Chapter Six: Roommates

Ethan had no time to admire the luxurious lobby of the 94th floor as he arrived there because Picario was already jogging off down the hall to the rooms section. Ethan jogged after him and quickly caught up. Picario said nothing during their jog and even shoved a couple people out of the way as he turned down the first corridor; Ethan had to apologize for him.

Picario jogged down the corridor then stopped when he got to a gorgeous deep blue door with different shades of blue swirling on it in an intricate pattern. On the top of the door in a darker shade of blue letters glowed into words saying: KELLY’S EXOTIC PET SHOP

Picario turned to face Ethan and asked “You coming?” Then without waiting for an answer he opened the door and went inside; leaving the door open behind him.

Ethan followed into the room and was immediately overwhelmed by massive fish tanks to his left and right that actually appeared to be the walls. In front of him was a straight path to a hall that at the end Ethan could see had some writings and arrows pointing to the left or right below the writings. Ethan glanced down at his feet and noticed for the first time that there was writing on the ground in aqua colored letters that read, “AQUARIUM”.

“Ethan!” Picario shouted from down the hall where it turned. “Please hurry up you can come back and admire all of this later.” Then Picario turned down the hall to the right and Ethan ran after him forcing himself to ignore all of the colorful and unusual marine animals inside the massive aquarium.

When Ethan got to the end of the path where it turns to two halls he could read the writing. On the left it read “Jungle Animals” And on the right it read “Miscellaneous Animals and Other” Ethan went down the right hall after Picario.

The hall came out to an open field of grass and fresh smelling air. Further down the grass several hundred yards, Ethan could see an abundance of trees that were at least 10 feet apart from each other. There was a sign posted on a stick sticking out of the ground that had an arrow pointing to the left at its very bottom and read “All the animals out here are display only. Please do not feed. Follow the arrow to find the same animals for sale and other.”

Ethan followed the arrow down the grass until he came to a large open doorway without any doors. He looked around his surroundings one more time, to his left the wall was lined with large bricks and to the right and beyond was a small forest expanse past the beautiful green grass. He could see inside the room and the first thing he noticed was that the grass stopped at the foot of the open doorway and was replaced with white tile.

Inside this new room Ethan saw several rows of racks that had a small metal cage about ten feet in length and five feet in height. Past the racks at the end of the room Ethan saw Picario and some girl at a counter. Ethan walked between the first rack and towards the counter.

As he walked between the first racks towards the counter he noticed that each of the cages had a small animal inside it. The cages Ethan passed contained Black Rhinos in them that were half the size of the cages themselves.

When Ethan approached the counter next to Picario the girl behind it looked up at him and said, “So Picario who’s your handsome new friend?”

The girl had brown hair that was tied up into a pony tail. Her face was rather pretty and had a few freckles on both her cheeks. She had black horn-rimmed glasses in a rectangular fashion. Her outfit was a plain white short sleeve shirt with some dark grey jeans.

Ethan put his right hand out and said, “My name is Ethan.”

The girl took Ethan’s hand shook it and said, “Mine is Kelly, and welcome to my pet shop.”

Ethan took a quick look around him then said, “This place is really awesome, I probably would have wondered around more enjoying the great sights if Picario hadn’t rushed me so much.”

Kelly smiled then looked at Picario and said, “Yeah I was wondering when I would see him today, I knew it must be important for him to forget about Nessie’s food. He was actually just talking about you moments before you arrived.”

Ethan finally noticed of the flat rectangular crate sitting on the counter in front of Picario. It was about five feet in length and width, and three feet in height. “Is that crate going to have enough food for a dragon?”

“Yeah, but we should get going Nessie is probably starving right now.”

Kelly got a mischievous look on her face then said, “Picario you should have Ethan help you carry that crate all the way to your room.” Then she winked quickly at Picario.

Picario looked up at Ethan then shrugged, placed his hand on the crate and said calmly, “Yeah sure, Ethan if you wouldn’t mind lending me a hand with this?”

“Of course,” Ethan said as he cluelessly grabbed the rope handles at the ends and tried lifting the crate. His first attempt was a miserable failure as he underestimated its weight. Then Ethan tried again putting much more effort into lifting the crate; he got it off the counter and turned to walk away.”

Kelly burst into laughter when Ethan’s back was facing her and Picario kept in pace with Ethan. As Ethan was having trouble walking with the crate but not overly so Picario chuckled lightly as well. Then Ethan asked, “How much does this thing weigh anyways?”

“Each sun stone weighs ten pounds and there are ten in there so including the weight of the crate just over one-hundred pounds.”

Ethan carefully and quickly switched one hand from holding the rope handle of the crate to under it and then did the same thing with his other hand so both were holding the crate from the bottom. When the two of them got outside of the shop Ethan was starting to sweat and said, “You know I never appreciated how much a hundred pound crate weighs until I’ve lifted and carried one for minutes. I don’t know how you managed to get this thing back to your room by yourself before. Then again this shouldn’t be that heavy for me either, guess I stopped lifting weights when I started college and haven’t picked them up in a while.”

“Yeah or you forgot I’m a magician and use magic to make the crate lighter.”

“Wait, if you made this thing lighter than why is it still so heavy?”

“I removed the spell when you agreed to carry it; it was really amusing too, I was forcing myself not to burst into laughter for a while, but now it’s not as funny."

“You are just the devil.”

When they got to Picario’s room on the 90th floor, Ethan put the crate down and started rolling his shoulders while Picario unlocked his door. Inside the room just beyond the door were small mountains. At the very end of the room Ethan could see large cliffs with a distant sunrise just beyond them.

Around the center of the cliffs was a waterfall that fell into a small area without a single rock insight. The ground was consistent of dirt, grass, and some pebbles; and there were several massive stones placed around at random.

Ethan walked inside forgetting the crate behind him and breathed in the fresh air and enjoyed the smell of it. Even after Picario walked inside with the crate and closed the door behind him, Ethan still believed he was transported outside. “So how do you like it?” Picario asked.

“I’m starting to come to the realization that this all one awesome dream," Ethan said.

Picario then whistled and it echoed throughout the area. Moments later a giant shadow soared along the ground. Ethan looked up just in time to see a massive brown dragon land with a loud Boom!

Ethan fell back, startled by the dragon’s sudden appearance. The dragon was brown with a western dragon lore body. It leaned its head down and Picario started petting it and speaking quietly to it, then he walked over to the crate opened it up and pulled out a stone the size of his head.

The stone was a mix of gold, red, and orange all swirling around inside a spherical stone. Picario tossed the stone way up into the air like it was a pebble. The dragon eyed the stone and as it reached the peak of its height; then the dragon opened its mouth and with a quick lurch stretched its neck out and in one bite swallowed the stone whole.

Ethan finally got to his feet while Picario introduced his dragon. “Ethan” He said. “This is my best friend and dragon Nessie.”

The dragon; Nessie walked over to Ethan and started sniffing him. When she was content she started rubbing against him. Hesitant at first Ethan eventually pet Nessie and the dragon licked him. Then she took off and flew above the cliff and out of Ethan’s sights.

Picario came up behind Ethan wiping his hands against his one another as if removing dust from them. “So would you like to see the rest of my room?” Picario asked.

“Lead the way.” Ethan said.

Picario led Ethan to the waterfall by the cliff and said that the next area was behind it. Before Ethan could ask, Picario held his hand out towards the water and in a moment a beam of ice began shooting from his palm. A path of ice froze over the water and Picario led the way through the waterfall.

Just passing under the waterfall Ethan got soaked and couldn’t see anything but darkness. The two of them kept walking in the pitch black and Ethan could feel a warm breeze coming from the other end of the cave he was in. Before he knew it he was completely dried, hair clothes and all.

The dark cave came out into a room with hardwood floors and a large set of train tracks that nearly reached the ceiling and went into part of the wall and came out another end; on the tracks was chrome styled train going around endlessly. On the far end of the room a hall that leads to another room similar to the last one except it was filled with many different airplanes scattered along the ground along with some toy robots, a football, and a small dark blue ball.

“Oh yeah, sorry this place is a bit of a mess,” Picario said. “I don’t get any guests so it’s easy to let myself become a slob when I don’t have to worry about anyone else around to see it.”

Ethan walked passed all the toys and picked up the football and tossed it into the air, caught it and repeated this a couple times. “You know what would be cool, is if we both had a dragon to ride on and tossed this around while doing so.” Ethan said. “It could be a new sport even.”

“Hmm it could, or we could toss it around in a space room,” Picario said.

“A what?” Ethan asked puzzled.

Picario led Ethan to a door that was black with several glowing dots on it that appeared to represent the night sky. Picario opened the door and inside Ethan could see a room covered in padding all around it and there were even diamond shaped structures with padding all around them just floating in the air; stationary. “So what is this pl-”

A strong force pushed Ethan into the room and interrupted him. Ethan screamed as he was uncontrollably heading towards one of the walls; even with its padding Ethan knew at that speed it would hurt. But when Ethan hit the wall it didn’t hurt at all and he rebounded off of it like it was rubber. Ethan kept bouncing around the room weightlessly, rebounding off the walls and ceiling.

At first it was dizzying and frightful but soon Ethan was able to straighten himself out after stopping with the help of one of the many diamond structures in the room. Shortly after Picario came in bouncing around like a mad man when he tossed the football to Ethan. Ethan caught the ball but the force of it alone sent him slowly going backwards through the air.

“This is awesome, a zero gravity room with padding,” Ethan said exhilarated.

“I just had it installed a few months ago,” Picario said.

Ethan and Picario spent the next four hours playing around in the zero gravity room, half the time was throwing the football, the other half was just bouncing around. After that Picario showed Ethan the rest of his room inside the waterfall caves. Picario had his own library fully stocked with comic books and an occasional novel. There was also a room with large monster dolls that Picario collected over the years.

He even had a kitchen stocked with juices and chips of several flavors. Finally Ethan saw Picario’s bedroom which resembled a normal bedroom and had a single massive bed in the middle and lots of posters on the walls and ceilings. There were some comics and even a doll or two scattered around the room.

“And that concludes the tour of my super awesome and super amazing room,” Picario said. “Are you jealous yet? Teeming with anger that you’re not nearly as cool as I am?”

Ethan grabbed the pillow on the bed and tossed it at Picario. Then he playfully said, “Shut up… but yes I’m a little jealous that I have to stay in that shabby little square room on floor 1 until I have enough to upgrade. Even then it will take me a few centuries to get to something this nice.”

“Well you know,” Picario said his voice more serious now. “If you wanted you and I could be roommates.”

Ethan pulled out the key to his room from his pocket and starred at it while thinking hard about Picario’s question. After some time he finally said, “You know Picario in the short time we have known each other you have been a better friend to me than the ones I knew while alive. So I would be honored to be your room mate.”