Shalia, Arith, and Saleera

Yep, so this is Shalia. As a baby, anyway. She's quite a bit longer and thinner as an adult. You see her pouncing here. There's one scene where she decides to leap onto Arith's head, just to bug him, so you can pretend that's where this sketch came from-when she's preparing to pounce. Eventually I'll try to put up my picture of her as an adult, whenever I can use someone else's computer (like Ellen's).
I can't wait to see your maps, Ellen! Saturday, maybe? You don't have to worry too much about Wiverna's shape, since it is landlocked. But I bet it'll look great anyway. And I wanna see what you made the new continents look like!
I'm trying to remember if I put up a summary of the story Ellen and I are writing together... I don't think I did, so I'll do that. It doesn't have a title yet. We'll have to think of one eventually.
So, my character is a boy named Arith (you may have gathered that from earlier posts) and Ellen's is a girl called Saleera (again, mentioned in earlier posts). They live on the planet Soreina. On this planet, most people are able to read the thoughts of animals using the language of thoughts. So they can communicate with any animal without using words. I like making people understand animals. It's sort of a recurring theme in some of my stories. I've used it before, and I know I'll use it again. Either way, Arith and Saleera's country is Draykia. Hopefully Ellen will put up her beautiful map of Draykia. She does maps, I make up names (I made up most of them in this book. But Ellen made up Milon and Nexsidus. Any more?) In this country, the right of passage into adulthood is for a boy or girl, usually about 16 years old, to bond with an animal, which is known as their familiar. People of the lower classes generally only get normal creatures like cats or ferrets. People of the middle class get magical creatures like hippogriffs or phoenixes. And those in the highest rank of society get dragons. There are a few exceptions. For example, if a low-class boy or girl goes out into the wild and gets a dragon egg, they can have a dragon as their familiar.
Arith and Saleera come from different villages. Arith, who lives in Shalen, is overshadowed by his older brother, Bram, who seems to be better at everything than Arith. Arith loves his brother, but wants to show his father that he's just as good as Bram, so he decides to get ahold of a dragon egg (I stole the name Bram from a book called Modoc. It's the most fantastic true story I've ever read, and I highly recommend it. I'll have to start book reviews eventually...). Saleera, who comes from the desert town Garayt, is considered the village freak. And she too wants to prove herself by getting a dragon. But they don't want just any dragon. They want an imperial dragon-the dragons with the strongest psychic talent apart from sun dragons. But there's so few of them left on Soreina that their entire population is in the palace of Tarule. And even the eggs are locked safely away in a chamber. They set out to get their eggs, and bump into each other. Realizing they have the same goal, they team up. Arith has his mother's hippogriff, Syrinx, and she carries them on their way. A syrinx is actually an ancient kind of flute, (pronounced Seer-inx) and it's the name of a song that is quite popular among flutists, but I haven't played it yet. I'll have to ask for a copy of the music from my flute teacher... But that's where Syrinx got her name. And Saleera has a pet (not a familiar, just a pet) ferret named Kailo. He's pretty funny.
So, they break into the palace and manage to steal two imperial dragon eggs. They barely escape, but when they head back to their homes, they find that King and Queen Raeton, of Tarule, have sent their armies out to get rid of the towns that oppose them-which includes both Arith and Saleera's homes. So they both find themselves homeless with their dragon eggs, a hippogriff, and a ferret who's always hungry. No one they know is alive anymore.
Then Arith's egg hatches. Inside is a little sky blue dragon with patches of white. She looks quite like the sky. Her name is Shalia. It took me forever to find a good name for her. I really liked Kaila, but that was way to close to Kailo, the ferret. But now we have a lot of characters beginning with the letter "s"-Saleera, Syrinx, and Shalia.
Arith, Saleera, Syrinx, Kailo, and Shalia meet up with a caravan of survivors from the king and queen's attacks on towns. They join up with the caravan of refugees, and start to travel around to look for other survivors. That same day, Saleera's egg hatches into a little dragon. His name is Zuben. He has a bit of an attitude, unlike the exuberant Shalia. Zuben actually means "claw." I was looking for good names for him, and since he's black with white speckles (like the night sky) I started looking for astranomy terms. I found Zuben. In the constellation scorpio, Zuben was used in the phrase "the upper claw of the scorpion," or something like that. Now you know.
So right now, that's about as far as we are. THe caravan is currently stopped at a surviving town. We still don't know exactly where we're headed with this, but once we get a little more done, I'll update again.