Getting a place at Mary’s Refrain Church of England Boarding School in Cumbria was not as difficult as Eric had feared. The paperwork was gnarly, and there was housing and safety and Aunt Tricia’s loan to deal with, but Eric managed it.

No, the first obstacle to Eric attending school in Cumbria was actually getting to Cumbria. Getting anywhere was daunting, when you were coming from deeply secret ancestral dragon territory. The second obstacle was Eric’s parents. The third was his brother, the Wyvern, and the whole goddamn world, apparently, but Eric ignored them all passionately.

Someone’ll pick you up, he finally got the school to say. But they were a small, underfunded school, so, from London.

Which put Eric…about 500 miles from where he needed to meet the car.

500 miles was a hell of a flight for a dragon, when you didn’t know where you were going. 500 miles was a hell of an anything, really. Hell of a walk, when you got too paranoid to shapeshift near public places. Hell of an anxiety attack, when you realized you were alone and far away in an empty public toilet where your pride wouldn’t let you call home.

But hell or not, Eric did it. On move-in day, his backpack hit Abbeytown dirt with everyone else’s.

-Black Dragon

Fun fact: over the course of Black Dragon, the personalities of my two main characters switched. Current draft Eric is very similar to concept draft James, who had his pre-concept-draft personality stolen by a different older-brother figure in my last Nano project, Lost and Found. Go figure.