Photo by Thomas Despeyroux on Unsplash
I woke to the ground shaking, well, the tree shaking. Per my standard operating procedure since transporting to this fucking fantasy shithole. Not sure if it is a planet, the ships masts don’t disappear over the horizon, at least they didn’t the one time I made it to a sea town which, let me tell you, freaked me the hell out.
Don’t know what this crazy place is gonna throw at me next, house brownies aiding the guesthouses and the requirements of their magical union twisted my stomach in knots after nearly two hours of explanation of what “everyone just knows, are you sure you never learned this, how slow are you?” from a well-meaning but angry by the end cutie-pie, so I returned to my sniper days and sleep in trees. Not as comfortable at fifty-two as at twenty-two, but liveable, in that I have survived so far. Those house brownies have a fucking shit-ton of teeth of the meat-eater variety. Survived for fourteen days and counting.
Word of advice. If a glowing blue circle appears, do NOT touch it just because anything has got to be better than a COVID hellscape.
The shaking was a dragon. An honest-to-god orange-skinned dragon, sparkling in the early morning sun. The meadow I bivouacked beside and above had deer during last night’s, and now this morning’s, twilight hours. Now, it has one less. The crunch of large bones made me want to press my back against the tree trunk.
Dragons are vision hunters. Like raptors in flight. Movement is their focus.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t blink.
…. And after eating the fucker likes to take a nap. Of course, it does. Yep. That is my luck now. I need my morning piss urgently.
(Words 292, first published 9/14/2022 – from a picture prompt for a Facebook writing group. Aim is about 50 words)