Here is chapter 5 of my dragon story!:

I sat and stared, mouth agape, as a massive bank of cloud loomed up above us. We flew straight into it and I screamed as I got plunged into cold, wet cloud. We emerged out the other side dripping wet and shivering. Thracnaw shook like a dog and I slipped off his back! I screamed louder than before as I plunged the short distance to the carpet of clouds below. I would punch right through the cloud and the fall to the earth below! Why had I done this, I would die! I should have taken the detention at school! And then I hit the soft, cushiony cloud, which bounced me back up like a trampoline. I landed back on Thracnaw’s back.

“Impossible,” I shrieked in my mind, still a bit shocked from thinking that I was going to die.

“We are in the City Of The Grades. Anything is possible. This entire cloud system, apart from the entrance cloud, is fortified by the Grade Queen Pair- our dragon and human queen. They rule as one. The human manages the humans, the dragon, the dragons. Their magic makes the entire city spongy and bouncy. There are many accidents with people falling off their dragon, you see.”

“Right…”

My mind struggled to process all this information. But then I looked up, and all coherent thought was driven from my mind. We were flying into a metropolis built on two levels. On the bottom level was normal sized houses, shops and streets, all built on the bouncy cloud. On the top level, seemingly floating in mid-air, was a second complex. I realized that it was the exact same layout as the normal one, just scaled up over 10 times. The bigger one must be for the dragons, and the smaller one for the humans! About half way through the city, the layout seemed to change. It was all on one level, but still massive. That must be where the Grades live once they had been paired! At the very end of the city, the backs of which disappeared into the clouds, were 3, massive buildings. Thracnaw read my mind (literally), and mind-spoke again.

“The white building on the left hand side is the hospital. The gray one on the right is the armory and equipment center. The massive building in the middle with all the gold and jewels round it is the palace for our Grade Queen Pair. Our Grade Queen Pair are very special. They have the highest privileges and they work very hard for them. Their magic is the greatest in the land. They are revered by everyone, and greatly feared by all enemies to dragons and Gradians. They are elected once one dies. Dragons and their spires have an long life span, so the Grade Queen Pair is usually up for election every 450 years, which will be in about 132 years’ time. Or if they die in battle, but that is unusual now that we are supposedly in peace time.”
I sensed a bitter note creeping into his thoughts here. I knew he wasn’t happy that we weren’t fighting Decaleloss, but surely being at peace is better than fighting and dying? But then, Decaleloss had taken many of his family’s lives, so it was understandable.