In the morning, the three friends got up and fried bacon and quail eggs in their makeshift frypan while they peered over at Rex who was licking their plateful of scraps pensively.
"I think he's ready to go," Tara said, noticing him flapping his wings restlessly. "If last night was anything to go by, he needs to find some more of his own kind to satisfy his wanderlust. We certainly can't attend to all of his needs."
"I agree," Clover said, peering at his enormous dragon genitals dangling between his hind legs. "But how do we encourage him to go? I think we might have trained him a little too well to rely on us to give him regular food."
"Maybe if we push or prod him, he'll get the message," Tara said, walking over to the dragon and trying to push him to get up off his haunches.
While Jessop did the same thing on the other side, Clover flapped her arms in front of him, trying to encourage him to take flight. After a few moments, he stood up on his hind legs and began to flap his wings as the trio nodded their heads excitedly, raising their hands in the air signaling for him to take flight.
He began to flap his wings faster and faster, and after a few moments he rose his weight off the ground, lifting himself a few feet above his friends. They ducked down from the force of the heavy draft produced by his enormous wings, and as he lifted himself higher up, he flew off a short distance, soaring and angling his body to test his wings, seeming to enjoy putting on a show for his friends while they hooted and clapped excitedly from the ground.
But instead of flying off into the distance, after a few minutes of demonstrating his acrobatic skills, he flew back towards them and landed a few feet away, sitting on his hind legs like a happy puppy.
"It looks like he doesn't want to leave," Tara said, shaking her head at the panting dragon.
"What do we do now?" Jessop said. "We can't exactly put him on a leash, and he'll lose us in the forest when he's flying so far overhead."
"Maybe we can catch a ride with him," Clover said. "We'll have an eagle eye's view of the terrain from up there and he can help us find the location of all the waterfalls in the region. We can certainly cover a lot more ground from up above than hacking our way through the forest."
"You're full of nutty ideas, aren't you?" Tara said, shaking her head. "How will we steer him? I've never exactly ridden a dragon before."
"People probably thought the same thing when they first got on a horse," Clover said. "We'll just play it by ear. Hopefully he'll learn our cues over time and we'll figure out how to send him the right signals."
"What will we hold onto?" Jessop asked. "We can't exactly put a saddle on this thing."
"He's got plenty of large scales. We can wedge our feet under the plates and use them like a stirrup while we hold onto the bony spikes of his neck like the horn of a saddle."
"You make it sound like it's going to be as easy as riding a horse!" Tara said.
"We'll never know until we give it a try. We said we were looking for adventures. I bet nobody's tried anything like this before."
The three friends paused as they peered at one another, then they slowly climbed up onto Rex's back as he lowered himself onto the ground like a kneeling camel. Clover got on first, with Tara immediately behind her, and Jessop taking up the rear. She positioned herself behind the last bony spike on his neck, then curled her toes underneath two large scales on his flanks while her friends mimicked her technique. Then Clover slapped her heels gently against Rex's flanks, and he flapped his wings, gingerly lifting the three of them off the ground.
As he took flight, their eyes widened watching the terrain disappear below them, and before long Rex was swooping through the air, gleefully giving his friends the ride of their life while they whooped and hollered on his back. Clover experimented by gently pulling on his ears and shifting her weight forward and back to steer him like an airplane, and before long he adapted to her signals, turning, soaring, and diving like a giant eagle.
After an hour or so, the band noticed a flock of large birds approaching them from the West, and they peered at the strange creatures as Rex began to huff uncomfortably.
"What are those things?" Jessop said, squinting into the sun.
"Gargoyles," Tara said, pinching Clover's side.
"Gargoyles?" Clover said. "Holy hell, what are we going to run into next? What do they want with us?"
"I don't know," Tara said, but I don't think we should stick around to find out. "There's a lot more of them than us."
Clover pulled on Rex's left ear to signal him to turn East, but when he saw the threatening band of beasts massing toward them, he tilted his body, flying directly in their direction.
"Where are you going?!" Tara screamed into Clover's ear, suddenly worried for her safety.
"It's not my idea," she said. "Rex seems to have a mind of his own."
As they got closer to the strange beasts, Clover noticed they had muscular physiques like a lion, but with the articulated wings and ugly faces of giant bats. As Rex flew straight toward the pack, he reared his head back, bellowing a long stream of fire directly at them, causing them to splice off and circle around. As they got closer, Rex used his longer wings to bat them out of the sky one by one, and after frying a few more of the brutes into a crisp, they bugged out in the other direction.
Having had enough excitement for the day, Clover peered down looking for a safe place to land, noticing a large castle in the distance. As they circled high overhead, she peered back at Tara.
"Do you know what that place is?" she said.
"I don't know for sure, but it looks huge, even from this height. I think it might be the Kingdom of Gargaton. I've heard rumors about a place where everybody is ten times the size of normal people. The king would hold a lot of power in this land and know many things about the region. Perhaps he can give you some more clues about the location of your magic waterfall."