Don’t Blink, Larry.
Part I
Larry cruised down highway 36 East doing just about the speed limit. A chat with the Highway Patrol would be a real inconvenience today. The Rocky Mountains faded into a line of blue lumps on the floor of the horizon behind him. Ahead an uninhabited swath of burnt-yellow Colorado plains stretched away to the horizon in a numbingly infinite way. He thought he could make out a tree, just there on the horizon. He hadn’t seen another vehicle in over an hour. I-70 handled all the cross country traffic these days, which suited Larry just fine, given his cargo.
The aging Astro van sagged with the weight of his cargo. Wind howled through the open front windows, swirling the scents of sulfur and cigarettes around Larry’s bushy beard. He wore ray bans, flannel, and a grim expression. His cargo stirred behind him, sending a fresh waft of sulfur up from the back of the van. With it came a subtle wave of confusion and fear.
Larry glanced up to the rearview mirror. First, he noticed that even pulled back into a neat bun, you could see more salt than pepper in his hair. The grays had the upper hand and showed no sign of slowing down. He sighed, then glanced past his hairline to the back of the van. He’d taken the seats out more than a decade ago; in their stead a sturdy metal crate took up all the space and accounted for most of the weight in his cargo. Through the thick steel bars he could see glistening red scales winding around themselves in mesmerizing circles. Even in the dim light of the van’s cargo bay, they captivated him as the dragon moved. Moving. It should have been sleeping. Another wave of fear, confusion, and now some anger wafted up from the back, followed by a puff of dark smoke.
WHHHRRRRRRRUUUUUUMMMMMMMM
“Shit!” Larry whispered, jerking the wheel to the left to get off the rumble strip. A massive puff of smoke drifted past him and he coughed on the acrid stench. “Shit. cough Shit. cough Shit.”
As the smoke cleared out, the driver furrowed his brow, glared at the flashing white lines and concentrated. He focused on a peaceful feeling of safety and the sense of returning home and tried to emanate it back to the small dragon. He created an image of himself as a protector and shepherd, a servant to their collective, higher cause.
“Easy, Dahlia, let’s be easy,” he muttered, as much to calm himself as her.
The dragon quieted, some. The next puff of smoke was smaller, at least. Larry exhaled, then reached down without looking and felt around in a pocket of his dashboard. His fingers danced across the pack of gum before they found the crumpled pack of cigs and tugged one out. Holding the wheel with a knee, he lit it without wavering an inch back toward that damned rumble strip. Rookie mistake, hitting the rumble strip with an adolescent dragon in the back. Stupid, rookie mistake. Funny, you make almost as many rookie mistakes at the end of a career as you do at the start. The mind dulls as the excitement fades. Picturing his quiet clinic in Nantucket, Larry shuffled the lit cig to a corner of his mouth and reached up for the handset of his radio. He clicked the button down and held the mouthpiece up to the free corner of his mouth.
“Scarlet Egg to Nest, come back Nest,” he said as clearly as he could. “One hour out from base and we’re showing signs that sedation has worn off.” He released and waited. Silence. Then a crackle.
“Nest to Scarlet,” a stark female voice came to him. “Put that damn cigarette out when you call us. I’ll check with anesthesiology.”
Larry huffed a frustrated laugh and managed to hold both the cig and the mouthpiece with one hand while steering with the other. Years of practice.
“Copy,” he said. “I don’t know how long she has, so don’t keep me waiting.” He racked the mouthpiece and took a drag of the cig.
Silence for a moment. A puff of sulfur. The crate rocked. Larry sighed and he drove on. Margarethe. (aka Nest for local radio comms) Real no-nonsense, Nurse Ratchet, greater good, science knows best, kind of a gal. Fine. Just fine. Grated against him a little. She occupied a mid level operational role, she didn’t know the animals. Hardly knew why they mattered. Hardly understood what they’d tried to build here at the Bureau. Sanctuaries for truly incredible species, too, for lack of a better word, magical for the layman to interact with. Magical and dangerous. To her, it was just another high-security clearance operations gig with a secure paycheck. And Larry was just another lippy veterinarian.
Larry smoked the rest of the cig and focused on the flat, empty land stretching away from him on all sides. He should have done this run at night. Margethe had talked him out of it. “Hide in plain sight,” she’d said. Stupid. Well. It worked for the Astro van, sure, but if Dahlia woke up or went through one of her sudden, violent growth spurts… less so.
He caught himself daydreaming again. He could have taken a cushy vet job from the outset. Doling out pain meds to shitzu’s and wrapping up bite wounds, maybe the occasional parakeet with anxiety. Nice life. Boring though. Very boring. When the Bureau of Non-Rational Creatures had approached him with a new life, he’d leapt at it. Foolishly. Larry had a tendency toward leaping more so than looking. The BNRC kept track of and fostered Non-Rational creatures in a chain of bunkers, warehouses, and fields around the world. What humanity didn’t believe in, it couldn’t mutilate, enslave, or destroy. Dahlia, for example, would make a fine prize in any billionaire’s vacation home menagerie. They’d put her in a box and she’d never taste the sky again.
The little dragon had outgrown the Rocky Mountain incubation facility and now needed transport to a larger one under the Western plains. Cue Larry and his van. Larry had served with the Bureau for 27 and a half years and he’d seen just about enough. He was ready for boring. Ready to retire. Ready to slip this little dragon an unofficial sedative, gun it for the Nest, and call it a career. He glanced in the rearview. Cute dragon, as they went, her scales really radiated. She’d be something special once she grew a bit. Not today. Hopefully.
A soft keening cry came from the back of the van and the crate rattled.
“Shiiiiiit,” Larry whispered. He started conjuring images of calm and peace again, but before he could bundle them up nice, he felt something else. A wave of greed and malice seemed to crash down on him from above. It hammered at his heart so strongly he felt that it should have been visible, like he should have been able to see some dark, choking cloud of gas wrapping around his van. He even coughed a few times, then a massive cloud of sulfur came from the back of the van and the crate rattled. Then, much worse, the crate groaned. Growth spurt. His vet brain kicked on.
Draoconis Mitis, the gentle dragons, able to communicate telepathically within a small range of emotions. They reach great ages and massive sizes, given the appropriate environment. Growth occurs in very brief, almost violent intervals, sometimes increasing the dragon’s size by double. These growth spurts can be triggered and/or amplified by perceived threats, memories of past-trauma, and/or the smell of nutmeg. Note: the smell of oregano can slow or halt growth altogether, but may irreparably stunt the dragon’s growth.
Larry felt another screeching wave of emotions from above, greed and malice, but laced with the excitement of the hunt and the surety of a swift kill. He leaned way forward, bearding brushing his knuckles on the steering wheel as he craned his head to glare up. The clear blue sky glared back down at him. He swore, quietly, and sat back. A massive shadow swept over his windshield. Cold fear shot down his spine. He made a deliberate effort to quell that. The crate shook again and a little cry came from it’s center.
Oh Christ on a candelabra… don’t grow on me…
“Dahlia…” Larry called back. “Let’s be easy, girl. Let’s be easy. We’re almost home. Stay calm for me, baby, I won’t have to slip you the green stuff.” He gave those feelings a gentle push her way and held his breath for a moment, waiting for the crate to burst open.
It didn’t. He breathed again, quietly.
No one knew for sure if the black market for non-rational creatures emerged before the Bureau or vis versa. If you were wealthy enough and cast away your scruples about shady business dealings, you could get your hands on some unique, beautiful, weird, magical, and dangerous creatures. The market for those creatures pushed them to the brink of extinction. The Bureau pushed back for all it was worth (which wasn’t much, as evidenced by Larry’s old van).
Larry thought about quitting (well, at this point retiring from) the Bureau twice a day, just after waking up and just as he walked into the office. Knowing that he got to stand between Dahlia and assholes like whoever had trained this rogue dragon to attack innocent vans called him back to his duty.
He reached again for the cigarette pack, then thought better of it and grabbed a stick of gum instead. He mashed it in his molars with vigor.
“Nest to Scarlet,” Margarethe crackled through on the radio.
“Thank God,” Larry said, snatching down the mouthpiece. “Go for Scarlet.”
“The sedation should have lasted another 2 hours,” she said. “Can you advise as to whether there may be extenuating circumstances? Startling traffic, loud noises, things of that nature?”
Larry swallowed a scream of frustration, bounced his head off the steering wheel, bared his teeth, then clicked the radio button.
“How about the massive, rogue dragon that just blasted us with thoughts of evisceration?” he hissed. “THINK THAT MIGHT DO IT?”
The shadow swept past again, a sudden swell of gleeful anticipation crashed down on them. Dahlia gave a low growl.
“Hold.”
Larry held. Held back another scream. Useless bureaucrats. They had radar for this. Detection systems. Were they all asleep? Did they give a damn about one little dragon and a doc who was about to hit his lucrative retirement. A new wave of thoughts crashed down on him, not unlike a bucket of bricks.
Oh my god… I’m cheaper dead. I mean…. no kids, no wife. They could disappear me for free and save… a lot of money… But come on… burn me? After 26 years? 27? … no… maybe… Margarethe certainly wouldn’t mind…
Dahlia growled again. Larry held. Driving. Knuckles white on the wheel. Wondering whether the radio would ever crackle on again. He felt sad, not just for himself, but for the little life in the back. He waited for the screech of metal from the roof, or the battle cry of a large male dragon swooping down to pluck his van off the road. He drove toward the Nest. Trying to quash the sudden feeling that he and Dahlia had been left out to dry.
Nothing came. He waited. The radio crackled.
Part II
Don’t Blink, Larry.
Part I
Larry cruised down highway 36 East doing just about the speed limit. A chat with the Highway Patrol would be a real inconvenience today. The Rocky Mountains faded into a line of blue lumps on the floor of the horizon behind him. Ahead an uninhabited swath of burnt-yellow Colorado plains stretched away to the horizon in a numbingly infinite way. He thought he could make out a tree, just there on the horizon. He hadn’t seen another vehicle in over an hour. I-70 handled all the cross country traffic these days, which suited Larry just fine, given his cargo.
The aging Astro van sagged with the weight of his cargo. Wind howled through the open front windows, swirling the scents of sulfur and cigarettes around Larry’s bushy beard. He wore ray bans, flannel, and a grim expression. His cargo stirred behind him, sending a fresh waft of sulfur up from the back of the van. With it came a subtle wave of confusion and fear.
Larry glanced up to the rearview mirror. First, he noticed that even pulled back into a neat bun, you could see more salt than pepper in his hair. The grays had the upper hand and showed no sign of slowing down. He sighed, then glanced past his hairline to the back of the van. He’d taken the seats out more than a decade ago; in their stead a sturdy metal crate took up all the space and accounted for most of the weight in his cargo. Through the thick steel bars he could see glistening red scales winding around themselves in mesmerizing circles. Even in the dim light of the van’s cargo bay, they captivated him as the dragon moved. Moving. It should have been sleeping. Another wave of fear, confusion, and now some anger wafted up from the back, followed by a puff of dark smoke.
WHHHRRRRRRRUUUUUUMMMMMMMM
“Shit!” Larry whispered, jerking the wheel to the left to get off the rumble strip. A massive puff of smoke drifted past him and he coughed on the acrid stench. “Shit. cough Shit. cough Shit.”
As the smoke cleared out, the driver furrowed his brow, glared at the flashing white lines and concentrated. He focused on a peaceful feeling of safety and the sense of returning home and tried to emanate it back to the small dragon. He created an image of himself as a protector and shepherd, a servant to their collective, higher cause.
“Easy, Dahlia, let’s be easy,” he muttered, as much to calm himself as her.
The dragon quieted, some. The next puff of smoke was smaller, at least. Larry exhaled, then reached down without looking and felt around in a pocket of his dashboard. His fingers danced across the pack of gum before they found the crumpled pack of cigs and tugged one out. Holding the wheel with a knee, he lit it without wavering an inch back toward that damned rumble strip. Rookie mistake, hitting the rumble strip with an adolescent dragon in the back. Stupid, rookie mistake. Funny, you make almost as many rookie mistakes at the end of a career as you do at the start. The mind dulls as the excitement fades. Picturing his quiet clinic in Nantucket, Larry shuffled the lit cig to a corner of his mouth and reached up for the handset of his radio. He clicked the button down and held the mouthpiece up to the free corner of his mouth.
“Scarlet Egg to Nest, come back Nest,” he said as clearly as he could. “One hour out from base and we’re showing signs that sedation has worn off.” He released and waited. Silence. Then a crackle.
“Nest to Scarlet,” a stark female voice came to him. “Put that damn cigarette out when you call us. I’ll check with anesthesiology.”
Larry huffed a frustrated laugh and managed to hold both the cig and the mouthpiece with one hand while steering with the other. Years of practice.
“Copy,” he said. “I don’t know how long she has, so don’t keep me waiting.” He racked the mouthpiece and took a drag of the cig.
Silence for a moment. A puff of sulfur. The crate rocked. Larry sighed and he drove on. Margarethe. (aka Nest for local radio comms) Real no-nonsense, Nurse Ratchet, greater good, science knows best, kind of a gal. Fine. Just fine. Grated against him a little. She occupied a mid level operational role, she didn’t know the animals. Hardly knew why they mattered. Hardly understood what they’d tried to build here at the Bureau. Sanctuaries for truly incredible species, too, for lack of a better word, magical for the layman to interact with. Magical and dangerous. To her, it was just another operations gig with a high-security clearance and a secure paycheck. And Larry was just another lippy veterinarian.
Larry smoked the rest of the cig and focused on the flat, empty land stretching away from him on all sides. He should have done this run at night. Margethe had talked him out of it. “Hide in plain sight,” she’d said. Stupid. Well. It worked for the Astro van, sure, but if Dahlia woke up or went through one of her sudden, violent growth spurts… less so.
He caught himself daydreaming again. He could have taken a cushy vet job from the outset. Doling out pain meds to shitzu’s and wrapping up bite wounds, maybe the occasional parakeet with anxiety. Nice life. Boring though. Very boring. When the Bureau of Non-Rational Creatures had approached him with a new life, he’d leapt at it. Foolishly. Larry had a tendency toward leaping more so than looking. The BNRC kept track of and fostered Non-Rational creatures in a chain of bunkers, warehouses, and fields around the world. What humanity didn’t believe in, it couldn’t mutilate, enslave, or destroy. Dahlia, for example, would make a fine prize in any billionaire’s vacation home menagerie. They’d put her in a box and she’d never taste the sky again.
The little dragon had outgrown the Rocky Mountain incubation facility and now needed transport to a larger one under the Western plains. Cue Larry and his van. Larry had served with the Bureau for 27 and a half years and he’d seen just about enough. He was ready for boring. Ready to retire. Ready to slip this little dragon an unofficial sedative, gun it for the Nest, and call it a career. He glanced in the rearview. Cute dragon, as they went, her scales really radiated. She’d be something special once she grew a bit. Not today. Hopefully.
A soft keening cry came from the back of the van and the crate rattled.
“Shiiiiiit,” Larry whispered. He started conjuring images of calm and peace again, but before he could bundle them up nice, he felt something else. A wave of greed and malice seemed to crash down on him from above. It hammered at his heart so strongly he felt that it should have been visible, like he should have been able to see some dark, choking cloud of gas wrapping around his van. He even coughed a few times, then a massive cloud of sulfur came from the back of the van and the crate rattled. Then, much worse, the crate groaned. Growth spurt. His vet brain kicked on.
Draoconis Mitis, the gentle dragons, able to communicate telepathically within a small range of emotions. They reach great ages and massive sizes, given the appropriate environment. Growth occurs in very brief, almost violent intervals, sometimes increasing the dragon’s size by double. These growth spurts can be triggered and/or amplified by perceived threats, memories of past-trauma, and/or the smell of nutmeg. Note: the smell of oregano can slow or halt growth altogether, but may irreparably stunt the dragon’s growth.
Larry felt another screeching wave of emotions from above, greed and malice, but laced with the excitement of the hunt and the surety of a swift kill. He leaned way forward, bearding brushing his knuckles on the steering wheel as he craned his head to glare up. The clear blue sky glared back down at him. He swore, quietly, and sat back. A massive shadow swept over his windshield. Cold fear shot down his spine. He made a deliberate effort to quell that. The crate shook again and a little cry came from it’s center.
Oh Christ on a candelabra… don’t grow on me…
“Dahlia…” Larry called back. “Let’s be easy, girl. Let’s be easy. We’re almost home. Stay calm for me, baby, I won’t have to slip you the green stuff.” He gave those feelings a gentle push her way and held his breath for a moment, waiting for the crate to burst open.
It didn’t. He breathed again, quietly.
No one knew for sure if the black market for non-rational creatures emerged before the Bureau or vis versa. If you were wealthy enough and cast away your scruples about shady business dealings, you could get your hands on some unique, beautiful, weird, magical, and dangerous creatures. The market for those creatures pushed them to the brink of extinction. The Bureau pushed back for all it was worth (which wasn’t much, as evidenced by Larry’s old van).
Larry thought about quitting (well, at this point retiring from) the Bureau twice a day, just after waking up and just as he walked into the office. Knowing that he got to stand between Dahlia and assholes like whoever had trained this rogue dragon to attack innocent vans called him back to his duty.
He reached again for the cigarette pack, then thought better of it and grabbed a stick of gum instead. He mashed it in his molars with vigor.
“Nest to Scarlet,” Margarethe crackled through on the radio.
“Thank God,” Larry said, snatching down the mouthpiece. “Go for Scarlet.”
“The sedation should have lasted another 2 hours,” she said. “Can you advise as to whether there may be extenuating circumstances? Startling traffic, loud noises, things of that nature?”
Larry swallowed a scream of frustration, bounced his head off the steering wheel, bared his teeth, then clicked the radio button.
“How about the massive, rogue dragon that just blasted us with thoughts of evisceration?” he hissed. “THINK THAT MIGHT DO IT?”
The shadow swept past again, a sudden swell of gleeful anticipation crashed down on them. Dahlia gave a low growl.
“Hold.”
Larry held. Held back another scream. Useless bureaucrats. They had radar for this. Detection systems. Were they all asleep? Did they give a damn about one little dragon and a doc who was about to hit his lucrative retirement. A new wave of thoughts crashed down on him, not unlike a bucket of bricks.
Oh my god… I’m cheaper dead. I mean…. no kids, no wife. They could disappear me for free and save… a lot of money… But come on… burn me? After 26 years? 27? … no… maybe… Margarethe certainly wouldn’t mind…
Dahlia growled again. Larry held. Driving. Knuckles white on the wheel. Wondering whether the radio would ever crackle on again. He felt sad, not just for himself, but for the little life in the back. He waited for the screech of metal from the roof, or the battle cry of a large male dragon swooping down to pluck his van off the road. He drove toward the Nest. Trying to quash the sudden feeling that he and Dahlia had been left out to dry.
Nothing came. He waited. After an age, the radio crackled.
Part II
“Nest to Scarlet. Looks like a minor storm cell on you, we’re going to have to divert on account of that weather.”
Larry inhaled sharply to retort. The gum shot to the back of his throat and lodged there for a terrifying moment. He coughed hard and it popped out, flying through the window. He coughed and swore a few times then mashed the button on his mic.
“DIVERT TO WHERE, NEST?! WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!!!”
“Hold.”
“Hold?! I’m not holding any damn thing,” Larry spat. “I’m coming to you, Nest, just be ready for us.”
“Do not approach the Nest,” Margarethe said, sternly. “I repeat-”
click
Larry turned off the radio.
“I heard ya the first–”
slam
The wheel jerked in Larry’s hand and a screech of metal came from above and behind him. The van bounced low enough to scrape the tires and they swerved wildly across the lanes. A short draconic cry came from overhead along with a momentary wash of frustration. Larry glanced in his rearview and saw claws piercing his roof. More sounds of metal tearing, then a green dragon leg punched through the roof. Another screech of rage and a flap of wings. The van lifted, just a bit, enough to make Larry shout a few curses. The vet fought for control, felt the wheel ripping back and forth in his hand. A final shriek and another wash of frustration, then all went quiet. Except for the wind sailing in the window and out through the roof. The Astro sailed on down the highway.
Panting, Larry glanced in his rearview again, angling it up to examine the ruined roof. In the moment of calm, his vet brain kicked in again.
Claw marks show 4-inches between tips, 18 inches long from heel to tip. Older adolescent, probably male, given his behavior, psycho-projections, and attack pattern, and probably not much longer than 25 - 30 feet.
The thought of those claws picking him up by the lower intestine made Larry shiver.
Not much larger than Dahlia, he thought. After a growth spurt, probably an even match.
Larry flicked the volume up on the radio for a moment.
“-peat, come back, Scarlet Egg,” Margarethe was saying. “I repeat, we advise you to use the green vial. Repeat: Use the green vial to contain the situation. Mother Hen will rendezvous.”
Mother Hen! His heart soared. They hadn’t abandoned him after all. How about that? Then he realized that the rogue dragon had taken plenty of time to regroup and his heart sank again. He gripped the wheel with both hands, waiting for the smash. None came. He drove for another moment in silence, hunched up, waiting for disaster. Nothing happened. The little green bastard hadn’t grown up yet, he was probably savoring the hunt. Probably didn’t get out much.
Stupid. Larry. Being stupid. Use the time you have.
He gathered his thoughts and projected them back toward Dahlia, first the image of running home, feelings of safety in the nest, but alongside that he tried to project an aching worry about the discovered nest. The vulnerability of the flock. He paused, gathering a new set of thoughts. He conjured images of two dragons fighting and of Dahlia and the smell of nutmeg. His fear for her leaked through, his worry that she might not win, that she’d never fought before, that this dragon could take her. The fear beneath this fear bled through it all. That the criminals, the bold deceivers, the truly heartless bastards, would capture her and enslave her. Transport in a crate was one thing for Larry. Life on a leash, or harvested for blood and scales… that was… worse than criminal. It was human. Disgustingly human. Larry let it all bleed through.
Larry tried something that he’d rarely gotten to work with dragons before. He tried to convey the idea of a choice and his own uncertainty. He tried to put the decision on her.
Larry glanced up into the rearview mirror to find a golden eye peering out at him through a slat in the crate. Scales flashed as the dragon coiled itself tighter in the crate, growing. A light groan of metal bolts. Scales and flesh bulged through the holes of the crate now. He knew it was hurting her, knew that she’d made a decision. He felt from her the urge to fight, to defeat any adversary, to burn a hole in the world if that’s what it came to. A rumbling sound emanated from deep within her coils.
“Alright!” Larry shouted. “Alright, I heard you! Don’t destroy what’s left of the damn van!” He slammed the brakes and the Astro screeched and shuddered as it slowed. The green dragon swept down in front of him, claws sparking as it dragged down the pavement, a wash of frustration sloughing down behind it. A massive sweep of wings took it up off the road, out of sight. Larry ignored it all as he muscled the Astro onto the shoulder in a spray of gravel and curses. They shuddered to a stop and Larry didn’t hesitate. He moved the cigs and gum aside and found two small vials. He glanced down and tossed the green vial back into the dashboard.
“Bite me, Nest,” he muttered. Larry flung himself out of the van and charged to the back, forcing himself not to look for the green wings, not to freeze in terror. His bowels bubbled as he wrenched open the back hatch. He loosened the screw top of the vial and leaned forward to reach for the handle of the crate. The golden eye had maneuvered to the end of the crate and he could see her narrow head, the high arch of her brow over that golden orb, the vicious teeth overlapping the upper and lower jaw.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “We can still run.” He knew she couldn’t speak English, but she seemed to understand the moment of hesitation. She screeched and shook the whole van. Rage and impatience washed over him.
“Fuckin’ a, right,” he said and slapped opened the hatch. Dahlia exploded out blasting past him and bowling him over. Larry screamed as he tumbled to the pavement, pain shooting up from his lower back as he rolled over backward. He followed her flight as he rolled and saw her, stark red against the blue sky, crashing into the green dragon just a few feet above and behind him. He flopped to a stop and then sat up to watch. The dragons had collapsed to the ground in a writhing mass of shrieks and flashing claws. Even amidst the chaos, Larry could tell that Dahlia was still 10 feet shorter than the green male. He’d misjudged. Badly. Still though, she fought like a demon. The movements flashed quickly, jabbing claws, scything tails, but they couldn’t keep up with the mind-blurring mash of thoughts and feelings flowing out from the pair. Rage, blended with sadness collided with delight and a thrill at the vigor of battle, which ramped up and then seemed to switch sides. Pain! Lancing pain. Gripping determination, defiance. A plea for peace. Patronizing glee. Fury, resistance. More pain.
Lancing pain punched through Larry’s skull. He gripped his head and curled up over his own knees, groaning softly. He felt a sudden blast of wind and when he looked up both dragons were gone. Cursing and blinking as the pain in his head receded, he glared up into the bright sky, searching for her. It finally occurred to him that his hand ached. The vial. He looked down. The cap remained on. She never got the accelerant.
He glared up toward the clouds, trying to tell which distant silhouette was winning and which was Dahlia. He couldn’t. He projected a deep desire to help, to aid, scarlet, the image of a dahlia… which meant nothing to a dragon… Maybe she’d get it. Larry stared into the sky. The dragons fought in silence now and their emotions faded up into the air. It occurred to Larry that he might have lost Dahlia forever.
He glared skyward. The two silhouettes separated. They looked nearly the same size now. They hung in the air, suspended on updrafts, circling high into the thin air above, tails slicing through a thin cloud that trailed past. Larry lost them for a moment in the sun.
A puff of white and they crashed back down through the cloud, locked together again. Bubbles of frustration and panic floated down to his mind, he thought he recognized Dahlia’s thought profile. He urged her to come to him for aid, he opened the vial and sniffed the nutmeg, projecting it desperately up.
Then the forms separated, one of them fell toward the Earth limp. Larry’s heart sank he glared up, trying to pick out a color… but he could already tell by the size. Dahlia, lifeless Dahlia drifted down, wings whipping uselessly by her sides. Tears brimmed in Larry’s eyes. Tears of frustration, sure… but she was just a kid… and she looked so sad and frail, falling from the air. What could he do? Catch her? Soften the fall with his van? And what then? The brutal green dragon would rip him apart, for joy.
His thoughts cut off as the male dragon dove down to Dahlia. Larry held his breath… but, instead of eviscerating her, the green dragon caught Dahlia up with a gentle grasp of his massive claws. He flapped a few times to stop their fall. Then, with some effort, he began to carry her away.
An actual tear slipped down Larry’s cheek then and he scrubbed it away as he turned back to the Astro. Nothing he could do. He was just a goddamn veterinarian. What did the Bureau expect?
A blast of unfathomable rage hit the back of Larry’s brain, raising the hairs on his body in a tingling wave from his neck down to his heels. He dropped to one knee and gasped for air before he thought to look up. His eyes followed the trail of emotion, he couldn’t have explained that if he tried, and he found Esmerelda, the Mother Hen. She flew in from the south, closing fast on the two dragons flying to the north. Larry’s breath slowed and shallowed. The mother blotted out the sky. Her jaws could hold the entire Astro van. She could swallow Larry whole. His heart felt tiny as it pounded against his rib cage. He cringed in awe at the sight.
Esmerelda soared over him, the shadow of her tail winding sinuously past for an age. She pursued the belabored male. The green dragon suddenly looked quite small and frail as Esmerelda approached.
He turned to face her and shrieked. Larry didn’t feel the surprise or fear from him at this distant, but he dropped Dahlia immediately and shot off into the distance. Roaring a final word of warning at the young man, Esmerelda caught her daughter with one delicate claw. She flapped in place, slow and steady, suspending herself impossibly over the plains. Magical. Larry could hardly breathe. After a moment’s contemplation, she turned back toward him and the Astro. Her claws glinted in the sun, the reptilian shape of her head and those massive teeth jutting past her jaws, all hit his central nervous system and tickled his adrenaline to attention.
He wanted to bolt, to flee, to dive into the grassy ditch by the road. He fought those instincts down and stood his ground.n
She gave a massive flap of her wings to slow herself, buffeting him with dirt and rolling pebbles past his boots. Another flap gave her just enough lift to deposit the tiny young dragon before him, a heap of scarlet scales and vibrant wings that reached his own height. Her chest rose slightly, then fell trembling. Larry exhaled. Alive. She was alive. But no thoughts came or went from her. She felt… dormant. He jumped at another massive flap of Esmerelda’s wings. She landed some fifty feet away. Then she loomed.
A thought of Dahlia slammed into his mind. Her hatching and her first growth. A mother’s pride.
Then the smell of nutmeg crashed in close behind, so strong that Larry choked and gagged.
When he’d recovered, he pieced it together. He found the vial of nutmeg laying where he’d dropped it. Just a few pinches remained. Enough, hopefully enough. He glanced at Esmerelda, she glared back with yellow eyes. Hopefully enough. Larry slipped the powdered nutmeg out onto his palm and dropped the vial. He approached the little dragon’s head, waited for her to exhale, then quickly put his palm before her nostrils. She drew in a tremulous breath, then… nothing. Larry jerked back his palm before she could exhale. He glanced at Esmerelda, who glared back. Larry sighed and repeated the exercise. Again. And Again. Soon Dahlia’s breath grew stronger. Her inhales more forceful. Her neck stretched toward his palm with every breath and he had to step back. She grew. As he watched, she grew.
He stumbled back and tripped on his own feet, crashing to the ground again. Another jolt of pain shot up from his low back and he cursed, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them, Dahlia stared down at him from a great height. Her head might have fit back into the crate, but the rest of her never would. She’d doubled in size.
The now-huge red dragon stretched her neck down slowly and opened her jaws. Larry looked down her raw red throat and his heart pounded up into a near panic. He screwed his eyes shut. The dragon closed her jaws, gently clenched the front of his plaid shirt, and pulled him to his feet. She looked him in the eye. Gratitude slipped through his thoughts. Gratitude and an almost familial wish for his own safety. Another tear filled his eye and he tried to send both emotions back to her.
Then she crouched and leapt up into the sky, keening with joy. Esmerelda gave him a last look, then took off after the young one. At first they flew east, toward Nest, but after a moment they made a slow circle around. He watched as they flew above him and the van. Awe and humility flooded him. Not from the sky, from a few decades of working with all manner of strange and magical beasts. A lucky life. A unique life. No regrets.
Larry coughed as the adrenaline and emotion drained from his body. He climbed back into the Astro, put it in gear, and started driving toward the Nest. Wind whistled from his windows up through the hole in his roof. Hand shaking, he reached up for the radio. He fumbled it. Stopped. Reached down, hesitated, and fumbled out a fresh piece of gum.
“Scarlet Egg to Nest,” Larry called in, shouting over the whistle of wind. “Returning home with a two bird aerial escort.” Maragarethe clicked back immediately.
“Nest to Egg, please confirm, two scarlet birds escort you?”
“Confirmed,” Larry said, grinning despite himself. “And the weather has cleared.”
“Glad to hear it, Scarlet Egg,” Margarethe said, emotionless, even now. “Expect a full debrief on return.”
“My last debrief,” Larry shot back. “You’ll be happy to know.”
“We’ll see about that,” Margarethe noted. “And never tell me how I feel. Nest out.”
Larry smirked, despite himself, and racked the radio, watching the shadows of dragons race along the plains beside him as he went.
