for the art

A friend of mine is hosting a fund raiser along with a silent auction and asked me to sell one of my drawings. She also wanted me to write up something about the picture an why I drew it. So I wrote this.

From: Time of the Dragon Slayers

My name is Natalie Paulson. I go by Natle.

I live in Basham Heights, right in the middle of the Dragon Nest. You’ve probably heard about that area. It’s considered one of the most dangerous in the country. Not because of neighboring countries but because of the dragons.  Yes, the stories are true. The dragons  do attack us, attack our farms, eat our cattle, and force us to rebuild.

We used to fight them. Dragons are smart. They don’t want to be hurt and they learned not to bother us. It wasn’t perfect; we had some problems. Babies came often enough,  before they learned how dangerous we were. And rarely, a few from the herd would come, when they were desperate.  My parents died because of that, leaving me alone with my brother.

But everything changed when Jorn came. Jorn told everyone that the dragons were dying out and needed to be saved. He said it was honorable for people to save them. People believed him. So people stopped fighting. They burned our crossbows, and banished me from my town, because I would shoot a dragon for my protection.

So when the dragons came again–five, six, maybe seven of them–we could do nothing but watch.

The dragons killed my brother. They destroyed my farm. And still, everyone thinks the dragons are merely misunderstood.  Which is why I have to leave now. I have to leave the land that has been in our family for generations, the people I grew up with, and everything I love, to live in a place that I barely know.  It is no longer safe here. It will probably never be safe again.