So I'll be honest, I wrote the first chapter at about midnight because I was suddenly struck by a flash of 'let's-write-Dust-fan-fiction'. Then I went back and read it the next day, and wondered what I had been thinking. I was planning on just abandoning it, but I just came back and looked at it today. Thank you so much, First Hero of Olympus, for the review; it kind of made me realize that maybe the story isn't as bad as I thought it was.

Wednesday

You know the nice thing about having wings? It's that no one else in this whole village does, and so I can get up to these trees where no one can get me. Of course, I still have to hear everything down below (come on, Reed, we don't want to hear about toothbrushes wanting to kill everyone and all that). But no one can actually come up to me and pull on my wings and ask me if I wanted to be their pet or anything stupid like that. Not naming names. But really, if I wanted that treatment I would have stayed in Mudpot with that girl… something-hop. Or –bop. Their names all sound the same.

Anyways…

I hate pencils. They aren't meant for nimbats to write with. We have three fingers. Three! Not exactly ideal for writing.

But I'm back, and I guess I should begin. With the… beginning! Which was… let me think on this a little.

Thursday

Back at Drinwood, the village I was from, there was a sword called Ahrah, which everyone claimed was some sort of special sword that could do cool stuff. I didn't believe it- it kind of just looked like an overexcessively decorated weapon to me. I mean, who puts gold on a sword? Come to think of it, what kind of sword is shaped like… oh, I don't even know what it was shaped like, but it was definitely not like the 'stereotypical-long-and-pointy' sword everyone thinks of. One part near the top even had prongs sticking out. Like you could use it as a really big fork. What's up with that?

So it was probably a bad thing that out of everyone in the village, I was chosen to train as the sword's guardian. Everyone thought it was such an honor, and all that, but I wanted to tell them, "Hey, you want to trade jobs? You can be the guardian, and sit by the sword all day doing nothing, and pretend to read ancient manuscripts, and act like you feel honored when all you really feel is bored. Then I'll take your job and become a berry-gatherer or something! Win-win situation. Or something."

Actually, I did tell one nimbat that. My mentor, the previous guardian named Mica, was kind of… really… annoyed. And slightly angry. So I didn't say anything ever again about the whole I-don't-really-want-to-be-the-sword's-guardian thing. Hey, at least I got a cool title.

So that's the beginning, I guess.

For a while, I just hung out in the stone alcove that Ahrah was in, mentally wondering why the nimbat elders chose me. Then I considered taking Ahrah and hiding it somewhere, so that maybe everyone would give me a normal job since the sword was gone. Then… hehe… I kind of realized that maybe they might be angry that, hey, the sword they've been guarding for generations is now missing! Yay!

I felt like going crazy in that job. I couldn't get out of it, since I'd already 'trained' (or, pretended to train) to be the guardian, and once you get assigned a job in Drinwood you're kind of in it for life. Seriously, who came up with these rules?

And then, after taking a short nap when… um… 'guarding' the sword, I woke up and it was… kind of… gone.