!"

"Dragon boy!" the old man hissed again, reaching behind himself and patting at his belt.

Kyle quickly jerked his arm away and jumped back. "You're insane!"

The old man began to hobble back towards him. He was fast, but it was clear he was having difficulty. "Give it here! Give it to me!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Kyle took long strides back and clutched the egg through the thick fabric of his jacket.

"Dragon boy...!" he hissed again.

Kyle came to his senses and turned, then broke into a sprint so fast he surprised himself. He leapt over roots and trampled the remains of thorn bushes. At some point a clump of thorns caught the cuff of his jeans and brought him down. As he fell, he turned not only to spare the egg, but to look back and see if the insane elderly man was still behind him. He saw nothing. He took a few deep breaths and started kicking his foot to loosen the thorns' grip. It took a few seconds, but he managed to kick loose the thorns. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up, dashed a foot and a half and ran straight into the old man. He felt the old man's big, cold, strong hands wrap around his collar and hoist him up.

"Give it! Give it to me!"

Kyle began to kick his feet and squirm, hoping the geezer would drop him. "I don't know what it is!" he cried. "Let me go, you psycho!"

The old man removed one hand and began to feel Kyle's pockets. "Where is it? Where is it!"

"Guy, you're old and I don't want to hurt you!" Kyle threatened.

"Is it in your bag? It's in the bag!" He began reaching around to grab Kyle's bag.

Panicked, Kyle reached forward and pinched the inside of the arm the old man still had on him. The man's grip loosened and he let the boy go, giving a pained yelp as he did so.

Kyle hit the ground and dashed around his attacker. He ran through the trees and avoided the patches of thorns the best he could. He did not dare look over his shoulder, he did not dare stop to catch a breath, he did not dare to do anything other than run the clearest and most direct path home. It was a relief to see the fence and rickety house again. He threw the gate open and closed it behind him, then tore open the door and dove inside, slamming the door behind him and, for perhaps the tenth time in its life, locked it.

"Buddy, what's the big deal?" came the calm, mellow voice of his father as he strode into the room. It was so comforting in that moment.

"G-Guy," Kyle stammered. He threw himself into his father's arms. "H-H-H-He w-w-w-w..."

His mother came down the stairs. "Kyle, you seem distressed. What's going on?"

"D-Dragon boy." With the utterance of those words, the room fell silent of all sounds but Kyle's desperate attempts to catch his breath. "H-He called me d-dragon boy."

"Weird," his mother sighed. She had an almost nervous tone to her voice.

"He grabbed me. Tried to take my bag."

His father looked at his mother. "Should we call the cops?" His father looked back at him. "Bud, could you tell the cops what he looked like?"

"Don't wanna deal with it." Then he remembered. "Homework!" He released his grip and started up the stairs.

"Bud, you don't want to deal with this?"

"Don't wanna fail!" He ran up the stairs and up to his room on the third floor. He threw his backpack on his bed and opened it up, reached into it, and retrieved the worksheet. He slammed the paper on his desk, then noticed the shoebox at the edge. He remembered the egg. In a frenzy, he opened his jacket and reached inside, nervously retrieving the precious egg. He pulled it out and looked.

It was safe.

He heaved a sigh of relief and set the egg gently in the shoebox. Then he sat himself done and plucked a pencil out of a cup on his desk and began answering the rest of the questions.

5. How did you have to change your schedule to keep the egg from breaking?

He answered, "I didn't change much, but I frequently woke up to check on the egg and stopped taking the bus to prevent other people from taking it."

6. On a separate piece of paper, write a brief essay on how this assignment has taught you about responsibility. Minimum of one page.

Kyle groaned and turned around. He reached in his backpack and began to sift through loose papers, hoping to find a piece of lined paper. As he sifted, he heard a train whistle. He began looking more frantically. He felt the house began to shake and he finally found a piece. The house quaked and he turned back just in time to see the shoebox shaking off the table and flipping over and on top of the precious purple egg.

He was still for a moment. It took him time to process what he saw. The thing he worked so hard for two weeks to protect was now on the floor, cracked likely beyond repair. He let out a forlorn scream and collapsed onto the ground. Then there was a sound of running feet that gradually got closer. How would he tell his parents that he was going to have to redo the class? He felt a pit in his stomach and hot tears forming in his eyes. It was just an egg, but something about the situation just hurt him so badly. As his parents reached the top of the first flight of stairs, he started to extend his shaky hands towards the shoebox. He wanted to lift it to see the damage. He knew it would be bad, but curiosity drove him to see just how bad.

"Kyle?" He had never heard his mother's voice so full of worry. She was the first one on the spiral staircase.

His shaky hands grabbed the corners of the shoebox. He slowly started to lift it, like prying the lid off a coffin you know contains a corpse in its most grotesque state of decay. Then he peeked. Wait, what was that? He flipped the shoebox off the rest of the way and let out another scream as he skittered back across the floor. The blanket was moving. The egg had broken and inside of it, under the blanket that had kept it safe, was a... a thing!

"What's wrong, bud?"

"MOM! DAD!"

His parents appeared one by one at the top of his staircase. They looked around the room frantically. "What is it?" his father asked. "What's wrong?" his mother asked. Then they saw the blanket on the floor.

"Oh, bud, I'm so- wait, is it moving?"

Kyle, feeling like a child but not caring, nodded and pointed to the blanket, whimpering.

Slowly, his mother reached forward and pinched the center of the blanket. She retracted her arm slowly, and when the thing was revealed, she jumped and let out a whine. The blanket slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor. Tears began streaming from her face.

She was not startled, she was sad.

"Oh, bud..."

"What?" Kyle demanded. "What's going on?" Then he looked down. "And what is that?"

There, on the floor, lying in the pile of eggshells, was a big purple lizard with bat wings on its back.

"It's your Familiar!" his mother sobbed. "He's too young!"

Another set of feet came stomping up the stairs. "What's all this hollerin' about?" Then Uncle Jack's balding head appeared, then his shoulders, and then the rest of his long, old body. Then he looked at the floor. "Oh my..."

"You know what's going on!" Kyle demanded in an accusatory tone.

The adults looked at each other. They all became increasingly more distraught.

"We saw the signs," his father began.

"We tried to write them off," his mother choked through her tears.

"We thought... we thought we had more time."

Kyle looked at his family. "Mom? Dad? Uncle Jack? What's going on?"

His mother wiped her tears and knelt in front of him and the hatchling. "Baby, it's time we tell you."

The depressed party had moved downstairs for the discussion. To help lighten things up, Uncle Jack had brewed a pot of chamomile tea. Everyone had a cup, but nobody took more than a few sips. The shoebox nest had been remade, and in it was Kyle's... oh what did Mom call it? Familiar, I think it was.

"So, Mom, you had one of these?"

His mother nodded solemnly. "Yes. His name was Snowflake."

He looked to his father. "Dad? Did you have one?"

His father nodded as well. "Yes, but my Familiar wasn't a dragon. Mine was a phoenix."

Kyle looked back down. "A dragon, eh?" The little creature was curled up in the blanket. It was asleep. It was also starting to look adorable.

"We chose to live out here because it's isolated. We feared this would happen and it's bad when Unfamiliars find out."

He looked around at his family. "Was the old man in the woods an Unfamiliar?"

They all looked at each other and shook their heads. "We don't know, Kyle."

It took a few seconds to process that. His father called him by his name only when he had done something wrong. "Is this my fault?"

"You didn't do anything wrong, sport," Uncle Jack assured him. "Nobody asks to have a Familiar."

"Why do people have Familiars?"

A hush fell over everyone.

"Baby," his mother lamented, "you're going to find out."

"First thing tomorrow, you go to your teacher and show her. Make sure no one is in the room though, unless they, too are trying to show her. They'll be nervous, too, so don't worry too much."

He looked back down at the hatchling. This dumb assignment just ruined his life. At the same time, he could not bring himself to be mad at the hatchling. If nobody asks to have a Familiar, then maybe Familiars do not ask to have anybody. Then he looked back up at his family. "Is it safe for me to walk to school?"

"I'll walk you there, champ," Uncle Jack offered. "Ain't no creepy old men're gonna get through me."

And for once, the idea of spending time with Uncle Jack did not seem unbearable.

The next day, Uncle Jack got up bright and early to take Kyle to school. They went through the woods, only because it was the fastest way to get there. Kyle was jumpy enough walking through the woods, but that day he was even more on edge. His uncle tried to assure him that everything was okay, but Kyle was very skeptical. When the open field came into view, he heaved a sigh of relief. He was so relieved, in fact, he hugged his uncle before taking off jogging across the field. He would have run, but in his backpack was the shoebox nest with the hatchling safely inside. Running would upset the creature, so a jog would have to do. When he made it inside, he slowed to a brisk walk and headed straight for the classroom. He paused right outside though. A red-haired girl stood in front of the teacher's desk.

"Ma'am, may I speak to you in private?"

The teacher rose from her seat. "Could we all go out into the hallway, please?" She was met with a choir of moans. "Don't give me that. It won't be too long. You're all on your text machines anyway, why don't you go find the friends to whom you're speaking and actually talk to them?"

Kyle took a step to the side as a handful of homeroom students left the classroom. When the last one left, he entered. "Ms. Kreechure, I have a question about the assignment."

"So do I!"

Kyle stepped aside just as a tall boy ran past him. A cute chubby girl entered as well, calling, "Me, too!"

The teacher looked at her watch and sighed. "Three, two, one..."

Right on cue, two more students came in. One was a girl of average build, but with a crazy head of colorful hair, and the other a meek boy in a grey turtleneck sweater. "Ms. Kreechure?"

Then, the teacher stood and walked slowly to the door. She closed it softly, and twisted the lock. "I think I know why you six are here." She returned to her desk and took a sip of her coffee. "And I believe you all know, too." She put her hands on her desk with authority. "Now, open your bags."

Each student obeyed. They slipped off their backpacks or messenger bags and opened them up. Kyle allowed his eyes to wander. The red-headed girl had a small cage with a tiny red bird inside. The tall boy had a drake crawling around a paper lunch bag. The chubby girl had a strange combination of rabbit and deer and nothing else. The rainbow girl had a large tupperware container with a strange fish in it. The meek boy had a gryphon.

Kyle raised his hand and stated, "I've never seen a few of these kinds of creatures even in movies or books. What are they?"

The teacher looked back at her watch. "Kyle, that is not my lesson to teach you. Even if it was, there is not enough time." She turned and picked up a piece of chalk, then began drawing a strange symbol on the board. "The homeroom bell rings in seven minutes. I can get you to the Bridge and back, but nothing else." When she set the chalk down, the symbol began to glow and the chalkboard began to open. Everyone took a step back. Rather than another classroom, the opened board revealed nothing. All the students could see was darkness.

"What's going on?" the chubby girl whispered.

"I don't think I like this," the tall boy gasped.

"I would prefer to not tarnish my attendance record," the meek boy muttered.

Then the teacher turned to face the darkness. She leaned forward. Suddenly, she started to grow. Her legs began to turn into a yellow-orange, and when she removed her shoes the students saw she had three long toes in the front of her foot and one in the back. Her arms grew thin, and the tiny hairs that covered them began to turn into feathers. Everyone took another step back as they watched their teacher transform. After a few moments, the teacher turned around. She appeared more youthful, and in much better shape, and when she spoke her voice was much less shrill.

"Who's first?