For Lack of a Better World

It was supposed to be another boring day of school, that winter day, or so I thought as I walked. I walked with a brisk, measured pace, just to stave off the cold that invariably slipped through my clothes and made my day miserable. I was trying to make the most out of the month or so remaining before winter break came rolling around, and I was also trying not to worry too much about an upcoming test, but the cold really worked against me. It was distracting, the way every movement allowed warm air to escape my garments and cold air to worm its way in, but not annoying enough to make me tuck in my shirt.

I could see my breath in front of me every time I exhaled, and I could feel the sharp bite of the cold air through my nose, down my windpipe, and in my lungs. The cold air carried with it the pleasant, pungent smell of wet leaves and damp earth. I took deeper breaths in spite of myself, enjoying the crisp smell of the new day’s fresh air before once again picking up the pace to keep warm.

As I walked up to the school’s entrance, it occurred to me that I hadn’t run into anyone else. There would usually be a couple busloads worth of people filing into the building around the time I came, so I checked my watch. I was running about three minutes late, but that was largely due to a last-minute scramble for a couple of books I wanted to read in my spare time at school. I sped up again, this time to make sure I wouldn’t be late. You can never be too sure when you cut it as close as I do.

When I arrived on the third floor, where my classroom was, I was surprised to see the entire class huddled in a mass around the classroom’s double sliding doors. I paused for a moment to shrug off my backpack, and everyone immediately cleared a path to the door for me. I groaned to myself. What’d gotten into the classroom this time?

The moment I stepped into the classroom, I understood perfectly why everyone was huddled outside. Come to think of it, I believe there were even some teachers were in the crowd. No doubt Mr. Anderson would be having laughs over this moment for many a year to come.

It was a startlingly simple situation. There was a dragon in the room – that was it. She was white, the color that the snow outside the window would have been had there been any snow anywhere within a fifty-mile radius of the school. Hail was about as bad as it got around these parts, and we didn’t get very much of that either. I guessed, based on the rather chilly weather we’d been getting recently, that she had come in search of warmth, and it could get plenty warm in the classroom. All you had to do was close the windows and wait. It got pretty stuffy, too.

As hesitant as I was, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do in the room without at the very least putting my bag down at my seat. I spent some time fidgeting about near the sliding doors but I had run out of time to waste, so I headed for my desk and mentally slapped myself. I was so caught up in seeing a dragon in the classroom that I’d failed to realize one very important thing: the dragon was curled up on my desk.

I approached my seat slowly, cautiously, and above all, quietly. The last thing I wanted to do was startle the dragon. It didn’t matter how small they were – they were still dragons, and therefore still very dangerous. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed that I know this firsthand.

When I got within about a few feet of the table, the dragon’s electric blue eyes shot open and his finned ears perked up. I heard everyone outside drop whatever they were doing to come watch “Ghost” take on the “overgrown lizard.” Yeah, they preferred to call me Ghost rather than my real name, Keith. Another step brought me a foot closer. The dragon’s head swiveled around and he looked me square in the eye. A couple of muffled gasps wafted in through the very tightly closed door, but that was it. Keeping my movements as smooth as possible, I put my bag on the floor next to my desk and slid into my seat. I made sure my hands were visible to the dragon at all times, and I made sure to keep them close to myself. At this point, I didn’t know what else to do. Just because I wasn’t scared stiff like everyone else doesn’t mean that I can do anything.

I was starting to feel warm, so I unzipped my jacket. You know how you get really hot after you stop moving but not a moment before? The people outside were starting to get restless. I heard complaints of boredom from some of the quote-unquote “manlier” guys and some worried whispering from the more sensitive people. The dragon looked up at everyone outside, and everyone outside stared back in at him. In the meantime, I was feeling a tad bit odd sitting there doing nothing with my jacket unzipped.

After about a minute of nothing happening, the dragon uncurled himself and, with drooping wings and dragging her tail, stumbled off the edge of the table. Out of reflex, I caught her.

She was freezing! No wonder she could barely move.

I set the dragon down in my lap and quickly pulled my arms from the sleeves of my jacket. I brought him closer to my core and wrapped my arms loosely around him, pulling my jacket around him, leaving a small slit so that she wouldn’t feel trapped. The door screeched open, but it wasn’t as loud or grating as it would be normally, so I guessed that a few “brave souls” had finally got up the courage to venture in. More and more people came in until everyone was back in the classroom, but I just ignored them. It isn’t hard when you’re basically hugging a gigantic ice cube.

The rest of the day went by much better than I had the right to expect. I had been afraid that some of the blockheads at school would try to have some “fun” with the dragon, but it seems they were still much too scared. Silly people, thinking of dragons as dumb beasts whose sole reason for existing was to cause death and destruction. I could feel the fear in the air, irrational and unfounded as it was. I could only imagine how strong the smell was to the dragon, who, though she could easily bully everyone else around, stuck close to me instead. That’s not to say she didn’t – she made it absolutely clear to the entire school that she was “in charge” and that she just didn’t consider them worthy of her attention. It was funny until I had to pull her off of the projector in the middle of class.

The bell signaling the end of the school day rung, and the dragon only flinched in response to the jarring sound. Desks and chairs clattered and screeched as everyone scrambled to gather up their belongings and get out of the school that held them captive for eight hours a day, five days a week, and freely dispensed homework that could easily take another two hours out of each day. As usual, I took my time, leafing through the pile of junk that was the interior of my desk, looking for the last bit of the day’s homework. I found a handout from last class, a couple bits of various different textbooks, and that one pen that I’d been looking for over the past two months. Well, I guess it wasn’t a bad thing.

Eventually I found the paper I was looking for in the depths of my backpack. Satisfied, I zipped the bag up, slung it over a shoulder, and turned to leave. The air outside was cold and crisp, and there weren’t but a few small puffy clouds in the sky, drifting wherever the winds whisked them. When I stopped and craned my neck back to see them better, I felt my head hit something that pushed back. Startled but curious, I froze before slowly reaching back with one hand and pulling back, of all things, the dragon.

I stood there, amidst the deluge of people racing toward the gate and freedom for the rest of the day, staring at the dragon curled around my hand, and he stared right back at me with those big blue puppy eyes of his. Someone bumped into me, reminding me that I was blocking traffic, so I brought the dragon to my shoulder and started walking. It seemed that I would be having a guest tonight.

As I walked, the dragon moved constantly from shoulder to shoulder and would occasionally perch on top of my head and reach out for the tips of tree branches. More than once I had to catch her because she would accidentally snag a branch and fail to get loose in time. It must have been a funny sight to anyone passing by, a teen fumbling to keep hold of a hyperactive dragon that was harder to keep hold of than smoke. Thankfully, I don’t think more than maybe three people actually noticed me before I got home.

The house itself was nothing too impressive, but I did like the fact that it was very easy to get up onto the roof from my room, and I spent a lot of time up there. It was hard to pretend otherwise when I could clearly see the shingles I had not only wiped clean and worn smooth with my pants. From a few hundred feet up in the air, my house almost looked like it had the chicken pox, what with all the discolored spots I’d left on the roof. Heck, I would have believed smallpox.

The moment I opened the door, the dragon shrunk into my shoulder, hiding as much of herself as possible in my jacket and behind my neck, leaving just her head poking out from the side so that he could look around, which she did. The scents of everything in the house had gotten quite strong over the course of the day, cooped up as they were, and they assaulted both our noses. I grimaced in sympathy for the dragon, whose sense of smell was somewhat more acute than mine, and hurried up the stairs to my room.

The first thing I did was open the window and stick my head outside for a breath of fresh air. The second thing I did was swing out of the window and climb onto the roof, making sure not to drop the dragon or lose my footing. I found one of my favorite spots, a few flat shingles up against the chimney that served as a sort of seat for me whenever I felt like I wanted to lean on something. The chimney was warm if the fireplace had been lit for a while, but was otherwise very cold.

It was a Friday afternoon and I didn’t feel like doing my homework ahead of time, so I passed the time by scanning the trees around for movement. The house was surrounded on three sides by the outer reaches of the forest that encircled most of the residential area, and being the person I was, I had explored quite a bit of it and was well known for my familiarity with it. Well known, if only because I could navigate through it more quickly and more consistently than most.

The forest floor was strangely still, even for the lazy winter Friday that today was, but I had the feeling that I knew why. I turned my gaze from the ground up to the clear blue sky above, searching for the small, fast-moving telltale blob of shadow that would indicate to me the presence of another dragon. The little white dragon in my lap did the same, almost tripping over herself when she turned too fast to face the same direction I was.

To me, it had always been painfully obvious when dragons were nearby, but everyone I knew went about their daily lives without so much as a clue about the magnificent creatures that lived practically in all of their backyards. In my case it might have been a bit more literal, as I would often spot dragons making their rounds near my house. Nearly never, of course, were they bold enough to step out into plain sight for the world to see, but my eyes would always be drawn to them, no matter how unwilling I was and no matter how well hidden they were. I’d lost many a train of thought to the dragons, but I didn’t hold it against them. How could I?

In what was sort of my own personal, private quest to better understand the dragons, I had, many years back, gotten into the habit of constantly observing my surroundings using any and all senses available. Perhaps I could only ever look in one direction at a time, but I could hear sounds from any direction. It was hard to sneak up and catch me by surprise, but it was also, for some unfathomable reason, difficult for people to tell when I found them out. They made jokes about eyes in the back of my head, which, although entertaining, were sadly not true. I never really did understand why they couldn’t tell when they were being watched – the prickling sensation that raced up and down the nape of my neck, all of one side of my back, and the entire length of my spine never failed to make me squirm in my seat.

It didn’t take me long to spot the vaguely airplane-shaped spot in the sky, circling in the shadow of a low cloud nearly directly above the house. The dragon circled above us for quite some time, breaking off just as the sun began its daily descent to the horizon and gliding down to vanish among the treetops. I frowned to myself. That wasn’t right. None of the dragons I’d ever seen in the area ever took the risk of flying this close to a residential area, much less land. She had landed close enough that not only could I have reached the clearing she had landed in within five minutes, she had come close enough that I could see that she was not from this area. Admittedly, now that I think about it, her general shape and build should have given her away long before she got close enough for me to make out her color. The dragons here tended to be stockier and shorter in length than their counterparts in the lower latitudes, who were, in general, slimmer but not necessarily weaker in strength. It was just that it was easier to lose excess heat if you had more surface area.

Her fiery red coloration would also likely have served, wherever she came from, as a warning to others that she was dangerous and not to be trifled with, but here it just made her stick out like a sore thumb. If she were to be left to her own devices, she would do just fine. Of that I had no doubt. I knew dragons to be more than capable of providing for themselves and even their entire community, if need be. Unfortunately, this was not a place that was welcoming to the uninformed dragon or dragoness. There were many places in the forest that regularly saw human traffic, and even a few that always had human traffic. There were also hunters, who I suppose can congregate at any “good” hunting spot, and there were a few in the vicinity. One of my achievements that I’m not so proud of is finding a couple of those spots.

One of my achievements that I’m definitely not proud of is getting shot at in those spots.

I leaned back on the chimney and blew out a long breath through my nose. It looked like I was going on a trip tonight, whether I wanted to or not. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that I hadn’t been spotted by the dragoness when she was circling overhead. If I had spotted her that easily, the she wouldn’t even had had to try to look for me or the dragon in my lap. I stood up as the sun dipped between two trees and reached out to the chimney to steady myself against the sudden rush of dizziness that swept over me. Evidently, I’d spent too long sitting down.

Mom was downstairs lighting the fireplace when I walked down the stairs. It was pretty unusual for us to light the fireplace just because we never really needed to. On the rare occasions when we did light it, it was usually because we were having a guest over who was more accustomed to central heating. That, or it was really cold today. The fireplace also created a lot of smoke, not all of which would escape out the chimney, a fact to which the armchair closest to the fireplace could attest. We’d given up on trying to keep it clean so long ago that I no longer remembered what color it was when it was new. These days, it was fine as long as it didn’t leave a stain when you sat in it. That, however, wasn’t too important.

I wanted to let as few people as possible to see the dragon, so I quietly crept back up the stairs and onto the roof again. From there, I made my way to a point near where the backdoor of the house would have been, and then took a well-established shortcut to the ground. In simpler terms, I jumped. There was, as I’m certain you know, a risk involved in doing so, but not the one you’d expect. What I worried about most wasn’t getting hurt in the process, but that someone would see me. There aren’t a whole lot of good ways to explain “recklessly” jumping off the roof of your own house. And while we’re on the topic, there also aren’t a whole lot of ways to explain a dragon either, so you can imagine I was really hoping no one was watching.

Unfortunately for me, someone was watching.

Fortunately for me, it was the dragoness whom I’d watched land not two minutes ago. It was impossible to miss the slight glow of her bright red scales among the dark green of shadowed underbrush. I only managed to catch a glimpse of the spade at the end of her tail as it was swallowed by the darkness that enveloped the forest at night. Without stopping to think, I followed her into the trees. This wasn’t the first time I’d made an unscheduled disappearance into the forest, so no one would start worrying unless I stayed gone past Monday.

I had a pretty good guess as to where the dragoness was headed, as there were only a few good spots in the area for a dragon to safely hide in, and I knew that at least one of them was occupied. Also, only two of them were easily visible from the air, so that ruled out all but the ones closest to the house. They were maybe ten minutes away on foot.

The first cave, which was little more than an indentation in the side of a riverbank, was a place that I had stumbled across by accident the first time I went exploring. By “stumbled across,” of course, I mean that I was introduced to it via a nice faceplant from the opposite bank. While it may not have been much in the way of shelter, it was still a good place to get away from everything and relax a bit. It was in plain sight, but it was difficult to notice unless you were looking for it or you knew it was there.

The little cave in the riverbank was an unoccupied space most of the time, bearing only two scents, one of them being mine and the other being that of a friend. Neither of us had been there for a while though, so I doubted the scents would scare the dragoness off. In fact, an old scent trail often indicated, in these parts as well as others, an unused dwelling, so there was a good chance that she was there.

As I got closer to where I knew the cave was, I slowed down and examined the ground under my feet, looking for paw prints. I didn’t find any, but the little dragon jumped off my shoulder and poked her head into the cave, chirping curiously, asking for a name. Getting no immediate response, she pushed deeper into the cave, disappearing from my sight completely. I followed her, but stopped just short of the mouth of the cave, placing myself in full view of any occupants the cave might hold. It was a wasted gesture, since the dragoness was facing away from me.

“Call me Ember,” a voice from inside the cave said. The little dragon continued chirping excitedly like the little kid she was, bombarding Ember with questions. Given the little that I could understand, Ember was being inundated with so many questions that there was no way she could possibly answer them all.

“Shh.” Ember shushed the little dragon and cocked her head, listening for something above the cave. I looked up just in time to see someone run straight off the top lip of the cave mouth and let out a yell of surprise. Ember placed herself in front of the little dragon, pushing her gently to one side with her tail while eyeing me warily, as if she expected trouble from me. I stood stock still and tried to look as nonthreatening as possible. The person on the ground in front of me groaned, attracting the attention of the little dragon, who scampered out of the cave and started nudging the downed person, leaving Ember aghast.

“Stop it, Ghost!” he exclaimed, peeling his face off the ground, “I’m up, okay? I’m up!” My name was actually Keith, but not many people use it. Most people knew me as Ghost, a nickname I got during a massive “camping” trip one winter. Everyone from my grade went, and since I was obviously familiar with the area, I came and went as I pleased, but to everyone else, I moved like a “ghost:” swiftly, silently, and invisibly. Given though, that Ghost was more of a mouthful than Keith, I never really figured out why everyone preferred it.

I half smiled to myself as I waited for Samuel, my best friend, who must have followed me all the way out here, to realize that it wasn’t me trying to get him “up.” Sam’s hand came up to swat what he thought was my hand away, but what he got for his trouble was a handful of dragon. He shook the stars from his eyes, which bugged out when he saw Ember - more specifically, when he saw her teeth, which were bared at him in a threatening display. Sam disappeared, reappearing, the heavy reek of fear clinging to him like spider webs, behind me a split second later. I’d never seen anyone move that fast before in my life.

The little dragon scrambled back up to the top of my head, so I reached up and plucked her off again, hoping that she’d get the message. Her three foot long self wouldn’t kill me yet, but the seven foot long, fire-breathing young dragon that she would soon become would. I put her on my shoulder, and she leapt off to rejoin Ember, her tail blade cutting across my cheek as she went. Two crimson droplets meandered their way down to my chin, where they fell to the soil at my feet.

The wind blew, throwing the scent of my blood and Sam’s fear right at the Ember, whose only reaction was to drag everyone into the cave.

Literally.