The Ballad of a Dragon

[ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 2: ᴀʟʟ'ꜱ ꜰᴀɪʀ ɪɴ ᴀʀʟᴏ ]

A/N: 
This is the first time i've done a rotating POV book....also I'm about 80% sure my friend Willow (not the one in the story) knows what this chapter is about...so erm yeah don't kill me <3 Also I cringed so hard while writing this chapter bc there's some rizzy parts...*gulps*

{TRIGGER WARNING:}
This chapter is awfully gay. Get out of here you homophobes.

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NOAH POV...
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Time runs too fast, as my grandfather liked to say, which was the reason he gave me his old pocket watch before dying. It was dusty & broken, but I had thanked him anyway. In the moment, though, time seemed to be moving slower than ever.

After visiting Sage, I had made plans with somebody. Or, rather, they had made plans with me. It was quite last minute, to say the least, I had zero clue where I was even heading, so I settled for the marketplace.

Why, you ask? I didn't know either. Efrait's marketplace was famous for several things, but mostly the cultural diversity. The Kingdom was accepting like that, & I had to give credit to the current rulers, King Alexander & Queen Gwen. Some of our past rulers were a bit...temperamental.

So as my feet echoed on the dried out cobblestone, I waited, pacing the marketplace as sellers eyed my wallet & strangers passed by in a hurry for reasons I would never know.

Seconds turned into minutes, & minutes translated into an hour. I began to wonder what I was doing with my life, waiting for somebody I had met last week. Or perhaps I was waiting for something else. I didn't really wanna deep dive into it.

A nearby vendor caught my eye, surprisingly enough, & while I had already wasted enough money that day, I figured it wouldn't do me any harm to browse. Walking over, I glanced up on all the things for sale, though one thing really caught my eye.

It was a pair of earrings made of crow feathers, though at the end they faded into a sort of turquoise color. My interest was piqued. "How much for those earrings?" I asked the vendor as I glanced upwards.

The seller shrugged, speaking with a heavy Indian accent "No specific price. I can give them to you for $12." I blinked, that was a surprisingly good price for earrings, considering how fancy they were nowadays. I pulled out my wallet, shuffling through my cash.

I pulled out $12, feeling stupid as I was about to waste my money, before my wallet was suddenly lifted out of my other hand. Instantly, my attention snapped to whomever was grabbing it, & I slapped them across the face.

"OW!" Shrieked a familiar voice, & upon further examination, my eyes widened. "Noah, that hurt!..." pouted the familiar face of my friend Arlo, who I had originally come down to see. And no, it was not Arlo from 10,000 years ago, he was just named after that guy.

"Arlo?" I asked, ignoring the slap mark across his face that he was rubbing, "why the hell were you trying to steal my wallet!?" After a few moments Arlo stopped rubbing his 'wound', & he responded. 

"I was going to pay for you," He spoke, clearing his throat, though a slight grin crossed his face. "After all, I saw you get all that food earlier today. Say, why did you need all that anyway? You live with m-"

I put a hand over his mouth, cutting his sentence off, an annoyed expression crossing my face. The vendor was probably looking a us weird, if I had to guess. "I told you not to talk about that in public!" I hissed under my breath.

Arlo batted my hand away from his face, seemingly unamused, but that expression quickly faded away as he ignored my statement, pulling out his own, slick black wallet. He shuffled through the money before pulling out $20 & handing it to the vendor.