《Dragons Waking》


 Fragment 1

    Far beneath the mountain, there was a tremor of movement where there had been only the stillness of stone for eons.


    --


    There was a feeling of anxiety across the world as city streets that were usually crowded to bursting became empty stretches of pavement beneath the traffic cameras.


    Everyone hadn''t died, humanity had just retreated to their caves to wait out the sickness.


    Inside those "caves" there was an almost frenetic buzz of energy, like a bee hive at high summer. People who rarely communicated with each other were video chatting and streaming about their confinement. The artwork and history of the world was opened up to remote public viewing for the confined, and a million different classes were offered to children who could no longer go to school.


    Of course, all of that was only for those who already had power and network access in place when the sickness came. Those who had been living in reduced circumstances from the beginning could only try to endure as shortages of basic living necessities reduced them to the level of true cave dwellers. And those who lacked shelter of any kind were left to drift through the empty streets with the animals.


    People had forgotten how many animals still clung to existence in the shallow spaces between their towering cities of false stone. Excitement and joy that rivaled the feelings of their distant ancestors greeted sightings of deer and other traditional prey animals who dared the spaces that the usual motorized traffic had abandoned. Not because most people were desperate enough to hunt their own food yet, but because the sight of animals roaming freely had become so rare.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    --


    His thoughts on awakening resembled those of millions of people across the globe. ''Is it over yet? Should I go out and check? Maybe it''s safer to wait. But what if it is finally time? A person only has so many years to live.''


    Unfortunately, he lacked a network connection, or even a cell phone, and couldn''t just ask. Not that he would have known who to call, even if he''d been familiar with the technology.


    He gazed at the blank wall in front of him. Cracks traced a delicate pattern in the surface that had once been smooth. Time was a cruel and unceasing foe for those caught up in its currents, even something as solid as stone could not escape its passing.


    He looked down at his hands, and didn''t know if he should be glad that he had no mirror. Even in sleep, everyone continued to age. The skin of his palms was creased in patterns that resembled those on the wall, but the disturbing thing was how thin he was, and how visible his bone structure had become.


    His stomach woke up more slowly than his mind, but the first twinges as it stretched and compressed around nothing spiked sharply through his thoughts. He was hungry. It was a very primitive need that had driven many minds sharper than his own into making reckless decisions.


    He decided. Even if the plague that had spread across the world wasn''t over, even if it wasn''t time, he was going out.


    --


    The mountain shifted, and a deep vibration shook the earth around it.

 Fragment 2

    John had cursed his luck many times during his life. There was his name for instance. A simple, common name, one that was given to many, too many. Letters and numbers were usually appended to differentiate you from all of the others.


    He''d always done his best to remind himself that it could be worse, that how he reacted to his misfortunes was the important thing. Who could forget poor Throckmorton. Old "Morty" had become the bully when he got tired of being the victim, and had ultimately made himself the victim for life, trapped between four walls that he would never leave.


    John gazed down the length of the eerily empty street, and rubbed his eyes. He was the only one in sight, and he wondered if he was the only one who was seeing the mountain, that was usually nothing more than the picturesque backdrop of his normally bustling city, erupt.


    Sure, the scientists always said that it could erupt any time at any time during the next millennium. But that was supposed to mean that it was highly unlikely that it would happen during his lifetime!


    John was a man of his times. He knew that what he did next would be important, to future generations, if not to himself, as he raised his phone and selected video.


    The list of groceries the other people in his apartment building had requested was forgotten. He just sat there in the middle of the street watching the dark cloud billow up from the mountainside. It spread out oddly in the wind, looking nothing like the mushroom clouds he''d seen in documentaries. Sharp points expanded to either side. It looked, he decided, like wings.


    Enormous wings that spanned the mountain itself.


    --


    The air tasted sour, bitter, sweet, and salty. He breathed in deeply, tasting it for scents that he recognized. The wind still carried the taste of the plague beneath it all. It wasn''t over.


    --


    John lowered his phone as the cloud over the mountain seemed to suddenly fold up, and then dissipated. He wondered if volcanoes erupted in stages.


    He posted the video before moving forward. He needed to get food before his pass expired if they weren''t all going to die today. The virus was keeping the world on lockdown, and no one could guess how much worse things would get before they started getting better.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    At the store, he was distracted as he filled his basket, because he was trying to browse news sites. The virus still hogged the headlines in every feed. A few layers down it was alternately politics and shortages. Finally he found what he was looking for in his social media feeds.


    He hadn''t been the only one who noticed, although his video might be the clearest, since the ones he could see on a quick scroll were all partially obscured by window frames or buildings.


    There had been a small earthquake that accompanied "the release of gasses" from the mountain. There were already petitions for a team of geologists to be released from confinement to go up the mountain and get enough data to predict whether or not there would be more, or larger quakes, or if the mountain was getting ready to actually erupt.


    John couldn''t help heaving a sigh of relief. If they were sending scientists up the mountain, then no one seriously expected the thing to explode. He turned his attention to grabbing everything on his list.


    The cashier''s eyes were judgmental when he presented the small mountain of supplies at the register.


    "It''s for everyone in my building," John tried to explain.


    "Sure," the girl replied tiredly. "Present your identification."


    He quickly dug his card out. She didn''t touch it, despite the gloves, mask, and head to toe overall she was wearing. She just snapped a photo, and said, "Form of payment?"


    "Bank card," John replied with a wince. It was a risk, since companies were shutting accounts down for ''abnormal'' charges right and left, but there was no way for him to bring payment from everyone in his building in an era when physical currency was becoming a relic from the past.


    They''d had more than half the residents in the online chat where they''d decided how to handle supply runs, and John wasn''t sure that he''d ever spoken to a tenth of those people before. But they''d all agreed, in order to reduce the number of transactions that the essential service providers had to monitor, those who could afford to pay for an order for the entire building would be the shoppers.


    In return, John and the other fifteen who had signed up, would theoretically have their rents paid by the others until the amounts they''d spent during the global emergency were repaid. He had his doubts about that, but he wasn''t going to let anyone who sheltered under the same roof starve if he could help it.


    --


    His eyes had taken longer to adjust than his nose had, but when his vision cleared, he had seen a vast expanse of structures covering an area larger than the mountain itself. He had closed his wings with a clap that shook trees loose from stones that had cradled them since they had first tasted the sun, and dropped to the ground.


    He had been regretting his age after awakening, but now he was glad that he was no hatchling. Hunger, and a thirst that made his very bones ache, tore at his reason. But he was old, and strong, and skilled. If the plague had not died, but had spread to such an extent, then logic dictated that the resources to support them in such numbers also existed.


    There would be food and drink down there. Enough to sate even a dragon.

 Fragment 3

    As he slunk down the mountain, keeping low, and staying within the dubious cover of the fragile pines, he began to stumble over their roads and dwellings, long before he reached the edge of the infestation visible from the mountain peak.


    --


    Sara couldn''t understand why people thought that she was brave. She was afraid of everything, which was why she''d moved to this isolated cabin above the city. She''d also never figured out why people thought that forests were quiet.


    A bird screamed in the distance and the trees sighed mournfully. She focused with not quite religious fervor on the ritual of making her tea. If she left it a few seconds too long, the cup would be bitter, but she would drink it anyway. Tea was an extravagance, and Sara tried not to waste anything, so that she could maintain her distance from the buzzing hive of humanity that drove her mad.


    The earthquake had woken her. It had been a mild one, nothing like the tremors of her youth that had cracked the streets and sent her family fleeing to the north. The mountain had merely shivered, but it had flamed the spark of anxiety that was always buried in her heart into a raging fire, and her fingers trembled as she moved her cup.


    At the end of her drive, an entire tree lay across the pavement, tossed there like a branch fallen after a spring thunderstorm. Because of the virus, she had already been held prisoner in her home by the words of a distant politician for weeks now. Because of her fear, she had been hiding herself here for far longer than that, so she''d told herself that the restrictions hadn''t really affected her. But the tree''s physical barrier added so much weight to her confinement.


    Normally she would simply have called someone with the proper equipment to drag it out of the way and cut it up into firewood size pieces, but right now only ''essential services'' were still functioning.


    There was a small part of her that was relieved by the fact that she wouldn''t have to speak to the handyman, that she wouldn''t have to pretend to be a functioning member of society in order to have her driveway cleared, and that she could blame the virus for it instead of her fear. The rest of her was silently screaming that if the mountain was shaking, it was time to run.


    She had been successfully silencing her internal screams for so long that not even a whisper escaped her when it pushed through the trees and stopped to examine her garden.


    --


    He wondered if he''d overestimated his own strength as he compressed himself as tightly as he could, and crawled down the mountain. Maybe he should have risked flying directly there. But wisdom told him that if they had expanded to such an extent, their aerial defenses would also have improved, and he doubted that he could defend himself if just moving a few tens of miles was enough to make his legs tremble.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Perhaps he''d underestimated his own age. He began to wonder how long it had been since the world sang the song of beginnings, of spring rising in the North, so clearly. He''d stirred with the rising of the song before, enough to have some feel of the passage of time, but it had never sounded clearly enough to wake him fully before this season.


    The plague had continued to expand despite all of their efforts, and so most of them had retreated, confident that it would burn itself out within a few centuries if they stopped feeding it.


    He smelled the whisper of the heart and his doubts ceased as he turned toward it like a mindless beast. Thirsty, so thirsty, his stomach twisted and screamed its painful emptiness to his claws. His steps cut deeply into the soft damp layers of needles beneath the trees. He pushed through the trees, and stopped dead, as shock wrenched his mind back into control.


    The scent of the heart was small and weak, but certain. The garden was small and twisted, but alive. It was also sheltering beside one of their dwellings, and a pair of tiny eyes met his through the sheet of glass.


    He hadn''t really taken the time to examine the dwellings that he''d passed, merely scenting them and skirting past them within the shelter of the trees. Glass was something that took patience to produce with such clarity. Perhaps it was the dwelling of one of the wise. Every race seemed to have a few, a few who could hear, or perhaps see, the strings that sang. What made the dragons different was that they had only a few, a very few, who could not.


    --


    Sara stood frozen as a creature out of fiction loomed over her tiny garden. It seemed to be staring directly at her. Everything except her instincts said that it couldn''t be real. Her instincts weren''t listening to such nonsense, and were holding her as solidly frozen as one of the glaciers on the peak far above.


    It was like some twisted mixture between a giant cat and one of those scrawny carnivorous dinosaurs from those movies, except for the furled wings along its sides. It was all claws and scales and tufts of fur, and the silliest thing was that it seemed to be made in a patchwork rainbow of colors, except for the dark eyes that gleamed like polished obsidian.


    After an eternity, it stepped forward, and dropped its gaze. She watched incredulously as the thing began to dig up her garden like an oversized rabbit. The dragon. There was a dragon digging up her garden. She didn''t even grow much that was edible beyond a few chives, and other edible flowering plants that could endure the cold winters on the mountain.


    Her garden was half stone, as her scrubby selection of plants was arranged around a decorative stone formation that looked like it was part of the mountain, except for the swirling carved shapes like waves. She really admired whichever landscaper had placed it on the property, because the way the large window framed that view had been one of the things that made her choose this particular house.


    The dragon lifted the entire center stone, like a raccoon looking for grubs, and then displayed the freakishly snakelike curve of its neck as it stuck its head into the hole.

 Fragment 4

    He drank from the heart, feeling the power seem to seep directly into his veins as he filled his empty stomach. He drank without stopping to breathe. He drank until the heart was empty, and then he stopped.


    Rude, barbaric, and uncivilized, to completely empty a heart. Even one as small and poorly tended as this. He was embarrassed by his lack of control, and the worst part was, he was still unbearably hungry, even though his thirst had subsided a little.


    He straightened and replaced the small capstone, before he dared a glance toward the tiny eyes that seemed to be watching him with reproach. He cleared his throat, and the creature, the mankind, flinched.


    Even if he would gladly wipe every last one of their kind from the face of the Earth, he didn''t feel any less shame over having emptied the heart that one of the wise was tending. He could even pity it for being born among such a race. The heart would take longer to refill than it was likely to live, with such a stunted garden.


    He measured his strength again, and decided that he could at least spare enough to straighten the lines of this little garden. It probably wouldn''t be enough to affect the life of the small being who was still gazing at him reproachfully, but it would be the civilized thing to do. It would also be the practical thing to do.


    Who knew how many hearts still lived near the surface, if he had slept for as long as he began to suspect that he might have. What if all of the gardens that remained had withered to this degree, with no one to tend them properly, with only the few wise of the lesser still roaming the Earth.


    --


    Sara had thought that she was going to die of fright when the dragon pulled its head out of the hole, dropped the enormous stone back into place, and then looked directly at her. The additional jolt of fear, when it gave a short coughing roar, seemed to shake her from the base of her spine like the memory of a tail stiffening to give more spring to the first leap away from danger.


    The dragon patted the stone and then turned and ripped a tree right out of the ground, as easily as she pulled a weed out of her flowerbeds. Actually, it wasn''t putting nearly as much effort into it as she had to use on a weed, she decided as it tossed that tree aside as if it were no good, and ripped another out of the ground.


    Her mind seemed to have retreated to some distant sanctuary, and left behind only a fragment of dry curiosity, as she watched the dragon continue to tear up the remains of her little garden, and take its frustrations out on the surrounding forest. A whisper of illogical logic suggested that she should take a picture, if she wanted anyone to believe her later.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Sara barely believed what was in front of her own eyes and told the fragment of self that thought she was going to be telling anyone else what had happened to her garden to shut up. If she ever had to explain, she was going to claim that it was the second shockwave of the quake earlier. If it had left one fallen tree behind, what were a dozen more?


    --


    He straightened the paths of the strings that led to the heart as well as he could. And then he gathered his strength and sank his claws into the earth at the base of each plant that sat in a position that would keep the strings anchored, and strengthened each one from the root. It was tedious and tiring work, but this garden would be much stronger after a single turn of the seasons.


    Life pulled and tugged at the strings much more strongly than the bones of the Earth did. Some had even speculated that it was life''s pull that held the world in a solid form. Others went further and said that nothing would exist if the one of the wise did not think of it, since the strongest of them had the power to actually call forth a new string.


    He had once considered himself strong enough to pull a new string into existence on a whim, but he thought that if he tried it now, he might pull out his own life instead. Strengthening the roots of a few plants made his bones ache and his stomach turn. The tiny mankind stood witness, showing far more patience than he recalled from its ancestors.


    Perhaps mankind had grown. He gingerly reached out to the string beside him, and let the song run up his claw and into his aching bones and listened. Both ice and fire, birth and death, the heart of the string screamed with a million conflicts. He snatched his hand back.


    He looked toward the other strings and moved toward one with a reluctance that was almost fear. Normally a single string would carry a single strong tone in its heart, and the songs were complex because they carried the sound of many strings. Perhaps this string just ran along some particularly knotted path, but he should listen to the others.


    A little while later, he shuddered, and moved to scoop up the discarded foliage. He shredded the trees and plants with his claws into a mulch that would protect the ones that would hold the strings that fed the heart straight. As he gathered up the last discarded tree, he was puzzled. Had he tossed this one so far from the garden? He shrugged and carried it back to shred it like the rest.


    He compressed himself again, and glanced back only once before leaving the stunted garden with its empty heart. His wings fluttered with his shiver. Admittedly, it was only a handful of strings, out of the millions that perhaps held the Earth in place, but none of them held a pure strong tone. Either none of those strings were running a smooth unknotted course, or the Earth was broken into a confusion of conflicting fragments.


    --


    Sara''s feet hurt, but she couldn''t make herself move until the dragon had long since disappeared into the forest.


    The dragon had stopped for a while, as though it had exhausted itself, and then staggered in a rough circle. The strangest thing was that it had cleaned up after its earlier raging tantrum before it left. It had even cleared away the tree that had blocked her driveway.


    Or perhaps that hadn''t been the strangest thing. Maybe that had been the way the dragon had seemed to get smaller as it left. When it had arrived it had shoved its way between the trees, but when it left it seemed to slink away beneath them.

 Fragment 5

    She woke up feeling both sluggish and cold. It was dark. A frown wrinkled her brow even before her eyes opened in the darkness. The frown deepened. It shouldn''t be dark. Her mouth opened and she tasted the water.


    A thousand traces of poison flavored it. Far worse than the wastes that had flowed from the foul cities of mankind when she had last woken, and yet far less pervasive at the same time. The old ones were naive to think that the "plague" would pass while they slept, but it would be cruel to wake them, because she doubted that any of them could adapt to the human''s era. It was also entirely possible that humanity actually would eventually succeed in killing itself off when nothing else could, and then they could finally come out of hibernation safely. Those that still lived.


    Her eyes looked into a darkness deeper than the purely physical for a moment, and then refocused as she sought for some faint trace of light in her immediate surroundings. The darkness stubbornly remained, and she moved blindly toward her garden, or its remains, she thought grimly. This unnatural cold would be hard on the life forms that weren''t quite plants, and weren''t quite animals.


    The heart was fainter than it should have been, but it was still there, and traces of warmth remained here where the vent should have been glowing brightly. She could see that only a few of the strings she had gathered remained. Likely only the ones that had naturally run through this chasm originally. She reached for a string and sank her claws into it.


    She was more than a little disturbed by what it told her. The Earth had shifted recently, and she had slept through it. She was no elder to dream away eons. She even sort of prided herself for her daring explorations of human cities, and rarely slept for more than a century at most. A tremor big enough to close her vent should have woken her.


    Her toes tested the warmth that remained, and she wondered if perhaps it wasn''t that the tremor written in the heart of the string had closed her vent, but that the Earth itself was cooling. The only truly old one that she had conversed with, had said that it went through cycles like summer to winter that had nothing to do with the short seasons that she counted, and it had been bitterly cold beyond the line of the sun''s turning in her youth, while growing generally warmer for most of her life. Perhaps the long season was turning.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    She swam upward.


    --


    Victoria''s mother had claimed that she''d been named after a queen.


    She could remember just enough about her father to suspect that she''d been named after the underwear catalogue instead, but it didn''t matter. In her heart, her name''s affinity was with the many ships that carried it in one form or another. Her own ship was named after her grandmother, the only person in her broken family who had encouraged her to pursue her love of sailing.


    Her mother had disapproved of her grandmother, and warned her daughter not to follow in her wild footsteps. Victoria had listened to both of them, and her footsteps rarely followed anyone else''s. She regretted that just a little currently.


    She pulled in her line and cast it out again. Fishing for survival like some castaway. When the virus had begun to cross borders, a lot of people had panicked and bought enough to live on for half a year, or more, instantly creating shortages and even starvation among the elderly and the poor.


    Victoria had figured that it would be a short lived emergency. The world hadn''t had a true, significantly population reducing, plague in centuries, or at least a full century. She had purchased only her usual supplies, and less than that of things that were already in short supply when she restocked.


    She hadn''t been too surprised when governments around the world had begun closing their borders and setting up rationing and curfews. What else could they do when their populations were in such a panic that they were killing portions of themselves off before any of them even got sick.


    Now, weeks later, she wished that she''d at least bought an extra bag of rice and an extra crate of water. And she thanked the gods that her ship, which traditionalists rolled their eyes at and regarded as a fragile abomination that was overly reliant on electronics, had good solar panels and automated geo positioning. She couldn''t claim that she liked the restrictions against ships docking that treated them all as active plague carriers, but she could survive at sea indefinitely if she had to, and even sleep reasonable hours without crashing into a shoreline if the wind came up.


    Her fishing pole dropped into the water as the freaking SEA SERPENT surfaced beside her little ship, which tilted dangerously as the surge of water shoved it one way and then pulled it the other.

 Fragment 6

    He paid more attention to the habitations he passed and the roads that he crossed on his way down the mountain. The lower he went the more of both appeared in his path, until they reached the density he associated with their largest cities of the past, and he had yet to reach the edge of that sprawling community that he''d seen from above.


    He quickly realized that glass was common for them. It was everywhere, in their dwellings and even in the carts that traveled their roads at speeds that rivaled those of storm winds. The carts themselves were powered by fires, except for a few of the smaller ones that seemed to be able to hold a ball of lightning in their cores.


    He was tempted to catch one and dismantle it to see how that trick was done, but hunger still had priority. He was puzzled by the way most of them were hiding in their dwellings. If they had harnessed fire to this degree, they would probably have very little fear of himself. Perhaps the one living beside the garden had not been one of the wise, he had not spoken to it, but its scent had touched everything.


    He was also puzzled by the lack of herd animals around their habitations. There were a few, and he seriously considered eating from the large barrel of grain that stood beside the long metal tracks that carried the heavier metal carts that would probably ruin the soft roads with only a few passages. Their ancestors would have scoffed at these roads that pretended to mimic the work of stone with sticky pebbles over beds of gravel.


    Eating grain was like trying to drink from the heart of a living creature. It would sustain life, but it used nearly as much effort as the sustenance it provided replenished. He was no longer expecting to find wagon loads of fruit in their city markets, but he had smelled small amounts of fruit in nearly every dwelling that he''d passed, so there had to be a distribution point somewhere.


    He found what he was looking for before reaching the foot of the mountain at what seemed to be a¡­ well, it must be the equivalent of an inn, as it appeared to distribute food to the mankind, and something flammable to their carts. Nearly all of the largest carts pulled into its vast but poorly paved square. He was puzzled by the new rituals of the mankind, as each of them warily moved around in such a way as to maintain a distance approximately equal to their own body length from the others.


    He couldn''t spare too much interest in them, since his nose told him that the large cart with enormous pictures of apples on the side indeed held a large enough quantity of the fruit to take the edge off of his hunger. Unfortunately, he currently lacked the power to compress himself enough to fit through the small vents. He also didn''t want to have to deal with their attacks while he ate, so just ripping the doors off the back and chowing down didn''t seem to be an option.


    His stomach growled at him. It had absorbed the rest of the heart''s offering as he''d traveled, and was unhappy about its emptiness, as that hadn''t been enough to put it back to sleep. His claws sliced through the soft paving as he flexed them. If he couldn''t get what he needed with power, he would have to use skill.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    He compressed himself as far as he could, and then began to alter his shape. He wasn''t as skilled at getting all of the details as some, but he was good enough to fool most animals, partially because he was very good at scents. He would still be much larger than most of them, but hopefully it would be enough.


    --


    George eyed the huge man who walked out of the bushes at the edge of the lot warily.


    He was a big man himself, as his doctor was quick to point out, and his wives had all nagged him to exercise more and reduce his bulk. The most recent had divorced him more in a much more kindly fashion than the others, requesting no compensation at all. He really wished that he''d realized just how sweet she was in time to keep her, although maybe that was an impossible dream for a man who lived in his truck.


    A man couldn''t help being wary of others with this deadly virus going around, especially others who acted oddly. George was relieved to note that despite his strange clothes and his enormous size, the man seemed to show no signs of sinus troubles. Not that that was any guarantee that a person wasn''t carrying, but you couldn''t help being more afraid of those who were actively sniffling and coughing.


    The huge man also stalked straight toward the back of the truck parked across from George with no hesitation. Who knew what he''d been doing in the bushes, but George wasn''t going to get close enough to ask. He turned away, but couldn''t help jumping in fright and spinning back to look as the door of the truck the man had been approaching screamed like it was being torn open.


    The huge man looked¡­ embarrassed, and George wanted to rub his eyes as the guy seemed to straighten the bent cargo door with his bare hands. He turned away from the scene and did not run to his truck. He was just walking very quickly. Very quickly.


    George peeked in his mirror after he was safely in his own seat. Somebody was going to be really mad at that guy later. He had pulled out a crate of apples, popped one of the cardboard trays out of it, and was eating apples out of the tray like they were bon bons. A whole crate. Without a forklift.


    None of his business. He had a delivery to make.


    --


    The apples weren''t piled in the flimsy wooden crates. They were packed in fairly sturdy paper boxes. Apparently paper was as common as glass, to use it in this manner. It was a little strange how the paper had been wrinkled up and glued into place to form stiff pieces. Wood was obviously widely available, so why go to so much work to mimic its function with paper?


    Inside the boxes the apples were cradled in individual depressions in shaped paper trays. That was actually quite clever, he granted the mankind graciously. It meant that this cart only held a fraction of the fruit that he''d hoped for, but it looked like none of it would be rotten.


    He bit into the first apple with his currently small and blunted teeth, and wrinkled his blunted little nose. Not rotten, just not quite ripe. He chewed and swallowed it greedily into the folded space where his stomach waited. A starving person had to take what they could get.

 Fragment 7

    John regarded delivery persons with much greater respect these days. He''d never really thought about them much before. It had seemed like simple work for simple people if he''d thought about it at all.


    He examined his list again. Mrs. Beaglesworth had asked for potatoes and vodka. Wasn''t vodka made from potatoes? He wondered if her apartment was potato themed. He wouldn''t be finding out anytime soon, if ever, since he was supposed to knock, ring the bell, and move on, so that no one had to come into contact with anyone else.


    He gathered up the items for the next three orders and staggered toward the elevators. Technically they were supposed to be avoiding closed environments like elevators, but he was pretty sure that climbing the stairs enough times to deliver everything would kill him a lot faster than catching the virus would.


    --


    The vampire stirred and woke up a little reluctantly. Of course, he''d only identified himself as a vampire relatively recently and he still wasn''t certain that the word exactly matched what he was. There had been other, older, names for something like him, but none of them were quite¡­ like him.


    Vampire was so close that he''d decided that the things that didn''t match must simply be incorrect. The sun didn''t bother him, for instance, but he could see in near darkness as well as any cat. He could be seen in mirrors, but he could make people forget that they''d seen him if they met his true eyes. He could make himself into mist, a bat, a dragon, or even a human of pretty much any appearance he pleased. In fact, his identification of himself as male was only because it took more focus to appear to be female, and he''d never been gotten with child.


    He might have continued to think of himself simply as a shapechanger, but he did draw more power and sustenance from drinking fresh blood than he could get from mundane food, or rather, from anything dead. Raw fruits, nuts and seeds were all technically alive and were better than dead meat, or cooked vegetables. Yogurt and cheeses were also alive after a fashion, but they were so weak that they were not much better than gnawing uselessly on dead things.


    However, a beating heart''s blood gave him the most energy of anything that he''d ever tried. Not that modern vampire literature mentioned beating hearts, but some of the older stuff did, and he felt like maybe the stories where the vampire lived off of the energy of its bound chosen without hurting them weren''t¡­ impossible. He just couldn''t quite figure out how.


    He''d never let anyone stab him through the heart with anything, let alone a wooden stake, so he didn''t know if that was what it would take to kill him. In his personal experience, stabbing anything through the heart would kill it, and the same with removing its head. He could regenerate whole limbs and heal from other things that would normally kill a human though, so that part matched the vampire lore well enough.


    He also might be immortal, since he was at least four centuries old already and showed no signs of aging beyond ''adult''. He was fairly sure that he was an adult, but not absolutely certain. In his earliest memories he had been much smaller, and painfully hungry all of the time. He thought that maybe he''d spent a long time as a snake who ate eggs because those had been able to feed him best, and snakes were good at that.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    He shoved the protective lid of the stone casket aside and sat up, looking for what had woken him, but there was no obvious sound or scent on the air. He checked the expensive and customized atomically powered watch on his wrist. It was quite new, and it told him that it had only counted a few years since he''d fallen asleep.


    He frowned. Normally he slept for at least a couple of decades at a time, but then he didn''t have to sleep again for nearly half a century. No wonder he felt a little enervated. He reset the watch cheerfully despite his questions. Instantly knowing how much time had passed was just as satisfying as he''d hoped.


    --


    The mankind who owned the cart was angry. He wasn''t quite sure what to do about it, since the creature was waving its arms and stomping its feet while shouting unintelligible words, without ever getting closer than its own body length.


    The downside to the apple protecting trays and this small form was that he couldn''t simply pour a whole crate of fruit into his mouth at once, so he had only managed to eat half of the cart''s contents before the mankind return.


    A few of the repeated words seemed to like they might be descendants of one of the previous languages of the mankind that he''d learned fairly well during his last waking, but they might simply sound similar. "Obnoxious" might be from noxious. "Responsible" might be from responder. It did seem like it wanted him to respond to its accusations, but he''d never been particularly talented with the languages they used, so he wasn''t doing much more than picking up on its obvious anger and frustration.


    Many thought that his kind had been the ones to teach them speech, but personally, he doubted it. They did speak with sound, like many of Earth''s creatures, but the few languages of mankind that held sounds that were at all similar were spoken by those who worshipped them as gods. He was fairly certain that those words were simply rough imitations that they had given their own meanings to.


    Some had not been distressed by the plague of them sweeping across the continents like an infection, and had kept individuals as pets and trained them. Many of those had been killed for their efforts. Even the strongest beings could not defend themselves while they slept.


    The little mankind was now angrily weeping as it faced the half empty cart, and he felt uncomfortable. His kind did not have the same instincts to possess things as the mankind, but he roughly understood that he had stolen this one''s labor just as he had rudely emptied the heart of the other''s garden. Perhaps it was worse for it because it believed the damage had been done by one of its own kind.


    That felt right, so he decided to show himself for what he was before leaving. He let himself expand, and the little mankind froze in place and made soft whimpering noises.


    Others, who had been keeping their distance from the conflict, shrieked, yelled, and pointed at him as he launched himself into the air. Some of their words were definitely descended from that language, as many of them were crying, "Dragon!" It was nearly identical to the cries of "Drakon" that he had heard during his last waking, it had merely softened a bit.


    He removed himself from their reach, and flew beyond the small river that tumbled down the mountain before landing closer to the edge of the vast¡­ city was perhaps more accurate than infestation? But he wasn''t sure.

 Fragment 8

    Anne watched the dragon fly over the river, and descend into the trees. She didn''t rub her eyes disbelievingly like the old woman across the street, she just closed her eyes and watched the water that no one else could see for a moment. Nerve damage she''d been told, back when she''d been able to afford to have someone examine her eyes.


    But she had never seen random things before. The vision behind her eyes always showed a tracery of branches and sky reflecting in clear rippling water. It wasn''t always the same pattern of branches, and sometimes she could make out leaves, but the rest was the same. So¡­ now she was hallucinating dragons.


    Her eyes popped open. The old woman had seen it too. "Hey, did you see the dragon?" Anne called out questioningly.


    The old woman looked her over once, with an incredulous expression, and then gripped her handbag tighter and hurried away.


    Anne bit her lip. She had probably sounded crazy. The woman''s reaction was so typical that she couldn''t even bother to be irritated by it, but it didn''t answer the question. Still, it had probably been a plane or an interesting bird or something, and her eyes were just playing tricks on her.


    The world sucked. But logic corrected quickly, the world itself was beautiful, it was just people that sucked. Truth reminded her sadly that most of the people she''d met were actually good sorts, it was just that those few who weren''t always seemed to do so much damage. Bitterness narrowed the level of suckage down to just her own life.


    It was almost like the meditation path for reducing pain, where they told you to narrow your focus of the pain down to the single point that actually hurt, and then to move your focus to all of the parts that didn''t hurt. Anne felt great sympathy with old Jose at the moment. He always claimed that the technique never worked for him, because he didn''t have any part of his old body left that didn''t hurt.


    It was really difficult to think of any part of her life at the moment that didn''t suck. And now she was hallucinating dragons. She closed her eyes and watched the water again while she thought about that for a moment. The dragon had been pretty. Colorful. Like some hybrid between a Chinese festival dragon and a European dragon with wings.


    If she had to start hallucinating things, pretty dragons were much better than the kinds of things you could hear junkies or drunks exchanging horror stories about. Thousands of times better than the things that drank blood that her great grammy used to go on about when her mind wandered.


    Anne decided, after due consideration, that maybe hallucinating dragons didn''t actually suck. If she saw more, she would just treat them like the water that she was watching behind her own eyelids. A secret, but not a bad one. If you couldn''t help seeing things that nobody else could, you might as well enjoy it.


    --If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The vampire had a bit of a problem. A problem that millions shared, but a problem nonetheless. He had no money, and his identification and license were expired. It wasn''t at all a surprise, because well, Gregory Vincent was dead, but it was still a problem.


    He had everything set up so that Gregory''s nephew, Norris Price would inherit his trust fund when he turned twenty-one¡­ in another sixteen years, when he would normally wake up. Convincing an exhausted midwife that she''d delivered an extra baby, when he started feeling tired, was easy. School records and the like, if required, weren''t nearly as difficult to fake as government ID. Lots of people faked them just because they didn''t like their real records, and it was hardly ever a problem unless you were trying to become a politician, or an astronaut.


    He had been severely tempted to apply for one of the astronaut training programs during the last half century. He hadn''t because he was certain that the physical monitoring and examinations would reveal that he wasn''t actually human.


    Normally he would just take some under the counter work, for some slob who didn''t want to pay taxes. But apparently some new plague had appeared, and everyone was holing up and practicing the same social isolation that had been considered a mental disease just a few years ago, and no one was hiring. The streets were so empty that it was scary. And unfortunately empty of easy pickpocket targets as well.


    The only real advantage he had over the millions who shared his difficulties, was that he could survive very well without needing a shelter to sleep in, and without buying food every day. But he really wanted to browse the internet and get a better picture of what was going on in the world, and look for clues that might tell him why he was awake after just a "nap".


    --


    She hadn''t meant to knock the little boat over. She really should have compressed her form before surfacing. People who caught sight of a small unidentified form in the water could quite easily pass it off as some weird fish or floating weeds. Disguising herself as a mermaid was fun too. She had just been too distracted to think properly.


    She carefully righted the tiny craft, and was slightly reassured, and incredibly curious when pumps coughed to life and the water trapped inside of it started pouring out of little spouts along the edges. The craft seemed¡­ more than a bit strange. Mankind was always making new discoveries, even if they were mostly limited to the purely physical, and this was definitely a sailboat. The general shape was quite familiar, it was just all of the details were¡­ strange. Especially the twinned body.


    She brushed aside her distracted thoughts and hunted for the person who''d fallen overboard. It was both a relief and a bit of an embarrassment when she found the woman, in no particular distress, swimming strongly toward her boat, with her fishing pole gripped between her teeth like some pirate with his sabre.


    Instead of scooping the determined little woman up and depositing her on top of her boat, she compressed her shape into a pretty mermaid and swam up beside her before suggesting hopefully, "It''ll be best if ye were to forget that ye saw any of that?"


    She could have forced the poor thing to forget, but she had always suspected that doing so caused them some mental damage, and besides, it was against the rules of the game. The game probably only existed in her own mind, but it made exploring their society so much more entertaining.


    The woman was quite admirably strong willed. She rolled her eyes and growled through the mouthful of her pole, but she didn''t stop swimming toward her sailboat.


    She couldn''t resist hanging around until the little woman had herself aboard, to see what she had to say. And to ask about the design of her craft.

 Fragment 9

    He dropped the strange cable that he''d felt the light running through, and blinked a few times. Maybe slicing it open with a claw and pulling it out of the ground to look inside had been a bad idea, but he''d been curious. He certainly hadn''t expected it to be like looking directly into the sun on a clear day from the upper atmosphere. If he''d looked into it with his true eyes, he might have been permanently blinded.


    He considered the two kinds of strange cable that he''d dug up and examined. One carried the same lightning-like power that moved some of the small carts. The other carried a much more powerful light than its soft song had hinted. The building behind him seemed to be molded out of nothing but mortar. A stronger mix, but essentially the same.


    The cables ran like veins, like the underground waste and water channels that linked all of the dwellings into something larger. He hadn''t noticed them at first, probably because they were like nothing he''d ever seen before. He looked around again, with his true eyes open, after carefully covering the dangerous one.


    Their dwellings were larger and closer together this far down the mountain. And despite the empty streets, many of those held dozens or even hundreds of the mankind. Their numbers were staggering. The population of an entire continent in the past was gathered here, but the roads indicated that there were many more of them outside of this place.


    Far from having run its course, the plague had settled deeply into the world and learned to thrive.He wasn''t sure how he felt about that, but the world taught that those who could not change quickly enough died. Sleeping through their decline had been the wrong decision.  Perhaps it wasn''t just himself as an individual that was getting old, but his entire race.


    His eyes showed him that the deeper into their city one went, the less wildlife there was. Perhaps it was some kind of hive at this size instead of a mere city, since they had stacked themselves in separated pockets of many layers. Not that it completely lacked wildlife, for all of its imitation stone, but it was confined into little pockets, like lichen growing in the cracks of a stone.


    The veinlike energy cables didn''t confer life upon the city itself, the buildings were inert despite the way the cables thinned and split as though they were feeding the buildings themselves the energies they carried. But the strings of the world still bent and curved toward the vast city, reflecting the enormous number of lives that it contained.


    There should have been hearts here, the natural pull on the strings would make gathering them easy. There were even places where the strings touched, and life sang or hummed more vibrantly around those natural pools, but none of those that he could see from this distance had been tamed into a heart.


    He closed his fragile true eyes, and the world dimmed to a more comfortable level. He didn''t feel particularly elderly at the moment, he felt hungry on a thousand levels. The apples had taken the edge off of his starvation, even though he hadn''t eaten nearly enough yet, and his mind was able to focus. He was so curious. Light could be bent, absorbed, and radiated, but he''d never imagined a channel built to carry it.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    He would look inside of one of the light cables after the sun set, and see if they went dark with the rest of the world.


    --


    The vampire, formerly known as Gregory, and someday to be known as Norris, growled as he sorted the trash of a random person. People dressed in nice clothes didn''t usually sort their trash in public, but when a cheery older woman carried her neatly sorted bags out of the building and stopped to stare at him with wide eyes, he discovered that he didn''t have to come up with an excuse.


    "Good on you," she said approvingly.


    "What?" he asked blankly.


    She used her chin to point at the carefully separated piles he''d been building. "Most people aren''t bothering to sort their trash just because the city is too burdened to give out fines during this horrible virus outbreak."


    "I''m just looking for a phone," he blurted. The separated piles were mostly just habit. He didn''t know why he''d admitted that, and his mouth snapped shut.


    She cocked her head and gave him another excuse, "Your girl got jealous and threw it away?"


    He was NOT going to explain that this trash bin glowed more than others did to his true eyes, which probably meant that it held a still powered electronic device of one kind or another. It wasn''t a reliable tactic, because the foggy white world that he could see with the last layer of his eyes open, seemed to be wrapped in blurry rivers and streams of light that weren''t electricity. But living things and concentrations of power would also shine brighter than the rest of the white fog.


    After a moment he nodded.


    "Tsk," she said scoldingly. "Both of you are probably at fault. You should keep in mind that it''s just a tool, and learn to pay attention to the needs of the people at your side. But throwing expensive things away is both a waste of money and of other people''s labor. Certainly not a reaction to be admired."


    As she talked, she waved her bags pointedly at the row of bins in front of him in a confusing manner, and when she asked a little sharply, "If you don''t mind?" he could only blink at her in confusion.


    "The six foot rule dear," she said a bit tartly.


    "Oh, right, sorry," he apologized, as he backed away from the piles he''d been making so she could deposit her own bags in the bins.


    She continued to hand out advice as she emptied each bag into the correct bin for its contents, and folded all but the food waste one back up. She stopped in the entrance as she walked away, and added kindly, "Everyone is tired of being confined, and just as scared of this virus as their grandparents were a century ago when that deadly influenza swept across oceans and through the large cities. Don''t be too bitter with the girl."


    He wasn''t scared of the virus, because he''d never caught any kind of disease from a human yet, and he couldn''t tell her that he remembered that year himself, but he smiled gently at her and said simply, "We will be okay."


    When the door closed behind her, he resumed sorting the trash, but he felt less frantic and frustrated than he had. Things weren''t so bad. He didn''t normally return to a place that he''d regularly frequented in his ''past life'', but he was wearing a different face and he could use a different accent if he focused on it, and he knew a place that might be ignoring the new regulations, if it was still in business.


    --


    She shook herself free of the ice, and looked around with a sigh. It was obvious with merely a glance that they''d chosen the wrong path.

 Fragment 10

    Kent let out a mild curse when the overhead lights flickered off, and power went out. The backups began to scream their warnings that the building was now operating on a time limit, but he delayed hitting the save for a moment and finished the line he was typing. He spat out a much sharper curse when the save failed a couple of minutes later, as the internet connection was down too.


    He got up and went to check that someone hadn''t unplugged the modem from the power supply again. It generally took a pretty major accident of some kind to shut both services down, but human error was quite common, especially now that they were running skeleton shifts and as many people as possible were working from home.


    A flash of color drew his eye as he stepped into the sunlit hallway that seemed too bright after the dim office. He''d never understood why the hallway was on the outside with all the windows, while all the offices were windowless cubicles on the inside. Something bright and colorful, was moving through the scrubby ''park'' below. After a moment he identified it as one of those chinese dragon costumes that came out every year for the winter parades downtown.


    People were idiots. He couldn''t understand what they found so difficult about staying inside and reducing contact with each other, but there were plenty of posts on the net and people wandering the cities in big costumes, as though the outfits would protect them. But those dragons usually had dozens of people inside to move them, so that thing was actually just the sort of gathering that was currently being prohibited.


    It was quite cheerfully colorful, and probably they were having a lot of fun, he conceded a moment later as it wound through the playground area, and reached out an arm to spin the merry-go-round. It stopped as though watching with interest, and he frowned. Don''t touch anything you didn''t have to, it seemed like an obvious rule.


    It turned and continued its progress, and as his viewing angle changed with the distance, he saw that instead of the dozens of feet he expected to see, this one only had two sets. Even odder, was that the arms that had spun the merry-go-round had no feet directly below them. The colorful sides seemed to heave suddenly, and then settled again, and he realized that there were folded wings laying along them.


    Chinese dragons didn''t have wings. Or at least, chinese dragon costumes didn''t have wings, he was fairly certain. Its head was moving back and forth as though it was a tourist, and trying to examine everything at once.


    Without taking his eyes off of the dragon, Kent began patting his pockets. Another curse whispered off his lips as he realized that he had probably left his phone at his desk.


    He''d laughed at all of the over-excited posts about wild animals coming into the cities, and the massive drops in pollution with the world-wide closures of factories. He''d always thought that the conservationists, who screamed that thousands of kinds of animals were all on the verge of extinction, were exaggerating.


    But at the same time, he''d always believed that dinosaurs were truly extinct. A lot of the recent research said that many of them had been feathered though, and while the thing in the park couldn''t actually be a dragon, it was definitely colored as brightly as a tropical bird.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Conservationists were going to go nuts.


    --


    On the other side of the world, a custodian who took pride in his work, was quickly developing a splitting headache that he suspected meant that he had waited too long to retire. Being able to see the dragon certainly meant that he''d waited too long. Or maybe the headache and the dragon were signs that he''d been infected.


    His strong desire to return home faded. If he had the disease, he did not want to return home. His first great grandchild was on the way, and he would not risk infecting his family. He would do as his wife had always accused him of, he would live at work. Normally he loved to learn about, and preserve, the history that he was lucky enough to be surrounded with on a daily basis, but it wasn''t supposed to talk to you.


    Dragons weren''t supposed to walk into the ancient palace and declare themselves emperor. To be fair, it had asked who the current emperor was first, but when he had informed it that there was no longer an emperor, it had told him, in words so archaic that they were difficult for even a historian to parse, "I suppose that it is only to be expected after so much time has passed. It certainly isn''t the first time I''ve returned to find that the empire is fragmenting. I will claim the seat again until a worthy candidate is found."


    It had then transformed itself into a rather plump figure in traditional imperial robes, that seemed to be covered in images of itself, and demanded that large quantities of fruits be brought to it¡­ him. The self proclaimed emperor''s grumblings as he demanded that the custodian stop butchering words and simply speak in the modern dialect so that it could learn it, made him seem¡­ real.


    For some reason he was reminded of the recently discovered scrolls that had held evidence of the first emperor''s ridiculous obsession with gaining eternal life. If you had actually been chosen by a dragon to become the first emperor, then believing that some magical substance existed that could make you live forever seemed more reasonable.


    "How old are you?" he asked the dragon curiously, after informing him rather tartly that food was in extremely short supply because of a new plague.


    The answer was impossible to believe. The dragon was claiming to be as old, or older than the human race, with its casual reply of, "I do not keep a count, but more than 10,000 of your generations."


    --


    The vampire stood in the shadows beside the library, and flicked through search results, occasionally stopping to read an article. The sun was setting, and the street lamps flickered on and off as they tried to decide if it was dark enough that they should be running.


    The elderly tablet in his hands struggled to load many of the sites he selected. It was of a design that had been obsolete before he had ''died''. It was actually more surprising that it had held a charge than that someone had thrown it away.


    He hadn''t been sure what he was looking for. What could have woken him early. But the news article he was looking at now made him think that he''d found it, sort of. The news article had a tabloid headline, "World-wide sightings of Dragons!" He would have ignored it, but the news company that had published it had been quite respectable a handful of years ago.


    Maybe he wasn''t alone. Maybe many supernatural creatures had suddenly woken up all over the world. Maybe he would finally meet another of his kind, or at least, another who was neither human nor animal.


    The other part of modern vampire legends that didn''t match him, was the "turning". No one had ever become what he was after he''d bitten them. Or after drinking his blood. It was embarrassing to remember all of the things he''d tried, but nothing had worked.

 Fragment 11

    The cables didn''t go dark after the sunset. The light inside them wasn''t any dimmer at all. He patted the sticky gravel they used instead of paving stones back over the cable he''d cut to examine. He wondered what the source of their light was, even as the city lit up around him.


    Some of the lights buzzed with well, lightning. Others held a much softer hum, but he wasn''t going to assume anything at this point. Almost nothing in the vast hivelike city seemed to be burning. He hadn''t noticed during the day, but while there were many scents of cooking, there were few scents of fire.


    He was still kind of following the river, but it was difficult since they had built out into it in places, and every detour led him to something else that looked interesting. He could have moved out into the river as well, but he''d always preferred fire to water, and he knew what cities dumped into their waterways. Although to be fair, despite its size, this enormous hivelike city''s river did not smell nearly as bad as he''d expected.


    Perhaps the conquerors whose language had left its imprint here, had managed to learn something from the tribes who had held this land when he had gone to sleep. They had been almost un-plague-like in their lazy ways, always leaving part of what they took in place, and burying their wastes like cats. He really hadn''t minded them too much, but they had been a rarity among the mankind, who seemed to grow dirtier and more destructive with every turning of the Earth around the sun.


    Luck gifted him with gentle fortune, and he finally found an area that was recognizably a market. Most of the stalls and shops were dark and shuttered, despite the bright lights that felt like they would call to a crowd. Only the ones that carried foods were still lit and open for business. It was a bit of a pity, as it would have been more convenient for him if those had been left untended as well.


    The shutters seemed to all be metal, and of a standardized design. The smithy that made them all must be a prosperous one. His dislike of the mankind and his decision to join the others in waiting them out had not been because he had not understood them. He studied every new race that his world presented, and each taught him something of his own.


    He, like many others, had judged them to be near the end of their era. For tens of thousands of years, they had developed slowly, like many races before them. But then they seemed to have reached some kind of critical mass, and exploded in waves of war, wracked with plagues that spread through their own filth, while continuing to expand even beyond their capacity to feed their populations. They even developed methods that produced incredible harvests, but left barren land behind. It was not enough. They had turned into a voracious plague eating their way across the Earth.


    The mankind were perhaps the closest thing that the Earth had ever produced to his own kind, in the capacity for learning at least. He didn''t know if it was a pity or a blessing that all of them were half blind and short-lived. If they had been less destructive, to themselves as well as to the world, they would have been almost lovable. He was honestly surprised that they had not followed in the footsteps of thousands, millions, of creatures throughout history, and consumed themselves into extinction.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The two of their wise that he''d found over many centuries of study, that could see the strings of the world, seemed to lack physical sight. The more common, but still extremely rare, wise individuals who arose every generation or three, retained some physical sight but seemed able to hear, or perhaps feel, the sound of the world.


    He looked at the market before him. He had regained enough energy to compress himself far enough to mimic their size more closely, so he altered himself once more. Smaller, softer, more fragrant, he adjusted until he matched more closely. He stepped out into the marketplace, and drew only a few glances.


    He stopped and gazed at a sign upon one of the shuttered shops, and traced it with a curious claw¡­ finger. Some of the characters used seemed familiar, but if he was not mistaken, they contained a mix of languages. Especially the number symbols, those did not belong to the same language of the conquerors that had known his kind as Drakon.


    --


    "It says they open at six in the morning, but they won''t open again until the governor lifts the restrictions," Old Jose told the dark haired man in funny clothes.


    He''d been drinking again. Well, when had he not anymore. But the stuff cost more than gold, nearly, and because he rationed it as hard as he could, he rarely felt drunk anymore. People these days treated the world''s oldest medicine like it was something made for pleasure. Alcohol, it was a preservative, a painkiller, a medicine that let the broken ones sleep at night.


    But he wondered a little if someone hadn''t slipped a little something ''extra'' into this bottle, because his old eyes claimed that something bigger than anything alive ought to be, had shifted in the darkness that this odd man had walked calmly out of.


    The man turned and looked at him curiously. There was nothing obviously threatening in that gaze, and Old Jose had seen a lot of gazes to judge by, but it made his blood run cold anyway. No one had looked at him with such intense curiosity before in his life. Not even before he''d become one of the broken that most avoided looking at if they could.


    --


    The vampire drifted toward a quarter of the city that he''d avoided during his last half century of waking. He drifted toward the water. Toward the music.


    Even before he got close enough to hear it, he somehow knew that it would still be playing. Even when everyone else was in hiding. Every city along the water, all across the world, had a place. A place that never really changed, even if the name on the door, or the entire building changed, the place didn''t. The bartenders changed less often than the music, the music changed less often than the names of the drinks.


    Sometimes a landlocked city would have a place. Sometimes a waterside city would have more than one. He took a deep breath of air that carried an unmistakably damp and decaying scent, tinted with old fuel, hints of fish, wastes, smoke and alcohol. It was a scent that had lingered where cities and water touched, since before humans harnessed the powers of combustion into engines.


    It was familiar, comforting, and it reminded his fingers that he had no instrument. The strings that made the air hum despite being muted by layers of brick and other things whispered to him. They suggested that he could sing, if he dared.

 Fragment 12

    "Tu loquerisne latin?" the frighteningly curious man asked Old Jose.


    Jose couldn''t remember how long it had been since Old had assumed the position of his first name, but it had been a long time. Old Jose got a firm grip on his scattered thoughts and replied, "I don''t speak Italian, or whatever that is. English, pretty good, Espanol, un poco."


    The grubby little mankind''s reply was long, but carried flavors of the standard language of the conquerors. He was pretty sure that the gist of the reply had been ''no''. A dangerous scent wafted from the flask that the mankind took a gulp from as he nervously widened the gap between them.


    --


    The Vampire entered the establishment that kept one toe on land, and one in the water. He paused in the entry, drawing the eyes of the muscular man in an apron, various people crouched at the bar and tucked into dark corners around the room. Even the saxophone player seemed to be able to see him through the stage lights.


    He moved sedately toward the bar, and could almost feel most of the watchers relax, until a creaky old voice made him freeze in his tracks as someone called out, "Andy? Is that you?"


    He cursed his own reflexes, he should have ignored the name, they couldn''t possibly recognize him since he wore a new face and build from either his most recent waking or the one before, when he''d been Andreas Colton. He took another few steps forward and then stopped again as a wrinkled old man tottered into his path.


    The old man squinted up at him, and then muttered sadly, "Sorry, my old eyes ''re playing tricks on me. Just the way you moved, it reminded me of someone I knew." He edged back, to allow the vampire who was scrambling to remember the temporary name he''d chosen while he''d been at the library, to pass.


    "Chris¡­ Tandy," the Vampire muttered, and then added more clearly, "it''s fine.


    The elder''s eyes seemed to sharpen for a moment as he peered up at the self proclaimed Chris, and he nodded, and asked something that made the vampire''s blood run cold. "Do you sing Mr. T''andy?"


    "Who wants to know?" the vampire asked stiffly. The ancient and weathered face had to belong to someone who had known ''Andy'' well, to identify him from the way he moved and a few spoken words. He had no doubt now that he''d been identified.


    "Mac. Chester MacLeod," the old man declared proudly, and blinked his watery eyes. "Let me buy you a drink," he suggested with an almost wicked glint in his old eyes.


    The vampire didn''t even care that he was utterly giving himself away as he shook his head, if the old man hadn''t already been sure. As he looked Mac over, his heart hurt. Mac, that brazen child, was this wrinkled old man. Knowing it, he could see the traces of his old friend buried in the wrinkles.


    Humans aged, and it wasn''t something that usually bothered him, because he usually built a life where he lived beside them. Time passed at the same rate for everything as near as he could tell. When he noticed a new wrinkle, or a silver thread of hair, in someone of his current identity''s age, he simply made sure to add a similar mark of age to himself. There was always a wrench when he had to ''die'' and leave a familiar life behind, but age itself was usually mere fact.Stolen story; please report.


    A friend from his first century as a human had devised the basic course his many ''lives'' had followed ever since, when they had both finally realized that he wasn''t aging at the same rate. He had altered the details to fit the era, but it had generally served him well.


    Mac took his arm, patted it, and pulled him toward the bar. "Don''t worry T''andy, Bobby makes a mean chocolate milk."


    Milk, one of the foods that actually held a bit of nourishment for him, when it was fresh. He almost stumbled forward, as tears hazed his eyes. He could feel the bartender''s doubtful gaze.


    Mac climbed up into one of the stools, he''d never grown very tall, and instructed the woman firmly, "Chocolate milk, no additives, for my old friend¡­s grandson. And another cup of tea for me, heavy on the whisky."


    Chris T''andy, he immediately adopted the lilt his old friend had added to the name, settled himself on the stool in front of him with practiced ease, and nodded to the bartender''s raised eyebrows.


    "It''s fine if you don''t want to talk about it," Mac said garrulously. "I can sorta guess, from what I already knows." His voice became more hesitant as he added, "I would like to hear you sing again though." He didn''t wait for an answer, as he chattered nervously about changes in the neighborhood.


    Nervous, his friend was nervous. He supposed Mac had plenty of reasons to be nervous. He interrupted the flow of words. "With this new epidemic, I''m low on cash¡­ that''s an exaggeration, I''m flat broke. I was hoping that there was somewhere I could sing for my supper."


    Mac looked at him in surprise, and then leaned forward to squint at his face again. He decided that maybe, ironically, the reason his old friend had been able to recognize him so easily, was because he couldn''t actually see very well. "You don''t look half as pretty now as Andy did do ya?"


    Chris glanced at the bartender who set down two glasses with a sharp noise that said a roach could have died to the blow.


    Mac seemed to realize his words were loose, and straightened up and patted Chris''s arm again. "Take after your mum no doubt," he said in a slightly too loud voice.


    Chris grinned at Mac, and his old friend''s grin spread just as wide and quick as it had in his youth. His heart eased a little at that smile. Age might have come for Mac, but life obviously hadn''t worn him down the way it did some people.


    "Waddya think Bobby?" Mac called to the bartender who had moved away to refill someone else''s drink.


    Chris looked around. People were sitting in isolated groups, and the server was wearing gloves and a bandana that masked his face, but kind of matched his feathered tricorne. "If things are tight here, I don''t need the pay," he said quietly. "I can get by with less than most."


    "Pshh, everybody''s got needs," Mac stated firmly. "Things are tight, but people come for the music as much as the drink, y''know that as well as I do."


    Bobby made her way back to them and looked Chris up and down, even though he knew that she''d already taken in the details of his clothes, his face, and Mac''s smile. "When the boy''s are done, you can take a turn, and I''ll feed you supper," she agreed almost kindly. "If you''re any good, I might even let you come back," she added almost smugly as she turned away again.


    Chris couldn''t prevent his own grin, as he called back to her, "I''m a vegetarian and a teetotaler!"


    He enjoyed the startled look on her face as she turned to look, and the way Mac rolled his eyes. "Vegetarian," Mac repeated sourly, with a pointedly arched eyebrow.


    "What else do they serve that''s alive?" Chris asked wryly.


    "Point," Mac agreed. "Not even oysters anymore, ''cept on Mondays."


    "Mondays?" Chris asked.


    "Bobby takes Mondays off," Mac explained. "And that Clare will serve anything with water in it. Brat thinks nobody can tell. Ears ''re stuck in the eighties too, fills the place with canned techno."

 Fragment 13

    Old Jose wondered if his curiosity was going to be the end of him. Maybe he''d caught it from this stranger than strange man. He could have walked away. But he didn''t.


    He trailed after the man who had frowned at his flask and called it venom, with an extra syllable or a strange roll of the tongue. It made Jose think of snakebite. Bad alcohol. Or a mix of beer and hard cider, if you wore a lot of black and liked your eyeshadow, or spoke the Queen''s English. Either way, it was probably bad.


    He''d offered the flask to the man, just in case the word meant something else entirely, and because it was the polite thing to do, though most wouldn''t dare with the virus outbreak. He''d actually retreated like he''d been threatened. Hard to say if it was because of the contents, which Jose had confidence would burn any bug that dared to come in contact with the liquid, or the fear of infection.


    Watching the man try to suggest a barter using sign language and words that nobody understood was pretty amusing. It was definitely one of those latin based languages, because venom wasn''t the only thing he said that sounded almost like a word. Of course, Jose wasn''t entirely certain that the guy was trying to barter, but he definitely seemed to be trying to ask what the shopkeeper wanted in exchange for fruit, and not understanding the response at all.


    Jose snorted, and the man spun on his heels with a speed that made Jose leap backwards with reflexes that he''d thought his ancient body had forgotten. Dangerous. He shouldn''t have been following someone who could move like that.


    The man pointed at the apple he held and said calmly, "Apple."


    The shopkeeper behind him corrected sharply, "My apple!"


    The lad obviously lacked a sense of self preservation.


    The dangerous man repeated questioningly, but clearly, "My apple?"


    Jose let out a sigh that came from his toes as the shopkeeper stiffened. The lad was one of the kinder folk, and left out bruised produce that he wasn''t allowed to give away, so that people could take it after he closed up his shop. He lifted his own hand to point at the apple and then at the shopkeeper, and said as clearly as he could, "His apple." Then he pointed at his flask and said, "My drink."


    The dangerous man set the apple down with the others, and asked, "Dollars?" He waved expansively toward the contents of the table.


    It took Jose a moment, while the shopkeeper agreed, "Yes, everything here costs money!"


    Jose fumbled in his pockets, until his fingers found his lucky coin. It was worth more than a dollar these days, and many kids wouldn''t even recognize it as one. He held it up and said, "Dollar."


    The shopkeeper gave him a confused look, but the dangerous man''s eyes glinted, and he gave Jose a firm nod, and held up a peach and asked, "Id?"


    "Peach," Jose said. "It is a peach."This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    He wasn''t surprised when the man reached for a plum, but he sucked in his breath when the shopkeeper slapped his hand and snapped, "Don''t touch what you''re not buying!"


    Reasonable, especially given the virus, but he was more relieved than he could explain when the man ignored the slap and pointed at the plum instead and asked, "It?"


    "It is a plum," Jose said quickly.


    The shopkeeper was rubbing his hand like he''d slapped a steel bar instead of a hand, and staring at the guy. They both froze when a deep growl rumbled out of the man whose hand had moved to point at the next tray. The man himself asked calmly, "It?"


    "Green pepper," Jose explained. He glanced at the shopkeeper and added, "I guess he''s really hungry."


    He really was a good lad, and Jose was determined to give him a bit extra when his little bit of money came in at the beginning of the month. The shopkeeper snatched up every fruit that the dangerous man, who had apparently decided to start his language lessons here, had touched and dropped them in a paper bag. He shoved the bag at the man and almost shouted, "Take it! Free! Eat!"


    The man looked confused, but accepted the sack. "My?" he questioned.


    "Yeah," Jose agreed, and then corrected that to "Yes," and added to the shopkeeper, "Thanks."


    "Yes, yours," the shopkeeper agreed, and pointed at the bag and then the man''s face.


    The man tried to give the shopkeeper a thankful smile and a nod, but somehow Jose felt that his heart wasn''t in it. "Eat apple," he suggested, and mimed taking a bite.


    --


    Victoria eyed the mermaid who had been a sea monster warily. The fishtailed woman had hauled herself up onto the deck with just her arms more easily than she had climbed aboard with two feet to help her. She was currently combing her hair and watching the solar panels track the sun.


    Victoria hadn''t dared to tell her to get off her ship, because she suspected the woman could sink it as easily as she''d boarded it. There was a lot more than her fins that was fishy about her. When she had righted the boat, transformed, and then warned Victoria to forget what she''d seen, Victoria had expected her to vanish. But there she sat, hours later.


    At first, she''d spoken like some English barmaid in an old movie. Lots of ye and tha sprinkled heavily with what Victoria was fairly sure were words a sailor would be proud of, as her mother would have said sarcastically. She had modified her way of speaking to match Victoria''s with frightening speed. Inhuman speed. But then, she obviously wasn''t human.


    If you''d asked Victoria that morning if mermaids really existed, she''d have pointed you to the manatees of Florida. And sea monsters might have gotten a surprisingly knowledgeable list of deep sea critters that had been recorded, and the various historical descriptions of sea monsters that matched each one. But she wasn''t one to doubt her own senses, or her own sanity, just because something out of legend was sitting on her deck.


    The mermaid was fascinated by all of the technology that made her little ship a single occupant craft. She had actually clapped her hands and giggled with delight when Victoria had shown her how the motors could move and trim the sails with just a few flicks of her hand at the helm. She had a thousand questions.


    Victoria wondered if she were betraying her race by answering as many of those questions as she could truthfully. If sea monsters were real, which they apparently were (either that or sea witches, Victoria hadn''t entirely decided), then their technology might be humanity''s only defense against them if it came to a fight. In legends, most of the wins were gotten by trickery or deception, but in the same legends, the witches and monsters usually kept their word.


    The dangerous creature who was watching the solar panel turn, which was about as exciting as watching grass grow, had promised to do her a favor if she answered "a few curious questions". Victoria had decided what favor to ask for before she''d even heard the first question.


    ''Go in peace, and don''t harm anyone who doesn''t harm you first.'' She hoped it wouldn''t count as two favors, but really, either half of it would probably be enough if it did.

 Fragment 14

    The vampire who had named himself Chris T''andy an hour ago, who had no identification, bank account, or possessions beyond the shirt on his back and the tablet he''d dug out of the trash, couldn''t help smiling.


    It wasn''t just his friend Mac that made him feel like he''d returned home. It was probably strange for a creature to whom alcohol was a poison to feel at home in an establishment that served it, but he''d spent plenty of time on both sides of the counter. Despite the cuts and dents in the heavily polished surface he was currently leaning on, he was fairly certain that it hadn''t been this same counter back then, but he had once stood behind the one that had stood in this spot.


    When the band tucked their instruments into their cases, with the same care that a first-time mother would use to wrap her baby, Bobby told him, "You''re up."


    "What''s your favorite song?" he asked cheekily.


    "Old Dun Cow," she replied without batting an eye.


    He blinked and looked back at Mac, who raised his glass and said serenely, "She''s a good kid, impeccable taste in music."


    He looked at the little stage and pointed out, "There''s a certain lack of piano about the establishment."


    "Psh," Mac scoffed. "Like you need somethin'' to lean on."


    There was a different kind of energy found in performing than the kind that food could give, something intangible, something that couldn''t keep a person alive, but something that could give them a reason to live. At the same time, it sucked the life energy out of you, burning through hours worth of energy in minutes. He was going to be hungry when he finished, even though he''d already eaten two full plates.


    Every eye in the place was on him after he sang the first line of the old drinking ballad.


    --


    He came to a halt, and the grubby representative of mankind who had been patiently identifying everything he pointed at while he ate the tiny bag of fruits that only made him hungrier, almost ran into him. It was almost comical the way it hurriedly backed up four paces.


    His hearing was muffled in this form, but something familiar tickled his ears, and he turned his head, trying to pinpoint its direction. He followed the sound toward the edge of the market, and the helpful mankind said something sharp and mocking. He turned to look at it.


    He wanted to follow the sound before it stopped. He wanted to listen with better ears. But even though this one wasn''t a dragon, it rankled to leave after accepting its teaching without gifting knowledge of his own in return. The mankind had often valued shiny metals more than knowledge in the past, but he had not collected any to bring down the mountain with him, and there was already a lot more metal in this hivelike city than in any cities he remembered.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    The sound that he wanted to follow faded away, and he glared in the direction he thought it had originated from. After a minute the sound returned, but it was softer. What was the grateful sounding word? "Thanks," he said to the grubby little mankind who had freely shared its words.


    He reached into the fold of his skin that mimicked the outer covering of cloth, and let one of his scales decompress, and then winced as he plucked it. He held it between his fingers and hummed to it for a moment. The sound was a deep rich tone that one of the mankind could not make with just their voices, and it carried a fragment of his almost non-existent energy reserve into the pattern of his own scale until it hummed with it like a tiny string.


    --


    Old Jose stared after the stranger for a while after he left. He looked down at the large rounded shell balanced on his wrinkled old hand. It was oddly warm, but then the man had pulled it out of his oddly shaped coat like he had carried it in his breast pocket.


    The way the stranger had suddenly walked toward the edge of the market, given an abrupt thanks, and then flinched before handing it over, made it seem like it must be valuable to him. Jose had tried to refuse it, but the man had insisted. Other than its size, it didn''t seem like it was anything terribly unusual.


    It had a slightly pearlescent sheen to its deep yellowish color, and a slightly dished shape. The faint grooves were rounded like a clam''s shell. After a moment he tucked it into one of his own large pockets. He didn''t really have anything to do, and had seriously considered following the dangerous stranger who had proven to be as polite as he was curious. But the shell in his pocket had obviously been meant as a parting gift.


    --


    Away from the market and its tempting fruits that he couldn''t take without causing a ruckus, he let himself decompress into his own form, although he kept himself small enough to maneuver easily between the buildings.


    He swiveled his ears until he had the sound''s origin pinpointed. Music had been playing in the market, but there had been no musicians. It had hummed from boxes on poles that had more of those cables that carried the lighting like little ducts, and he suspected that the sounds were being carried somehow like the powerful light had been.


    Even more interesting, most of the merchants had carried small devices that held more lightning in their bellies, and many of those had also been emitting music, without any cables or strings attached to them. Details about the inn where the carts had been stopped above the city, that he hadn''t paid attention to at the time, made him think that these devices were common.


    A dog dashed out of an alley that ran perpendicular to his course and started shouting at him. The language of dogs had not changed as much as that of the mankind. He was tempted to eat the rude little animal''s heart, he was so hungry, but he was sure that it would leave an unpleasant echo.


    The noise of an entry opening above, in the building that loomed over him, made him compress himself back into the shape he had used in the market. The dog shouted in fear and surprise, and then backed away while growling. He huffed in amusement, and told it, "It would take me much more effort to eat you in this shape."


    The dog turned and ran.

 Fragment 15

    He fumbled with the door for a while before figuring out how to open it without breaking it. The hands of the mankind, which they used so cleverly, were not terribly different in shape from his own, or from those of other animals like the raccoon. The mechanism which latched this door shut seemed like it would be very interesting to disassemble, but even if he disregarded the mankind, he was fairly certain that there was another of his own kind inside of this building.


    He had circled it to verify that the sound came from inside. This close, he could hear the song made of words from the mankind that accompanied the song of his kindred, but there was something raw and untamed about it. Like an infant''s humming, wasting energy for the joy of hearing the world vibrate in response.


    Once inside there was a short narrow hallway that gave him pause for a moment. He might have felt nervous about the entrance being some kind of trap, if he hadn''t felt the weak material it was framed in vibrating in the unfocused hum, and the joy in that sound.


    The room he stepped into at the other end of that short space was a place that one would have fit into any of the mankind''s cities in the most recent hundred millennia or so. Wooden tables, wooden seats, and cups of the poison that the mankind regarded as one of their greatest accomplishments.


    The young dragon who was singing so joyfully on the slightly raised platform at the far end of the larger room had surprising skill with shaping its compressed form. He could only identify its true nature through the sound it was spilling out so carelessly. He blinked and let his vision shift. In every physical aspect, the child mimicked the mankind perfectly, not that it seemed to be very much larger than the shape it wore when he examined it with his true eyes. A bit of the complexity had been reduced by the fabric it wore in the same fashion as the mankind.


    It was a mere handful of centuries old at a guess. He was surprised to see such a young dragon, since it meant that others had not slept as long as he had. But in a way, that was not actually too surprising. Something was still strange though, such skill with shaping did not match the unrestrained energy it was pouring into the song it was singing.


    The youth''s eyes met his, and a tremor shook its frame.


    --


    The vampire had forgotten the joy of mesmerizing a crowd, and he forgot that he was supposed to be someone else now, as he sang old favorites mixed with new songs from his most recent waking.


    Mac''s grin was so wide that he could still see it despite the bulb that shone directly into his eyes when he turned toward the bar.


    Someone entered the bar and came to a halt as soon as they could see the stage, and he basked in his own power for a moment, until he saw the man''s eyes. A tremor of recognition shook him so hard that his song wavered. Only centuries of singing held the tune in place as his mind reeled.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    He knew that he did not know that man, he was certain that they had never met, because he would have remembered this visceral reaction that told him that the man was no more human than he was. Another! A being of his own kind! Joy, sorrow, and confusion bubbled through his veins, making his skin feel tight.


    He ended the song, and almost fell off the stage in his haste. He turned the misstep into a leap and a dance step that carried him right up to the stranger. "You came," he stated the obvious in a voice somewhere between a pained whisper and an exultant shout.


    The man spoke a greeting that he understood, in words that left him frozen in shock. Cold to the very bottom of his soul, despite the cool kindness he sensed in them. His words seemed to make the very air hum, and pull at the world.


    --


    The youth spoke to him in the words of the mankind, with the hum of its song still spilling the secrets of its heart freely into the world. Pain, joy, question.


    This close he could smell the echo of old blood on the child''s breath, an echo faint enough that the youth should have been able to overwrite it. "Hello little one," he said gently in their own tongue.


    The mankind around them had been mesmerized by the youth''s song, but his voice shook them awake. Some of them reacted with fear, but one little wrinkled one reacted with anger, and leapt down from its wooden stool to charge forward as though it intended to defend the small dragon that trembled before him.


    The youth held out an arm to block the small creature from reaching him, and spoke quickly to it in the words of the mankind''s tribe. He still understood frustratingly few of those words, and the hum of the youth''s song faded from his voice as he, he was fairly sure that it was a boy, restrained both the small wrinkled one and his own power.


    When it directed a question to him in the same language, he hesitated. After a moment he answered in three languages. "No know," in the language of the mankind''s tribe. "Non intellego lingua," in the language of the conquerors tribe. "I do not yet have a good grasp on that language," in their own tongue.


    The youth sucked in a breath too deep for its compressed frame to hold, and looked at him with wide frightened eyes.


    The small one that it was holding back, snapped at him angrily with a series of sharp and liquid words, several of which were close enough to the curses of its ancestors for him to recognize, and he smiled. Its defensive anger was similar to the dog''s earlier, and it was trying very hard to insult him in the same manner, as though it regarded this young dragon who must be at least five or six times its age as a child it was guarding. It was almost endearing.


    He focused on the child who seemed to be struggling to speak. "Na tu un gu.." Perhaps despite his apparent skill with shaping his form, he did not know how to release one part of himself back to his own shape so that he could let his throat properly form the words.


    With apparent desperation the child suddenly sang its meaning at him. Never spoken, the world hummed with its wordless meaning. He gazed at the youth in shock. It was completely inexplicable! No infant was ever left to roam the world alone before it was old enough to speak, and anyone who found such a child would have taught it, no matter how little it could offer in return.


    "I will teach you, and you will teach me the words of the mankind tribe of this place," he stated the bargain without the usual limits on his own offer, or the question that could be refused.

 Fragment 16

    The sunset was glorious. It made Victoria think of the old adage: red sky at night sailors'' delight; red sky in the morning sailors take warning. But you couldn''t always trust in that, because it only held true when the storms came from the west.


    Her habitual caution was the reason that she made the mistake. She decided to check her phone for new messages and glance over the latest headlines, and look at what the weather was actually doing. She was keeping it turned off when she wasn''t using it, to conserve power, since even though her solar panels made her self sufficient, she didn''t have a large reserve.


    The mermaid, or whatever she was, had been so quiet for so long that Victoria hadn''t exactly forgotten her, but had somehow stopped regarding her as an active threat. The mermaid was hanging mostly upside down over the edge of the boat, so that she could see the signal lights that had come on when the light dimmed. When Victoria''s phone played its startup jingle the mermaid abruptly pushed herself back onto the deck and turned to look at Victoria with bright interested eyes.


    "A new type of musical instrument?" the mermaid asked merrily.


    "No," Victoria replied, but then she hesitated. "I don''t know, I guess it can be. I''ve heard that there are people who actually compose songs with just their phones."


    "Let me try it!" the mermaid demanded.


    Victoria''s hands tightened on her phone, like it was her lifeline. In many ways, it was just that. It was her connection to the rest of the world. Sure, she had the required emergency radio aboard, and had even used it once or twice when she''d been in a dead area, but it wasn''t the same.


    "It''s primary purpose is communication," Victoria clarified. "And I only have one¡­"


    "I''ll be careful with it," the mermaid promised promptly.


    Victoria''s phone was a rugged model that was supposed to be waterproof for up to half an hour and to a depth of four meters. It had a float attached to it in place of the typical cute charm or security cable, but she would have been reluctant to place it in the hands of a strange child, let alone a strange sea monster. The mermaid began to look impatient.


    She offered quickly, "I''ll show it to you after dinner?"


    Her stomach growled at her own words, and she realized that she hadn''t eaten anything since the mermaid had boarded her ship. She swallowed nervously as she realized that she had just introduced another potentially dangerous topic when the mermaid smiled. She seemed to have very sharp teeth, and Victoria wondered if she''d just leapt from the frying pan to the fire.


    "Do you have any fresh fruit?" the mermaid asked with interest.


    Victoria blinked.


    After a moment, she replied reluctantly, "I have a few frozen berries left. Half a lime, and a lemon, I think." She hoarded them like treasures, eating only a little at a time, and got most of her vitamins from greens. But she could imagine that to a sea dwelling creature, fruit might be a delicacy worth bargaining for.


    The mermaid''s expression looked like she was pitying the poor, as she asked doubtfully, "You went ashore recently enough that you still have ice and that''s all you have?"


    Victoria hesitated over the ''still have ice'' but decided to skip the topic of refrigeration, and replied, "There''s an epidemic going on, I picked up what I could."


    "Epidemic? A sickness?" the mermaid asked.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Victoria nodded.


    --


    The soapy water struck Mac, T''andy, and the stranger with cool indifference. Bobby lowered the squirt gun after she had their attention, and slapped the sign behind her. "No breaking the six foot rule, and no more than two to a table!" she scolded. "I let Mac off easy earlier, because he''s old enough to choose how he goes, but you gents had better all take two steps back right now."


    The self proclaimed Chris T''andy knew that the older vampire in front of him couldn''t understand the demand, but he took two steps back and wiped the spray off his face. He was embarrassed by his attempt to form words that he felt like he almost knew, but the cold soapy water had given him a chance to step back and think, and he realized that he''d understood the second language that the elder had tried. It was the language of science for centuries, a dead language, he had spoken in Latin.


    "Recedite, ne tradendae pestilentia," he attempted to explain the instruction to step back to prevent transmission of sickness. He suspected that to someone who truly spoke the language he was butchering it, and he was pretty certain that his kind couldn''t catch the virus, but the older vampire stepped back without protest.


    Mac gave him a look, before turning back to the bar and grumbling at Bobby, "Waste of good soap n''water."


    Bobby rolled her eyes and pointed out, "In other countries people who break the quarantine restrictions are getting themselves shot with bullets you old dwarf."


    The vampire turned to stare at her, but Mac laughed like it was a joke between them instead of the insult that had gotten his younger self into more fights than he could count. Bobby raised an eyebrow at him, and asked dryly, "That guy a friend of yours? He''s obviously not from around here."


    He glanced back toward the elder, the other, the being like himself, and the joy and fear he''d felt when he''d seen eyes like his own bubbled back up inside of him. Bobby was right, the clothes were similar to what you might see on the street, but the details were all wrong. The jeans looked like they were wool instead of cotton, and the ridges that were normally caused by the weight of the canvas folded into the seams were just¡­ bulges. The shirt under the odd jacket appeared to have laces at the cuffs, and no seams or even a visible hemline at all. The combat boots had laces, but lacked the metal rings and other details that they should have held.


    "He is a teacher?" he told Bobby and Mac a little uncertainly. "I''m not sure¡­"


    Mac shrugged. Bobby looked them both over once more with her sharp eyes, but simply replied, "Okay."


    The elder asked something that took him a bit to puzzle out, but he decided that it was probably a repeat of the words he''d said earlier in a language that the vampire hadn''t known that he knew. Something along the lines of ''I will teach you, and you will teach me this language.'' He sorted quickly through words that might mean yes and chose to reply, "Certes."


    He was trying to decide how to say, "But this is not the place to begin," when the elder spoke again. He wished that he could ask for a written exchange, because the school days when he''d taken classes where Latin was spoken were more than two centuries behind him. He was pretty certain that the elder had said, "This is not the place."


    He nodded reluctantly, and his gaze moved back to the bar where Mac was watching them with a wary expression. Bobby appeared to be focusing on wiping down the counter, but he was pretty certain that her attention was also focused on the two strangers. He was reluctant to walk away from this place that had welcomed him after so long, even though he wore a different face and it was a different era. He was reluctant to leave Mac without saying more, without¡­


    His eyes moved back to the stranger who could probably answer centuries worth of questions about what he was, and where he came from. A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he turned to look at the frightened face of the woman who had shifted in her seat. He glanced at the other faces, and saw their stillness, their tension.


    He had been connected to these people through his songs only a few minutes ago, and he had felt their enjoyment, but now they looked like a gang had walked in and started something. Or like they saw or sensed something very dangerous from the man he had been so excited to see. Or maybe, like they could suddenly see how dangerous he himself could be.


    "We should go somewhere else," he said in English, before remembering to try to translate it into Latin.


    The elder who had offered to teach him nodded.


    Mac took a step toward him, but only a single step. It was enough to make his heart ache, and he promised rashly, "I''ll come back tomorrow night."


    "I''ll be here," Mac replied, and it was a promise.


    He smiled joyfully, and Mac blinked at him, and then gave him a wide grin and two thumbs up.

 Fragment 17

    Old Jose spotted a patrol car, and ducked into the alley. He moved far enough in to stand in line with the fire escape, and then leaned against the wall and heaved a sigh. The new quarantine rules meant that only those who held a permit were allowed to move around outside of their homes. It meant that people like him who didn''t have a home stood out like sore thumbs.


    He was better off than most, since he had a small monthly income from his years of service. In this life you had to choose your battles. Jose usually chose food and medical expenses, except during the most bitter winters. When those came he bought tickets for wherever was cheapest, followed the birds south, and hoped for good foraging opportunities.


    The government liked to know where they could find you though, so it was easier to return with spring than to make the move permanent. Plus, cockroaches couldn''t survive this far north. Jose had faced down many foes over the years, but he still had a few things that he''d rather not face. Cockroaches still utterly creeped him out, nasty little plague vectors that refused to die.


    He could see his breath, and the wall against his back was cold enough to feel through his coat. The stillness and the chill of his surroundings slowly brought a patch of warmth against his hip to his attention. He stuck his hand into his coat pocket, and touched the surface of the shell the stranger had given him. An instant later he yanked his hand back out of his pocket and held his coat away from his body.


    Warm, it was still warm. After a moment he warily reached for it again, and pulled it out. It didn''t look any different, wasn''t glowing or anything. It simply warmed his hand with the same feeling of remnant body heat that it had held when the stranger had handed it to him.


    He ran his fingers over it, searching for any trace of a seam. There was nothing that he could detect. It felt exactly like the rather ordinary shell that it appeared to be, except for the warmth. Another source of warmth occurred to him, and he froze. What if it was radioactive?


    After a moment he shrugged. If it was that hot, hot enough for him to feel, he was probably already dead. The frighteningly curious stranger hadn''t seemed like the right kind of strange to be packing lethal radioactive samples, and he''d been wearing the shell against his chest. Not that humans didn''t do the stupidest things sometimes, but Jose somehow didn''t think that this was one of those times.


    Probably best to keep away from women and children until he''d had it long enough to prove that it wasn''t going to make him sick anyway. A laugh huffed between his lips. Everyone was keeping their distance anyway. With this virus sweeping across the world, just the fact that he was touching something that someone else had touched was probably the most dangerous thing about the shell.


    After a moment he straightened and tucked the shell into his waistband, against the small of his back. It was a comfortable warmth. A silly speculation flitted to the surface of his mind. If the shell magically maintained this temperature indefinitely, wouldn''t it feel cool during the height of summer? He blew the stray thought away on another huff of laughter. If the shell could do that, it''d be worth more than its weight in gold.


    --


    The youth followed him out of the den of the mankind. When he came to a halt, the child took a step back and regarded him warily, but at the same time, he seemed to radiate hopefulness.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    He let out a sigh, to carry his luck away. He didn''t need this kind of luck. He was still hungry, but the middle of this hivelike city was not a good place to stop and teach a little one.


    The young dragon used its broken standard to ask, "What your name is?"


    He gazed at the youth, momentarily stunned by the enormity of what he''d just promised. He should have just sought out one of the younger busybodies who liked to chatter and told them that there was a child who could not speak living here. Doubt whispered through his heart. Finding his kin might not be so easy with the fragmentation he''d felt in the strings.


    The youth continued, "I name Chris T''andy, false name for this woken, not know true name of me."


    "Dragon," he replied after a moment, using the modern variant of the word to prevent further confusion.


    "Dragon name?" the young dragon asked doubtfully.


    "Dragon is my identity in their tongue, and yours," he clarified simply.


    The child appeared to chew on his words while he considered whether it would be better to take the young dragon back up the mountain, where he knew there was space or to continue downriver to the ocean where there would be more to eat.


    "Dragon, I think I not understand well this flavor," the child confided, and then said more, in the current language of the mankind of this place.


    He couldn''t pick out any of the few words he already knew in that quick babble, but he replied dryly to the first sentence, "Agreed. Not well."


    He examined the youth, again impressed by his skill in mimicry. The child was obviously at home among the mankind, and spoke their current language much more fluidly than he spoke the standard tongue of the conquerors. After a moment he decided to ask the little one''s opinion before deciding their course.


    "I am hungry. This is not a good place to learn. Better the mountain, or the sea?" He tried to keep things simple and repeated it in their own tongue, which the child had seemed to recognize even if it couldn''t speak.


    "Hunger?" the young dragon asked worriedly, and took a couple of steps back, as though he expected to be considered as food.


    It was an exasperating reaction, for many reasons, and he growled softly. The faint memory of old blood that lingered beneath the more recent scent of greens and nuts on the young dragon''s breath, told him that it had been eating the hearts of animals. Even if he became desperate enough to eat such things, he would never eat one of his own kind. That way lay madness. Even the hearts of the mankind or the seafolk carried too much of an echo of their self to be worth the amount of energy gained.


    "I will not eat you," he stated clearly.


    --


    The vampire, Chris T''andy, eyed the being who had given ''Dragon'' as his name. His Latin was too broken, because the ''taste of my identity to you'' just didn''t quite make sense. He suspected he''d mistranslated the word that related to tongue.


    Dragon seemed to be angry. It was no doubt supposed to be reassuring when he declared that he would not eat Chris, but it made him more afraid that he''d been considered as food. The meaning of hungry in the other language, the one he didn''t remember but understood somehow, had been sharp and clear, and a bit frightening. It had felt hungry.


    It reminded him of his own forgotten hunger, and he almost turned back to enter the bar, but that wouldn''t be good either, since he had no money. The mountain or the sea? Did Dragon intend to go hunting?


    "If you have any money, we could just go to a supermarket?" he suggested, before realizing that he needed to translate that into Latin. Maybe hunting would be easier.


    Mac had told him about how the coast was being heavily patrolled because people were idiots who thought that time off work due to an epidemic meant they had time to take a vacation.


    "No money," Dragon stated after a moment.


    So much for the life of the rich and entitled vampires as portrayed by the media. "Let''s try the mountain I guess, er¡­ mons?" he suggested.

 Fragment 18

    Victoria had described what she knew of the new virus that had swept out of the orient and overwhelmed hospitals across europe. How the Americas had been slow to believe in its severity, and given it a firm toehold among their populations, before panicking.


    The things that surprised the mermaid about her tale were¡­ different than she expected. The mermaid''s indifference to the number of deaths wasn''t too surprising, after all, they weren''t members of her species. Her incredulity over the speed at which the virus had swept clear across the globe, and her disbelief that it had been spread from an animal seemed so¡­ scientific somehow.


    Victoria watched her spit out a frozen blueberry and had to restrain the urge to smack the dangerous sea monster that could sink her little ship.


    "These are already dead," the mermaid complained, as she pushed the bowl away. "And even the fastest winds do not traverse the world swiftly enough to account for the speed of the spread of this disease. I do not think this theory of transmission by airship is valid, it has to be enemy action."


    Victoria snatched up the bowl and carried it over to the little refrigerator. She wasn''t going to waste precious berries, even if there might be a bit of mermaid spit on them. She could cook them, that would sterilize most foods well enough.


    "I told you, they have tracked it to people who flew. On jets. They can circle the globe in a single day," Victoria insisted.


    "Describe how these jets fly then," the mermaid challenged, as she bit into Victoria''s last lemon with teeth as sharp as knives.


    "Let me just google that for you," Victoria grumbled.


    The mermaid seemed to forget about the half eaten lemon, which she hadn''t puckered up at in the slightest, as Victoria pulled her phone out again. The simplified explanation on the wiki page looked like the best place to start. She had only read the first paragraph, when the mermaid interrupted.


    "Let me look into that device," she demanded.


    There was a strange resonance to the words, as though something much larger was speaking, and Victoria froze. She couldn''t have resisted if she''d tried, when the mermaid reached out and snatched her phone from her hand. She was still sightly relieved to see the almost delicate way the creature held the phone.


    The mermaid gazed at the text on the screen, and actually sounded out the words. It was like watching someone fluent in English who could read a bit of French, but she got faster and faster at it, until by the end of the page, she was reading aloud at a normal speaking speed.


    It was even more of a shock, when she looked up and asked, "Jet engines? Mach? Humans have measured the exact speed of sound? No, nevermind those things, how did you ask this device to show an excerpt from a book that would answer my question?"Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    Victoria looked away from the mermaid''s frighteningly intense and curious gaze, and let her eyes focus on the scatter of stars overhead. Weariness seemed to be seeping out of her bones. The day had been very long already, and this was obviously going to take awhile.


    "Maybe the easiest way to answer that is to show you how to search for information and look it up yourself," Victoria suggested after a moment. She couldn''t help adding, "But please don''t break it or get it wet, okay?"


    "It has a distaste for water?" the mermaid asked, with a glance at the dark water that surrounded them on all sides. "Is it because it holds lightning in its belly?"


    "Uh¡­" Victoria stumbled over the last question. "It runs on electricity, so¡­ kind of yes? And yeah, I guess a distaste for water is close enough. It''ll stop working if its insides get wet."


    "I have seen how the sparks can be raised with silk and amber," the mermaid confided. "But I have never seen so much of it held within anything so small before."


    --


    "Are you planning to walk all the way?" was what Chris T''andy wanted to ask. He wished he had a phone so that he could look up translations.


    Following a stranger that he could barely communicate with through the city just because he seemed to be the same species, if he''d had a mother he was certain that she would have been throwing a fit. He couldn''t not follow though. He couldn''t miss this opportunity.


    Some of his initial excitement was wearing off now, and he noticed that Dragon was avoiding the streetlights as much as possible. He also seemed to know exactly what direction he wanted to go, but not which streets to take. Chris was actually quite familiar with this pattern of behavior. It belonged to tourists.


    He was not so familiar with the behavior Dragon displayed next. The other vampire came to a halt suddenly and sniffed air, before making a beeline toward a small import market that was currently closed. A heavy chain with a padlock was twined through the handles, as though to make that very clear.


    Dragon ignored the obvious and examined the doors closely, even running his hands over the chains.


    "Hey," Chris objected nervously. It wasn''t that he never broke one of the ever changing laws, but he broke them very selectively. Sometimes it was unavoidable, like faking his deaths and births because humans simply didn''t live as long. Sometimes it was because following the letter of the law would attract more notice than breaking one.


    Dragon replied simply, "Hungry."


    There was a soft noise like a click, and Chris stared as the chain fell off the door handles in pieces, and landed at Dragon''s feet with a clank. "No, no, no, this is bad!" he protested with a suppressed exclamation. "Est malum, c''est mauvais, es malo," he hissed as many latin like variants as he could come up with.


    His head turned as he searched for the camera lenses that he knew would be watching. At the same time, he really wanted to know how the other vampire had done that. He couldn''t cut through steel with his nails, there was no sign of heat, and there had been only that one soft sound. Thieves with diamond bladed hacksaws couldn''t have cut through the fat links that fast.


    Dragon growled at the door and pushed hard enough that the whole wall seemed to shake. Chris gave in to the inevitable and stepped forward. Dragon took a step back as Chris took hold of one of the handles. This was going to be embarrassing if Dragon had bent the frame.


    He hauled the door sideways with all of his strength, and the automatic door grudgingly slid into its pocket, with a grinding noise that sounded as loud as a cement truck to the nervous vampire''s ears.

 Fragment 19

    The young dragon had been distressed by his actions, but it would be wasteful to retreat to the mountain without eating more where there was food available.


    It wasn''t a garden, and held no heart, but the small indoor market had obviously been positioned by someone who could see, or at least feel the strings. He opened his true eyes and nodded. A climbing plant ran from floor to ceiling along the end of the table that held the dormant roots. It was a weak influence, but it was so that it tugged the string into alignment.


    Whoever had arranged the roots themselves had been blind, but they still benefited from the flow of energy that spilled over and around them.


    He listened to the child''s worried flow of new words and watched with curiosity as the youth examined one of the devices that was fed by more than one of the odd cables full of lightning, although the second one carried little more than a stray spark. The child followed the weak cable with his fingers and his physical vision, as though he were true blind, and the old dragon frowned.


    He crunched another handful of the spicy roots between his teeth as he watched the child manipulate the lock on the small door that led into a small partitioned space. He hadn''t recognized it as a lock, but watching the process made it clear. For all the wasteful power of the youth''s song earlier, he used his hands and a wire to move the metal instead.


    He grabbed the rest of the dozen varieties of small spicy roots, and moved far enough to watch the young dragon manipulate another device that hummed to itself with the power of the lightning that ran in and out of it like a harnessed stream. He blinked in surprise when it lit up.


    It was too bad that there weren''t many roots of this strength, each one was worth a crate full of the apples he''d eaten earlier.


    --


    The vampire breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the system the shop was using to record the security camera footage. "Thank God they haven''t updated things lately," he muttered. He glanced at the figure perched on the desk beside the monitor. "Or perhaps Budda," he added politely.


    He had flattened his fingertips so that they left no prints when he''d pushed open the door, and he was no computer wizard to magically erase the evidence and leave false footage in its place, but he could delete the last few hours and shut the system down. He felt bad about the theft, but at least they were only losing a few fruits and vegetables.


    He''d been a little surprised by that. The small tank of live seafood had made his own stomach rumble, but he''d resisted. He looked up to see the older vampire watching him, while chewing on another root of some kind. Was that ginger?


    Maybe he''d misidentified it. The elder didn''t seem to be at all distressed as he crunched the knotty brown root. He finished shutting the system down and straightened, and the older vampire seemed to take it as a signal and turned toward the outer door.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    --


    It took them almost an hour to reach the upper edge of the hivelike city, even though they walked faster than most of the mankind could run where the darkness hid them.


    He stopped beneath a tree and asked the child, "Should we fly from here?" He repeated the question in the old standard tongue.


    The young dragon responded by showing its talent and compressing himself all the way down into a small bat. He could only stare at the child for a long moment. After a minute he decided that the form was very unlikely to draw attention from the mankind. It was very sensible really.


    Unfortunately there was no way that he could duplicate the feat. He was already compressed nearly as far as he could manage at his current energy levels. He grimaced and considered all of the large birds that could still fly. The largest albatross that he could think of was only a fraction of his density. Swans were heavier, but not enough heavier.


    Perhaps a bird from a previous era? There had been a variety of condors. They had lived on another continent, but since they had already departed the world, no one would notice that discrepancy. He compressed himself into that vaguely remembered shape, and launched himself awkwardly into the air.


    For a moment he flew as awkwardly as a chicken, but he quickly let himself expand a little and adjusted his shape. It was still laborious, but it would be much faster than climbing the mountain on foot. He circled after a moment, looking for the young dragon. The little bat was a laborious untidy flutter of wings, and he sighed.


    It might be authentically small, but that form was obviously going to be too dense to fly easily despite the young dragon''s naturally small size. He didn''t have to suggest landing to change shape though. The exceptionally talented little mimic copied his own current form a few moments later, and quickly caught up.


    --


    Sara hadn''t been able to settle down. A dragon had torn up her garden, and a lot of trees, and then shredded the torn trees into what almost looked like the wood chips that used to be spread on playgrounds before that weird sponge-like rubbery paving was invented. It had also shredded the tree that had blocked her driveway.


    She felt dazed and exhausted, but she couldn''t sleep. And possibly weirdly, she wanted to sit here on the large stone that apparently held some kind of dragon attracting hole in the ground beneath it, where she could smell the vibrant scent of the freshly cut wood fragments. She hugged her warm cup of tea that added its own softer scent.


    The cold stone beneath her felt as solid and unmovable as it had always looked. The moon followed the same path, and although she had been thinking it seemed brighter lately, she suspected that it was merely her imagination playing on the headlines that said pollution levels were dropping at amazing rates.


    Wildlife was supposedly returning to large cities across the world as well. She was sceptical about the "return" though. Both because of things like the photo manipulation that was going around which showed the Loch Ness monster visiting Inverness, and because she suspected a lot of the animals were simply being noticed more because people were stuck at home with nothing to do during the quarantine restrictions.


    Then again, a dragon had relandscaped her garden and a good chunk of the surrounding forest. She sipped her tea.


    Two impossibly large birds caught the moonlight overhead.


    Sara choked on her mouthful of tea, dropped her cup, and was inside her house, hiding underneath the heavy quilt that covered her bed in less time than it usually took her to walk across her living room. As though her fragile house and a soft blanket could protect her from something that could lift boulderers and shred trees into wood chips.

 Fragment 20

    In the darkness, the top of the mountain had a strange line of lights that lead all the way to the peak, like those along the larger streets in the city below. He dismissed it as a puzzle to be unraveled later and landed on the darker side of the mountain. Not only were there fewer lights on this side, but there were fewer roads and houses as well. It was puzzling, because this side had a more accessible slope and faced the larger of the two rivers that met at its foot.


    The large stone outcropping he''d chosen was surrounded by tall trees, but they seemed¡­ too young and uniform in age. Perhaps a fire had burned hotter than normal and cleared a wide area at some point, the mountain was prone to seasonal lightning storms.


    The youth landed beside him, and he released the tightly compressed state that he''d been holding himself in, and instructed the child, "Return to your accustomed shape."


    --


    The vampire did not squeak in surprise, he had just¡­ landed a bit hard.


    The other of his kind had shaped himself into an enormous, colorful, serpentine¡­ dragon. Like his name? For a moment the words in that strangely resonant language that he could somehow understand, but not speak went completely unheeded as he gawked up at the dragon form that was so large that it seemed to block the sky.


    Dragon, who had taken a dragon shape that was bigger even than the largest cloud form that Chris could maintain, demanded impatiently in the same tongue, "Release your compression! It will make the language lessons significantly easier."


    He puzzled at the words, and finally paid attention to what had first been said. His accustomed shape? He wondered how the other knew with such certainty that he had one, but he did have a face that he tended to return to every few generations.


    He didn''t have anything as dramatic as a promise, or an oath, or even a strong logical reason for it. It was just a whisper of nostalgia, a small comfort. An intangible thread of connection to the one who had been his first friend, who had called that face brother.


    He wondered how the shape would help him speak, but he shifted his form obediently.


    --


    He peered at the young dragon doubtfully. He thought that the shape was slightly different than the one he had worn in the hivelike city of the mankind, but it was still definitely of that species. Was the child unable to understand as much as he''d thought?


    He opened his mouth to repeat the insistence that the child release its compressed form, but the youth spoke uncertainly in his poor standard, "Uncrush? Unbind? I not understand."


    He opened his true eyes fully, and examined the young dragon, while he tried to think of another way to describe the decompression. The child truly seemed to have obtained an effortless balance with his current shape, wearing it as easily as he wore his wings.


    He suggested hopefully, "Let your heart and eyes expand to their truest shape."


    The young dragon let his heartbeat slow, and opened his own true eyes, without altering his compressed form. It was frustrating that he could obviously understand at least some of what was being asked, without being able to grasp the intent.


    The youth stared up at him curiously, and said clearly but softly in the old standard tongue, "Light. You are full of light." The simple words once more carried the hum of song beneath them, and the child seemed to radiate amazement.


    He hesitated as he met those eyes. It wasn''t that the words could be considered untrue exactly. Every living thing carried its own complex energy pattern, just as the world carried its complex pattern of strings. He had always suspected that if one could fly beyond the reach of the air, to the height of the moon, that one could look down at the world and see its full pattern. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Light was not an incorrect term for that radiance, but a horrible suspicion was forming. A reason that many of the oldest might have abandoned a hatchling before it was old enough to speak properly.


    He closed his true eyes for a moment, and gazed doubtfully at the pale color of the child''s true eyes. He had never been able to see his own true eyes with his physical sight, and the pale surface could be part of the child''s compressed shape¡­ but he had looked upon the true eyes of others who had worn other forms.


    It was not done, it was an offense great enough to excuse even death, because it left a trace on the victim. A trace as strong as though you had force fed them a bite of your own heart. By forcing your own imprint upon another, your will, you gave them the right to devour your heart later without blame, without consequence.


    When dragons had been less, when the world had been young and dangerous, it had been their defense. It had let them eat their enemies. And it had let them share a fraction of their memories, their selves, and their strengths, when they had not cared about the difference between you, and I.


    He opened his true eyes again and gazed into the child''s eyes. And then he¡­ pushed a single intent. Not a binding, not a hurt, it was a simple demand. "Release!"


    A sigh that seemed to flow all the way from his toes slid over his tongue and steamed in the cold air, as the child suddenly decompressed, and gazed up at him with wide frightened white eyes.


    --


    He became a snake, and he panicked, but¡­ he didn''t flee, because he felt the sorrow.


    He silently cursed himself for his own stupidity. He could impose his will on others with his gaze, what on Earth had made him think that meeting the true eyes of another of his kind was a good idea. But¡­ he was also confused.


    ''Release.'' He was certain that that was the demand his body had answered. For a moment he''d lost control of himself, every muscle had gone flaccid, and now¡­ he was a snake. Wasn''t he? Was he?


    His toes curled in fear and he froze and looked down at his own hands. They were small, scaled, and had¡­ claws. Like some kind of snake cat.


    "Blink," suggested a voice that was gentle with sorrow, while being large enough to make the trees around them tremble.


    He blinked, and then he wondered fearfully if he''d been forced to blink. He scuttled backward, feeling his snake belly rub against the cold stone. He blinked again, and then closed his true eyes and shifted back into¡­ his accustomed shape.


    The biting cold made him take one step forward to snatch the remains of his clothes, before turning to run. They had torn when he''d changed and fallen when he''d retreated. And the sheer idiocy of a human (or a vampire) running from a dragon that was larger than a house made him stop three steps later and turn around.


    Dragon¡­ the dragon, looked sad. He could still feel that sadness. He opened his mouth to ask why, and the sudden realization that he knew the word held him frozen in a different silence.


    Dra¡­ the dragon sighed again, and asked curiously, "Why return to that form?"


    The words were more than meaning, they were words. Chris, the vampire who had once lived as a snake, and who had been a snake with hands just a moment ago¡­ right. Chris cleared his throat, and realized that it was the wrong shape to form a reply. He felt certain that he could open his throat the same way he could open his true eyes, if he just¡­


    --


    "This is the shape¡­ I¡­ that my first brother cherished," the child explained awkwardly.


    He could feel the fear, and confusion. He should apologize. He was old. Older than many of those who might have abandoned such a child. But he would not. Had not.


    But still, this child was not completely blind like that one. It could at least see something like light where it should see patterns. It seemed that he should also teach the youth about basic biology. "Dragons cannot interbreed with the mankind. They are completely separate species."


    "They are called ''humans'', and I know that!" the little dragon snapped, but then it froze and whispered, "Dragons?"


    "You are speaking very well," he complimented the child curiously. "Was it only that you did not remember how to return to the shape of your own throat?"


    The child''s feeling of horror when it looked at its own hands, and its quick retreat into the shape of the mankind¡­ into a human, made him think that it might actually be possible for a child who had held another form for most of its life to forget how to release the compression.


    "Didn''t you¡­ didn''t you teach them to me when you¡­ did that?" the child asked uncertainly.


    Release¡­ that had been all he had sent. Even if he was so far gone as to break the taboo, he had been careful to minimize, to contain¡­ he had reduced it down to pure intent and the emotions were already fading to what could be carried in the song of words.


    Suddenly, he was very, very angry¡­

 Fragment 21

    Chris shivered beneath the dragon''s glare. The remains of his clothes were clutched in his hands, but they didn''t seem to matter. He didn''t know why the dragon had suddenly switched from radiating sadness to fierce anger, and his mind was reeling.


    The dragon, the OTHER dragon (he was a dragon?), looked away from Chris, heaved an exasperated sigh, and said, "Shit."


    Chris couldn''t help it, he started to laugh. Hysterically, perhaps, but he laughed nonetheless. The dragon turned its glare back toward Chris, and he waved his armful of clothes, and explained quickly in gasps, "Every language. I read that the word for¡­ ''excrement''," he stumbled over the language suddenly, as no other word than shit presented itself, and used the English word, "is an ''explicative'' in every language."


    The dragon didn''t roll his eyes, he just turned his face away, but that was the feeling that Chris got from him, although, somehow this werd direct sense of its emotions was fading. Its¡­ his anger was no longer tearing at the air around them, even though he was certain that the feeling lingered.


    His laughter trailed off, and he couldn''t stop shivering. He didn''t think that it was from the cold, cold never affected him as quickly as it affected humans, as though he had a hidden reserve of heat in his core. It was shock, he decided in self diagnosis. He was going into shock, the overload was too much.


    The information was too much.


    Maybe what had made the dragon angry had been the way he''d spoken of what had just been done to him, but he didn''t know what had been done to him. There was no way he could describe the way his head, his body, maybe his very soul had been cracked open. If this was the way every person he had ever used his eyes on felt¡­ remorse swept through him with the shudders that wracked him.


    That dazed look they got when he commanded something, he felt sure that it was in his own eyes now. But¡­ the command, he could understand it fully now, the word, feeling, and concept were all the same. And it was still simple. Release. How could release wrack him with¡­ with memories? How ¡­no. He knew how it could turn him into a snake, no, into a dragon. He was a dragon, that shape¡­ was his.


    It wasn''t anything like the dragon he''d made of himself before, not the shape he''d crafted. It was like¡­ the snake he had barely remembered being, the snake that he had been¡­ for a long time. How long? As he asked, he knew. The haze of time that clouded that time seemed to have withdrawn. A full century.


    And before? Before that? He remembered the eyes. He blinked and shivered, and turned his gaze upward. A concerned frown met his eyes. He looked. He looked at the shape of the face surrounded by¡­ fur? feathers? His eyes wandered to the rest of the dragon''s form. The hands, the clawed hands, they were small compared to the rest of him, but he was¡­ enormous.


    He made a whale look small, and whales were HUGE. In another lifetime Chris had watched whales from the deck of a wooden ship, and found them almost inconceivably large. It felt like they had dwarfed the ship the way this dragon would dwarf a whale.Stolen novel; please report.


    There were¡­ fins? Along the dragon''s colorful back, fins and decoratively trailing strands of that soft fluff that could be either fur or feathers. And he had wings. There was no way something that big could fly without wings that would cover the entire sky. No, something that big should simply be unable to fly.


    He shivered uncontrollably, and he shifted. He¡­ released his form. He was still tiny, barely larger than his normal human form. And then he craned his head back to examine his own back. There were no wings. He wasn''t¡­ they weren''t the same. A wave of sorrow so deep that it felt as endless as the night sky washed through him. They were similar, but they weren''t the same kind.


    He started to cry, like a woman (a woman of this age might slap him for that thought, but it was deeply ingrained into the culture he had lived in), or like a baby, and¡­ in this form it poured out of his mouth like a song.


    --


    The child¡­ mourned.


    The connection had faded but the child cried like an infant, and the world shivered with the raw song of its sorrow.


    The anger that he had been setting aside flared brightly. What memory had been released that could make him feel such sorrow. The anger cooled, just a little, as he wondered if the child''s language had been bound accidently. Maybe whoever had sealed his voice had been well meaning but clumsy?


    It was possible. It was still wrong, more wrong than what he had done. Even if forgetting seemed like a kindness, even if it was begged for, it would be like violently erasing part of one''s self.


    --


    The dragon''s fierce glare made him struggle to regain control. It didn''t deserve this childish reaction. It had offered to teach him, and had somehow almost instantly given him words, released a whole language that he hadn''t known he had forgotten.


    He focused on that thought. A language he had forgotten. When had he learned it? He shook his head¡­ and felt a weird pull at the edges of his jaw. Suddenly he really wanted a mirror.


    "Can you tell me what brings you such sorrow?" the dragon asked with a really weird mixture of anger and sympathy.


    Chris blinked and met eyes that were just looking. The focus was frightening. He had never seen such raw curiosity from any human. They had a thousand ways to veil their interest, to avoid direct questions, and direct answers were rarely appreciated.


    The truth slipped out of his mouth while his thoughts danced in circles. "I don''t have wings."


    The dragon blinked.


    Its mouth opened, and then shut. Just like a human who had changed what they were about to say. Sorrow shimmered to the surface of its gaze, drowning out the anger, sympathy, and curiosity. And it closed its eyes for a moment.


    "I am certain that you can shape your own wings well," the dragon said almost calmly as it opened its eyes again. Sympathy had replaced the sorrow. "I just don''t know if it is possible to teach one who is mostly blind how to change their own pattern. I think it would be incredibly dangerous, and I cannot advise it. But if it is your true wish, I will attempt to teach you how it is done."


    Chris knew that he was staring up at the dragon with an open mouth and a blank expression, but¡­


    The dragon declared quickly and with sharp emphasis, "AFTER you have learned to reinforce your own pattern and clear it of the echoes of others!" He voice dropped to a mutter as he added, "If you can do that, it might be possible¡­"


    "You MADE yourself wings?" Chris demanded incredulously. It was really a very silly question coming from a talented shapeshifter, but the small dragon''s usual mental walls, and the guards on his tongue had been temporarily shattered.

 Fragment 22

    The human girl had fallen asleep awhile ago, but her vessel was like an enchanted ship out of a story. It seemingly sailed itself according to its captain''s last commands.


    The device in her hands was more incredible than any scrying stone or magic scroll in any story she had ever heard of. The girl had said that its primary purpose was communication, and while she hadn''t seemed to be lying, the dragon was fairly certain that its value as a research tool was far higher. The girl''s reluctance to let her use it was actually quite reasonable, once you understood its power.


    Studying had never been one of her favorite things, she would rather learn by doing, but the world had never before changed to such a degree during one of her sleeps. She had heard from elders of times when one could awaken to find the continents had shifted, or that ice locked the world. And she had woken before to find new countries had risen, or that a long established one had fallen.


    But somehow she felt quite certain that no one had ever before woken to find that old tales of magic were coming true, and even being surpassed, before this age. They would have sung of such an event for aeons. She was tempted to sing it into the strings herself, even though the device in her hands told her that she had barely experienced any of the wonders available.


    In a way, what the elders predicted had happened, was still happening. The plague of humanity had covered the Earth, more unstoppable than any plague of locusts. They had devoured everything in their path. Stripped everything of value that they could grasp.


    The page that showed on the surface of the small device in her hand spoke of terrible things. Wars more horrible than any she could have imagined. If she hadn''t read of so many wonders, and heard about how incredible the cooperation between nations was in fighting this new disease, she would have assumed that she had woken just before the end. She might even have chosen to join the elders in their long sleep.


    But the human''s complaints had only highlighted the general harmony that humans in general finally seemed to have achieved. She gazed at the moon overhead, and then scanned the stars, trying to pick out the distant planet known as Mars. The humans had devices there, farther than any dragon could fly, that could let anyone with a device like this look around the surface of another world.


    They had spread, and devoured, and destroyed¡­ and grown beyond any dragon''s imagining. They were not dying, despite their fear of the new sickness. They were still growing.


    Numbers she understood well, even if many of the new words in the books that the device could display were beyond her current grasp. The numbers of the dead were tiny, compared to the numbers of the living. This new plague had not yet stricken even a single city as hard as what had become known as the black plague had once stricken entire countries, and they were winning against it.


    It had not even plagued them for a year yet, and they were already producing medicines, according to the somewhat confusing reports that the human had declared to be somewhat credible sources. Apparently even magical access to vast libraries could not prevent those who knew little about a subject from writing about it. No, it likely encouraged it.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    What the elders had predicted was not wrong, exactly, it was just that they had not been able to imagine a species capable of surviving a global famine of its own making. The humans were still thriving beyond even her own predictions. They had just been learning to fly through the sky when she had gone to sleep, and now they seemed to be preparing to fly among the stars.


    She looked at the strange little tablet in her hands that could show the words and pictures from a thousand libraries, that could repeat the songs of singers across the world, and after a moment she set it down with incredible reluctance.


    The oldest of her kind did not understand the concept of property, in the way that their legends told them that their kind had once lacked the concept of self. They did not take with the intention to steal, like many humans would, because the concept of theft required an understanding of property and possession. Bees understood what very old dragons did not. But according to the songs, bees had developed societies long before humans, and societies were built around homes.


    She was young, and she had been playing ''the game'' among the humans for much of her life. She understood property. She even thought of her garden as hers, and though she would take no offense to any who drank from its heart, she would be offended if others changed it.


    She left the ''phone'' beside the sleeping girl, on her fascinating little craft, and altered her shape to one that she''d admired during her firstmillennia. That elder had been a quite patient teacher, unlike her mother, and many other younger elders. Her ''game'' was actually patterned off of his method of studying ''the tribe of the conquerors'', as he had called the Romans that he had moved north with.


    He would love to have one of those small tablets. But he had decided to sleep through the end of humanity''s self destruction like the other elders. It was actually one of the most united actions that dragons had ever taken, as far as she knew, almost as though they were finally developing their own society into something beyond the small guiding songs.


    She launched herself into the air. If the sleeping girl had been a dragon, she would have owed her a great debt. Knowledge should be traded for knowledge of equal value, even if some old dragons would accept the knowledge of a simple flower in exchange for knowledge that spanned the world. Not taking wasn''t the same as giving, but¡­


    After she saw an ''aircraft'' in flight, her next priority was to obtain a ''phone'' of her own. She flew higher and her eyes searched the sky for shapes that were not birds.


    She saw the traces of their paths through the sky long before she saw one in flight. At first she simply wondered at the strange streaks of cloud across the sky. If the device had not shown pictures in the book about ''jets'' she probably wouldn''t have connected the clouds with the ''trails'' of an aircraft at all. They were too large. They cut across the whole curve of the sky.


    When she finally detected one that was moving, at first she could only see the trail that was growing behind it, and she was relieved. The tiny speck that was the actual aircraft was not actually unimaginably large. It could not be small though, to be visible from this distance. She flew swiftly toward it, and then altered her course.


    It was swift, impossibly swift. If she flew toward it, she would never reach it. She turned and flew at an angle, in the direction that the line of its trail indicated. It was such a straight line. It did not fly like a flying thing, it flew like an arrow that could cut the wind. Like shot from apistol. People rode such a thing? Humans were crazy, humans were amazing, humans were fun!

 Fragment 23

    The former vampire, who had just discovered that he was actually a dragon, the being temporarily self named Chris T''andy, was currently laying on his wingless back, and staring at the stars.


    Actually he wasn''t discounting the possibility that he was still exactly the type of creature that the word vampire was meant to describe. It was more like he was now adding the possibility that he was literally the kind of dinosaur that he''d mentally accused himself of becoming everytime keeping up with the latest technology became rather tiresome.


    Dinosaur was the common name of all of those lizard-like beings who had existed long before mankind right? And according to the dragon beside him, he himself had been alive, although young, during that epic era. Age, it seemed, was the reason for the vast difference between their sizes. Therefore, dragons must be dinosaurs. Probably.


    Snakes did not lay on their backs and stare at the stars. Neither did dragons, from the glances the older dragon kept sneaking at him. Humans did though.


    "What is your real name anyway?" Chris asked. There was something odd about the word for name in this language, but he was still feeling out the corners of this new/old knowledge. He was also beginning to suspect that he had only had a small child''s grasp of it when he''d become¡­ a mute snake that couldn''t remember its passing days clearly. He was still almost certain that he hadn''t had hands and feet like this back then.


    The older dragon didn''t answer right away, and he felt a frown wrinkle his face. It was odd, he''d never thought much about the expression before, but this face could frown, although he wasn''t going to bet that he''d recognize his own expression in a mirror right now. He flexed his tiny fingers that were still some weird cross between a lizard and a cat''s claws. His hands still felt like hands, unlike when he took the shape of a cat or a lizard.


    After a moment the older dragon SANG something, and Chris sat up and stared. The older dragon kept singing, without repeating, or no¡­ there was repetition, or maybe a pattern to it, but it definitely had no chorus or verse. And it all MEANT something. Something that was too big for him to understand.


    His mind fled to tiny details, like the fact that dragons were not meant to sit on the backs of their spines. His body lacked the proper padding and support for such a position. And the older dragon still sang. He was singing¡­ his NAME. Chris was somehow certain. And he was probably a horrible failure as a dragon, because there was no way he was going to be able remember it, let alone repeat it.


    But it was¡­ wonderful.


    It felt like the whole world was echoing with the sound.


    When the dragon whose name described more than could ever be said in words stopped singing, Chris felt like the world had dimmed, and the¡­ it wasn''t silence, because the wind sang through the trees, dozens or hundreds of varieties of life made noises, and even the trucks on the freeway along the river far below them could still be heard. But the lack of song was just that, a lack, an emptiness, a silence.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    And then the dragon opened his true eyes, and said calmly, "Your name is:" and he SANG again. Chris desperately tried to grasp the song this time. He tried to catch even a phrase of it firmly in his mind.


    When it ended he was crying, except that dragons apparently did not cry with tears. Sorrow curled him into a knot. He could not remember even a fraction of it. And he also felt certain that he had heard it before, unlike the older dragon''s, he somehow recognized his own NAME. Even if he couldn''t grasp it.


    "How do you know mine?" Chris asked in a broken whisper that bent his words, when the silence sat between them again.


    "I can see it," the older dragon replied gently. Too gently. Sorrow and sympathy laced the words.


    Chris uncoiled himself and looked up at the older dragon. "Earlier, you said that I''m mostly blind? What did you mean? I can see quite well¡­ I think? Is it something like letting my throat open properly, am I not opening my eyes properly?" He opened his true eyes and looked around, trying to somehow ''see'' more than he usually could.


    "What does the world look like to you with your true eyes open?" the dragon replied to his string of questions with another question.


    "A white mist that fills the world, it is the energy that is everywhere," Chris confided openly what he usually kept secret. "I can also see things that hold more energy than the background radiation, because they glow. All lives glow a bit more, but you glow like¡­ like a power plant, only differently, with overflowing life." He was embarrassed, but in this shape his cheeks did not burn with it. He added, as he looked at his hands, "I glow a little more than others, but not nearly as brightly as you."


    "The few, the one survivor that I have spoken with who was completely blind could see only pure unchanging white when he opened his true eyes," the older dragon said quietly. "But those who can see, can see the patterns within living things, and the light of the strings of the world."


    "One survivor?" Chris asked fearfully, ignoring the patterns and strings for a moment.


    The dragon hissed. But after a moment Chris realized that sibilant sound was mostly a sigh. "They usually starve. They cannot see the hearts to drink from, and they cannot consume enough energy to compensate for the lack on their own. Unless they eat the hearts of creatures that have patterns that echo too strongly within them, and drive them mad because they cannot look at themselves and reinforce their own pattern. And then they starve."


    "Consume the hearts of your enemies, but do not be consumed," Chris blurted awkwardly. It wasn''t quite right somehow in this language, but the phrase had always rung true with him, like something learned at his mother''s breast. Although apparently it was very unlikely that his mother had actually had breasts, per se.


    The older dragon chuckled. "What an awkward paraphrase of a fragment of the guiding songs."


    Chris had to struggle with the meaning of some of those words. It helped somehow that he knew the concepts for them in another language, but paraphrase was definitely a guess. It had probably been too complex for a child. There were so many things he needed to ask, and each answer brought a dozen new questions with it.


    He looked at his strange little hands, and said instead, "I''m almost sure that I didn''t have hands during my first century. I was sure that I had been a snake for a long time before I discovered that I could shift my shape."


    The older dragon laughed, and the light of the world around then shimmered with his amusement.


    When he finally stopped laughing he informed the young dragon, who had lived a mere five centuries and considered himself very old, quite cheerfully, "Of course not. Infants don''t begin to develop their hands and feet until they are at least a century old."

 Fragment 24

    The self declared Emperor, looked at the small plate of stolen fruit and edible flowers. Many of them were barely ripe enough to be edible.


    The custodian eyed the plump figure nervously. Normally taking anything from the palace gardens would result in immediate dismissal, and likely heavy fines. But what else were you supposed to do when a dragon demanded fruit, and you feared to venture out into the city to find a market, because you were probably seeing a dragon transform into a plump old fashioned emperor because you were already delirious.


    Even if he had gone to a market, he would have risked fines and likely been able to acquire even less food. Everything was locked down to prevent the spread of the virus, as tightly as the government could manage in a nation with a population in the billions.


    The custodian was so braced for an angry tantrum, that he actually wobbled when the self declared Emperor asked with concern, "Are the people beyond the palace starving?"


    "No¡­ not yet sir. Most of them," he replied quickly, but truthfully. He spoke respectfully, as to a superior, but without all of the honorifics that an emperor should normally receive. He wasn''t certain that acknowledging the claim wouldn''t be treason. The President might not be everything that a person could wish for, but if you compared him to other world leaders, he was at least efficient and decisive.


    The self proclaimed emperor did not seem to notice the lack of flowery words and proper mode. He neatly devoured the small plateful of bitter offerings without a word of complaint, as though he were starving despite his plump appearance. When he finished, he announced, "I will meditate in the garden, it would be best if no one disturbs me."


    The custodian stared and then hesitantly followed, as the self proclaimed Emperor walked gracefully to the large doors that royalty would have used to access the inner garden, and paused as though waiting for guards to open them. Of course, no one stood in those positions now, and the custodian wondered if he should step forward, but before he could finish the thought, the self declared emperor''s robes rippled and expanded. No. He expanded as his form became that of the dragon he had been when he arrived.


    The dragon reached out and gently opened the doors, which seemed almost as though they had been designed to fit him comfortably. His gaze searched the garden before he entered it, and he frowned in disapproval.


    "No one thought to replace the dead tree?" the dragon complained.


    "It, it has been preserved for posterity," the custodian explained nervously.


    "Other trees have been added," the dragon stated heavily. He pointed to the stand of flowering trees that had been planted by an empress several centuries ago.


    "They are quite famous for their beauty?" the custodian offered. "When they flower in the spring, the pavilion¡­" he began to explain, but his words died as the dragon heaved a sigh which seemed to coincide with a gust of wind that made the trees echo the sigh.


    Then the dragon moved forward and expanded again, and the custodian watched in horror as the dragon gracefully lifted a small stone pavilion off of the ''mountain'' and set it aside as though he were moving patio furniture.


    --


    On a mountainside near the western edge of the bitten tailed continent, a much larger dragon sat beside a much smaller dragon.


    Curiosity lit the older dragon''s eyes as he asked, "Did you actually learn to compress your form before your third century?"


    The younger dragon considered the question, and then asked, "Do you mean changing my shape, or something else?"


    "Shaping yourself, yes," the older dragon agreed. "How did you change yourself at first?"


    "The first shape I took was that of a bird that I had just eaten, and I don''t have a precise measure for my age, but I had been a¡­ what I thought was a snake for about a century I think. But I don''t understand why you call it compression? I can make larger shapes as easily as smaller ones," the youth explained questioningly. "I can even turn into mist."


    The elder eyed the youth. He had been wondering how a child who could not see the patterns could be such a talented shapeshifter. A bird he had just eaten. It sounded like he had shaped himself to its echo. Dangerous, but perhaps possible to do by feel rather than by sight. If he acquired his skill with the mankind''s¡­ with a human''s shape, he corrected himself, in the same fashion, it is a wonder that he hasn''t gone mad. The child seemed quite rational though.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Into mist?" he asked.


    The child shifted and expanded himself instead of explaining with words. He spread himself out so far that he was rather like a coil of mist. His color was indeed pale white like mist, and his shape undefined by recognizable features. But there was a telltale space between him and every object, as he moved around his surroundings instead of through them.


    "I see," he said with amusement.


    The child released the amorphous form, and told him enthusiastically, "I can''t speak in my mist form, but I can slide through a space as small as a keyhole, or through a paper thin crack."


    He smiled. The child''s first shapings may have been based on the tainted echoes of hearts he had eaten, but his mist form was one that no living thing in his own vast memory had ever held. "Watch," he instructed, and let gravity pull him halfway into the stone outcropping that he stood on.


    The child''s eyes went round and his mouth dropped open. It was perhaps an ill-advised demonstration, since the child could not see the patterns within things, and had not learned to reinforce his own. He lifted himself back to the surface and let the natural space between I and not I resume its usual hold.


    "Once you have proper control over your own pattern, there is much more that you can do," he explained.


    "That¡­ shouldn''t be possible," the child protested finally. His gaze went sharp and suspicious as he asked, "Did you just make me think I saw you sink into the ground?"


    His own eyes narrowed. "You seemed quite aware of it when I pushed with a single demand, and now you think I can send you crafted visions without even sharing your mind? We don''t do that, by the way. It is a thing that is against the guiding songs. Although there are tales about a legendary life-mated pair that claimed they were still able to retain individual identities, it is more likely that it was a deception."


    The little dragon waved his hands and protested, "I don''t know! I don''t know what''s possible! But sinking into the ground without even disturbing it should be impossible! Unless, unless it''s magic? I guess if dragons really exist, then magic probably does too." He added in a mutter, "We have a word for magic¡­ and I already know it?"


    He sighed. The child might be lucky enough to have retained his sanity, despite his dangerous diet, but he seemed to only know fragments of what would be sung to an egg. Still, his own rash promise to teach without stating proper limits bound him to continue, but it had been tens of thousands of years since he had watched over a child of his own. He''d forgotten how many silly things they could come up with.


    "Magic is a word for something that happens due to extreme luck. Things that happen at the edges of probability, either good or bad. Being able to let myself sink into the stone beneath my feet is not magic. It is a display of my control over my own pattern and its interactions with other patterns," he explained patiently. "Everything is made up of energy and emptiness, even if we cannot see the individual fragments. It is difficult to put into words, but if you restrain the energies, the emptiness between the fragments is plenty wide enough to slide through. The energy of the patterns is what holds the natural distance of separation within the emptiness in everything."


    The child''s eyes had gone round again. The small dragon suddenly avoided his gaze and looked around them, like he was searching for something. "That sounds like you''re trying to explain ''atoms''," he stated plaintively. "With maybe some ''quantum physics'' mixed in. People can''t just move their own ''atoms'' around!" The child froze, and raised its eyes to meet his own again. "Only, only that''s what I''m doing when I change my shape isn''t it?"


    He smiled. He didn''t understand the new words yet, but this half-blind child was a bright little soul, and the meaning was clear enough that he could confidently reply, "Yes, you are simply shifting the fragments of yourself around. When you made yourself into a small bat, you also had to contain the energy enough to compress the space between them a great deal."


    "I¡­ see. Compression." The child stared at his own little hands. "But if I can actually shift my ''atoms'' around, how can I be certain that this is my real shape?"


    He sighed. It was a pity. He opened his true eyes to check that the youth was indeed fully shaped to his own pattern. The echo was faint, but visible. Since the child couldn''t see his own pattern to reinforce it, there was no way to clear it other than waiting for it to fade. He hoped it would fade. If it didn''t then he had no idea how to teach the child to clear his own pattern, because he would need to be able to feel it, to know it by heart, since he couldn''t see it.


    "It is the shape written in your own pattern, and you will always return to it when you release your hold on your fragments," he assured the small dragon.


    "I was always holding my shape? Even when I was sleeping?" the child asked doubtfully.


    He hesitated. Few would bother to hold a compressed shape while they slept. It was possible, but it wouldn''t be easy. Would the pull of an echo make it easier? "Apparently so. You seem to have a gift for compressing your shape though. Most could not, definitely not at such a young age."


    "If you''d told me that ridiculous little dragon from ''Mulan'' was the closest thing to a real dragon''s shape yesterday, I''d have laughed at you," the little dragon grumbled, but the hum of his song sounded¡­ amused.


    He wondered where Mulan was. At least the child seemed to be regaining his equilibrium.


    Suddenly the child gasped and looked up at him. "Wait! Is that how you fly too? Do you let yourself sink into the air?"


    So many questions. This one would take awhile.

 Fragment 25

    Everyone hated him. Probably everyone in the world hated him. He hated himself for following the order, but his hands held the flame steady as the neat line of bead formed along its path.


    He had two small children at home, and this horrible deed might give them a chance to live through the pandemic that was sweeping the world. Later he would mourn for those whose last chance he was currently sealing away forever. If he was one of those who managed to live on, then he would have time to mourn.


    The man behind him sniffled, and the flame he guided trembled for a moment, splattering the hot metal and marring the neat line of the weld. He steadied it and formed a lumpy patch before continuing to seal the line, the horrible line that would close this door permanently on people who were already suffering.


    He hoped that when he stopped and removed the dark glass that covered his eyes¡­ he hoped that he would see the tracks of tears on the face of the man who stood at his back.


    --


    Promises were important.


    Chris T''andy made his way back to the place along the river with his head stuffed full. He knew that he needed time to process everything that he''d learned during his night on the mountain, and the morning that had followed, but he''d told Mac that he would return. And despite the overloaded feeling his mind was complaining of, he needed more information.


    Amaru Drakon, the older dragon, claimed to have been sleeping for longer than the current calendar had been counting years. Chris had asked him to choose a human style name for his own comfort, after figuring out that dragons mostly spoke in terms of you, I, and others. Their names, or maybe their essences, were obvious to each other and not really used as names. Although, they did seem similar to the NAMES of legends, the names used by wizards, witches, and the gods in stories. Names that could create, call, or bind that which was named. Maybe.


    Amaru Drakon had chosen his names with casual amusement. Chris had known that Drakon meant dragon, or serpent, and asked what Amaru meant. The older dragon had laughed at him, and then explained that both names were simply the word for dragon in two of the human languages that the elder had learned.


    Amaru also disagreed with modern science, if one assumed that dragons were actually a type of dinosaur, by saying that their closest living animal relatives were not birds, but rather salamanders. Birds were one of the first shapes that most dragons tried to mimic though. Amaru''s wings were also birdlike in their structure, instead of the bat wings of most modern dragon illustrations.


    Chris kind of wanted to take Amaru to see the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy, or maybe ''Dragonslayer'', or maybe not. He also had trouble thinking of his snakelike trueform as an amphibian. He didn''t feel like an amphibian. Dragon frogs? On the other hand, there was that whole thing about identifying supernatural creatures by trying to drown them. That had always seemed really stupid. If you killed them, you proved that they were actually human, yay¡­


    But despite everything churning in his head, he really needed more information. He needed to catch up with the five years that he''d slept through, and figure out how to acquire identification while the whole city seemed to be shut down. Amaru Drakon, who had flown toward the coast, with a promise to return by morning, would also need identification. He needed money.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Amaru claimed that dragons did not usually bother with material goods. No convenient hoard to loot. No long-term investments. Which meant: Chris still needed a job.


    ''Gregory'' hadn''t left his infant nephew ''Norris'' a fortune, but it would have been enough for a comfortable start. He kind of regretted the safeguards he''d placed on the money. Although¡­ he was also starting to wonder if there would be anything left to collect in another fifteen years.


    The streets he hurried through were disturbingly empty. If there had been a few moaning figures with their arms stuck out like heat seeking dowsing rods, it would have seemed like the city was caught up in a deadly virus outbreak scenario from a video game. The fact that the restrictions that were keeping the streets this empty were caused by a real virus was almost ironic.


    He would have stopped by the library again to borrow the internet connection, but the tablet he''d dug out of the trash was out of power. He was hoping that Mac, or the bartender, would have a compatible charger. His clothes were also going to attract notice if anyone looked too closely.


    He was lucky that his dragon feet were smaller than his human feet, and that his shoes were intact. Amaru might be able to create a line of separation in a solid object, which explained the chain on the doors, but claimed that joining two things that were separate was¡­ well, he hadn''t said it was impossible, just that he didn''t have enough energy to do such a thing.


    Chris''s own skills with a needle had been disparaged by many over the centuries of his long life. They didn''t seem to have been much improved by the fact that the repairs were done with a stone needle kindly shaped for him by an elder dragon. There was also the fact that the only thread he''d had available had been pulled out of the edges of the tears that he''d been mending.


    He almost screamed like a little girl when a pale figure in torn and dirty clothing stumbled out of the alley in front of him and emitted a horrible wheezing groan.


    --


    Anne coughed again, and lifted a hand to her head, as she peered toward the man who had just emitted a shrill squeak and jumped backwards.


    She flipped him off, and muttered, "That''s right, stay back and let everyone die alone. Idiot."


    She wiped her nose with the piece of her sleeve that she''d ripped off. It was disgusting, but her nose wouldn''t stop running, and she''d started out by just rubbing it with her sleeve, but the damp against her skin in this kind of cold had triggered chills that wracked her tired body.


    She was sure that she''d caught the new virus that was killing people all over the world. She''d been tired and cold, but she hadn''t felt sick, until her head had suddenly started leaking snot like a broken water pipe in the middle of the night. The worst thing (somehow there was always still another worst thing waiting) was how thirsty she was.


    All of the public toilets, all of the restaurants, everything was shut down and locked up. People who didn''t have a place to go were living like cavemen now. Digging holes with sticks in flower beds to take a dump, drinking from gutters, or worse, public fountains.


    The hospital was supposed to have to treat you even if you didn''t have insurance, at least, that''s what people moaning about unfair taxes and how they were supporting good healthcare for illegal immigrants claimed. She''d gone to the ER, she''d walked miles to get there, figuring that they''d at least quarantine her until she died. They''d kicked her out as soon as they''d determined that she wasn''t bleeding anywhere.


    Anne was so shocked when a warm arm wrapped around her waist, that she didn''t even scream. When she looked up to meet his eyes, the water that she could usually only see when she closed her eyes seemed to ripple across his face, and another gush of snot dribbled from her nose.


    Almost calmly she asked, "You want to die?"

 Fragment 26

    Chris replied truthfully, "Not today."


    The look the girl gave him was both angry and miserable. Normally he wouldn''t reach out to help a random stranger, but her angry words had been like an echo of his own fear: dying alone, without ever meeting another of his kind.


    "Don''t worry, I can''t catch anything from a human," he assured her.


    The girl in his arms stopped breathing for a moment, as his brain caught up with his mouth. Shit. Spending twenty hours speaking with complete honesty, to a dragon, while isolated in the middle of a national forest, had broken down his usual guard on his own tongue. Not that there was any reason that Amaru couldn''t be lying to him, but he wanted to believe the feeling that told him that the older dragon was honorable.


    "Ah, I didn''t mean that literally," he lied quickly. "Sometimes I just feel like I''m not the same as everyone else. I''ve never caught a cold." Truths could lend lies their strength, an old lesson, an old caution.


    She drew a wheezing breath, and asked doubtfully, "Never?"


    "No¡­ but I have been poisoned, and I''m told that many of the symptoms are the same?" he explained.


    "Someone poisoned you? Or, like food poisoning?" she asked as she shivered in his arms. She was so cold. He politely ignored the snot that she was dripping on his shirt, it was pretty much ruined anyway.


    "It wasn''t intentional," he prevaricated.


    She started to cry. At least, he hoped she was crying and not having convulsions. He needed to get her to somewhere warm. After a moment he lifted her into his arms. She was heavier than he expected, but he was stronger than he looked.


    She gasped and stared at him like he''d just transformed. He actually checked his features in the glass of one of the dark shop windows as he passed. He hadn''t changed, it was still the same face he''d chosen before falling asleep in his small, but ridiculously expensive, crypt five years ago. It was such a cliche ''vampire'' move, but it was really a very safe tactic, and he''d been using it for two centuries now.


    "They say this virus is different," she warned him worriedly. She was obviously a very kind person. "They say that even all kinds of animals can catch it. Even if you''ve got an amazing immune system that makes you feel like you''re not human, you might still catch it."


    She was definitely weeping now, and he tried to reassure her, "You don''t have the new virus."


    --


    The strange man''s confident sounding words shocked Anne so much that her tears stopped like a faucet had been shut off. If only her nose would follow their example.


    "You can''t know that!" she protested angrily. It wasn''t like she wanted to have caught it, but what else would strike so suddenly? And she really didn''t want to infect anyone else. Everyone knew that you were supposed to keep a 6 foot distance, wash your hands every chance you got, and never touch your face, but this guy had walked right up to her, and now he was carrying her off like a princess or something. He was going to die, and it was going to be her¡­


    "If what I read about the symptoms is true, you don''t have it," he interrupted her sorrowful thoughts with calm logic. "One of the reasons it is appearing to spread so fast, is that it is apparently one of those horrible silent diseases that is already killing you before you notice it. You, on the other hand, are obviously dreadfully ill."


    Anne stared at his face, searching for¡­ something, truth maybe, through the ripples that were obscuring her vision even with her eyes open. She ought to tell him to put her down. She ought to at least be trying to walk on her own. But she was so tired. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    She let her eyes close for a moment, and listened to his even breathing. He was walking so quickly while carrying her, but he wasn''t even breathing hard. The rippling water was so clear in her vision right now that she could almost see the texture of the branches that reflected in it, and the leaves.


    But the rippling of the water that no one else could see wasn''t letting her focus on any branch in particular for more than a second. It was strange, it wasn''t just the rippling of the water, it was like the branches themselves were moving too. Like she was running beside the stream, like¡­ she was being carried along beside the stream.


    Anne''s eyes popped open and she stared at the man whose body heat was slowly warming one side of her so much that she could almost sleep. The clear water still rippled across his face, but she thought that it was sort of average looking.


    His hair was gold though. You just didn''t see that color of blonde on an adult without dye. Young children sometimes. Maybe he colored it. He was obviously in really good shape, even if his build had seemed average at a glance. The feel of his shirt was like silk. Maybe he was rich, and she was being rescued from the hell her life had become, like some fairytale come true.


    He was probably gay. She was a disgusting mess. She immediately resolved not to hold his preferences against him. Her snot was a cold river that was making a cold and wet stain on his shirt. She scrubbed at her face and throat with the sodden scrap of sleeve, and cleared her throat.


    "Sorry," she apologized inadequately.


    "I am sure that you did not choose to fall ill," he assured her immediately, without breaking stride.


    "No," she agreed uncertainly. The way he talked was like a rich person too. Who phrased things like that anymore? ''Did not choose.'' It wasn''t that the words were unusual, there was just something about the, what was that fancy word¡­ cadence?


    "How long have you been coming down with this dreadful cold?" he asked gently.


    Maybe it was the adjectives he was using. Her grandmother had often described illness as horrible or dreadful instead of sucky or nasty.


    --


    Chris was rather afraid that the girl in his arms had caught one of the old fevers that had plagued mankind for centuries. Nothing he''d read while standing beside the library had indicated that the new pandemic was accompanied by outbreaks of older illnesses, but they always seemed to be lurking at the edges, waiting for a time of weakness and vulnerability.


    He was using a technique that he''d learned from a knight who had learned from a monk who had learned from some sort of priest in the mountains of another continent''s west, to let his blood warm his skin. Modern science belittled the ability to consciously control the tightness of your own veins and the beat of your heart, but some humans could do it, and for him¡­ it was easy.


    It wasn''t enough though. The girl needed more heat than he could provide this way, shelter, nutrition, clean water¡­ it was very foolish of him to try to take responsibility for another when he lacked the resources to fulfill his own needs. But she was human, so there was no dishonor in asking other humans for aid on her behalf.


    Honor, and dishonor, they were known as concepts of battle. But he had fought beside those who were not like him in many different battles over the years. Sometimes simply because if someone had asked him then, ''Do you want to die?'' He could have answered, ''Yes, I am ready to die today.'' But there had been other battles where he had fought for life.


    Before he had come west, to stand on the opposite coast from what his homeland had known as the far east, and stare at the setting sun with nothing but the curve of the Earth itself to stand between¡­ he had worn a woman''s shape for a while. And he had walked in a field full of the dying, and those so sick that they simply wished they were dying.


    For weeks he had walked without stopping. His fellow nurses had been too exhausted, too worn, and pushing themselves too far beyond their own limits, to notice that the woman beside them had never stopped to sleep or to eat. He had fought the invisible foe, and sometimes, he had won.


    He had also lost so much that he had left that fight to others for a full century. He glanced down at the nearly unconscious girl in his arms. So dirty, so miserable, so alone.


    ''Gregory Vincent'' had contributed to charities. He had helped out his few friends whenever he could. And he had isolated himself behind comfortable walls, and enjoyed every new technology he found, with the selfish enthusiasm of a child.


    ''Chris T''andy'' had asked ''Amaru Drakon'' the wrong things. He had wasted precious time. He should have asked if dragons could cure diseases. He should have asked if he could learn to give others his own apparent immunity to them.


    He came to a halt, and stood for a moment where he had stood before. At the entry to the place. The place that existed somewhere in every large city, where the water met the shore. With another human child cradled in his arms.

 Fragment 27

    This was why life was shouting its song through the strings of the world strongly enough to wake them after so long. In a way, it was the most terrifying thing she''d ever seen. It was also wonderful.


    The mankind, or humans as they called themselves now, had not died out. Rather, they had multiplied beyond belief. By any sane calculation the entire world should be as barren and lifeless as the land the old kingdoms had occupied.


    But it was not.


    The world bore the scars of the struggle, and the strings felt fragmented and tangled, but still strong. And life was shouting victoriously as the world renewed itself, oblivious to the fact that they, the ones who had been declared a plague upon the world, had merely retreated into hiding.


    That retreat was the wonderfully terrifying thing. An entire species acting in unison, a coordination that spanned the entire world like the first song. And they were fighting the old foe, the unweavers, the pattern warpers, the unseen.


    And there lay irony. The unseen had been seen by the blind. They had built tools to see what could not be seen by the sharpest eye. For all of their crude tactics and their individually short lives, they had built themselves chances to live, again and again throughout the centuries that were many generations to their kind.


    When she had shaken herself free of the ice and looked down the mountain, she had known that they had chosen the wrong path. But now, she was less certain. The man in front of her was intelligent, efficient, and surprisingly helpful. He was the leader of the troops who had come to capture her.


    She had sent the other dragons who had also chosen to sleep in these mountains away to replenish their energy reserves and investigate on their own. Her own garden had endured well enough that she had drunk deeply from its heart before surfacing, so she had felt confident enough to allow herself to be ''captured.''


    Some of the younger ones would have argued that forcing one''s will upon a human was as wrong as forcing one''s will upon another. They thought that they had the minds of people. She had always thought that they were as intelligent as their seafolk cousins, but no more. Now¡­ she thought that the young ones had been correct.


    The man said apologetically, "I''m sorry, I have reached my limits and must rest."


    She blinked and then nodded. "Of course. My apologies, I have been caught up in fascination."


    He stopped at the door and turned back, "I wish you had not¡­ used your magic on me." He swallowed nervously. "I cannot trust my own decisions because of that. I have never believed in magicians, sleeping princesses, dragons and such, and it''s been quite a shock."You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    She waited, but he seemed to have stopped talking. "I did not want you to shoot me," she pointed out dryly. Although at the time she hadn''t been completely certain that the devices were weapons, she had learned much.


    After a moment he nodded. "I hope that you will still be here when I return. I hope that I can trust you."


    She could not answer that yet. Her kind had always wandered the world freely, but their numbers had never been large. When an individual could live for hundreds of thousands of years, barring accident or enmity, producing many young would be detrimental to their survival, and they had always lived in balance with the world.


    It had been clear for tens of thousands of years that humans were not patterned to live in balance. Usually another species would rise to force a balance upon one that had no natural limit, usually by regarding it as a plentiful food source. But it looked as though perhaps they were going to become capable of creating a balance of their own.


    She didn''t know if they had been wrong to sleep through the struggles that they thought had signaled the beginning of the end for the mankind. Perhaps their absence had allowed the younger species to find its own way. Or perhaps if they had acknowledged them as the people that the youngest insisted they were, they could have helped create a balance.


    Now, dragons would have to learn a new balance.


    --


    The mankind were still filthy creatures, even if they hadn''t succeeded in completely destroying the balance of the world and bringing the end of an age.


    The rocky shoreline was littered in discarded objects. A pod of seafolk danced around him, chattering excitedly. They were already composing their small songs.


    They shouted that none of them had seen one of his kind in many many years. That any of them had seen a dragon within their lifetime surprised him a little. Perhaps several of the youngest had chosen not to sleep through the end of the mankind then.


    Someone had given life to the half blind child of course, but he still suspected that it had been one of the older ones. The beginning of life was always quick. Not as quick as the end, of course, but it took only a single circle around the sun. A brief waking would be enough, and given how hungry he was, he thought others might have woken earlier to replenish their energy.


    He compressed himself and shifted his form into one better suited to hunting in the cold ocean. For whatever reason, the oldest forms of life carried the smallest echo. The ones that had existed long before he had. He would construct new gardens to fill new hearts eventually, but for now, old hearts would do. He was still starving.


    The seafolk laughed and danced around him, and he scolded them and warned them not to drive off his prey. Their kind had existed for a long time. The stories the mankind told each other, of how the seafolk were descended from their kind, had always made him laugh, because the seafolk were hundreds of times older.


    The strings that ran through the ocean weren''t as fragmented, though they didn''t run clear. Their rhythmic songs carried traces from other continents, recent vibrations from the world shifting, and the rise and fall of the moon''s passing. The mankind, the ''humans'' as the child called them, did not crowd the water as they did all of the land he''d flown across.


    Their numbers were staggering. They had walked this continent, like all the others, but they had been much more scattered and far fewer when he''d gone to sleep. He wondered if it would be too cruel to wish the unweavers greater success in plaguing them as they plagued the Earth, and reducing their numbers.


    The water had unpleasant aftertastes that he didn''t want to think about too much.

 Fragment 28

    Chris flinched as the soapy water missed his face and hit the girl he was carrying instead.


    He turned around at the same time as Bobby demanded, "Get out!"


    The bartender had taken one look at him carrying the sick girl into her building and fired on them without stopping to ask questions. He was probably just lucky that all she was shooting with was water, but it wasn''t completely harmless, because it would chill the girl even more when he stepped outside again.


    Even though he''d immediately turned away, he didn''t exit the room right away. "She needs help. I need somewhere warm to take her, or enough money to get a room. And¡­ I need help finding a job."


    Mac was the only one who responded. He''d always been a reckless kid, and he immediately hopped off his stool and volunteered, "You can take her to my place."


    Chris turned his head far enough to see that Mac was approaching him and he snapped, "Stay back Mac! She''s really sick, and even if it''s not the new virus, the old ones can be just as deadly to someone your age!"


    Mac froze, and then glared.


    Chris ignored the glare as he added, "I can''t take her there unless you''ve got somewhere else you can go for a couple of weeks."


    "You should be taking her to the hospital if it''s that bad," Bobby stated coldly.


    The girl in his arms spoke, which startled him so much that his own reply died unspoken. She''d seemed almost comatose, but apparently the change in environment and the angry voices had been enough to rouse her.


    She announced raggedly, "I went there. They threw me out."


    "Which hospital?" Mac asked.


    She gave them the name that had once belonged to a Christian Saint, and a sturdy looking woman dressed in a bulky wool sweater said, "That''s the good one. I heard in other countries they have to choose who to let die, but I didn''t think it was that bad yet here."


    "What about Urgent Care?" another patron asked.


    "You got to have internet and do the mobile screening," Mac declared knowledgeably. "I''ve got internet at my place."


    Everyone looked at the small elderly man with expressions of surprise, and he threw up his hands and said, "I''ve got grandkids! They like to keep me up to date!"


    Even Bobby smiled, although Chris suspected that her reason wasn''t the same as his. Mac had children, grandkids, family.


    "I don''t want you to risk your family," he told Mac seriously.


    Mac rolled his eyes and stated firmly, "I live alone. If my wife, rest her soul, was still with me, I wouldn''t have time to hang out here every evening. Always had a list waiting for me."


    The others smiled or even chuckled, and the tense atmosphere receded a little. The girl in his arms struggled for a moment, and after he realized that she was just trying to peek over his shoulder, he lifted her higher. She rubbed her soggy rag against her face, and he briefly wished that handkerchiefs hadn''t gone out of style.


    "I''m sorry I never got to meet her," Chris said softly to Mac. "But I don''t want to risk you either."Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    Mac ignored the second half of his words, and assured him, "You''d have liked her, probably gotten on like two peas." A wry grin showed off yellowing teeth as he added, "Probably just as well you weren''t around back when we were courtin'' though."


    This time Chris was the one who rolled his eyes. Bobby looked at the girl peeking over his shoulder at Mac, and rubbed her forehead.


    "Mac," Bobby called for his attention. Mac turned and raised an eyebrow. "I''ll lend you a room if you want to lend your place out. But you keep your distance and don''t catch anything, got it?"


    "Mac never could catch anything anyway, couldn''t stand sitting still," a man who was younger than Mac, but not young, announced laughingly.


    Mac flipped him off, but told Bobby, "Deal."


    Bobby just looked at Chris and added, "If you''re not too proud to flip burgers, my niece told me her place is short staffed. But you still have to have a food handler''s card, and if you don''t have one," her gaze said that she was confident that he didn''t, "I don''t know if you can get one with everything being shut down."


    "Thank you," Chris replied seriously. He would owe both her and Mac.


    He walked back out of the bar, and the girl shivered and huddled against him, but he didn''t stop until he was a dozen feet from the door. He called back without looking, "Where to Mac?"


    Mac''s voice was layered with emotions when he replied a little roughly, "Just go home." Chris turned to the right and started walking. "Some idiot paid up three whole years worth before he died, and left his stuff to me," Mac grumbled.


    "That was over 70 years ago," Chris pointed out.


    "I really thought you were dead," Mac growled back.


    Chris bowed his head and met the sick girl''s wide eyed gaze. "You''re really not human are you?" she whispered, as another shiver wracked her body.


    "I''m sorry," he answered them both regretfully.


    --


    Chris stopped when he reached the place that a small narrow house had once stood overlooking the river, and looked around uncertainly.


    "It''s the right place," Mac assured him as he strode past. An elderly looking apartment building squatted where six small, narrow, but much more elegant, brick houses had once stood.


    Mac held the door for him, and then stepped around him in the narrow entry hall that didn''t have enough room to keep the six foot rule.


    "Is it yours?" Chris asked.


    "The building?" Mac asked with a wry chuckle. "No, never could save up enough. Especially after the first kid came along. But I got us all a concession when they insisted on building it, locked it in tight enough that it''s lasted through a dozen different owners."


    "I see," Chris replied. There wasn''t much he could say to that.


    "Kids keep insisting I should move, and couldn''t give them a good reason not to, couldn''t even explain it to myself," Mac said conversationally as he led them to a dark wooden door on the first floor, unlocked it with an old fashioned key, and held it open.


    Chris knew that the windows wouldn''t have a view of anything but the street outside before he even stepped through the doorway. Even when he''d lived in the little house that had stood on this block, only the upper floor had looked out on the river. He didn''t have to ask why Mac hadn''t demanded an apartment on a higher floor though.


    The place was spacious, with three doors on either side of the large room. A sunken living area, in a style that had been popular half a century ago took up half of the large space. It had enough room for a large family. More room than the small house had ever had.


    "Maybe I was waiting for you," Mac suggested as he tossed his key on the counter. "I''ll just pack a few things up and head back to the bar. Guest room''s made up, but probably a mite dusty." He gestured toward one of the doors. "Make yourself at home."


    "Mac," Chris protested.


    "Want to do an old man a favor?" Mac asked.


    "Of course!" Chris replied promptly.


    Mac ran a hand and over his face before he turned around, but tears still shimmered in his eyes. "Make this your home. Stay. At least until¡­"


    ''Until you''re gone.'' Chris finished silently, but all he said was, "Okay."


    Mac smiled brightly, and turned away again. "I don''t have a landline anymore, but I''ll get you a phone, and leave you that iPad thing my grandson got me for Christmas. It does video chat real nice."


    "You have a tub?" Chris asked. If it had just been him, he might have argued against Mac''s offered gifts, but the girl in his arms was too cold, and hadn''t roused herself again yet.


    Mac turned again and grinned at him. "Yup. You''ll love it."


    "I will if you''ve got enough hot water to fill it," Chris promised.

 Fragment 29

    She screamed and struggled when the monster dropped her into the pot of boiling water.


    She couldn''t escape the hands that pressed her down, but they were human hands, and a human voice was telling her, "It''s not as hot as it feels. You are just too cold."


    She tried to look at him, he wavered in her vision, but the gold hair identified him as the stranger who had scooped her up. She couldn''t help the way her body arched and tried to evade the hot water, but now she could see the solid outline of the tub, and recognize the burning sensation as being similar to what happened when you tried to enter a hot tub too quickly.


    She could also see that she was naked, and she released her grip on him to cover herself. Her head was spinning, but she still pushed with her feet, and protested, "It''s too hot!"


    "It is too cold," he argued. "You have to adjust a little at a time, but this water is almost as cold as the ocean is at this latitude. If I left you in it for half an hour without warming it more, you''d probably die of hypothermia."


    His words completely contradicted what her body was telling her, but the heat was triggering an uncontrollable shivering that made her teeth chatter too much to argue. The water felt like it was boiling hot.


    She tried to focus on his face, but the strength of the chills that ran through her wouldn''t let her. He was watching her though. And she was naked. "S''stop looking at me!" she demanded. Although if he wasn''t human, maybe he didn''t care. She shook her head. He was obviously human, this was obviously a bathtub not a pot, and she was delirious because she was sick.


    She felt so shocked that she actually slid deeper into the water when he let go of her, turned around so that his back was against the tub, and said, "Sorry. I won''t look, but I can''t leave you alone in here. You weren''t conscious anymore by the time we got here."


    The way her chills started to subside into softer waves of shivers made her think that maybe he was telling the truth. Spending a few weeks on the streets during the winter had let her experience ranges of temperatures that she''d been insulated from her whole life. Going from the freezing cold into a warm room could cause chills like this.


    "When it stops feeling like it burns, we need to exchange some of the cold water for hot," he informed her calmly.


    "It still feels really hot," she protested. Although it wasn''t as painful as it had been at first.


    "It will," he agreed, as he leaned forward and pulled a large iPad off of the counter that held the sink.


    She was pretty certain that monsters didn''t use iPads. Or maybe they did, but despite the watery wavering of her vision every time she tried to focus on him, she was sure he looked completely human.


    "What is your name, and your birthdate?" he asked.


    "What''s it to you?" she snapped defensively.


    He held the tablet above his shoulder level so that she could see the screen without answering or turning to look at her, and she saw that it was showing an urgent care site that was demanding the patient''s information. She blinked at the screen, and then looked at the back of his head.


    She could read the words on the screen from here, but his gold hair still shimmered with the ripples of water, like the water that covered her, only clearer. She could see the dirt embedded in her skin slowly clouding the water, it was so bad. She looked up and watched his hair ripple. The ripple flowed across his shoulders too. She swallowed. Delirious. It was the fever. Probably.


    "Anne," she said finally, but then she didn''t know which name to give him, so she gave him her birthday instead.


    "Pleased¡­ well, not exactly pleased to meet you Anne. It complicates things, but it is of no matter. My name is Chris," he said calmly as he lowered the tablet.


    "Sorry," she apologized.


    Tears sprang to her eyes, and she cupped a handful of water to splash on her face. It shocked her with how cool it felt against the raw skin of her nose. And when it touched her lips she remembered how thirsty she was. She could feel the mucus she was cleaning off her face though, and she eyed the tap.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Any history of asthma or other respiratory diseases?" Chris asked.


    She shook her head, and then remembered that he wasn''t looking at her. "No."


    The thing with her eyes wouldn''t fit into anything on one of those forms, so she didn''t mention it. She reached for the tap and bent forward, but when he heard the water he reached back and stuck his hand into the stream, and then turned and scolded her, "Hot, you need to add hot water!"


    "I was going to drink it!" she protested as she crossed her arms protectively over her chest.


    He had already opened the drain and switched the tap to hot, but he nodded and said, "Ah. Hold on a minute, I''ll go get you a cup."


    She stared at his reflection in the mirror when he stood. His face was as ordinary as she''d guessed, but the ripples didn''t distort his reflection the way they did his face. Another shiver wracked her, but she didn''t know if it was from the heat that was already spreading from the tap to her knees and toes, or from fear.


    Her head was spinning.


    --


    He stood at the heart of an empire, and wished again that he could see as others of his kind could see.


    On the whole, his clever plan had worked very well.


    For the first few thousand years of his life he''d been dependent on his father, who had maintained extra gardens for him. Normally dragons did not maintain filial relationships with either parent beyond their first few centuries, but he was blind. Not blind to the beauty of the world, but to its energies, and the energy of life that he depended on to sustain his own life.


    The first few centuries of his life, the other dragon had even been forced to hold his head for him while he drank from the hearts that he could not see, but eventually he had learned to feel the flow somewhat, at least where it was very strong. From watching his father build gardens wherever they traveled, he gradually learned to correlate physical features of the world that either indicated or helped create those flows. His father liked to use trees, which were longer lived than many plants, but other dragons had their own preferences.


    The mankind were clever, and they were also blind like he was, although they could survive on a much wider variety of food sources. The other dragons grumbled a lot about the way they blindly tore up any garden they came across. He noticed when some of the more clever ones began planting some of the seeds they harvested, and thus, his plan to maintain a garden of his own had formed.


    Even though his father had doubted him, the elder had still helped him locate promising sites. His father chose the first places that must be planted, and those that must be kept bare stone, to bend more strings to feed the natural pool that he selected. They had built a heart large enough to feed a dozen starving dragons, because even if it wavered a bit, it would always be strong enough for him to feel.


    He had chosen a strong tribe, and shown them where to build their homes and where to plant their seeds, and finally, he had been free. Or at least, he had felt free, even if other dragons thought that he was trapped. Keeping the mankind working on maintaining the flow of the strings was difficult at first, but he helped those who maintained the traditions he set for them, and those who refused quickly discovered the cost. And it had worked!


    For a while other dragons had mimicked his efforts, although on a smaller scale because they were just playing around, and a circle of dragon protected kingdoms had risen around his own.


    Perhaps because he always maintained a single large heart instead of wandering from place to place like the rest of his kind, or perhaps because he drank freely and often from the heart of his vast garden, or perhaps because he was blind, and could not see the way to encourage a single plant, he learned that he could absorb the excess energy collected in his heart and gift it back. He could emit energy that encouraged plants to grow somehow, like a smaller sun. His kingdom flourished and became an empire.


    But, the mankind had eventually expanded his empire beyond his personal reach, and had created many other empires across the world that rose and fell. Even in times of destruction, their numbers continued to expand. He wasn''t actually bound to his garden and his empire, so he traveled sometimes, to see the way they were expanding across the world for himself.


    They also grew increasingly warlike. Those who took from those who produced had always existed, but the scale of those conflicts grew larger and larger, even in his own empire. Eventually he could not sleep without waking to find them marching armies with thousands, or even tens of thousands, across the fields that his garden required.


    When the elders decided that the mankind were nearing the end of their increasingly painful existence, he had decided to give up on them. He had abandoned them. He had learned enough to survive without help, and so he had slept with the others.


    But they had not died. And, although it had taken some searching, he had found the place that the energy at the heart of his garden had shifted to, and it was full. They had not abandoned all of the traditions he had given them. And no armies marched to war across the fields, although warriors of some kind did march through the cities according to the single servant who had waited in the palace.


    That one also said that famine would come soon if the illness that was among them continued to spread.


    He stood in the heart of his empire, on the vast stone heart with a palace built atop it, absorbing the energy that he could not see. Replenishing his own strength and preparing to gift the rest back to his people.

 Fragment 30

    Human bodies were complex. The cold had been weakening her, but it had also been reducing her fever. By the time the girl''s core temperature had stabilized, her fever had risen enough to get the attention of the Urgent Care practitioner assigned to triage the cases, but Chris was no longer certain that a consultation with a doctor was needed.


    The warm broth he''d given her had stayed down, her congestion seemed to have eased in the steam from the warm bath, and while her fever was high she seemed to have fallen asleep rather than passing out. But he also knew that his own medical knowledge was both shallow and a century out of date, so he waited in the consultation queue anyway.


    Her bath had presented a number of other pressing mundane problems as well. He had washed up, started a load of laundry, and then rustled through Mac''s possessions quite invasively, without finding much of any clothing suitable for either himself or the girl. She was currently wrapped in an old bathrobe beneath the covers, while he wore a pair of frayed boxers that the elastic had given out in and an elderly dressing gown that was much too small for his current frame.


    He could have adjusted his form to suit the available clothing of course, but that would probably cause both the girl, Anne, and Mac even more distress. It would also use more energy, and he was already quite hungry. Which was the next moderately urgent problem.


    Mac''s cupboards contained plenty of dry and canned goods, and by the dates on a lot of the packages, had contained them for quite some time. He could feed Anne well enough, although fresh citrus and greens would be beneficial, but there was nothing for him to eat here. The screen in his hands flashed, and the Urgent Care video consultation finally connected.


    Many of the questions that he''d prepared lies for weren''t asked. The doctor didn''t bother with history or relations, he was obviously tired, and wanted to keep things quick and concise. He did have to wake Anne to answer a handful of questions on her own, but he suspected that those were simply so that the doctor could judge how severely disoriented her fever was making her.


    After giving recommended doses for a few over the counter medicines, signing for a necessary goods quarantine trip permit, and telling him to take her to the hospital if her fever rose another two degrees or stayed this high for more than four days, the doctor wasted a moment to add, "You''ve done well." The entire consultation had taken less than five minutes.


    Chris stared at the web page that announced the call was over and linked him to the permit for one adult. After a moment he clicked the link. Permission to be on the street was all very well, but the store would want money, and the permit wanted identification numbers for the adult in question. He got up and checked Mac''s medicine cabinet, and was relieved to find that there were at least a few doses of two of the listed medications present.


    He roused Anne again to give her a dose of each, and watched her avoid ever looking at him with consternation. Her hands gripped the covers tightly. She was obviously afraid of him.


    "Should I try to find a woman to take care of you instead?" he offered after a moment. He could use the four hours until her next dose to find some kind of food and reshape himself.


    "What?" she asked blankly and glanced at him, before quickly turning her face away. "Oh. No, don''t. I don''t want to risk even more people getting sick."


    "Okay," he agreed. After a moment of hesitation, he left it at that.


    Some people rolled with everything life threw at them and met every new face with courage. Others were more like wild animals, who waited cautiously for you to prove that you could be trusted, and fled if you startled them. Most fell somewhere in-between.


    He used Mac''s iPad to look up the food handler''s permit he''d need to apply for the job that Bobby had suggested, and discovered more complications. Proof of up to date vaccinations would be required in addition to proof of identity. If many certifications required such proofs, then it wasn''t just ''Chris'', ''Gregory''s'' nephew ''Norris'' was going to have problems in a few years too.


    He hadn''t really cared about the ''loss of privacy'' that people complained of in the modern era. The conveniences more than made up for it in his eyes, but it was getting more and more complicated to create a false identity, as more and more records were instantly available and permanently stored where a simple fire couldn''t touch them. He could start his new life as an infant of course, but then he would have to risk having family or caretakers discover that he wasn''t actually human.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    He looked for other ''essential services'' jobs, and discovered that even the ''worst'' jobs, like waste disposal were currently in very high demand, and that each seemed to require additional certifications of one sort or another. Heavy equipment, health, the list went on and on. Every real online job seemed to be filled as soon as it was posted as well.


    An advertisement for protection against identity theft caught his eye, and he grimaced. Anne, the most obvious target, hadn''t carried a wallet or any identification either. In her case, it had probably been stolen, because she spoke like a native to the region. Mac was in his eighties, too old to get a job in normal circumstances, let alone in the current competitive environment.


    He mentally reviewed the few younger acquaintances he''d had as Gregory. Most of them had been friends in online games, sprinkled with a few cashiers and waitpersons. They were the kind of people who struggled to find and keep some form of decent employment at the best of times. He needed an enemy to steal from, but he hadn''t really had any.


    The door to the guest room creaked open, it probably hadn''t been balanced properly or greased lately, and he looked up to see Anne tottering toward the bathroom. She didn''t look at him, but she knew he was there, because she gave him a wide berth, so he stayed still and didn''t speak.


    After she finished her business and ventured out again, she asked nervously, "What are you doing?"


    Chris looked up and considered her for a moment. She was still avoiding looking at him, mostly, but she glanced at him and pulled the bathrobe tighter. It just emphasised her shape instead of covering it more, but it seemed impolite to point that out.


    Maybe she was afraid of him because he wasn''t human. They hadn''t talked about that, but even though she hadn''t struggled against him after making her single comment of realization, it had to bother her. He didn''t know if he should bring it up or not.


    "Sorry, I didn''t mean to pry," she apologized quietly and edged toward the guest room.


    He protested quickly, "No, it''s fine. Sorry, I was just trying to think of¡­ I''m looking for a job."


    She drew a sharp breath and turned to stare at him. Her stare didn''t last long as she shifted her focus to something over his shoulder instead. She frowned and asked doubtfully, "You''re looking for a job?"


    "There aren''t many available right now," he pointed out.


    "But you''re¡­" she began, but didn''t finish her sentence.


    After waiting a minute he made a decision and replied questioningly, "Not human? I still can''t conjure money out of thin air." He didn''t mention that he could steal some pretty easily. It would eventually result in other problems though.


    Her gaze snapped back to his face and she shivered. "I thought that I¡­ What are you?"


    "Apparently I''m a very young dragon," he replied with more humor than he''d felt all day. "Your fever is pretty bad, you should get back in bed and stay warm."


    "Apparently?" she asked blankly, without moving.


    He decided that it was a bad time to mention that he''d been convinced that he was probably a very old vampire for the last few centuries. "That''s what an old dragon told me recently," he assured her as he set the tablet down and stood up.


    He was a little surprised that she didn''t retreat when he walked over and put his arm around her, but she was busy squinting at his face with an intense look of concentration


    "I don''t¡­ I just see water. When I look at you, or when I close my eyes. Water and branches. Do you ever see things like that?" she asked in a rush as he guided her back toward the guest room.


    "No?" he replied uncertainly. "You see water when you look at me?"


    "I, just, nevermind. Something''s been wrong with my eyes for a long time," she said sadly, and pulled away from him to climb back into the bed on her own.


    He stepped forward and tucked her in as though she were a younger child. She didn''t look afraid now, she looked sad. "You don''t happen to have any enemies do you?" he asked wryly.


    The glass he''d left beside her was empty, so he picked it up, as she gazed up at him with wide eyes. Her expression hardened after a moment and she said, "Yeah, I do. Do you eat people?"


    He almost dropped the glass, but he managed to catch it. "Not if I can help it," he replied warily. She looked disappointed, so he asked, "Do you happen to know their names, birthdates, and identification numbers?"


    Anne''s expression brightened. "There''s only one that matters," she told him fiercely, "and I know all of his personal information better than he does!"


    Chris blinked at her and said, "Ah."

 Fragment 31

    At first he moved cautiously, leery of the boats that were powered like the carts that traveled the roads, but after a while he ignored them. The child had warned him of rumors about heavy patrols along the coast, but they seemed to have eyes only for their own kind.


    His hunt beneath the waves took so long that he wondered if it might not have been faster to fly south in search of the last heart he had carved himself. It was normal for creatures to grow smaller and more sparsely in the cooler oceans, but they were fewer and scrawnier than he expected. Despite his hunger, he was careful to take only a few of each.


    He had still not eaten his fill by the time the sun neared the rim of the horizon, but he had restored much, and it would be sufficient for another turn of the moon. He had much to teach, and much to learn. He had misjudged the mankind, and the consequences of that were obviously not simple.


    The seafolk gathered around him again when he released his compressed form and rose. They chattered joyfully as he launched himself into the air, and he circled them several times before turning toward the mountains, to their great delight.


    --


    Anne lay in a strange bed, slowly reducing a box of tissues to sodden scraps, while telling a stranger who might be crazier than she was, about how her life had crumbled around a single mistake.


    She looked at the clean, dry, tissue in her hand, and marveled at its softness. The bed that cradled her aching body felt just as soft and clean, even though the man in the chair beside her had muttered about dust while settling her into it the first time. Her nose was still dripping steadily, but it was no longer running like a faucet, and she was no longer painfully thirsty.


    She was still hungry, because the man who had jokingly claimed to be a dragon, told her quite firmly that she needed to work up to food. His name was Chris, his hair shimmered like gold, and water rippled across his skin when she looked at him, but she couldn''t trust him. She couldn''t trust anyone.


    She told him everything anyway. She didn''t expect him to believe her, because no one had believed her, not even her own mother. But she told him about Juan, about the enemy who had taken everything.


    --


    Chris listened to Anne talk about the man, because of course it was a man, that she now regarded as her enemy, and thought that maybe it was too bad he didn''t plan on eating anyone.


    Juan Torres had presented himself as successful, romantic, and looking for a wife. Anne had been young and gullible. Chris was not at all surprised to hear that the man had stolen her college trust fund, but the way he''d done it had been nasty, vicious, and unfortunately quite successful.


    They had lived together for a year, after a whirlwind courtship, ostensibly to prevent Anne from regretting rushing into marriage with a man she didn''t know that well. Her family and friends had been very supportive of the relationship, and Juan had been very open and trusting with her, giving her access to his accounts and even taking her to Spain and introducing her to his grandparents there.


    Unfortunately, Anne had trustingly reciprocated, and given Juan access to everything she had. By the time she noticed that money had been disappearing from her trust fund every month, most of it was gone. She had confronted him, and he had denied knowing anything about it, and assured her that he would help her report it and have the withdrawals traced.


    She had woken up with policemen in her apartment, feeling horribly sick, and surrounded by drug paraphernalia. She had been arrested. Tests had revealed the drugs in her system. No one listened when she told them that she''d never used drugs in her life.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    She had a history of psychiatric evaluations regarding hallucinations, her account had a recent history of large cash withdrawals, and her ex fiance sadly testified to her addiction. Her family and friends testified to her history of odd behavior. Juan moved to another city immediately after she was convicted, claiming to be heartbroken by her accusations, and unable to remain where they had lived together.


    Her mother was the one who told her about it, and then told her that she never wanted to see her again. When Anne was finally released, she''d tried to go home anyway, but her parents had threatened to call the police if she didn''t leave. No one would hire her with her new criminal record and no permanent address, and all of her accounts were empty.


    Her story was heartbreaking, but it didn''t really matter to Chris. There were always humans who preyed upon other humans. What mattered was that Anne really did know everything that he needed to know in order to borrow Juan''s identity, which surprised him a little. Most people had to look at their cards to give out their own licence numbers, and had trouble remembering their own passwords, let alone those of others.


    He spent the first part of the afternoon browsing Juan''s social media. The man had changed his old banking and email passwords to something Anne couldn''t guess, but had changed his social accounts to an old one that he''d used on a gaming account before. Chris didn''t post anything but he did gather a lot of useful information, including access to a new email account that turned out to be using an old password.


    He set up another email account using the same name, but a new password on another site. He also set up a new online checking account and credit line in Juan''s name, which was shockingly easy, because the man had a very good credit rating. He made one small alteration to Juan''s information on those accounts, he replaced the middle initial C. that stood for Carlos with Christopher. It was too convenient a coincidence to pass up.


    When Chris finished, he filled out forms for replacement identification and vaccination records as though Juan had lost his wallet. He used the new credit line to pay the fees. He offered to do the same for Anne, but she told him that she hadn''t lost her wallet, she''d buried it, although she didn''t tell him where.


    She seemed feverish but stable, so he made her a soup before he left, and went to buy the rest of the medicine that she should take before the stores closed. He didn''t fill out the pass, since he could claim that he hadn''t understood that it wasn''t already complete, and it was good for a week. He also stopped by the bar and got the address of the fast-food shop, talked to Mac for a moment, and left feeling much more cheerful about life.


    He didn''t head for the mountain until after he''d checked on Anne and eaten an entire bag of raw potatoes. He''d almost eaten a dog that had threatened him on his way home, but Amaru had said that he shouldn''t eat the heart of anything, not even a fish, until some kind of echo had cleared from his pattern.


    Chris hoped that Amaru would be willing to come to Mac''s apartment to teach him. He didn''t want to leave Anne alone for long until her fever finally broke. It was part of why he''d admitted that he was a dragon, confirming her guess that he wasn''t human. Even if he and Amaru maintained human forms, their conversations in the language of dragons wouldn''t sound much like a human foreign language.


    --


    He hurried toward the mountain, with one eye on the sky. Another thing to ask the child about. The vessels that streaked through the air at speeds that he couldn''t match seemed to be blind, since none reacted to his presence in the sky below them.


    He had noticed a few of them leaving the city during the morning, and had assumed that they mimicked the hours of sea going vessels, for much the same reasons, to take advantage of the weather patterns that followed dawn and dusk across the Earth. But there were many more of them both coming and going at this hour.


    "Airplanes," he muttered the word the child had given in the tongue of the tribe that had built at the foot of the mountain.


    The largest carts were called ''Trucks'' and the small ones were usually ''Cars''. He still wanted to catch a car that ran with lightning in its belly and take it apart. The ones that ran on fires that burned were also interesting, but a wheel that turned on the rising heat was actually quite possible if you had thought of it in the first place.


    He couldn''t imagine how the lightning was harnessed into a flow that would turn wheels though. All of the cables that carried it had metals in their cores, but he couldn''t figure out how one would first catch, and then force lighting to flow in the direction that they wanted it to go, let alone store it in the belly of a car.

 Fragment 32

    It was embarrassing to admit, but Chris was lost. Not completely lost in the woods like a child in a fairytale, because he could turn and see the glow of the city at the base of the mountain reflecting on the clouds, but unable to find the stone outcropping where he presumed that the elder dragon was waiting.


    He might be hundreds of years old, and have spent his first century living in the wild, but he was still basically a child of civilization. He had traveled through forests without roads before, but only when other people had led the way. There were traces of old roads crisscrossing the national forest, and even signs with identifying numbers that would probably reveal an exact location to anyone with the map that matched them¡­ but none of that helped him find the large stone outcropping that he remembered.


    It had seemed so simple when he''d returned to the city by simply flying down to where a wide highway cut a clear path through the trees, and following it back. But now all of the trees looked pretty much the same, and there were a lot more clearings than he''d remembered on the rolling curves of the mountainside. Some of them even contained rocky outcroppings, though more contained buildings, water, or traces of old fire.


    He flew upward, and tried to match his view with the one he''d seen the night before. Simple triangulation with the lights of the city, and the smaller town farther down the big river along the freeway should get him in the general area. The problem was that the general area was still miles across.


    His bowels gurgled ominously and he sighed. He kept having to land and dig another hole too. The bag of potatoes had contained enough energy to let him alter his shape a few more times without becoming so hungry that people started to look like food¡­ but they weren''t efficient.


    His body didn''t take long to extract what energy they could provide, and his system was in a hurry to get rid of what it couldn''t use. Even though he could expand his stomach to hold more than it seemed like it should, he still had to expel the waste products like any other living creature. An efficient high energy food source would be mostly absorbed, but potatoes were not.


    He frowned. Learning that he was actually a dragon had somehow opened up a lot of questions that he''d never thought to consider. Like, if he could actually rearrange his own atoms, why couldn''t he just absorb all of the atoms from whatever he ate? When he turned himself into a mist, he didn''t have organs, so wasn''t he turning the contents of his stomach to mist as well?


    He supposed that it had never occurred to him to wonder because he''d thought of it as magic, even though he wasn''t able to carry clothes or other objects along in that shape. Actually, now that he was considering it, he wasn''t sure that he could remember ever needing to defecate after turning to mist, but it had definitely never given him more energy.


    Turning himself to mist and back actually used up a lot of energy. He''d done it to show off the night before, but even though he was really curious about whether or not the potato waste would become part of him, if he shaped himself into a mist again even Anne might start looking like food.


    --


    He hurried back toward the mountain where the child was probably already waiting.


    Without hunger gnawing at his stomach, it was easy to get distracted. Especially when dusk had begun to settle, and the lights of the mankind''s settlements had begun to light. As he had noted the night before while walking the city streets, no one seemed to be tending them, or even obviously bidding them to light.


    The hivelike city at the foot of the mountain contained so many lights that the clouds above it glowed with the reflected radiance. He debated for a moment, and then flew higher. It might put him in the path of one of the airships, but if he stayed between the lights and the clouds he would be quite visible to even purely physical eyes.


    The cold vapor curled around his wings as he skimmed across the surface of the clouds, and he added a snap to the beat of his wings that forced the beads of water that wanted to settle themselves against his long flight feathers to bounce off the tips and back into the air. A smile curved his cheeks around the teeth that a distant ancestor had added to his pattern.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    As he''d explained to the child, a wingless dragon could fly by simply expanding until even the movement of a breeze was strong enough to lift them, but they were at the mercy of the winds. They could swim through the air to a certain extent, as a snake could swim through the water, but it was slow.


    At first, dragons who enjoyed flight had learned to shape their forelimbs into wings, in the fashion of birds and bats. But few dragons were willing to permanently alter their forms in such a fashion if it meant giving up their hands. Those who desired to keep their wings had studied the forms of creatures who had more than four limbs. Few were successful at taking a shape that had more limbs than their own natural forms.


    Those who managed it found it fatiguing. The addition of just one extra set of limbs taxed their minds and energies far more than simply altering their compressed shape did. He had been one of the few who persisted, who chased the dream of wings of their own for millennia.


    Eventually he had figured out how to alter the pattern of his own mind as he compressed its shape. Although he had nearly died more than once in the attempt, he finally managed to create a natural pathway for the extra limbs. Once he perfected the combination of pathway and wings, he attempted to teach it to others.


    Of the few who could give themselves extra limbs, even fewer could understand the pathway for the mind. In the end, he knew of only three who had mastered the form well enough to write their wings into their own patterns. But anything that was written into their patterns could be inherited by their children, like the teeth that nearly every dragon living carried in their jaws.


    His next child had begun to grow its own wings shortly after it started to develop its hands and feet. Many of the younger dragons were winged in this age, but still far from all them.


    He had never known a child with such control over its compressed shape at such a young age, as this wingless and half-blind child that he had found. If only the child had been able to see the patterns, he was nearly certain that he would be one of the few who could give himself and his descendants wings of his own design. As it was, he was still hopeful.


    Even if it turned out that the child could not write it into his own pattern, his display of the mistform of his own design pushed his odds of at least being able to create a six limbed compressed shape into a likelihood.


    --


    Chris looked up when a large shape passed by overhead. A moment later he was in the air, and following in the wake of the other dragon''s descent.


    Amaru landed neatly on the familiar stone outcropping overlooking the river, to Chris''s chagrin. It had been so close, and the other dragon had flown straight toward it without the slightest sign of hesitation, as though it had a beacon on it.


    Amaru looked around and caught sight of Chris, with what appeared to be surprise. His words even carried a startled feeling when he spoke, "I had expected that you would already be waiting for me."


    Chris landed much more awkwardly than Amaru had, and let his shape expand into the form that was uniquely his, and yet still unfamiliar. He avoided mentioning that he''d been lost by bringing up the question of waste atoms, "Why do we need to expel wastes like other creatures if we can move our own atoms around, why doesn''t everything just become part of us?"


    Amaru blinked at him. The enormous dragon looked nonplussed, but after a moment he seemed to gather himself, and he nodded and replied, "Not every fragment will fit into your pattern, the extras are naturally discarded."


    Chris immediately felt like the question had been rather stupid, because the answer sounded quite obvious. He raised his little clawed hands to his face in a human gesture of humiliation, but raised his head after only a moment. "Nevermind that, what I really need to know is if we can cure an illness? And will you come and teach me at Mac''s place?"


    Amaru opened his true eyes and frowned down at Chris. "You don''t appear to be ill, or injured?" he replied questioningly. "But if you were, you could cure yourself if you could reinforce your own pattern. Even a lost limb can be recovered by pouring more energy into the reinforcement. It is an important skill to learn."


    Chris objected, "Are you sure that I don''t have it already? I can already replace a lost limb by reshaping myself." Amaru looked surprised, but Chris continued swiftly, "But that''s not what I mean, I''m trying to ask if we can cure others of illness."


    "Yes and no," Amaru replied reluctantly. "It is possible, but it is very dangerous. Even more dangerous than pushing your will onto someone, or accepting theirs. You must know their pattern as well as you know your own, and put your own energy into it without letting it overwrite yourself, and without writing part of your pattern into theirs." He closed his eyes and added somberly, "Few would risk it, and even fewer would succeed, and most would prefer death to being rewritten even if it were successful."


    The answer was no then. For him at least. And it sounded too dangerous to risk for Anne anyway, since she would probably recover with time unless she worsened. But he decided he might as well ask, "What if it were you, and it wasn''t another dragon, but a human? Could you heal a human?"


    Amaru''s eyes snapped open and then narrowed as he asked snappishly, "Why would I ever bother?"

 Fragment 33

    Anne woke up alone, and shivering. That part was normal, but the blankets that she was tangled in weren''t. As she struggled out of their clingy confines, she remembered the rest.


    Right, she was at a stranger''s house. Chris. Chris who picked up dying girls off the street and lived here with¡­ Mac? This bathrobe belonged to Mac. It was small, faded, and vaguely green, with clover leaves embroidered on it. The living room that she''d stumbled through to get to the bathroom had a couch patterned in flowers. Maybe Mac was short for Mackenzie or something. Anne had known a girl named Mackenzie once. Or maybe it was a guy and Chris liked flowers. No judgement.


    There were sheets tangled up in the blankets too, and everything that had been touching her skin was damp and clammy feeling. She had been sweating despite her shivers. Feverish. Thirsty.


    The glass beside the bed was empty. The only sound was the old fashioned ticking of a clock in another room. She felt dizzy just from sitting up.


    Tentatively, she called out, "Hello?"


    She didn''t know whether to feel relieved or worried when no one answered. The world spun when she stood, but she just stayed still until it was mostly steady again. She tottered to the bathroom first, and drank a handful of water from the sink after she washed her hands.


    She had to go back to the bedroom and to get the glass, before venturing around the tall counter and into the kitchen. She opened a door on the refrigerator, to find that it was the fancy kind and that she''d opened the half that was freezer space.


    A single bag of frozen vegetables huddled alone on the highest shelf, overlooking a chaotic war between paper wrapped packages with the names of various cuts of meat written on them, and small cartons of ice cream that ranged from single servings to quarts. The cold air felt good and her shivers eased, as she stood there staring into the freezer.


    When she finally closed the door, a quart of ice cream was in her other hand. She was almost disappointed when she peeked into the other side and saw a fairly normal collection of refrigerated goods. Beer, milk, eggs, and various condiments. A small drawer full of cheeses, and a larger drawer with some fruits and vegetables.


    A box of cubes for making broth and an electric water kettle sat open on the counter, but Anne ignored them, and hunted through the drawers until she found a spoon.


    Ice cream. It had been so long. She carried everything back to the bed, which took a lot more effort than it should have, but she didn''t want to spread her germs around. She was exhausted by the time she had herself propped up with the blankets mostly straightened out, and her nose was running again.


    It was so raw that it hurt to dry it against a tissue, but there was a small jar of salve beside the box of tissues. If rubbing soft paper against her face, the fragrant eucalyptus salve burned, and it was so strong that she could actually smell it. She didn''t rub it off though, and capped the little jare carefully.


    Who knew how much longer things made with ingredients from other continents would be available. Even in the streets, with everyone keeping their distance, news filtered down.


    The ice cream had softened enough that her feeble strength was sufficient to lift a heaping spoonful by the time she opened it. She held the mouthful of frozen cream on her tongue until it had melted before swallowing. It was just like holding a cold pack against her forehead, only from the inside, she silently excused her greed.


    She lifted out another spoonful.


    --


    She had wasted an entire day chasing after the "jets" and had only gotten close enough to one to see the row of windows that proved that it truly was some sort of airship.


    She laughed again and compressed her form into one more streamlined than the one that was written into her pattern. Her natural wings weren''t as swift and colorful as the feathered ones of her favorite teacher, but she was a little smug about the fact that there were far more illustrations that resembled her shape than his. The fact that most of those illustrations showed dragons being hunted by humans, she blithely ignored.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    She flew toward the heart of civilization, and debated which of the great cities should be blessed with her presence first. London? Paris? Venice? Paris, she decided. Surely a mere two centuries would not be enough to pull that city from its place as the heart of fashion, the leader of the latest vogue.


    She had no doubt at all that she would be able to acquire a "phone" of her own in a Paris shop.


    She had no doubt until she saw the city in the distance many hours later. It was larger than it had been, much larger, and taller, as the morning sun lit its vast expanse. Ten times as large as the city she had known but two centuries ago. Grander too perhaps, but too quiet.


    New kinds of vehicles crawled its streets, but few, far too few. A city that had sung with more than half a million voices, streets that had been crowded with clattering carriages, wagons, and pedestrians, its sound was reduced to a quiet hum.


    Victoria''s tales of the plague that now swept the world had not painted this picture of hushed quiet in her mind. The old plagues had been noisy, filled with moans and groans, weeping and shouting. These endless empty streets were frightening. No pillars of smoke, no stacks of bodies, the wind did not carry decay and sickness away from the city.


    And yet¡­


    When she opened her true eyes she could see how they hid. More sparks of life than she could count hid within those many walls. They hid as though it were an army marching upon them, rather than the unseen. And indeed, uniforms clothed many of the figures who were in the streets. They were different than the uniforms she remembered, but they could be nothing else.


    She turned toward the isles without descending.


    --


    He glared at the child and counseled himself to patience. After a moment he lifted his gaze to the stars that lit the sky overhead.


    If the unweavers were to sweep the mankind from the face of the Earth entirely within a generation, he would feel only mild regret, but the child who had lived among them would mourn. It was highly unlikely that any sickness could ever destroy them all, in any case.


    The child was probably just too young to understand how brief their lives really were. Also, he very likely only wanted to save some favorite individual among them. And of course, because he could not see the patterns within things, he could not understand how complex that pattern was. If anything, the pattern of an individual "human" was more complex than the pattern of a "dragon", because they were a younger species.


    He was quite certain that the patterns of dragons were also becoming more complex over time, as each generation tended to add onto what already existed within them, rather than removing what had existed before. The difference was that they designed the changes themselves, while the other creatures that shared the world with them lived or died according to whatever additions or very occasionally, subtractions, that chance bestowed upon them.


    He dropped his head to the child''s level, and told him quietly, "Even if you could see everything as I see it, by the time you could grasp every detail of the pattern within the individual human that you wish to reinforce, they would already be dead."


    The child dropped his gaze and sighed, but he didn''t argue.


    "When I was young, there was an elder," he began, but the child held up his hands in a gesture adopted from the mankind to forestall his words.


    "Can you come down into the city, to the place that I''m going to be living for perhaps another decade, and teach me there?" the child asked earnestly. "I need to teach you more English too, and that will be easier there."


    "Why?" he asked doubtfully.


    "I can use the ''internet'' there, and also take care of Anne, and give her a better chance to recover on her own," the child explained.


    After a moment he agreed. There was much left for both of them to learn.


    He was not used to speaking while flying, so he felt startled when the child shouted, partway down the mountain, "Did that elder you were going to tell me about succeed in reinforcing someone''s pattern?"


    He thought about the old dragon who had scorned, or perhaps envied, his own desire to write wings into his pattern. "She worked with the patterns of the simplest creatures," he explained quietly, carefully shaping the sound so that it leapt toward the child.


    The elder had shown him how patterns of not I could also be shaped. She had also believed that it might be possible to create a living pattern from your own energy, if you truly understood and could shape even the smallest detail from memory. He remembered her large hand and the water that had filled it slowly.


    She had smacked him when he had performed what appeared to be the same trick only a century later, by pulling the water out of the air around him. But later they had laughed about it, because his method had taken a tiny fraction of the energy she had used, and that was the only way she''d known that he hadn''t created the water directly from its pattern. It had taken him vastly longer to truly understand what she had actually shown him.


    He doubted that anyone would ever be able to create even the simplest living pattern directly out of energy. It was incredibly difficult to create even a small amount of the pure element that served as the foundation for all life.

 Fragment 34

    Amaru looked at the entrance to the apartments and complained mildly in dragon, "I will be forced to maintain my compression this tightly the entire time I''m in there."


    Language lessons first, Chris decided as he looked the other dragon over. Amaru looked like a large, but fairly ordinary man. He was still dressed in the strange outfit, but now Chris knew that the other dragon created wrinkles of his own skin, and shaped and colored it like clothing, instead of folding his clothes into a pocket of himself and carrying them along. He wondered why he''d never thought of trying that. It would have come in very handy at a few points during several of his human lifetimes.


    It took him a moment of effort to adjust his own throat to ask, "Is it difficult for you?"


    Amaru replied almost grudgingly, "I do not have a good balance yet in this form, so it takes more energy. I suppose that I can maintain it for several days if needed."


    "After Anne is recovered, I can go to the mountain every day instead," Chris replied as he opened the door.


    "Why return to this place every day?" Amaru asked with a baffled expression as he followed Chris inside.


    Chris wondered how to answer. It is convenient? It is my home for now? I have internet access here? "There are useful things and friends." Not that Anne was a friend exactly, not yet, but it was simpler to group her with Mac for now. "Wait here while I check on her," he instructed with a gesture toward the living area.


    Amaru looked around the large room and commented, "For a little one, this is a decently sized cave I guess."


    Chris hesitated at the door to the guest room. Cave? Dragons had words for so many concepts, surely they had a word for room. He tried to come up with one for a moment, but failed. After a moment he shook his head and opened the door to check on Anne.


    He frowned at the half full glass of water beside the bed as he approached the still form. Even from here he could tell immediately that it wasn''t the cold stillness of death, because her breath was an audible whistling wheeze. He was a little worried that their voices hadn''t woken her though.


    When he got close enough to see her face, he stared. There were smears like blood. After a breath, he noticed that her fist was clutching a spoon, and she was curled up around a small carton of melted ice cream dregs. It wasn''t the dried brown of blood, it was chocolate.


    Exasperation warred with amusement. On the plus side, she was doing well enough to have found food on her own, and had felt hungry enough to eat it. The downside was that the cold would increase the congestion in her lungs. Her breaths were shallow and noisy, and she still looked feverish.


    He gently removed the damp carton from the bedding and her loose grasp and set it aside. Then he picked up the small thermometer and reached out to rub it against her forehead.


    --


    Anne woke up suddenly, and flailed her arms at whatever had touched her face. A moment later she flailed with more purpose toward the blurry figure leaning over her. She would have screamed, with fear or anger, she wasn''t sure, but the scream died in her throat as the soothing voice apologized and insisted, "It is just me."


    "Chris?" she croaked doubtfully.


    "Yes," he assured her. "I am just trying to take your temperature, okay?"Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    "Your hair," she pointed at the dark color that had replaced the shining gold.


    "I colored it to match Juan''s ID photos," he explained as though it were as ordinary as changing his shirt.


    She glared at him, as she reached for the tissues and realized that she was still gripping her ice cream spoon. She let herself be distracted for a moment while she hunted a little frantically for the carton that she didn''t remember finishing, until she saw it sitting beside her glass.


    She used the tissue to mop gingerly at her crusted nose, and glared at Chris again before reaching for the glass. "I thought you were going to steal from him," she complained. "Why are you using his ID?"


    "I will be stealing a lot of things from him. I will just be using his identity to do it," Chris explained.


    Anne shook her head and argued, "Disguises like that only work in stories and shows."


    "It would be easier if I could take his hand first, but I will manage," Chris told her confidently. He sounded amused.


    She squinted at him, and wondered if his eyes were a different color. The ripples made it hard to focus, but she was pretty sure they were brown. Brown was a common color, but she felt like they hadn''t been brown before, although she couldn''t think what color they had been. She shook her head again, and froze as a strange sound came from the living room.


    She didn''t know how to describe the humming vibration that might have sounded like a trill at a higher pitch. A much higher pitch. Something at the back of her brain insisted that the source was large and scary. Chris had turned his head toward the door, but he hadn''t flinched like she had.


    "What was that?" she asked warily.


    Even though she couldn''t get her eyes to focus properly on his face, she could see his wide grin as he suggested lightly, "A grumpy old dragon."


    "Dragon," she repeated flatly. She remembered him claiming to be a dragon according to an older dragon before.


    "We''ll be working on language lessons. You don''t have to worry about making either of us sick," he assured her.


    Anne glared at him again. "I need to pee!" she announced abruptly. It wasn''t even a lie. The amount of energy it took to get off the bed and stomp, or at least stagger toward the door was embarrassing though. Especially when Chris just clucked his tongue at her and didn''t move to help.


    She didn''t know what she''d been expecting. His roommate, the mysterious Mac maybe. But what she saw when she pulled herself through the doorway was¡­ not a person. Not a dragon. It was a golden sea of light in the center of the room.


    Waves of clear water rippled through the entire room, making everything within it waver as though she were trying¡­ to look at Chris. Somehow she forced her head to turn away from that golden sea and look back at him for a moment. The ripples around his features were small and merely glimmered compared to the radiance that pulled her gaze back into the living room.


    A brief burst of that strange sound stirred the waves that rolled out of the golden sea at the center of the room. It was a sea too, vast, and deep. Impossibly large and yet impossibly small. The bright golden core of the watery light of the sea occupied a relatively small portion of the room.


    "Dragons are made of water?" she whispered as her knees buckled and she fell toward the floor.


    --


    Chris reached out and caught Anne as she fell.


    Amaru looked faintly surprised as he gazed at them. "You told her that we are dragons?" he asked in dragon.


    Anne shuddered as though the words were a physical wave that shook her body. Chris answered the older dragon in English, "Yes, I told her that we are dragons." He expected Anne to look up at him when he said it, but her eyes were fixed on Amaru. "This is Anne. She seems to see water when she looks at us?" he added questioningly as he carried her toward the bathroom.


    Anne nodded after a moment. "You ripple, but¡­ but¡­ there are waves," she choked out. Her head was turning to keep her gaze on Amaru as they passed the older dragon.


    He paused in front of the bathroom door and struggled to balance her while getting a hand free to open it.


    "Sea water?" Amaru asked.


    "No, they sound the same, but I said she sees water when she looks at us," Chris replied in dragon so that the older dragon could understand.


    Anne gave a squeak and stared up at him in horror. At least, he took it for horror, since she was shivering uncontrollably and pushing herself away from his chest. He dropped her gently back onto her own feet, and released her slowly, wary against another fall.


    She stepped backward through the bathroom door, and then reached out to snatch the knob and pull it shut between them with a solid thump.


    He could hear her voice clearly enough when she shouted loud enough to make her raspy voice crack, "I need a few minutes!"


    Amaru asked incredulously, "Your friend is one of the wise?"


    Chris blinked, and spun on one heel as he blurted, "What?"

 Fragment 35

    The child repeated his question several times, attempting to rephrase it as though he had not understood, while he considered how to answer. It had been difficult enough to explain ordinary sight to one who hadn''t realized that he was partially blind.


    "The wise are individuals of various species who can see as dragons see with their true eyes. They can see the strings of the world, even if they cannot discern the finer patterns," he explained. "But even though we are all looking at the same things, we interpret what we see according to our own structure and experience. What a dragon sees as a string of light, one of the wise among the seafolk sees as a dark current, and the few wise among the mankind seem to see the strings as rivers."


    "Then other species can also have true eyes?" the child asked doubtfully. "I have never seen anyone except you. Anne''s eyes seem completely ordinary to me."


    "I don''t know for certain, but I have never seen another species with true eyes, although cats seem to have something similar. The wise among other species are usually blind to physical sight, because they do not have two kinds of vision." He couldn''t tell if the child understood, but he nodded after a moment.


    --


    Anne tried to work up enough courage to leave the dubious safety of the bathroom. Passing out and letting herself be carried back to bed sounded easier. Now that she was aware of it, she could see the ripples that shivered the air even here, with a wall between her and whatever was out there.


    Dragon. The word meant flying fire breathing lizard to her. Whatever was in the living room was nothing like her image of a dragon. But she did remember hearing somewhere that to other cultures dragons were revered like gods, and she thought they represented wisdom, or maybe thunderstorms.


    The frightening voices¡­ she still didn''t know how to describe the sound, but for some reason she couldn''t help imagining that a fifty foot parakeet might sound similar. The image almost made her laugh, but really, it would be pretty frightening. Parakeets were vicious little birds in her limited experience. Somehow the sounds grew less frightening with the occasional english word thrown in. Language lessons. Seriously?


    When Chris knocked on the door, she jumped, but he only asked, "Are you doing okay?" When she didn''t answer right away, he called out, "Excuse me, I''m coming in to check on you."


    She didn''t know why she jumped forward to push against the door as it started to open, but it made her head spin. "I''m okay," she insisted, even though she wasn''t entirely certain that she was. She was going to add something like, ''I just need a few more minutes'', but what came out of her mouth was, "Shouldn''t a dragon at least have a scaly tail?"


    The door thumped shut as she wavered, now that there was no resistance. She stared at it blankly. The low voices of house sized parakeets conferred for a moment on the other side of that small barrier. A moment later it sounded like someone was dragging the furniture around.


    She opened the door to see Chris shoving the couch up against the wall, seemingly oblivious to the golden waves that rippled over and through him, making his whole form waver like a mirage. He turned and looked at her and then¡­ he unfolded somehow and a sort of oriental looking dragon tottered on his hind feet in Chris''s place.


    Anne closed her eyes, but it didn''t help, because it just made the waves coming from the golden sea that she didn''t dare turn her focus toward more vibrant. She opened her eyes again to find the dragon holding itself steady with one paw on the couch beside it, and watching her with concern. The mirage-like waver hadn''t lessened, but something big filled the rest of the room, blocking the view of the other walls.


    She wasn''t able to prevent her eyes from turning toward the source of the waves. Claws, scales, serpentine coils, and the glowing gold sea filled her vision. And then she met its open eyes, and they opened again.


    --


    Chris shifted back into his current human form and carried Anne back to her bed, while Amaru announced, "I will stay in this form. Keeping my own shape compressed takes much less ''energy'' than holding the shape of ''a human''. What is the word for holding?"This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    She opened her eyes as he covered her up, and told him rather firmly, "I''m going to sleep for a while."


    He could only smile as she shut her eyes and pulled the blankets up. And then opened them again and pushed the blankets down to sit up and empty the glass of water. He handed her the next doses of her medicines, and she took them silently.


    "Don''t laugh," she grumbled at him as she scooted back down and pulled the covers back up.


    "I won''t," he promised.


    --


    A few hours later, Chris began to wonder again whether or not he and Amaru were really the same species. The older dragon didn''t seem to need the repetition that most humans needed. He''d thought that his own memory was quite good, and it was, compared to the average human, but he still forgot things that he didn''t use, and he couldn''t imagine simply memorizing a dictionary.


    They were currently working their way through an old Webster''s Dictionary, pulled from Mac''s shelves, because Chris had run out of words off the top of his head. He knew a great many more words than he could simply list. Probably everyone knew the word imbued for example, but who would think to mention it before it was needed?


    Chris read the next entry and the older dragon pointed out, "You spoke about the meaning of ''immediate'' previously."


    When they reached the word mediate, Amaru complained that the meaning of immediate did not match the addition of the im prefix to the word mediate.


    "It sort of does," Chris tried to argue. "Mediate means in between, and immediate is without anything between? Kind of. I did already mention that English regularly breaks its own rules."


    "You did," Amaru conceded.


    --


    Anne woke up to the sound of Chris reading a dictionary aloud in the other room. At least, that''s the only reason she could think of for the string of words beginning with V and their definitions. She felt sorry for the dragon he was teaching. He could at least be using one of the learning apps that presented things in a somewhat reasonable order.


    She considered the DRAGON for a moment. Okay, both of them were dragons, if she could believe her unreliable eyes. And her ears, she guessed, although when the other voice responded it didn''t sound like a fifty foot parakeet.


    "Venerable age, I shall use this term for myself when people ask," a man''s voice announced.


    The way he spoke sounded slightly old fashioned¡­ like the way Chris spoke, she realized abruptly.


    Suddenly she sat up with a jolt of fright, and wondered how long she''d really been asleep. Her head spun, and the sensation combined with the soft waves that rippled everything in her vision made her nauseous.


    She threw up.


    It was horrible.


    The recitation of V words halted abruptly and Chris was beside her with an arm full of towels less than a full minute later. Or at least that''s how quickly it felt.


    "I need a shower," she said plaintively.


    "You can have another bath after your stomach settles enough to keep a bit of fluid down," he assured her.


    A bath. She was not going to sit in a tub with vomit floating it in. "A shower," she protested much more weakly than she meant to.


    "We''ll see," he prevaricated as he pushed a glass of water into her hands. "Spit into this towel," he instructed calmly.


    When she finished, he carried away the bundle of bedding and towels. Somehow he had already cleaned up the worst of the mess. She hadn''t even managed to apologize. It was like he was used to taking care of sick people.


    "Are you really a dragon?" she called out doubtfully.


    A flood of golden waves spilled across everything as a head as wide as a man''s body moved into the doorway. She couldn''t focus on the face enough to make out any details except the eyes. Her back was pressed against the headboard with no more room to retreat.


    "He is, I assure you," the dragon told her in the same voice that had declared that he was going to use venerable age to describe himself. His eyes regarded her curiously, but didn''t do the horrible thing where they opened up to show the stars within the golden sea shining out of them directly. "As am I," it added the obvious calmly.


    "Y''yeah," she agreed weakly. "I''m not wise," she blurted a moment later. The dragon blinked at her. "Before, I heard¡­ I heard Chris ask you what you meant by ''one of the wise''."


    "You can see the rivers of life, can you not?" the dragon asked curiously.


    Her mouth opened, but she couldn''t answer him. The rivers of life. The streams that danced behind her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes, with the unseen branches and sky reflecting in them. The waves that spilled off of the dragon, out of the bright golden sea that made him impossible to look at. Life? Yes.


    She looked into the eyes of a dragon while her entire world spun. Chris pushed the large head out of his way and walked through the door. He looked completely human except for the way the ripples and waves prevented her from focusing on his features.


    Anne croaked, "I''m not crazy." It wasn''t a question.

 Fragment 36

    "No more crazy than the rest of your species anyway," Amaru agreed from beyond the doorway.


    Anne didn''t argue.


    "What do you see exactly, when you look at Amaru?" Chris asked Anne curiously as he handed her a cup of broth.


    She took the cup with a firmer grip than he expected, and then complained, "He is even more difficult to see than you are, because instead of little ripples there are waves coming off of him that make everything ripple like you do." She gestured to her surroundings, and then did her best to describe the golden sea, the coils, and the impossible eyes. When she finished, she watched Chris with an odd mixture of defiance and fear.


    He considered her for a moment, but Amaru walked through the door in his human guise before he could think up a reassuring response. He did manage to catch the cup when Anne flinched and dropped it. She covered her eyes and tried to turn her head away, before turning her whole body away from them.


    "Closing my eyes doesn''t help, and all I can see is the golden sea right now," Anne complained shakily.


    Amaru gazed at her curiously and said, "I had thought that all of the wise among your kind were completely blind to physical sight. They are exceedingly rare though, I found only a few in all of the millennia that I watched them."


    "Is there something different about them? How did you find them?" Chris asked. "And will Anne be able to reinforce her own pattern too?"


    Amaru looked taken aback. "There is something different: they can see. Generally they will stay near one of the places where many lines cross to form a natural pool similar, but less condensed than what is gathered in a heart. I do not know if Anne will be able to. In general the wise tend to live longer than most of their kind, so perhaps."


    Anne coughed and croaked, "My pattern?"


    Chris tried to explain, "I think it is¡­ maybe something like DNA? He said he wrote wings into his pattern, and then his children could inherit them."


    Anne turned to stare at him incredulously, but hurriedly turned around again. "He didn''t have wings? All dragons got their wings from him?"


    Amaru grumbled, "Many dragons are naturally winged now, but certainly not all. I think only a few dozen or so would be my descendants."


    "I don''t have wings," Chris admitted ruefully. He looked at the way Anne was still trying to avoid looking anywhere near the older dragon and then turned to Amaru and added, "I think you are too bright for her, even if she doesn''t see the same light that my true eyes do. Can you withdraw for now and converse with her when she has recovered a bit?"


    "Very well," Amaru agreed.


    Chris frowned when he heard the outer door open and shut as Anne finally turned around, and he pressed the cooling cup of broth back into her hands. But Anne seemed relieved, and presumably Amaru would return. He added cell phones to the list of things he needed to buy.


    --


    Anne took what felt like the most exhausting shower of her life after Chris finally decided that she had kept the broth down long enough.


    She was so weak that she had to lean against the wall while she scrubbed at her hair. When she gave up and decided that she was as clean as she was going to get, she was shocked by how difficult it was to get out of the tub. She couldn''t stop coughing, and was too weak to dry her hair.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    She was sure that Chris must be wrong about her not having the new virus. She blinked at the clothes piled on the counter where she''d left the bathrobe. She hadn''t heard Chris come in. She didn''t feel like she had the strength to get dressed, but they looked clean.


    She ignored the bra. Her shirt had been inexpertly patched, but it was good enough. Underwear was a necessity, but she stared at her worn jeans for a bit. She was too exhausted to struggle into them. If she didn''t lay down soon, she was going to fall down.


    She opened the door a crack, and peeked out. Chris immediately stood up from the couch that was still pushed up against the wall. She could see that the other furniture was all pressed up against the other walls.


    "Are you okay?" Chris asked with concern.


    "Too tired for pants," she admitted with embarrassment. "Need to lie down."


    "Okay," Chris agreed and turned away from the door. "The bed is already made, and I won''t look," he promised.


    Anne was relieved and amused by the old fashioned behavior. Halfway back to the guest room, she wondered if she was going to make it all the way on her own. She tottered up to the bed and flopped the top half of herself face down on the clean covering.


    She was still telling herself that she just needed to rest for another minute before getting into the bed, when Chris picked her up. She didn''t even have the energy to protest about how he wasn''t going to look. He managed to hold her up with one arm while he pulled back the covers with the other, and then tucked her into the bed as easily as if she were a small child, and she stared at him.


    His eyes opened as he pulled the covers up over her chest. "The fever is making you weak. I''ll bring you more broth."


    "Can''t I have ice cream?" she asked plaintively.


    "Do you enjoy coughing?" he asked dryly.


    "No, but," she began.


    "The cold increases your congestion and reduces the effectiveness of the fever," he chided.


    "Isn''t reducing the fever a good thing?" she argued.


    He shook his head. "No, the fever is how your body fights the illness that causes it. Unless it endangers your own life as well, it is better to encourage it to run its course quickly."


    His medical treatments sounded as old fashioned as his speech and she muttered tiredly, "I wish I still had my phone."


    "I can bring you Mac''s iPad if you''d like," Chris offered helpfully.


    She nodded, and he left the room. Even if he was using dangerously old fashioned methods, at least he was taking care of her. She turned her head and squinted at the medicines on the little table. Everything said things like draining and clearing, cough suppression on the red one, but nothing listed fever.


    She was almost asleep, or already asleep when Chris got back with the broth and the tablet, but he held her up while she sipped it, so she struggled to swallow it all. The tablet was the new kind that she knew weighed barely anything, but it felt as heavy as a slab of stone.


    Somehow Anne felt betrayed when several respectable medical sites agreed with Chris about letting fevers run their course. None of them said don''t eat ice cream, but ice baths were listed as a bad idea. Just the thought of being dipped in ice water made her shiver.


    The advice for the new virus was the same, and her horribly runny nose wasn''t on the common symptom list for it, even though fever and cough were. She closed the browser and let the tablet lay against the pillow in front of her face instead of trying to hold it upright. She could watch something. Read one of the comics she used to follow. Or a web novel. Her eyes closed before she decided what to try while she had the opportunity.


    --


    Chris walked quickly, toward the fast food shop where he had applied. He owed Bobby and Mac a lot. He wished that Anne had come down with something easily identifiable, like the chicken pox, because then he could let Mac come home and keep an eye on her if it were something he''d already had. But of course, both of them had probably been vaccinated for anything like that.


    He considered asking Amaru to watch over her, but he felt leery of that idea for several reasons. The older dragon had clearly said that he wouldn''t mind at all if sickness wiped out more humans. He did seem interested in her now that he knew she could see things, but he had seemed oblivious to her distress when he got close.


    Probably someone who blinded you, or at least made you nauseous if you looked toward them, was not a good nursing candidate anyway.

 Fragment 37

    John thought he was having a heart attack, but his building wasn''t far from one of the urgent care centers, so when he contacted them and they asked if he could make it in on his own, he said yes.


    He didn''t drive of course, because he''d read somewhere that an astonishingly large percentage of fatal auto accidents were caused by drivers having heart attacks. Halfway to the center he wondered if he''d lied, and he wasn''t going to make it after all. He entered the emergency line number in his phone, but didn''t dial it yet.


    He regretted eating so many cheeseburgers because they were cheap, fast, and easy when he was tired. He regretted not getting more exercise on a regular basis, although he''d already regretted that when lugging endless sacks of groceries. He regretted that ambulance rides were being limited.


    By the time he staggered through the doors, he felt like he''d walked a hundred miles instead of a few blocks. To his shock, they were waiting for him with a stretcher, he barely gasped his name before they were lifting him onto it. He''d come in once a few years ago with a friend who''d been dripping blood everywhere, and they''d had to wait for hours. But now, when medical centers everywhere were supposed to be overloaded, they were meeting him at the door.


    It wasn''t a heart attack, or rather, it was, but it wasn''t caused by a clogged artery. The symptoms and the damage were the same, but the cause was different. He had caught the virus.


    It was weird, but after a brief burst of indignation, he found that he didn''t really regret having been the one who put himself at risk. Better him than one of the kids who lived in his building. He just hoped that he hadn''t passed it on to them too.


    Doubts assailed him. Had he been careful enough? Had he remembered to wash his hands every time? Had he spread it to others?


    He expected to be sent to the hospital, after they told him that it was also in his lungs. But to his shock, they sent him home, with a few medicines and a plastic tool to measure the strength of his breath, and insisted that he didn''t need to return until he couldn''t move it to the assigned mark. That really drove home how severely overloaded the hospitals were.


    He notified everyone in his building through the chat they''d set up. The responses were mixed. Some were horrified and accusatory. Some were fearful. Others were sympathetic. Only a couple of people thanked him again for all of the deliveries, but he could understand why most of them were more afraid that he''d brought the virus to them.


    John was so tired when he crawled into his bed that he wondered if he''d ever wake up again.


    When he woke up, he panicked because he felt like he was drowning. After a moment he realized that the sound that had woken him had been his doorbell. It was about thirty miles from his bed to his door, but he made it. He leaned against the door and squinted through the tiny peephole that he had never used since moving in.


    He didn''t see anyone or anything. He waited for half of eternity, or at least a couple of minutes, but nothing moved in the warped circle of corridor. He opened the door and stared at the eclectic pile of food containers piled up like a short wall against the bottom edge.


    For a moment he forgot that he had the virus, as he considered them with suspicion, but then he remembered. It didn''t matter if they were contaminated, as long as they didn''t contain ordinary types of potential food poisoning, because he already had what everyone was afraid of catching.


    There were a lot of them. More than he could eat in a day even if he were healthy. He blinked back tears. He was overwhelmed in more ways than one. Picking up the dishes and carrying them to his small kitchen felt like a herculean task.


    He was halfway through when he looked up to see old Mrs. Beaglesworth, of the many potato orders, striding toward him with another container. He tried to make a polite but sincere protest from a distance, glad to see that she was at least wearing a mask and gloves. She ignored him.


    "Nonsense. You should be in a hospital, not trying to tend to things yourself. Leave that and let''s get you back into bed young man," she said authoritatively.


    "What if you catch it?" he protested as she took the containers he held.


    "I''m already old," she pointed out as she pushed past him.


    "That means you''re in a higher risk group," he replied worriedly.


    She ignored him, and the rest of the containers. After she deposited her armload on the counter, she came back and took his elbow in a surprisingly firm grip. "Bed or bathroom first?" she asked.


    He felt too tired to argue.


    A few hours later after he''d slept and woken up again he asked, "Were you a nurse?"


    She laughed, and replied "Nope. But my mister and I spent enough time in and out of hospitals over the years that I picked up a lot."


    She had not only stored all the food away, she had brought in a humidifier from somewhere, set out his next doses of medicines, and dragged the rocking chair he hardly ever used into his bedroom so that she could sit comfortably beside his bed. She took his temperature and his pulse with professional ease, and held the breath analyzer up for him to use, just like he''d been instructed to.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    She also treated him as though he were 14 instead of 40, but he couldn''t really work up the energy to complain. He did sit up and protest when she brought in the oxygen tank. He wasn''t sure how much time had passed, days maybe.


    "She wanted you to have it," Mrs. Beaglesworth insisted. I made sure that she''d already received her new tank. This one''s only got about a quarter left, but it will help."


    "Oxygen is supposed to be dangerous if you don''t need it," he protested.


    "You need it," she said a bit sharply. "Did you know that we all die of suffocation? Well, unless you get your brain smashed to bits faster than it can die of oxygen deprivation. But everything else, heart attacks, pneumonia, strokes, even simple blood loss. It''s all just keeping enough oxygen from reaching your brain."


    "I''m not arguing that," he said plaintively. "But I''m pretty sure that it shouldn''t be used without a doctor''s order."


    She rolled her eyes at him, and sighed. "You live by rules don''t you kid? After you recover, why don''t you try breaking a few more often."


    She helped him contact the urgent care center and ask, and then he apologized after they received his breath analyzer readings, and agreed with her.


    "I''m sorry," he said again.


    "Tsk, nevermind that. You just lack experience, that''s all," she insisted cheerfully.


    "I wish I''d taken more vacations before. I don''t think people are going to be able to travel as much for a long time," he confided.


    She laid a cool gloved hand against his forehead and looked at him with concern as she replied confidently, "There''s no rush, the world''s not going anywhere even if it takes a long time. You can still travel more."


    "Experience," he explained.


    She blinked at him and then laughed. "Experience comes to you wherever you are. All you have to do is live through it."


    --


    Anne woke up and wondered if she were dying. Then she wondered if she even wanted to live. Then she saw the waves and remembered that she''d seen a dragon''s eyes, and that she really wasn''t crazy no matter how many people had insisted that she must be.


    Amaru opened the door to her room without knocking and demanded, "Where is the child?"


    She gazed at the golden sea without feeling like she was going to throw up, but still without being able to make out what Chris had told her was his human form. "Child?" she asked blankly.


    "I suppose that to your kind he would be an elder," the dragon conceded. "Chris, as he calls himself in your tongue."


    "He''s a child to you?" Anne asked doubtfully. "I think calling him an elder is too extreme, he looks like he''s only a little older than I am."


    Amaru laughed, and Anne wanted him to keep laughing forever. She could feel his amusement in the waves that surrounded her, and for a moment it washed away all of her physical discomfort.


    "He is but a handful of centuries old, while I am much older than your kind," the dragon explained.


    She was torn between asking if he meant that seriously, and asking if that was why their speech sounded so old fashioned. But as the laughter faded from the waves of what she had thought was intangible water, but the dragon called life, more pressing concerns presented themselves.


    She slid over the edge of the bed and almost fell, before asking uncertainly, "Sorry, but can you help me walk to the restroom?"


    There was a long silence. She pushed herself upright and reached for the stand beside her, which wobbled a little. A moment later a grip that nearly broke her arm took hold of her. She couldn''t see anything but flashes of golden light and movement, but the painful grip guided her in the right direction, so she stumbled along beside it.


    She realized they''d reached her destination when she heard the thump of porcelain on porcelain, and the dragon beside her said disapprovingly, "Wastes should not be dumped into the waterways, even though it seems very convenient from within your dwelling."


    "It doesn''t go into waterways," she protested weakly. "I mean, I guess it used to, but every city has to have a treatment plant now, where everything gets sterilized and filtered."


    "Oh?" he asked with interest. "Tell me about this plant, I have never seen such a thing growing in the wild."


    Anne opened her mouth, and then shook her head. "I''ll try to explain, after I''m finished in here. If you could step out?" she hinted strongly.


    The sea rippled with movement, but she heard the sound of water running in the sink instead.


    "I can''t see anything while you''re this close," she complained.


    "Oh, I see," he said without apologizing, but the sea retreated.


    When Anne could make out the outline of the doorway she leaned on the counter and closed it before moving back to the toilet. The waves that radiated off of him were still visible, and it made her wonder if he could see through walls. Maybe the closed door didn''t affect him.


    After a moment she gritted her teeth and told herself that in that case, clothes didn''t matter either, and he''d already seen everything. It was not really a comforting thought. She remembered his claim about being older than humanity, and told herself that a dinosaur wouldn''t care if it saw a monkey pee.


    Even though she''d needed to go quite urgently, it took her awhile.


    Her arm ached too.


    When she edged through the door a bit later, the sea appeared to be sitting on the couch. Not that she could really see the couch, but she remembered where it was.


    Her other arm ached with equal intensity by the time the dragon kindly helped her back to the bed. And he didn''t even wait until she was settled before he demanded to hear about the strange plant that could sterilize wastes. He deemed her explanation both insufficient and rather disgusting after she told him that it wasn''t actually a plant, but an artificial lake of collected sewage, and realized that she didn''t know exactly what happened after that. It was hard to argue.


    "If you''ll move back into the other room, I can look it up on the tablet Chris lent me," she suggested.


    "Such a thing is written on a tablet at your bedside?" Amaru asked doubtfully.


    "Yeah, I mean, you can look up almost anything on the internet," she agreed, but the words threw her into a coughing fit.


    "This is not a good place to gather enough energy to fight the unweavers with just the defenses of your blood," Amaru commented.


    She did feel very weak, so she ignored the strange word and asked, "Where is a good place?"


    "Find this tablet that speaks of treatments for wastes, and then I shall take you to the nearest natural pool," the dragon declared, and moved back far enough for her to make out the wavering form of the iPad.

 Fragment 38

    When Chris returned home from his new job, he halted at the entrance with a feeling of trepidation. Mac''s place was quiet. Too quiet.


    He opened the door to the guest room, hoping that Anne was just sleeping more quietly than expected, but fearing the worst. She had been getting worse instead of better, and he''d arranged to take two four hour shifts instead of a single shift per day so that he could make sure she took the medicines at least close to the prescribed schedule.


    The bed was empty.


    He checked each room.


    The apartment was empty.


    Anne was gone.


    Chris considered looking for her for a moment, but she wasn''t his captive. She had never even asked for his help. She had even actually helped him out quite a bit, by gifting him with Juan''s identity.


    There was no note or message indicating that she would return, but it was always possible that she had gone to gather her possessions or fulfill some other obligation and meant to return. Or he and Amaru might have scared her so much that running away while deathly ill still seemed like the safest choice.


    It took him longer to realize that Mac''s iPad was also gone.


    It probably meant that she wasn''t planning to return. He didn''t hold it against her. It was a valuable resource and a practical choice, although he wished that she''d at least taken the medicines too. She might have even thought that he''d gifted it to her instead of lending it.


    Unfortunately, it left him with another debt which could never be fully repaid. He could replace the tablet eventually, but not it''s value as a gift from a grandchild.


    At times like this he thought that the human need for daily sleep might be comforting. Most of the time he just wondered at how much they managed to get done when they had to interrupt their activities so often for food and sleep. He looked around, and decided that delaying wouldn''t gain him anything.


    Chris began the process of cleaning. Everything that had been touched or breathed on needed to be washed before Mac could safely return home.


    --


    Anne was really glad that she''d insisted on putting on pants before leaving Chris''s place.


    At first, she''d been afraid that the dragon who appeared to be a golden sea in her vision was simply going to drag her to the place that he wanted her to go, but he had carried her most of the way instead. Not as comfortably as Chris had carried her, but much farther than she could have walked with the cough that kept stealing her breath.


    Amaru took her all the way out to the suburbs on the mountain side of the city, near where she''d been when she''d seen a dragon landing near the river in the distance, but farther out. She thought that the dragon silhouette she''d seen had been less oriental and more like a western dragon than Chris and Amaru seemed to be.


    "Are there a lot of types of dragons?" she asked nervously as Amaru completely ignored a set of signs warning against trespassing, and carried her over the fence with a graceful leap that an athlete might envy.


    "Every dragon is different, but also no more or less than a dragon," Amaru replied calmly.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Anne wasn''t sure what that was supposed to mean.


    Most people didn''t realize that the farther you got from the hustle and bustle in the city, the more people who didn''t fit in stood out, and the dragon was no different. She felt like they were going to be reported at any moment, but he didn''t even slow down.


    And then suddenly, he came to a stop, and let go. Anne grabbed at him reflexively as she fell, and snatched her hand back almost as quickly as she staggered away from him. He might be wearing a human form, but his clothes felt like living skin or something. It was an incredibly creepy sensation.


    "Now you can tell me about the plant that is not a plant while you replenish your energy," he instructed.


    "Here?" she asked disbelievingly.


    They were standing at the edge of some rich person''s suburban estate as nearly as she could tell. Their trespasses were probably being recorded on security cameras, and he sounded like he wanted her to just sit here and rest.


    "Yes, can''t you see the pool?" he asked.


    She almost said no, before she realized that the waves weren''t coming off of him anymore. Instead ripples were now moving toward him and being absorbed into the golden sea. Everything in her vision wavered so badly when she was near him that she hadn''t noticed the change, and couldn''t tell if there was a visible edge.


    "Maybe?" she replied hesitantly. "It looks like water is flowing into the sea that covers you, instead of rolling out of it? But I can''t really tell if there''s a pool."


    "You can see enough. I am absorbing some of the energy naturally, let yourself do the same," he instructed again.


    "How?" Anne asked blankly, with another nervous glance around. There were quite a few large trees and some bushes that might be protecting them from view somewhat, but she still felt like they could be caught at any moment.


    He glared at her and suggested, "Be less fearful and more welcoming toward what surrounds you."


    "I can''t help being afraid that we''re going to get caught!" she protested. The sharp words made her start coughing again.


    "I will insure your safety," he said with an irritated undertone to his words that seemed to shake the air.


    She shook her head, but stopped when he began to unfold. He kept unfolding until the golden sea faded, and a dragon more massive than a house coiled himself into a circle like a shimmering wall of scaled colors. He was at least ten paces from her in every direction. He surrounded her, and familiar golden ripples danced along his bright colors.


    His eyes were huge, but familiar. He had wisps of fur or feathers that drifted in the air around his face giving him a whiskery and somewhat bearded look. The ruff of softness around his face thinned and tufted along his long back. His forefeet looked more like hands with sharp retractable claws like a cat with long fingers. His wings were feathered like some ancient Aztec god instead of a dragon.


    "Well?" he demanded impatiently.


    She sat down meekly and closed her eyes.


    Without the distraction of open eyes, the water leapt into focus even faster than normal, but the ripples weren''t a stream, there was no feeling of a boundary and there wasn''t a single direction to the flow.


    There was a vast golden rim surrounding everything, and as she focused on it, she realized that she could still see the dragon''s shimmering form even with her eyes closed. He was a being crafted from wavering gold, like the sea that she hadn''t been able to see through, but diffuse compared to that compressed endless depth.


    The rippling pool that he surrounded reflected green leaves and blue sky as strongly as she''d ever seen them, even though when she looked up instead of down and around, there were only the same ripples across darkness, as though she were looking toward another bottom. The water didn''t seem to be flowing into her the way it mingled with the golden ripples of the dragon.


    She couldn''t see herself at all, except as a quieter space where there were few ripples. She had no idea how to let the ripples flow into her. She didn''t know how long she sat there trying to will the water to move toward her, before she wondered if she just needed to drink it.


    She reached out her unseen hands and tried to cup the intangible water, and Amaru asked a bit crossly, "What are you flailing about for? Hurry up and begin strengthening yourself so that we can begin to trade our knowledge."


    "How?" she asked plaintively.


    The dragon glared at her, and then seemed to roll his eyes. Her eyes popped open as she tried to see if what she was seeing behind her eyes matched reality at all.

 Fragment 39

    The sickly girl stared at him blankly. He wholeheartedly agreed that she did not fit the normal definitions of ''wise'' in her own tongue, even though the child had insisted that it was the closest word to wise in the language of dragons.


    The word in her tribe''s language implied knowledge that this girl obviously lacked, but the wisdom of dragons did not require knowledge as part of its comprehension, perception of patterns, and shrewd instinct.


    The child had explained that words often had more modern meanings than those written in the impressive ''book'' of papers that he had read from. Wisdom''s modern definition was apparently closer to a dragon''s term because ''games'' had ''stats'' in which intelligence usually conferred knowledge, and wisdom conferred shrewdness and perception. Perhaps he should tell the girl to play with the energy of the strings as though it were a game.


    Actually, with a single string she could reach out to strengthen her connection through her fingers, which might explain the way she flailed around with her arms. There was no need to reach out when she was immersed in the pool formed by many strings meeting, but perhaps¡­


    "Why don''t you try showing me what I''m doing wrong," she demanded plaintively.


    He considered for a moment, perhaps that was also a good suggestion. "Very well," he agreed.


    He resisted the song of the strings, the muddled hum of the pool, and drew a firm line between I and not I. It was a rather stifling feeling, akin to holding his breath. She could see the effect of it though, he could tell by the way her eyes widened as she got to her feet again and turned in a slow circle.


    He was confused when she closed her eyes again, and continued to turn slowly.


    "Can I touch you when you''re in that form?" she asked uncertainly.


    "Yes?" he agreed questioningly. He wondered if she thought that he''d changed into some sort of mist form as the child had demonstrated because he was so much larger than the tightly compressed form he''d used in the small dwelling.


    She took a few steps, fell, and then opened her eyes as she stood again to walk over to him. Once she reached his side she tentatively reached out to press her hand against his scales and promptly closed her eyes again.


    "I think I see," she mumbled.


    "With your eyes closed, or with your hands?" he asked facetiously.


    "Both I think," she replied agreeably. "I can see the water more clearly with my eyes closed, but I can kind of feel a, sort of a line of separation?"


    "I see," he said thoughtfully.


    Her head still moved as though she were looking with her eyes when they were closed. She moved one hand to her own chest, and asked, "Can you go back to absorbing it again?"


    He released the layer of separation, without speaking, and it was obvious again that she could see something. "What happens when you look with your eyes open, while in complete darkness?" he asked with interest.


    Her eyes opened and she turned to stare at his face. "I have always been afraid of complete darkness," she explained nervously. "But it''s usually hard to find anywhere that''s completely dark, so it''s not a problem normally."This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    "Why do you fear it?" he asked thoughtfully.


    Her hand was still a small point of contact between them, and he listened to the vibration of the single scale as it trembled. Her fear was sharp and real, but her answer was strangely hesitant.


    "No one believed me, but I thought I could see my own heartbeat, I thought I could see my blood through my skin. And everything got really loud, so loud that I was deaf for a while after they finally let me out," she said the statements as though they were questions.


    "Ah," he replied and she yanked her hand away and stumbled back. It took him a moment to realize that he had forgotten to mute the sound into the range her kind used for speech. "I think that you should try to look at the pool, and yourself, and the barrier that you have formed without the distraction of physical light and the barrier of your eyelids."


    She squeaked some indiscernible reply and stumbled back to the center of the space he had left around her initial position.


    Ideas that he had never considered about why the wise of most other species were blind to physical sight danced through his mind as he unfurled one wing.


    --


    Anne had no idea how long she''d been in the darkness, days, or maybe even weeks. She had slept sometimes, but invalids slept more frequently, and she had been feeling very weak. The first few hours of darkness had been frequently interrupted, because she''d brought Chris''s iPad with her.


    The dragon was utterly fascinated by it. Not because it glowed enough to relieve her eyes and her fear, but because it had internet access even way out here. Although, that probably wasn''t surprising given the expensive houses.


    He claimed that he''d learned to read by simply watching as Chris read the new language to him. Maybe dragons were actually geniuses, but Anne wasn''t really sure. She told the web browser that a child was using it before she reluctantly let him have the device, after having seen the results of some of the things he had already asked about.


    Amaru talked with her quite cordially whenever she asked what he was reading about, and did not seem at all surprised when the tablet finally ran out of energy. He even explained his theories about how her eyes were actually impaired by the fact that she retained her ability to see with light.


    It was possible that she''d only been kept in the dark for a few hours instead of the days that it felt like. She had no way to tell after the tablet shut down. She also had no distractions other than the dragon himself. No one had even come to try chasing them off. Whenever she fell asleep, she would wake up wrapped in the warmth of a curled dragon tail.


    She wasn''t really surprised to learn that everything she''d thought she''d seen in the utter dark as a small child was real. What surprised her was that the ripples, waves, and flashes of light that she was used to seemed to have mostly vanished. Infinitesimal things moved through the darkness around her almost as thickly as they crowded her own veins.


    If she closed her eyes she could see the familiar rippling surfaces, but she realized that those were just tricks her mind played with the patterns of movement. They matched the patterns that she could see in the darkness with her eyes open, but it was the difference between looking at a flame and watching its reflection on a wall.


    The sounds that had deafened her as a child existed here too, but they were muted by a dragon. The lights and patterns were muted by the dragon too. When her eyes were tired she could look at his radiance and find an anchor.


    He had her play games with the lights and sounds that filled the lightless dark. He would hum something into one of the stronger currents and have her track it down and somehow catch it on her skin. That wasn''t how he described it, but that was how it felt to her.


    Eventually she caught the trick of letting her fingers hum with the sound, which made it vanish. It was still a long time before she could open more of herself to the energy that swirled around her. When it finally started drifting into her the way it drifted into the dragon, Amaru praised her rather awkwardly. She had expected him to release her, but instead he ordered her to sleep for a while and let herself absorb more.


    When she woke again, she asked what she finally realized that she could have asked even a creature who did not seem to understand the meaning of an hour. She wasn''t so hungry that she was certain it would be more than once, but she felt fairly thirsty, though not nearly as thirsty as she was certain that she should after talking so much even if it hadn''t actually been days.


    "How many times has the sun set since we came here?" Anne asked.


    His reply was infuriatingly vague, "Several."

 Fragment 40

    Anne stared back at the enormous yellow circle of grass that Amaru left behind.


    She looked at the dragon who had folded himself up into a human sized golden sea, growing brighter in her vision as he compressed himself into that small form.


    She looked back at the place where a dragon had sat for long enough for the grass to change color. Her throat was uncomfortably dry, but she didn''t feel as sickly as she had when they''d arrived. How could people have missed seeing a dragon that big? Why weren''t they surrounded by cameras and soldiers?


    "Let''s go," the dragon suggested casually. "We have a long walk ahead of us."


    The way he spoke sounded much more natural than it had when they''d arrived. His clothes that weren''t clothes were still a little odd though.


    "Too bad we don''t have enough money to get a cab. I don''t think they usually accept gold," she suggested half jokingly.


    "Humans used to be quite fond of gold," the dragon agreed. "It''s too bad that it''s no longer an acceptable currency, I would like to try ''get a cab''."


    "Try to get a cab," she corrected automatically. She couldn''t quite bring herself to ask if he actually had a hoard of gold.


    --


    Chris wished that he''d been more specific with Amaru. Who knew how long the elder dragon considered ''a bit'' of time to be. Mac was bustling about, packing up his many momentos of his life with the family that Chris had never met.


    "You don''t need to do that," he told Mac again.


    "It''s no trouble, and would need doing eventually," the little old man insisted. "You needed more room, and I don''t mind giving up the space."


    Chris had tried to move things to their original positions, but he had obviously failed, because Mac had noticed immediately. He sighed, and they both looked up when a faint knocking sound came from the door.


    "I''ll get it," Chris volunteered.


    "Wait, I''ll get you a mask," Mac argued.


    "I don''t need it," Chris pointed out.


    "They''ll need it," Mac pointed out dryly. "For peace of mind if nothing else."


    Chris hesitated in front of the door. "Alright," he agreed.


    Mac''s door was relatively sturdy, but it didn''t prevent Chris from hearing the familiar aggravated voice of a dragon demanding, "Open the door."


    Chris opened the door to Mac''s dismay, and stared blankly at the two figures waiting in the hallway. Anne looked scared and Amaru looked impatient. Chris turned his body so that he could glance between Mac and Anne. Chris held out his hand when Anne nervously edged forward. For a moment her expression looked hurt, but her shoulders stiffened and her face was expressionless when she held out the iPad.


    Chris ignored the proffered tablet and said quickly, "Mac was getting a mask for me, but since he''s home, you should probably put it on before you come in Anne."If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Anne blinked at him, and then edged closer so that she could see past him, but Mac was already in one of the other rooms. He came back out a minute later, wearing a bright blue mask and waving several folded and very brightly colored pieces of cloth that appeared to have long tassels. Anne stared at him, open mouthed, and turned a very startled and questioning look toward Chris.


    Mac didn''t hesitate to push past Chris and place a bright green cloth mask into Anne''s hands. "Don''t worry, they aren''t just cloth, there''s a filter between the layers," Mac told her cheerfully as he held out a bright pink mask toward Amaru with a hint of challenge in his eyes.


    The dragon took the pink piece of beribboned cloth with a curious expression and examined it carefully. Mac looked a little taken aback, but gestured to his own face and said, "Wear it like this, pinch the wire at the top into the shape of your nose.".


    Chris stepped back so that Anne could enter. Mac''s hands weren''t empty yet, he still carried a yellow mask, and Chris shrugged and put it on without complaint when Mac turned to hand it to him.


    Amaru followed Chris''s example and then asked, "Why must we all muffle our faces?"


    "They catch the germs I told you about," Anne replied promptly.


    Chris interrupted Amaru''s objection with, "It is currently a polite social accoutrement, like pants. All workers are required to wear them during their shifts as well."


    Mac and Anne both gave him a fishy stare, but Amaru nodded.


    Chris turned to Anne and asked hesitantly, "You seem to be feeling somewhat better?"


    "I guess I am," she agreed with surprise, "but I''m really thirsty and kind of hungry. I haven''t had anything since I left."


    "I''ll make you a sandwich," Mac announced and immediately headed for his kitchen.


    "Broth," Chris interrupted. Mac halted and looked back inquiringly. Anne wrinkled her nose. "She hasn''t eaten anything in a week," Chris explained.


    "Has it really been a whole week?" she asked doubtfully.


    "Six days," he replied neutrally. "Where did you go?"


    Anne turned and indicated Amaru. "Out near the mountain to a place¡­ he called it a pool, but it wasn''t water, it was¡­" she hesitated.


    "It was a place where many strings met, the wise usually reside near such a place, because most can draw energy from the pool," Amaru explained calmly. "I do not know if she can live long enough to reinforce her own pattern as you hoped, but she was eventually able to open herself to the strings and recharge."


    "Speaking of recharging?" Anne added nervously as she tried to hand Chris the tablet again.


    Amaru''s gaze sharpened as he told Chris, "I would appreciate it if you could acquire a tablet for me as well."


    Chris took the tablet and blinked at the older dragon.


    "He really liked being able to search for weird information," Anne explained helpfully.


    "Ah, well, I can''t afford an iPad right now, but I already got you a phone," Chris told Amaru warily. "It is smaller but it can do internet searches."


    "A phone, can it truly speak instantly with a person on the other side of the world?" the dragon asked.


    Chris wondered how many ads the dragon had watched. "Almost, there is a small delay as the signals have to be bounced around the curve of the Earth. It is also expensive and I cannot afford it at the moment."


    "I restricted the search results to, um, a more refined setting," Anne added quickly.


    It took Chris a moment, but then he nodded. "Good idea, I''m sure that some of the suggestions are confusing enough without explicit content."


    Anne nodded, looking relieved that he had understood, but Amaru objected, "I would prefer more explicit explanations of many things. Some of them were quite uninformative. That book of words was actually admirably organized compared to many of the documents."


    "It was not the same meaning of explicit that Anne used," Chris explained.


    "It''s slang for pornography," Mac explained helpfully. "Not that the filters will keep everything out, but they help."


    "Ah so," Amaru replied knowledgeably. "I would like to know how to filter out cats then. The documents that included them did not seem particularly refined or informative on the topics I requested."


    No one responded right away, they just exchanged glances.

 Fragment 41

    She looked out across mountain peaks that were still white with snow, although it was quickly being compressed into ice as the top layers slightly melted and sank into the layers below them to freeze again.


    Spring was raising green carpets that crawled slowly upward from the bottoms of the valleys. Bursts of sweetness and color decorated the slopes as the season of flowers began. The world was beautiful in its ever changing variety.


    She spun on an updraft and turned her gaze toward the city that marred the charming view. Perhaps it improved the view for those who occupied it, but it was inelegant in her sight. If they had built two of those, arranged all of the buildings in descending heights, and capped them all in white, it would have been¡­


    She stopped herself. She did not wish to get drawn into the silly games that some of the younger generation had played with the tribes. The territories of animals could not be adjusted without consequences.


    The mankind weren''t the first species to suffer the attempts of dragons who thought that herding them could be amusing. Carrying a single breeding pair of interesting animals to a different continent could destroy the balance among the residents for a thousand years. Eventually a new balance would settle, life was strong and enduring, but there were always consequences to meddling with things that you didn''t fully understand.


    She had thought that she had understood them well enough. Others had studied them more. But it was obvious that none of her kind had really comprehended what they were capable of.


    She was currently running away. Not because they were so horrible, not because she feared for her life, but because she had found herself reluctant to leave. Reluctant to stop investigating everything that they had discovered.


    Dragons prized knowledge, they bartered it among themselves, they shared it, they hoarded it. Knowledge shaped them as a species, quite literally, as they wove their future into their own patterns. Each of them was a scholar, a singer, a weaver, and could read the very flow of the world itself. But they had always been few, living within the balances, and they could live long, so long that no one had ever sung the limit.


    The mankind lived such short lives, that as intelligent as they seemed, few of her kind had ever imagined that they could ever gather as much knowledge as a single dragon. But now she knew. It was still true that no individual among them could match more than an infant''s store of knowledge. But they were no longer storing it within themselves.


    Their fragile hoards of written documents had made them stronger and may even have been the reason that they had spread far enough to threaten the balance of the entire world. But what her kind had not understood, was that it was the very number of them that was accelerating their collection of knowledge as a species. That they would develop a form of storage and recollection for knowledge that individuals could access from almost anywhere.


    Their species had not just multiplied beyond comprehension, they had stored knowledge beyond comprehension and were constantly discovering more. And she could feel that knowledge changing her already, and so she ran.


    She would return of course. Not only had she promised it, but she already knew that the draw of so much knowledge would call to her as light called to a moth. But she must share what she had already learned first, she knew that it would draw them all in eventually, even if she did not know where the pivot that would let her kind find their own balance again would form.


    --


    Anne didn''t know why she was still living at Chris and Mac''s place, not that she had any desire to leave! She just couldn''t figure out why they were letting her stay.


    Amaru lived on top of the nearest mountain, and came down to visit only when his phone needed to recharge. Anne had almost suggested solar panels once, but Chris had silenced her, and made her promise not to give the elder dragon ideas. He seemed to think that the dragon would become the first Hikikomori among his species if they let him.


    Mac was human, like she was, but the wrinkled little old man seemed to welcome her presence. She wasn''t entirely certain that he knew that Chris was a dragon, because he kept hoping that the two of them would develop a romantic relationship. He did know that Chris wasn''t human though, because the two of them often laughed over things that had happened when Mac was a child.


    The six week quarantine that Chris had insisted on after she returned, even though she had improved so quickly that she''d felt completely well within another week, was already over. With an address available, she''d been able to update her identification, and get an online job as a transcriptionist. The pay rate was horrible, not even meeting the minimum wage in her state, but it was a real job.


    It was the toehold she needed to get a better job someday. Someday when the world-wide lockdown ended. A few places had ended it and the new outbreaks there had resulted in many deaths and scenes just as horrible as the first round.


    The slow spread in confined populations was remaining manageable, and far fewer were dying on a per infected person scale, but it wasn''t sustainable. Already electronics were becoming more expensive, and certain foods were becoming harder to get. Somehow they needed a controlled infection rate. It sounded horrible everytime she thought it, but it seemed to her like they needed to purposely infect small groups.


    The problem was that it was a deadly illness. Even with the best care it still killed too many. Now that she was well, she no longer doubted Chris''s insistence that she''d actually had an older illness.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    --


    Emma Louise Forsythe Beaglesworth deeply regretted a few sharp words that she''d said to her grandmother half a century ago.


    The girl that she''d been then hadn''t been able to understand how anyone could truly regret that they had lived when another had died. But she thought that even back then she had understood the bitter doubt that came from doing something as well as you possibly could, and failing. The doubt that couldn''t be silenced by others telling you that you''d done the best you could.


    She''d repeated the empty words to the others who had failed in the same task. It was what you did when someone died in their care. Even when you secretly wondered if you could have done better than they had. Even when you knew that you hadn''t done better, even if you hadn''t done worse.


    She was tired. She was old. She almost ignored the sound of another message arriving, but a moment later she was standing up and pulling a freshly washed handful of masks out of her dryer.


    Even if she couldn''t trade her life for a child''s, she could still help a young woman fight for her child''s life.


    --


    Chris turned himself into a bat or an owl and flew to the mountain every night. He had the energy to spare for it now. A week after Amaru''s surprising return with Anne, the elder dragon had taken Chris away from his city for two days. It would have been longer, but after Chris figured out where the older dragon wanted to go, they rented a car.


    The hardest part hadn''t been teaching the elder dragon to drive, it had been forcing him to return the car in one piece. The coolest part had been drinking from the heart that had been carved out of light that shone as brightly as Amaru himself to Chris''s true eyes.


    The dragon carved heart rested inside of a mountain within a mountain. The informational signs said that it was a new volcanic peak forming on the crater of the old volcano, but it was still a mountain within a mountain. Chris hadn''t really understood the garden when Amaru tried to explain how the garden pulled the strings through the heart to fill it, but it all sounded very Feng Shui somehow.


    When Chris looked up Feng Shui later, and discovered that the term itself translated as Wind Water, it seemed even more similar. Amaru dismissed it as a useless guide after reading the same descriptions, but did concede that it might be based on a blind human''s interpretation of the way a dragon built a garden to adjust the strings. Chris decided to reserve his own judgment until he had a chance to see Amaru''s reaction to actual buildings that had been built around the concepts.


    Amaru grumbled at Chris when he landed, but the elder dragon still came to meet him each night. He didn''t shift his focus from the tiny cell phone held in smaller than normal hands that were shaped with soft clawless digits that could manipulate the device easily, but his tail swept up between them. The tip was shaped into an oddly flexible series of fans.


    "I have managed to form lenses that will magnify my own true sight," Amaru informed him distractedly. His tail fanned out, holding the nearly transparent fans in a line with the flatter surfaces held one after the other between the two of them.


    Chris blinked, and then looked at the tail again and tried opening his own true eyes. He moved from side to side for a moment.


    "It does affect what I see, but this current arrangement is just moving the edge of the brighter area where you are," Chris said with disappointment. "But ophthalmology is a complex field! And very small changes in alignment and curve can make a huge difference in what each person sees!" he added swiftly.


    Amaru didn''t look up from his phone as his tail flicked and changed the order of the fans.


    When Amaru finally turned off his phone and looked at Chris, he said, "The sequence of tests should, in theory, match those of the lens swapping mechanisms used in measuring a prescription for glass lenses. Either the lense is not the source of your half blind state, or my lenses are incompatible with your eyes."


    Chris sighed, and said, "Sorry, it seemed worth trying."


    "Oh, it certainly was. It was a very instructive course of study. I shall find it quite useful even if you cannot," Amaru said firmly.


    Chris nodded. "Thank you."


    "I understand your impatience," the older dragon began. Chris gave him a sharp and doubtful look, but Amaru ignored it. "However, even if this experiment had been completely successful, you could not learn to modify even a single human''s pattern in time to make a difference."


    Chris wanted to argue, but instead he nodded reluctantly.


    "We will go back to focusing on having you learn your own pattern without sight," Amaru announced decisively. "Once I am certain that you can repair even your true eyes, I would like to examine them more closely with these lenses."


    Chris almost protested that he could already replace a missing limb when he reshaped himself, but then he realized that if Amaru wanted him to be certain that he was able to replace his eyes, he was probably going to dissect them. Another horrible thought occurred to him a moment later. The memory of a blade slashing across his eye.


    His sight had not changed after that injury had been healed by reshaping himself, but¡­ "What if my true eyes were damaged when I was an infant? Won''t I be learning a damaged pattern?"


    Amaru shook his head. "It would be a blessing if that were the source of your blindness, because once you reinforced your full pattern, it would heal."


    The patterns really sounded a lot like DNA. The unweavers sounded like viruses.


    "I know that it won''t matter for this virus, but if Anne could live long enough for you to learn her pattern, and you could write resistance to the unweavers into it¡­ When you wrote it into her, would it be like reinforcement? Would she regain her youth and be able to bear children?" Chris asked soberly.


    "Why do you want to make them even stronger?" Amaru asked grouchily as he turned on his phone.


    "Why are you spending all of your time on the internet now?" Chris asked dryly, without answering.


    He didn''t really know if he wanted to make humanity stronger. They could be even more terrible than the monster he had believed himself to be when drinking life from a still beating heart was the strongest source he knew of. When he had lived without knowing that he could drink from a carefully carved heart of stone filled with light instead.


    He thought of Mac''s last video call, where his grandson had presented his great grandchild to him with the only method available during the long confinement. Mac would be lucky to live another decade. Chris was lucky to have met him again.


    "There are a few people of value among them," Amaru said grudgingly as he studied the page on his small screen.


    "Yes," Chris agreed. It was that simple.

 Fragment 42

    Humanity grew restless.


    It didn''t matter how logical the confinement was. It didn''t matter that of the few million who had caught the virus, the deaths were still listed in the hundred thousands versus more than a million who had successfully recovered. It didn''t matter that the plan was working.


    The long siege was taking a heavy toll on hearts and minds.


    Like in any war, there were people who had been waiting months to go home, there were crops being destroyed, and there were people who were starving. If the populace could have fought the enemy with weapons, armies the like of none that had yet walked the world would have risen to raze all that lay before them. But the current battle was not like any war between people.


    Even so, there were those who woke up and put on their armor and fell, exhausted by long days of service, many hours later. The old fashioned laces and bindings, that held their gear to their bodies throughout the day, were just as knotted and sweaty as those of any knight. The masks and gloves of the average worker were only the beginning for those who fought for the lives of the millions who had fallen to the new foe.


    Those who understood feared the restlessness that could destroy the fragile balance. If the balance tipped too far, the hard won successes could become nothing but a memory of hope.


    And yet, humanity was restless.


    --


    Chris smelled like french fries every time he came home. Mac would ask him how work had been, just as seriously as if the dragon had been working a respectable career. Anne just couldn''t bring herself to follow the old man''s example, even though her job was no better, even worse in some ways.


    Something was horribly WRONG with a legendary being working in a fast food joint.


    Sometimes she wanted to shake him and scream, "You''re a freaking DRAGON, why would you lower yourself this far!?"


    Amaru wasn''t much better though, even though he didn''t work a day job, and brought them small nuggets of actual gold to pay for his share of the electricity they used, his data plan, and more tablets. Actually, the gold was kind of cool. A dragon with gold was right. A dragon who grumbled about wasting time swimming through the Earth and calling gold into his claws just so that he could have unlimited internet access was just wrong.


    Anne couldn''t bring herself to complain about the evenings when Chris sang at the bar though, even if it wasn''t an activity that she''d ever associated with dragons. Elves maybe. His voice was inhumanly beautiful. Not in any obvious way, nothing that you could point to and protest, ''That''s not possible!'' It was just¡­ legendary.


    Bobby, the senior bartender at the place, had Chris sing on a completely illogical seeming schedule that greatly amused Mac and Chris. Mac claimed that she was using the random schedule to keep the place at maximum capacity every night, since nobody knew when Chris would sing. Since the current maximum capacity of the bar was only 36 people, Anne was more than a little doubtful that any incentive beyond alcohol was needed to keep the place full.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The bar served food, and restaurants were still considered essential in their city, but Anne suspected that most of the patrons were getting there illegally. Everyone now received one free trip pass per week, in addition to work and shopping trip permits. It was a compromise that had been issued state-wide by their governor, but Anne was pretty sure that Mac wasn''t the only one who went there almost every night.


    Chris came out of the bathroom after his shower, looking like a dragon. He walked to the open area at the center of the living room and then curled up like a cat and closed his eyes. He''d been doing it all week, except when Mac had stayed in for the evening. The wavering that shimmered across his skin seemed to strengthen.


    He was mostly green, unlike the colorful rainbow of colors that Amaru wore in his dragon form. He had four small limbs and a long tail, like a crocodile, but he didn''t resemble one at all. He was scaled and serpentine like a snake, but he looked more like some kind of aquatic creature. He shimmered in her odd vision just as much in his dragon form as he did when he looked like a human.


    Anne''s eyes still insisted that the wavering was like ripples of water unless she blocked the windows and covered every source of light. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, but closed it again without asking. He seemed bigger and more dangerous in his dragon shape, even though his curled form would barely come up to her knees.


    "What is it?" Chris asked.


    Anne was startled into asking, "I wondered what you are doing? Can you see me with your eyes closed?"


    "I can hear you," Chris explained. "I''m learning the essence of this shape."


    "I thought, I mean, I thought this was your real shape?" Anne asked with surprise.


    Chris opened his eyes and nodded. "It is." He hesitated for a moment. "But I had lost it."


    Anne stared at him blankly. "What?" she asked after the silence continued for a little too long.


    Chris looked embarrassed, and she wondered if his expressions were so much more human than Amaru''s usually were, because he used human expressions all the time. "I forgot that I was a dragon for a long time. Amaru thinks that someone sealed my memories, but¡­ I''m not so sure."


    Anne hoped that her face was conveying her intense interest, because she was afraid to ask.


    Chris smiled at her, which wasn''t as reassuring as it might have been. His teeth looked very sharp. "Apparently after I drank from the still beating heart of a human, I should have gone mad, instead I stole his place and lived in his shape for most of a century."


    He was watching her with a measuring look, and after a moment she remembered to breath. She would have been more afraid if she hadn''t recognized his expression as one she''d used a thousand times. His words said, ''I am a monster.'' His eyes said, ''I am different. I am strange. I am not like you. Are you scared? Will you hate me? Do you want to know?''


    "Why?" It was a single word, but it was difficult to speak the simple question.


    "Amaru calls it an echo, he says that intelligent beings are not safe to consume because their echo is strong, and that a strong echo can warp your pattern and drive you mad. I think the patterns he speaks of are like DNA, but at the time, I thought that I had simply drunk the boy''s memories with his blood," Chris explained. "As for why I killed him? I was hungry, and he hunted me, so I hunted him."


    "Oh¡­" People did not eat people that they killed in self defense, but¡­ people killed animals that hunted people with pride, and often ate them too.


    Chris said softly, "The true story of my life is long and complicated, and I have done many questionable things over the years."


    Anne swallowed, but lifted her chin and told him, "I would like to hear the life story of the dragon who saved me."


    His mouth curled with amusement as he replied, "It was a vampire."

 Fragment 43

    "I had just learned that I was really a dragon the night before I found you," Chris told Anne.


    Even as he spoke the words, he still wondered how true they were. Sometimes he seemed so much different than Amaru that he still wondered if he wasn''t actually some other kind of shape changer who had once taken the form of a young dragon. It seemed extremely unlikely that there were two species capable of such complex mimicry though. It was far more likely that the differences were cultural, since Chris had basically been raised by the wolves that called themselves human.


    "For several centuries prior to that night, I had believed that I must be a vampire, and that the lore about them was merely incomplete and inaccurate." He avoided Anne''s wide eyed gaze as he admitted, "I still catch myself thinking of myself as a vampire, and comparing my actions to fictional characters."


    When he had attempted to ask Amaru what kind of activities and behaviors were draconic, the elder dragon had seemed confused by his questions. The answer to the question, ''What would a real dragon do?'' seemed to be, ''Whatever it wants to.''


    When he glanced back, Anne was nodding as she asked, "You can even give your human form fangs if you want to, can''t you?"


    "I can, but it is a rather inefficient method of feeding," Chris agreed warily.


    "Can you really live on just blood?" she asked doubtfully.


    "Yes, but you could probably do the same thing," he pointed out a bit dryly.


    Her eyes widened. "Because I can absorb energy from the rivers of life like a dragon?"


    "I just meant that I think most humans could," he explained quickly. "For a while at least."


    She grimaced at the idea, but didn''t argue. Instead, she asked, "Can you take the shape of anyone that you drink the blood of, or does it have to be from their heart? If you drank some of my blood, could you look like me?" Chris stared blankly at her for a moment. "You said that you took the shape of the first human that you, that you drank from," she pointed out nervously.


    "Yes," he agreed slowly. "But I do not have to drink blood to change my shape."


    "Then why did you live as the boy?" she asked.


    It wasn''t the first time that someone had asked him that, but centuries later, he still didn''t have a good answer. Anne waited with surprising patience as he shifted himself into a more comfortable position and remembered the beginning of his first human life.


    A beginning filled with pain and blood, like all lives. He had been wearing the form of a small dog, and daring to explore the fringes of the city that had been growing up beside the meadows that he called home. The young man who had hunted him had been vicious and cruel. Cutting him and then letting him flee, only to track him down and cut him again.


    It had taken him much more effort and time to change his shape back then, and he hadn''t been able to find a safe place. He hadn''t known how to reform just part of his shape back then either. Wounds sapped his energy just as fiercely as they would any other animal, and he had grown more hungry and more fierce even as he had weakened.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    He had ripped the young human''s throat out without a trace of remorse, and only desperation had given him the strength to reach the heart that contained the energy that he had instinctively known that he needed to live. When he had shifted his form to heal his wounds, instinct had also guided him to take the shape of the foe that he devoured.


    His brother had found him, beside the remains of the body. Even then, before he learned to speak as humans did, he had known that the boy, Merritt, had not reacted as others would have. He had stood, and stared at the naked form of his brother crouched beside the bloody remains of his own body. And then he had approached with soft kind words, and utterly ruthless practicality.


    Merritt had removed the clothes from the body and dressed him in them. By the time the body had been buried, he''d known the name of Merritt''s brother, Roland. His name.


    Later, when he had learned to speak, he had discovered how far Merrit had gone to cover for him. A blow to the head had knocked the sense out of him, his brother had told his family. Knocked the demon out of him, Roland''s mother had sworn in later years. Changeling, the grandmother had insisted, but no one except the new Roland had listened to her fearful warnings.


    A few years later, when Roland remained unchanged, and Merrit had begun to look like he was the elder brother, they had finally talked of the day that he''d taken Roland''s place. When he''d asked why Merrit had accepted him, Merrit had not answered, instead he had asked the same question that Anne asked, "Why do you live in his image?"


    He hadn''t been able to give his brother any good answer then either, but Merrit had simply looked him in the eyes and insisted, "You are my brother. You are a good man, and I have no regrets."


    Chris looked at Anne. "I think¡­ that it was because I was accepted by a good man." He told her a bit about those first years, and about his brother, Merrit. A kind man, practical, and ruthless against those who threatened what he protected. A man who had educated himself far above his station in order to answer the endless questions asked by the brother he had claimed as his own.


    Merrit had been no ordinary man, and his strange non human brother had not been the only one who noticed. He won recognition by the crown, he strengthened everyone who was allowed the benefit of his friendship, and he had taught his brother how to pass as human. He lived a long and full life which was far more difficult to do than most people seemed to realize.


    Chris had outlived him by centuries, but except for not being a human, he felt that he had always been far more ordinary than his brother and first friend. Amaru''s guess that he''d shaped himself to Roland''s echo seemed accurate, but Merrit had shown him how to live as a man, and shaped the being who still carried his memory.


    --


    The red haired woman clutched the phone in her hand with a greedy expression. Acquiring it had been a far more complex task than she''d ever expected. She looked up as a car passed.


    The girl on the boat, Victoria, had not mentioned cars, but she had since learned the identity of the new kinds of vehicles that moved through the streets of the great cities. More than a month later she was still amazed whenever she saw one moving around. They were short and fat compared to the carriages that had rattled through the streets a couple of centuries ago, but they were also much faster.


    London and Venice had been much the same as Paris when she''d flown to each one in turn. Rome, Milan, and Berlin had also shared the incredible growth and ominous quiet of the others. It was the small places, the ones where the constable put on his hat, or pulled his badge out of his apron pocket when someone required that he set aside his day job and perform his public duties, where people still walked the public streets and nodded to each other.


    Even in those quiet backwaters, the people kept a wider distance between neighbors, and veiled their faces with cloth more often than not. Even in places where life usually moved slowly, the new plague had brought social changes. One thing hadn''t changed though, strangers were still regarded as being far more dangerous than the worst of one''s neighbors. There was no anonymity in a village, and the red haired woman still drew the attention of every eye that passed.


    She didn''t care. Her hands caressed her prize and she smiled. She had acquired the device that would let her learn as much as she wanted. It''s only flaw was that she could not carry it back to her garden at the bottom of the sea. Although the ''contract'' required for maintaining its connection to the libraries might also be viewed as a flaw, she simply viewed it as evidence that even magic had a price.

 Fragment 44

    The being who was currently known as Amaru Drakon was irritated as he moved slowly through the stone and earth beneath the surface of the world. The children, both dragon and human, still viewed his ability to swim through the earth itself as magical. His careful explanations of the skills needed, the control and understanding of what was I, the feel of the form of what was not I, and how to move through the space between, did nothing to lessen their insistence that it was magical.


    That was not what irritated him at the moment though. Nor was it that the drain of the activity on his energy would be difficult to replace quickly. It was the human, and the word itself carried all of the scorn that he''d ever attached to the mankind, concept of possession of even ideas.


    Amaru understood possession. He understood because dragons had once shared their minds directly, rather like hive members in a human science fiction novel, but now were separate. The very separation created the idea of possession, because what was part of I was no longer part of all. Having knowledge that another did not have was a form of riches. One displayed those riches by imparting them to those who did not possess them. One hoarded every scrap of new information that one could obtain, so that one could maintain the status of one who knew more. Wealth was being able to share more knowledge than was traded for it.


    What irritated him was the human idea that one''s knowledge must be kept secret to have value. It was so backward, when the value would increase and grow with the number who shared it. They demanded to be paid for their knowledge. They screamed and fought, called each other thieves, and acted as though knowledge was something that could be held in one''s claws like a rock.


    The human concept of possession was wrapped around not sharing, and it was beyond vexing. Oh, the general concepts of things were widely shared on the human''s internet, in an almost draconic fashion, except that often the identity of the one who taught was obscured. But the core details were hidden. Secrets were sold for money, for material possessions, and that was as far from what a dragon would do as his ability to swim through stone was for a blind human.


    Their concept of possession was so tangled and conflicting. They tried to display their wealth to each other without sharing it, in a tangled dance of flaunted secrets. It made him feel like there must be some key concept to their idea of possession that they could not explain even to each other. His current theory was that it was tied to the concept of clothing.


    When one wore an item of clothing, all could enjoy looking upon it, but only one could wear the item. If one hid the creation or acquisition of a new item of clothing until it was displayed in the wearing, then extra status could be gained as many were surprised with the new knowledge at once, when it was finally displayed. Possession, secret, and display were combined in this display of artwork.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Artwork had been one of the interesting things that humans had created early in their existence. And artwork had developed into writing, and writing had led to the creation of their worldwide network. It was beautiful. Other creatures, even dragons, had never developed their way of copying the form of one thing into another substance.


    Amaru had always intended to carry the concept of artwork long past the decline of this dreadful and wondrously unbalanced species.


    He was starting to wonder if perhaps artwork itself could carry the concepts of humans and dragons long past the decline of his own long lived species. Nothing made of common substances would outlast even a single dragon, but there were a few substances that were basically inert, and mostly immune to the interactions of time and loose fragments. He tasted the fragments of gold in the stone around him, and stopped to gather the fragments to his claws.


    --


    Sarah stared doubtfully at the young woman who had knocked on her door.


    "I told him that we needed to ask for permission, but um, it would really be good if we could have your permission to look at your garden," Anne explained nervously.


    Sarah peeked at the two men who waited in the distance, at the entrance to her driveway.


    Anne turned and looked, and seemed to sigh with relief, as she added, "He agreed to wait until after I asked."


    "Who''s the other one then?" Sarah quibbled, without being able to guess which of the men ''he'' was.


    "Chris, he''s still learning just like I am," Anne explained quickly. "Amaru wants to teach us both about how your garden was created."


    Sarah gulped. Somehow they knew. Someone knew. This man named Amaru somehow knew that her garden had been rearranged by a dragon. She wanted to ask, but she was afraid to find out, how he knew.


    "I¡­ if I allow your teacher to use my garden as an example, can I hear the explanations?" Sarah asked uncertainly.


    Anne turned back to her and visibly hesitated. "I don''t, I mean that''s a totally reasonable request," she stalled while trying to come up with any kind of reasonable explanation. "It''s um, it''ll probably sound a little crazy? Very new age? Even though it''s really old age," she babbled uncertainly.


    Sarah blinked at the girl. Her gaze turned toward the men waiting at the end of her driveway again. They looked ordinary. One was a little shorter than average, and the other was larger than average, but his body language wasn''t threatening. The big one was looking around curiously, while the smaller one seemed to be returning her gaze. She looked away quickly.


    Dragons were both new age and very old weren''t they? She needed to know why a dragon had come to her garden. "Okay, just let me get my shoes," Sarah replied decisively.

 Fragment 45

    Amaru was disappointed, but unsurprised to learn that the mountain garden''s custodian was not one of the few wise among her kind.


    He frowned at the new plants that had been added. They were all so small that they weren''t having much effect yet, but they were scattered completely randomly across the lines even though they were relatively evenly spaced around the cap stone. The only variation in their spacing was actually due to the position of the ones that he had replanted while he was here before, he realized after a moment.


    Sarah saw where he was looking and admitted nervously, "I replanted some of the types of flowers."


    "The type of plant is less important than its size and position," Amaru told the gardener disapprovingly.


    "Replanted?" Anne asked.


    "After it was torn up by¡­" Sarah hesitated in her explanation.


    Amaru shrugged.


    "What''s wrong with their positions?" Chris asked curiously.


    "I have explained this before, living things pull at the strings," Amaru replied. "The longer something lives in one place, the more its pull affects the position of the strings. The strings that pass through this garden are not currently well aligned with the heart, even though most of them are getting close enough to feed it a little power. The alignment has been straightened somewhat, but it will take time to grow to its full capacity again."


    "The heart?" Sarah questioned nervously.


    Amaru pointed at the cap stone and calmly explained to both humans and the child, "I suspect that the shaping of a heart is something that only those who can see the strings clearly can understand, but basically it stores the power that is carried by the strings into a condensed pool, rather like a battery."


    "It''s weird to hear you compare something to a battery," Chris commented with amusement, as he opened his true eyes to look at the stone.


    Sarah glanced between the two dragons and gasped as she saw the way Chris'' eyes had shifted to white. Amaru ignored her alarm, but Anne reached out and placed a hand on Chris'' shoulder. Chris turned and raised an eyebrow, breaking Sarah''s line of sight.


    "Your eyes are scaring her," Anne explained.


    Sarah straightened and protested uncomfortably, "I was just surprised!"


    "Sorry about that, I was just trying to see," Chris explained to both girls.


    "Can you see anything aside from a brighter glow?" Amaru asked Chris.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "The carved rock isn''t glowing, I think, the brighter area is underneath it," Chris told the older dragon seriously. "But¡­ it smells very odd somehow?"


    "It smells?" Anne asked.


    She and Sarah both turned back to stare at the large stone, as though their eyes could enhance their ability to smell, and Sarah asked, "Is it the mums?"


    "I don''t think it''s a plant," Chris replied uncertainly.


    Amaru nodded. "You are correct. The cap stone isn''t the heart, it is more like," he sorted through the new human words for things that had never existed before, and found the right one, "a speaker for the scent. It transmits the scent of the power to the surface, so that those who are unfamiliar with the area can find it easily."


    "Shouldn''t it be singing instead?" Chris questioned doubtfully. "I think I can hear a song humming quietly inside the core of the light?"


    Amaru shook his head and explained, "You are hearing traces of the songs the strings carry, where some of their energy is escaping the heart because the flow is not completely aligned. If the cap were transmitting the songs it would always be leaking power in a very inefficient manner."


    "Wouldn''t making smells use power too?" Anne asked.


    "Only a small amount," Amaru explained. "A very small scent can travel much farther than a very small sound."


    Both of his students, and the gardener, stared at the rock doubtfully. Anne and Sarah sniffed deeply at the air, while Chris wrinkled his brow in thought.


    "I just smell ordinary things, like pine trees, I think," Anne protested. "And how can you claim that making a rock create a smell isn''t magic?"


    "I kind of agree, unless the smell is from the rock slowly being dissolved by the power," Chris added.


    Amaru frowned at them. "There is a complex pattern carved into the stone that shapes the energy of the strings into fragments. It is not magic, it is control of a natural force, like the human use of electricity."


    "People thought that electricity was magic a few centuries ago," Chris pointed out.


    Amaru could not decide if the statement meant to agree or disagree that the rock was not magical, but Sarah had another question, "Are the strings you keep mentioning something like ley lines?"


    Chris and Anne both looked doubtful, and seemed startled when Amaru replied calmly, "Possibly, since the concept is supposed to be linked to the flow of the Earth''s energies. However very few of the maps that I examined seem likely to match the strings of the world. On the other hand, some could be based on real locations, since the strings generally move more freely than the continents, although those bent by mountain ranges and such remain somewhat predictable."


    "But there are strings or ley lines here?" Sarah questioned with an odd intensity.


    "Yes," Amaru agreed.


    He opened his true eyes to point one out, and when she saw them, Sarah freaked out. "D, d, dr¡­"


    Amaru met her eyes, and she froze. A moment later, Chris stepped between them, physically breaking their gazes.


    Sarah took two steps backwards, but froze again when Anne asked with interest, "How can you tell that he''s a dragon just from seeing his eyes?"


    Sarah looked at the carved stone at the center of her garden, but she couldn''t speak well enough to explain.


    "She''s seen me before," Amaru explained calmly.


    All three of them stared at him for a long moment, before Sarah recovered enough to complain, "I was trying to work my way up to asking what you knew about dragons, I never imagined that you were, were¡­ how?" Her gaze turned toward Chris, who''s eyes had gone pale earlier.


    "How?" Amaru repeated the question blankly.


    "He can change his shape, and yeah, they both are," Anne told Sarah.

 Fragment 46

    Chris avoided explaining to Sarah that he''d only recently learned that he was a dragon, but he did transform into his dragon shape for her. She didn''t seem to be as frightened of him as she was of Amaru, and he asked curiously, "You wanted to ask us about dragons?"


    The nervous woman glanced between the small green dragon and the one who looked human, but had lifted and shredded entire trees in his claws on his previous visit. "She," she pointed at Anne, "said that her teacher knew about how my garden was created, and since a dragon¡­ came to it, I thought maybe¡­ but instead you actually are dragons."


    "It''s harder to ask them to their faces isn''t it?" Anne asked sympathetically. "But you can. They won''t bite."


    Chris refrained from pointing out that he''d actually bitten many people over the years and nodded.


    Sarah couldn''t meet either dragon''s eyes without freezing up, as they talked. It only made Chris realize that Anne could easily meet his eyes now. She seemed to have slowly gained more control over her own vision, and no longer avoided looking at his face as much as possible.


    When Sarah finally got up enough courage to ask, Amaru verified that dragons had created the stone in Sarah''s garden long before the tribes of the conquerors had come to the continent. And once the conversation was back on the original subject, he explained more about the proper placement of the plantings.


    In some ways the elder dragon behaved like an irritated professor. He seemed to take joy in imparting knowledge, and grow impatient with topics that did not relate to factual information. Because neither Chris nor Sarah could actually see where the strings ran, he walked along their paths as he explained the layout around the heart.


    Anne reported that she could still only see the strings only as interference in her vision, but she also told them happily, "I think that I''m getting better at tracing the locations, now that I understand what I''m looking for."


    Amaru nodded, and had her attempt to follow the last two strings on her own.


    --


    No one told them to do it, but all across the world other dragons were busy straightening the strings. Some were moved into position to feed old hearts, while where the strings naturally ran together, new hearts were being created.


    The songs of the world had already been stronger than they had been for ages when the dragons had woken, and as the strings were gradually aligned, the songs began to flow more clearly for longer distances. Some areas, like the mountains where she had slept in the ice had held as many as a dozen dragons in relatively close proximity, and in those places the songs vibrated with the discussions of dragons.


    Only faint echoes of those conversations ran south and east to where the blind emperor was radiating a light that only life itself could sense. He was busy gently pouring the energy of hundreds of years into the cultivated fields of his chosen tribe, but he listened to the songs that were carried into the heart that he could not see with a dragon''s true eyes, and heard the distant murmurs of his kind.


    Dragons had been fairly solitary by nature for millennia, perhaps in reaction to the freedom they had gained with the distinction of I, and the Emperor was more inclined to be even more solitary than most for similar reasons. For far too long he had been reliant on another dragon for his sustenance, and even though he was still reliant on his tribe of short lived mammals and the vast garden that they still tended unknowingly, he still cherished his independence.


    He listened to the traces of distant songs, but he sang only the briefest of replies into the unseen strings of the world. "I am also awake."


    --If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    "You can''t tell me why you dragons are suddenly waking up, on an apparently worldwide scale?" he demanded incredulously.


    She tilted her head and looked down at him with an eye that was nearly as large as the desk in his office, but he kept his spine straight, and met her sharp gaze. Amusement curved her enormous cheeks as she returned question for question, "How do you know that dragons are waking up all over the world?"


    He had been amazed by her return, incredulous even, while she had merely been a little chagrined to have returned so swiftly. But during her absence he had grown less pliable, and he remained more wary, and more suspicious. Wounded, she felt. He had been wounded in some way while she had flown freely, getting a feel for the world''s balance, and trading songs with the others.


    He glared up at her. "Aren''t they?" he asked.


    "Perhaps? It seems likely," she agreed.


    "We have evidence of probable sightings in locations on every inhabited continent," he informed her bitterly. "Please explain why it seems likely?"


    She smiled. "Because the song of spring rising in this hemisphere was very strong this year, but there are certainly many lands that are just beginning to settle into the winter sleep, so perhaps the true answer is that I do not know?"


    She looked around the frail, empty, metal building where she had been asked to show her true size. It was a shelter built for the aircraft that they used to fly, and she wished that they had left a few for her to examine more closely. After a moment she readjusted her size and shape to one more convenient to the device that she wished to access.


    He watched her shrink, and a hint of his previous wonder reflected in his eyes. If he stepped forward and touched her, his hands would report the same changes that his eyes saw. Magical, and yet even according to her, it was not magic.


    She held out her apparently human hand, in an unspoken demand, and even though dozens of people were watching critically, he did not hesitate to offer the device. Her own eyes were greedy as she examined the screen of the extra large tablet that he''d brought as a bribe.


    "Did you tell your people about the wonders of the internet that you so admire," he asked a little cooly.


    "I sang of my newest knowledge," she said agreeably without looking up.


    "How many do you think heard your song?" he asked warily, without glancing at the recording devices.


    "Perhaps a handful already," she speculated. "But the strings in the mountains already hum with new things, so there are many distracting songs of interest."


    "You use these invisible strings that you say entwine the world like a social media network?" he asked dryly.


    "Social media?" she asked.


    He could see the search results pop up for her faster than he could form a coherent reply. He replied anyway, "An inefficient system used to share snippets of daily life and interesting pictures or articles of interest to the poster."


    She did not respond immediately, but eventually she agreed, "Perhaps, although truly songs are a better description I think. Songs that meld and merge, and generally carry the strongest vibrations farther than the softest. Although a note can be strengthened by the same or similar notes if the source of the vibration is widespread."


    Humans had such a wide variety of spoken languages that the concept of information carried by tones was not completely foreign, but it was still a rather mystifying concept for him personally.


    The idea that events themselves created vibrations that were communicated through an invisible network across the globe was reaching into mystical territory, but when a dragon-mage told you about it, it was difficult to object that it was unscientific. Especially when the dragon-mage in question learned the scientific method and regarded it as a very logical and concise summary of a tradition.


    "Can I collect another sample of your blood?" he asked without explaining.


    She looked up from the tablet and then glanced at the recording devices that he had been carefully avoiding looking at. "I will allow it," she agreed. "But I suspect that it will not help your kind in their current battle against the virus that has driven them into their shelters."


    "It might," he argued stubbornly, and honestly. "Both the virus and the dragons seem to have appeared in the world at the same time! Immunity doesn''t prevent you from being a carrier for a disease, but your living blood might contain a clue to your own resistance."


    "We are not rats, or birds, to carry illness into your settlements," she replied with a hint of amusement. "Nor will drinking our blood or tasting our flesh grant anyone immortality."


    He glanced at one of the cameras, and grimaced. "No one believes in old legends like that," he said firmly. "We are trying to create a very real vaccine."

 Fragment 47

    "This pandemic is never going to end!" complained the shopkeeper.


    Old Jose nodded silently, as he looked around the square that wasn''t as empty as it had been a few weeks ago. The reports of effective medicines or vaccines that had brought hope of a quick resolution to the outbreak in the first few months had trickled away to almost nothing.


    The shopkeeper tugged at the mask that seemed to cling more stickilily to his face with every breath, but he didn''t take it off. "People are going crazy Joe. News said they found a body in the refrigerator of some lady''s house."


    Jose shrugged. It was horrifying enough, and he pitied the kids in uniform who had to discover such things in the course of their jobs, but it was also normal. People had always been their own worst enemies. The darkest stories in the world were about horrible things that people did to other people.


    "The whole world is going crazy," the man continued. "Animals are running wild, and even monsters are coming out of hiding." He shook his head. "They say there are dozens of dragons running around Europe! It''s like the tabloids are taking over¡­ man¡­ I just don''t know, maybe it really is the end of the world, only it''s taking longer than everyone expected."


    "Monsters huh?" Jose finally replied as he fingered the shell that rode in his pocket. The surface still maintained the temperature it had held when it had been placed in his hand over a month ago. Magic, or something so advanced that an old man like him couldn''t differentiate it from magic. "Can''t be worse than people," he added comfortingly.


    The shopkeeper gave him a sour look and complained, "That''s really not very reassuring is it? Especially with all the rioting and looting on the news!"


    Jose waved a hand at the people who were rushing nervously back and forth to buy goods and services from non-essential shops that had finally been allowed to open again. "Most people are just struggling to survive. Me and them, and even you, we''re just doing what we can. But scared groups of people are like herd animals, they panic and do whatever they see others doing."


    The shopkeeper looked at the crowd of people that wasn''t packed enough that he would have called it a crowd half a year ago. Their faces were covered like his, in masks, scarves, or bandanas. "I bet those countries where everyone keeps their face covered and they never shake hands are all laughing at us now," he said sourly.


    Jose smiled widely enough to crinkle his old eyes into the wrinkles that surrounded them. "Maybe. But it''s not so bad to have fashions and customs flow both ways. We''ll adapt," he assured the younger man as he adjusted the scarf he now wore in a fashion he''d learned more than half a century ago. "Life goes on. It always finds a way."


    --


    There were bees in the raspberries. It was also a good year for dandelions, and she''d made dandelion jelly for the first time in her life. And she''d swear she''d seen a dragon roaming the mountain, but right now, in front of her eyes, there were bees in the raspberries.


    There were fat fuzzy ones with black jackets, and smaller ordinary ones in stripes. Some were more brown than yellow, and some were almost grey. At least four kinds that she could see. They all looked busy as they hummed quietly to and fro.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    She''d come out to the edge of the road to see if there were any berries forming yet, and there were many little green budding berries forming. And there were many bees. The decline and potential extinction of bees had been everywhere in the media for the last couple of years.


    She''d mostly stopped watching the headlines in the last few months, because since the world-wide epidemic had begun, most of the news had been even more depressing than usual. Across the world millions of cases had been reported. The fact that this was a small fraction of the seven billion inhabitants was difficult to focus on when everyone already seemed to know someone who was sick. But here in an ordinary patch of what was usually considered weeds, were more bees than rumors implied might be living in the entire country.


    She looked back toward the scruffy patch of grass that struggled to give an impression of a lawn. It was doing better than in some years despite the reduced watering schedule, and the perennial flowers around the border actually looked rather nice, but she''d put the change down to spending more time at home this spring, and there certainly weren''t enough flowers to explain this apparent boom in the local bee population.


    She pulled out her phone and turned the camera lens toward the bees. She looked at the picture of the fat bumblebee that she''d captured for a long time. It was displayed much larger than life, and in finer detail than she could actually see when she looked at it with her own eyes.


    Somehow she''d expected an attempt to take a picture of the bees to come out like her attempts to take pictures of the dragon that she''d seen moving through the trees at the far edge of her neighbor''s property. Those had looked like most of her wildlife pictures ever had, slightly blurred scenic places where a bird had just been. Places where a dolphin had just leapt out of the water. Fuzzy impressions of animal butts.


    A bee landed on her sleeve, and she froze. But it seemed to find nothing of interest, and lifted itself back into the air before her heart had even recovered from the initial thump of surprise. Bees rarely stung people, she reminded herself, as she moved away from the prickly brambles.


    When she got back to her desk, she opened a page that showed the most recent headlines. There wasn''t a single word about bees anywhere in the list. Deaths, crimes, infections rates, new outbreaks, politics¡­ Bird migrations? The word dragon caught her eye, but it was only an article about a space capsule reaching the space station.


    A cheeky smile curved her cheeks despite the list of horrible things going on in the world. Aside from a horrible virus trying to end the world as they''d known it, the most common lament about the decade had been, "Where are the flying cars?" But she could easily dismiss an article about a space station as ordinary and boring.


    She made the photo of the fat bumblebee her wallpaper, and decided to look for dragons.


    --


    Amaru stared at the phone in his hands. Of course, he''d understood that it was used for communication, but somehow he had been using it all this time without ever investigating the device itself. The access to information that it provided had occupied all of the attention that he''d given it.


    Chris and Anne had laughingly created him a profile page for one of the popular social sites that used a picture of his true form. He''d gotten used to looking at the flat pictures the devices showed, and now someone had messaged him. What had him staring wasn''t the text contained in the message, but the picture of the other dragon.


    She was familiar. And despite being filtered through the language of the human tribe that had apparently conquered at least a third of the entire world with their tongue, if not their rule, so was her manner of speaking.


    She had written: "Teacher! I can''t tell you how amazed I am to see your image here, but I just knew that you would love these devices! I have so much to tell you! Let''s meet up soon!"

 Fragment 48

    The vaccine that had seemed so close to being created months ago had quietly disappeared from the news. Everyone seemed to know someone who was fighting for their life against the invisible foe.


    But thanks to the continuing pandemic, Chris, in his stolen identity as Juan C. Torres, had moved from trainee to shift manager at a speed that was unusual, even for a fast food place. Some of that was because Chris literally had centuries of experience in taking odd jobs, but most of it seemed to be because he never showed the slightest symptom of a cold or an allergy.


    "Wish I had twenty people with your constitution," Dwight told him wistfully.


    Chris smiled at the pale man who was far too thin to seem like someone closely associated with any kind of reputable restaurant. "It''s just my luck in the genetic lottery," Chris joked truthfully.


    "Are you sure you''ll be okay with a double shift?" Dwight asked nervously.


    Chris nodded without hesitation. It was ironic, but the easing of the isolation restrictions had brought renewed prosperity to the fast food shops that had weathered the first months of the pandemic. Chris cared less about the numbers, apart from being grateful to have the job, than he did about the smiles on people''s faces.


    The hot fried foods and cold sweets that had been the bane of millions of diets had become the rare treats that they perhaps always should have been, and providing the foods that had long been subjected to the most careful scrutiny by health inspectors across the world felt like a much more worthwhile occupation than Chris had expected.


    "Thanks again, I don''t know what I''d do without you," Dwight insisted.


    "You would no doubt think of something," Chris prevaricated. "Go home and get some rest."


    "It''s just allergies," Dwight grumbled weakly. "This is just the worst year ever. Spring came through on a bleeding rampage, and all the drug companies are busy pumping out virus tests."


    Chris hesitated. "Perhaps everyone in your position needs to rethink phrases like ''just'' allergies, or ''just'' the flu, under the circumstances?"


    "Believe me, everyone with pollen allergies has felt like dying for what feels like an eternity now," Dwight responded emphatically.


    Chris cleared his throat conversationally and explained, "Everyone in management I meant."


    Dwight stopped in the doorway and looked back at him. "We can''t afford to give people sick pay and time off for their allergies. Especially not when we have to keep paying for tests to prove that nobody''s really sick."


    Chris wanted to roll his eyes, but he simply shrugged and watched Dwight stagger off.


    "Hypocrite," Rose muttered as she edged through with the trash bags from the front. She rarely missed a shift, and had worked at the shop for longer than Chris had, but had seemed utterly resigned to the fact that he''d been promoted instead of her. She met his eyes and tossed her head toward the door. "Him," she clarified.


    Chris offered her a smile and suggested, "It is probably difficult to keep track of such minor discrepancies with a head full of nothing but snot."


    Rose snorted with amusement. "Prob''ly," she agreed.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    Chris checked the supply of gloves, freshly laundered masks, and the trimmed pieces of special filter fabric that were inserted between the layers. He quickly cut out another stack. For all of his complaints and stereotypical inconsideration, Dwight had gone to lengths to ensure that his employees all had access to the required protective gear, and did not demand that they provide their own.


    The shop practically gleamed, partially because they no longer allowed people to dine inside it, but also because the required sanitary procedures meant that things were now being washed dozens of times every day. The harsh soap that they were using was an economization that Chris could actually be applauded for, if anyone had thought to investigate. The soap was nearly as old fashioned as some of Chris'' habits, crafted from fat and lye, and was actually being produced relatively locally by a small business.


    Rose paused on her way back through, to wash her hands between glove changes, and asked rather suddenly, "Think you''ll stay long? I mean, this''s kinda beneath you ain''t it?"


    Chris blinked at her warily. "I''ll probably stay on for a few years?" he responded more lightly than the possibilities he could think of for the question warranted. At least until Mac was gone.


    "But you''ve like, been to college and all, right?" Rose asked.


    "Several times," Chris agreed dryly.


    "Oh. I getcha. I always meant to finish up too. Not much chance of that now," she said regretfully.


    "In another decade things that you have no expectations of right now will be completely normal," Chris promised.


    Rose gazed at him doubtfully, and looked around the shop, while Eddie shouted from the back, "Extra extra extra cheese!"


    Chris thought of the milk product held in a gelatinous form by chemistry that they called cheese, and grinned at the example. "Bet your granny wouldn''t call this stuff cheese, but it''s completely normal, right?"


    Rose snorted again, but her cheeks rose, showing the smile hidden by her mask. "Ha. My gram can''t cook anything that don''t come in a box, she wouldn''t eat cheese for a week after I took her on a tour at the cheese factory," she informed him. "I''d rather some things never become normal like that to me."


    "True. There''s a lot of things I''d like to put on that list," Chris agreed as a customer dropped his paper mask beside his car and then drove away. Rose turned and looked for what he was looking at, and heaved a resigned sigh. "I''ll do the sweep," Chris told her firmly.


    "Thanks," she replied gratefully.


    Chris mimed pinching coins and pointed out, "Extra duties are what I''m getting paid the big bucks for."


    "You earn ''em Mr. Torres," Rose assured him.


    The name still seemed like an alias to him, but he tried not to let that show. Neither Anne nor Mac ever used it, and Amaru still hardly used names at all.


    --


    "What if we can''t win? Maybe in a hundred years the only people who are left will be the ones who are naturally immune?" the man in the suit asked tiredly.


    "Maybe," she agreed cheerfully, as though it had nothing to do with her.


    His expression was sour as he watched her peel a grape and eat it, an occupation that he was sure would have amused him once. The light caught her hair, which was redder than any natural coloring should allow, but which showed no trace of manufacture. A loose scarf lay around her shoulders, her only concession to the requirement of having a cloth to cover her face with, and he wondered if she''d even bothered to use it on her way here.


    "There''s no point in worrying about it," she added. "Humans are disgustingly resilient."


    Her phrasing made a ridiculous idea flicker just below his awareness, but it escaped when she held up her phone and showed him the image on the screen. "What is that?" he asked blankly.


    "Research on the percentage of Neanderthal genes in modern humans," she explained. "They seem to be shocked by the fact that the two races could still interbreed." She snorted in an unladylike fashion.


    "Okay?" he replied questioningly. "How did that come up?"


    "I was looking up what a bigfoot is," she confided. "People are comparing sightings of things like them to sightings of real animals. Look, this article also talks about penguins and dragons!"


    "Because none of those sightings are real either?" he suggested dryly. Her smile was smug, and her eyes twinkled, and somehow the ridiculous topic really did lift his worries. Reality didn''t change, but something in his perspective seemed to shift, and he remembered why he''d thrown caution to the wind and invited a beautiful woman to his home.


    He forgot again when he met her eyes, and she switched the topic back to his complaint, "But anyway, wouldn''t you be glad if everyone was already immune to this in only a hundred years?"

 Fragment 49

    "I would like to fly," Amaru announced.


    Even Mac turned to look at the dragon who currently appeared to be a large man sitting awkwardly on the couch.


    "I think there are still some domestic flights," Mac offered.


    Chris cleared his throat, but Amaru responded politely, "I wish to visit a place on the other side of the planet, and would like to ride there in an airplane."


    Mac looked at Amaru oddly, but Anne asked, "Which country? A few of them have allowed a few flights recently I think?"


    Amaru lifted his tablet and checked a map. "China."


    "I''m pretty sure that you have to be a doctor or have some kind of political pull to get on one of those flights," Chris informed the older dragon.


    "Or be visiting immediate family," Anne suggested.


    Chris held out his hand and wobbled it, to indicate the uncertainty of using that reason. "Maybe. I don''t know if you can still get a visa for that right now. Why do you suddenly want to take a flight anyway?"


    "I wish to visit my son," Amaru announced.


    Chris and Anne both stared blankly, but Mac responded immediately, "Oughta keep waiting. I''d like to visit my kids too, but I don''t wanna put ''em at any more risk than they already are. Tis easy to feel impatient, but it''s gonna take time. Folks these days expect everything to be fast, but when I was a youngster and the adults still talked about how fast that influenza swept across the world, it actually took it over a year. Feels long, but it''s better to just wait it out."


    Mac glanced over at Chris. Amaru blinked at the small man, and then glanced at Chris too.


    "Um¡­" Chris stalled. "Yeah. A bit over a year and I think afterward they decided that about a third of the population caught that one. Also, even if we can''t catch it, it might still be possible for us to spread it." He knew that risk of infection probably wasn''t a convincing reason for the older dragon.


    Mac gazed at Chris for a moment, and then glanced at Amaru. "It''s easy to forget that you''re not¡­"


    The words hovered unfinished in the air for a moment. Mac had known that Chris wasn''t exactly human for most of his life, but it was one of those things that they didn''t really talk about.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Do you have a passport?" Anne asked suddenly.


    Lack of ID was a real problem if the older dragon really wanted to ride inside an airplane, Chris realized. Even if Amaru had somehow had a legal identity here, there was almost no way that it could be tied to his son''s. "Even if you had one and they were doing family visas right now, you''d need your son''s contact information so that they could verify your relationship," he told Amaru.


    Amaru glanced at the tablet he carried all of the time now. "I do not know if he has acquired one of these devices," he acknowledged.


    "Do you know his address?" Anne asked curiously.


    Chris shot her a look. She had to know how unlikely that was.


    "I know where he is likely to be," Amaru replied without hesitation. "He will be in this region."


    Chris examined the map that Amaru held out with a dubious expression, and then objected, "That''s hundreds of miles of one of the most populated areas on the planet." He shook his head as he added, "I don''t think it''s possible. You''d need legal identification, proof of immediate need, or an employer or occupation that they are currently accepting travelers for."


    "I could simply take the place of one of those who are already headed to that region," Amaru suggested.


    Anne shook her head this time. "Even if you could make yourself look like them, you''d still get caught as soon as they reported that they hadn''t gotten on their flight."


    "It would be simplest to kill them," Amaru agreed calmly.


    Chris froze, as Anne''s eyes widened.


    "Can''t just go around killing people," Mac chided. "Besides, might get yourself worse than caught for that. Bodies are hard to get rid of."


    "It wouldn''t be a problem," Amaru assured Mac.


    Chris swallowed his own protest against killing humans. The elder dragon still regarded humanity as an interesting, but transitory species, and had very little interest in most of them as individuals. Logically considering the range of things that he''d seen Amaru do, there was probably nothing to prevent him from killing someone and simply scattering their atoms or something.


    "Oh yeah?" Mac drawled.


    "If needed I could drag the body all the way down to where the stone begins to melt," Amaru explained patiently.


    "You can''t¡­" Anne protested weakly.


    "Probably shouldn''t kill someone for no reason. Even if they are very short lived compared to us, they are still people," Chris tried to explain. He didn''t have much room to argue, since it wasn''t like he''d never killed a human himself.


    Amaru tilted his head and turned his tablet toward Anne. "But many of your kind apparently wish to kill this one, and this says that he will be going to the correct area soon."


    Anne hesitated, and Chris leaned over to see who Amaru was talking about. A moment later he covered his face with both hands.


    "Well, I guess if you actually managed it, a lot of people might be pretty happy about it," Mac said soberly. "But I''m thinking that if you failed you''d prob''ly get dissected by the government folk."


    "No, just no," Chris said wearily.


    Anne nodded reluctantly.

 Fragment 50

    Orders were orders, or at least that''s what the higher ups liked to think, but that way lay madness if the history books ever proved anything. On the other hand, there were hundreds of instances every day where she herself wished the civilians would just shut up and follow orders for once.


    How hard was it to understand that catching 98% of their virus laden spittle before it became airborne could prevent the majority of transmissions between individuals? Condoms didn''t have a better success rate than that, but the same people insisting that one barrier was useless would swear on their god, or their mother''s name, that the other barrier worked every time.


    She gazed at the screen and considered her own objections to her orders. They wanted her to keep the freaking alien being, who was spending twenty-four hours a day on the internet learning everything that humanity was willing to post about itself, secret from everyone outside the squad assigned to security for the room the alien was occupying. The orders made her wonder how many of the ridiculous stories that she''d dismissed in her lifetime had actually had some truth to them.


    She was just worried. Who knew how much that thing that currently looked like a statuesque woman was learning about them. Since her own mother had even posted about her toenail fungus to her favorite social site, she was rather afraid that there was nothing that people wouldn''t post. According to the search history that they were tracking, the thing had looked up everything from how to make a bottle rocket, to how the space shuttles were constructed.


    The weirdest thing was that even though the shapeshifting alien seemed so¡­ well, alien, everyone was insisting that it wasn''t actually an alien. They''d sent samples to three different labs for testing, and every single one insisted that they had been given samples from some new species of ordinary terrestrial amphibian. Almost ordinary at least, since there were attached speculations about having found a descendant of an extinct prehistoric family, with possible links to the evolution of mammals.


    It half made her wonder if it had messed with people''s minds, and tricked them into testing the blood of something else, but in a way, that was even more improbable. The most frustrating thing was that her orders prevented her from consulting anyone about the creature that either looked like a woman, or had the power to make everyone around it think that it looked like a woman.


    --


    "Legends, fairy tales, myths, and gods are still walking among us today," Frederick insisted.


    "Even if a freaking dinosaur is swimming around Inverness, it doesn''t mean that fairies are stealing your socks, or children are getting invitations to wizard schools," Michail argued dryly.


    Frederick exclaimed with exasperation, "Of course not! I''m not talking about some modern fiction story, I''m talking about real creatures. There are stories that exist in almost every culture for something like the dragons that are currently being sighted in different places across the globe. There are also stories about powerful beings that resemble humans only superficially and gift blessings or curses upon those who encounter them."Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Michail shook his greying head and adjusted the scarf that covered his nose and mouth. "Those pictures are hoaxes. They are just proof that digital creations can no longer be distinguished from real photos. Just like those politically slandering ones they finally proved were actually created in some kid''s basement."


    Frederick ran his hands through his frizzy hair and glared at his old friend. "Look, I''m just telling you that more than geese and badgers are coming down out of the wilds. If the kid says he feels like she''s too good to be true, he could be right, and he should get a good look at her teeth."


    Michail snorted. "The poor girl is definitely daft to be interested in my grandson, but she''s no sidhe or wild godling that can''t abide churches or salt. The kid himself''s more suspect in that case, probably hasn''t been in a church since he got baptised with his name, and lives on tofu. I certainly don''t blame her for refusing to eat anything that she can''t identify as having been alive recently around his place."


    Frederick glanced in the mirror, where he''d swear he''d seen a stranger''s coat shift restlessly like wings, and then settle into a new pattern a week before. But only a handful of familiar faces occupied the room today, and he shrugged. Glamour, illusion, and images indistinguishable from reality had a lot in common. Who knew what the kid who''d created those photos had actually been, but weren''t there a thousand legends of those who preferred to live below ground.


    --


    Chris carefully explained the difference between creating an identity from birth, the way he usually did, and stealing a temporary identity like the one he was currently using. "You don''t even have any intention of maintaining the identity do you? You have no idea what you could start if someone that famous disappeared after entering the country. It wouldn''t surprise me if it started the next world war."


    "I do not care if the humans reduce their overall numbers," Amaru pointed out. "I would consider it a benefit."


    "Even if they destroy the entire world?" Chris asked mockingly.


    The elder dragon blinked.


    "Nobody would really use nukes just because of that guy would they?" Anne asked doubtfully.


    "People in groups are really stupid," Chris pointed out.


    "Yeah¡­" she agreed reluctantly.


    "Why do you need to ride in an airplane? Why not just fly there yourself?" Chris asked.


    Amaru frowned. "I hoped that it would be faster."


    Chris could feel the worry in the vibration of the words, and it worried him. "What''s the sudden emergency? You never mentioned wanting to visit any of your children before?"


    "I had thought that the song of spring had woken me, and that the tribes of the mankind had fragmented the strings with their disruptions, but now I am not so certain. I think that perhaps the strings have begun their unraveling, and if the time has come for the world to turn upside down, that one will starve," Amaru explained simply.


    The young dragon and the young woman gazed at him with wide eyes for a long silent moment.

 Fragment 51

    Magic. He didn''t believe in it. But¡­ he had no explanation for the dragon. Not only should it be impossible for something that large to fly, but it could obviously see him. It was watching him, tracking his silent movement with its disturbing eyes, while the surveillance camera remained as oblivious to his presence as the dogs sleeping below.


    As soon as he thought of them, one of the dogs raised its head and snorted. A moment later they were all on their feet and barking their heads off, but not a single one of them was looking toward him, they were all looking at the dragon.


    The dragon glanced down, and growled. All but one of the dogs immediately fell silent and stepped back to huddle against the wall below him. A single tiny dog barked even more loudly and bounced against the end of its tether, as though if it were released it would happily dash forward and apply its tiny teeth to the dragon, despite the fact that a single claw was larger than its whole body.


    The stupid little animal was all spine and no brain. The dragon''s growl had seemed to vibrate through his bones as much as his ears, and his instincts told him to run, but his brain quickly presented logical arguments. He was clinging to a vertical surface at the moment, and trying to run could be fatal.


    A door opened, and a tired voice said loudly, "It''s just Jenkins again."


    Another voice answered, but he couldn''t make out what they said.


    A beam of light shot into the darkness and swept across the grass in front of the small angry dog. "Nothing''s there! Shut up you idiot!" the man insisted.


    One of the other dogs dared a whimper, and the light moved toward the huddle of larger dogs. "Hey, I think maybe something''s actually wrong¡­"


    Indecision was his worst enemy, but he honestly didn''t know whether to move or to stay where he was. The dragon was still watching him, but nothing else seemed to be aware of his presence, and surely the moment they noticed it, it would hold all of their attention. They couldn''t possibly miss something that big for long.


    Filters protected his vision as lights illuminated the building and the grounds around it a moment later. The dragon blinked in surprise, or perhaps momentary blindness. The little dog actually stopped barking, and it sneezed as it stood proudly in front of the large dogs who were blinking blindly at the sudden change and huddling even closer together.


    Any moment now and they would see the dragon. Any¡­ the dragon was gone.


    --


    He couldn''t quite believe that he hadn''t been spotted in the search for, "Whatever scared the dogs and set Jenkins off."


    He sagged against the cool padded seat kilometers away from the residence. His fingers trembled as he fumbled with the fastenings that held the mask of his high tech stealth suit in place. He supposed that he could even call the venture a success, but his mind wavered even more than his hands. The image of the impossible dragon staring at him when nothing else could see him was going to haunt his dreams forever.


    Old royalty and legends. In this modern age of computers where the scariest thing in the world was too small to see, impossibly large dragons were completely out of place. Next thing you know people would be waving swords around and declaring themselves the rightful King. He didn''t even know if he should report it. It would probably be safer not to.


    There was a polite tapping against his window that made his blood run cold. Slowly, he turned his head, and then blinked. The claw delicately tapped the glass again.


    After a moment he rolled down the window.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "I''m very curious," the dragon began conversationally.


    --


    "I don''t understand how people can just dismiss all of the evidence. Actual dragons are flying over cities with millions of people in them, and we have a few news articles that get less views than the latest celebrity who''s tested positive for the virus," Emily complained.


    "Who cares. The real question is how they can see electricity. We''ve pretty much proven that they can, but how are they doing it?" Karl muttered.


    Emily sighed and reluctantly focused on the screen. "Well, we also pretty much proved that it''s not infrared, or heat? What does that leave? Maybe they really can see life force or whatever, and electricity overlaps that spectrum? Why does it matter how they are seeing it? Shouldn''t how they can change their shape be a lot more important? I mean, what are they really? Those blood tests say they are some kind of amphibian, but frogs don''t have scales, and there''s no chameleon on Earth that can just change its size and shape like magic."


    Karl shook his head. "Magic is just something we don''t understand. If we can figure out how they see, we''ll be able to detect these strings that they keep talking about."


    "Right, the strings," Emily said sourly. "I mean, step back from the details for a moment and ask yourself which video game we''re playing."


    Everyone on their team paused whatever they were doing and turned to look at her.


    She lifted her chin and insisted, "In the middle of an epic virus outbreak, straight out of an apocalyptic storyline, elder beings that look like dragons suddenly start appearing all over the world at once. As soon as they get access to people with real power they start telling them about this invisible, undetectable, network of life that wraps the entire planet, which just happens to be suddenly dissolving because of like¡­ pollution and stuff, which is actually way down on a global scale this year because of the stupid super virus. And if we are good little humans and improve our eco footprint enough, everything will get better and we''ll all live happily ever after?"


    "You don''t understand, they aren''t telling us that everything will get better." Karl objected. "I mean, they did say we can coexist peacefully if we can keep reducing our pollution levels, but c''mon, that has to happen eventually anyway, or we have to find a new planet. These invisible nets that bind the world that are weakening, and how the world is going to turn upside down, the thing is¡­ I can''t help wondering if part of what if they can actually see is magnetism."


    "You mean like how a few years ago they were claiming that all the accidents caused by gps errors were impossible to prevent because the poles are wandering and North and South are going to swap places? But they''ve proven since then that the flips actually take centuries haven''t they?" Andre spoke up.


    Emily threw up her hands and pointed out dryly, "Since that''s all supposed to be happening inside the Earth''s core, how exactly are you linking it with these magical life nets that supposedly criss cross the surface anyway?"


    "That''s just it, it''s incredibly unlikely that there is some kind of life net that no one has ever discovered. But lots of creatures can actually detect magnetic direction, and we don''t really understand how they are doing it. If that''s what they are seeing, if that net is actually the flow of magnetism, which does vary across the surface¡­" Karl replied seriously, ignoring her tone. "¡­then the warning that the world is about to turn upside down becomes very literal. We don''t know how to detect it very well, but we already know about the South Atlantic Anomaly, and that the poles themselves are actually moving by kilometers every year. There are theories that there are actually hundreds of large magnetic fields interacting within the core, so maybe if you could literally see that, you could see nets of flow. I don''t know, it''s just a theory."


    --


    "If the strings on the other side of the world are decaying at the same rate¡­" Amaru muttered.


    "Okay, I get it, I think. So¡­ I''ve obviously got more experience with the world than you do, so leave it to me, and I''ll figure out some way to get you there faster than you can fly," Chris told the older dragon with a world weary sigh.


    Sometimes it was actually easier if he still thought of himself as an ancient, centuries old vampire, instead of a young dragon with no idea what he was doing. An ancient vampire was quite familiar with ''the rules'' of human society, and could thus break the rules whenever it was convenient, and hide his tracks well.


    The key to living well when you were old was to keep changing with the times after all. He started by setting a budget based on the amount of gold Amaru currently had, and searching the discount vacation packages being advertised by desperate travel agencies who were going out of business because of the world wide quarantines. If he could get Amaru to within a thousand kilometers, the older dragon could be skulking around the Forbidden City within a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.


    Actually¡­ humans could be pretty dumb. You just had to meet their expectations.

 Fragment 52

    Chris watched nervously as Amaru passed through the gates. Amaru was currently a short, but extremely plump figure with very little hair, dressed in a loud floral shirt and jeans. Hopefully his apparent age would cover any undue confusion, and his height would diminish the effect his bulk usually had on people.


    Chris was tempted to shift his form so that he could watch and see that the older dragon made it onto the correct plane, but he told himself firmly that this was only the first test. He''d been tempted to go along too, but Amaru had actually asked him to stay. Anne could have gone if she hadn''t had a criminal record, or could have shifted her appearance like the dragons could.


    Chris was actually rather surprised that the extravagant vacation idea had worked at all. There were reports of rising infection rates all across the country, but apparently the chance of obtaining money was still worth the risk to enough people. The elderly man that Amaru was imitating was someone that Gregory Vincent had known peripherally. It was always easier to borrow an identity with a starting point, and Chris didn''t even feel too bad about it, since Amaru had paid off an astonishing amount of debt to facilitate obtaining the necessary documents.


    A small clawfull of gold could go a long way, and Chris privately admitted that the potentials of the ability to meld with solid objects kept him trying to learn his own ''pattern'' far more effectively than the ability to give himself permanent wings someday. Especially when he considered that it might not be too long until wings that moved a body through an atmosphere might become obsolete within a century when humanity started exploring the rest of the solar system¡­ unless civilization was thrown back into the dark ages when the Earth "turned upside down" of course.


    --


    The thief had been one of the most interesting people that she''d spoken to since awakening. And he had known so much more than he had realized.


    She''d just been curious about the skin-like clothing he''d worn that had made him so very difficult to see without using her true eyes, but the encounter had been the most intelligent, concise, and informative conversation she''d had since meeting Victoria. The man would almost have made a good dragon with his almost instinctive understanding of the value of details when trading information.


    She had, of course, collected his contact information for future questions. The internet was still the most amazing tool ever invented in her opinion, but you had to know what you were looking for to get the most out of it. She delicately opened the valuable device that she''d had so much trouble obtaining, and sent a simple message that she had never imagined sending to anyone on the other side of the world a mere two or three centuries ago.


    "I''m coming to see you!"


    It was time to visit ''the colonies'' and see what had changed on the twin continents that had been so new to the cities where she usually played. How much amusement had she gained back when chocolate had been the latest vogue? She looked forward to seeing the colorful toucans again, and the way the tribes there decorated themselves with colorful feathers as if in imitation of her favorite teacher.


    --


    He wondered at the bravery of creatures that hurtled themselves through the sky inside metal darts powered by jets that spun air with metal coils.


    If the delicate contraption failed, he would be fine, but the humans aboard would likely perish. Some of them looked completely unconcerned, but others sat stiffly in the small seats with fear radiating off of them. His nose told him that many of the ones that appeared bored or sleepy were just as tense as the ones who showed their fear in their postures, but some of them were truly unconcerned.


    Many of them were fiddling with the mandatory masks that the airline required, but it had been simple enough for him to adjust his ears to suit the pull of the straps. The child had insisted that he must do his best to act like the other passengers, so he raised his hand to his face occasionally just to fit in. The warning that occasionally filled the tiny screen in front of him proclaimed that touching one''s face was likely to spread infection. But as with the traffic laws the child had insisted he memorize and explained, few of the humans seemed to follow the restrictions consistently.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    The airplane was only filled to partial capacity, with one person per three seats, as though the extra meter between passengers would prevent them from breathing the same recycled air. He found the artificial air pressure very interesting. Reading about such things was not the same as experiencing them with your own nose, and he seriously contemplated the child''s suggestion that he craft an identity from ''birth'' and become an ''engineer'' among the tribes of the mankind so that he could experience and participate in the construction of many of the devices that he had been reading about.


    The difficulty was that he could not reduce his size far enough to simply imitate a very young member of their tribes. The child had said optimistically that the plague provided the perfect opportunity to create an identity that only interacted with the rest of civilization digitally whenever possible, but he was actually playing with the idea of keeping part of the fragments of himself hidden in plain sight, or melded into objects that were regarded as solid.


    The nervous passenger across the tiny aisle that this shape had barely fit through leaned toward him suddenly. "You know these masks aren''t preventing us from catching anything? This whole thing is a hoax, otherwise why would they ever let anybody fly?"


    Amaru turned his head and considered the questions. "I hope that you catch everything you wish to, and that you learn many truths within your lifetime," he answered benignly.


    The lazing form of the man in the seats behind him emitted a quiet chuckle, while the nervous one blinked and wrinkled its brows in puzzlement. The dragon turned his head further as the nervous passenger drew a deep breath, and eyed the man behind him curiously. This one was truly as relaxed as he appeared to be.


    --


    His people would not starve. The emperor was confident in his appraisal. He had poured centuries of energy back into the lands he claimed, and all things that lived and grew within it were thriving. He was unaware that many creatures considered undesirable by his people and their neighbors were also thriving, because no one dared to complain.


    He had more servants now, and the palace was no longer as empty and silent. The ''president'' had even come to make his bow, a silent acknowledgement that the emperor accepted. He wasn''t fooled by the obeisance, few of the individuals who had ruled over the others had ever regarded him with real reverence. It was those who had no power of their own who worshipped sincerely. To that one he was merely a useful phenomenon.


    His eyes glittered as his scaled form shifted beneath the sunlight that touched the garden. He couldn''t decide if it was just that he had spent centuries sleeping beneath the surface of the world within the cave that had been shaped for him, or if the sun was actually hotter than he remembered it. The strength of the sun also seemed to mute the sound of the songs that ran across the world to fill his heart.


    The guiding songs spoke of such things, of the lean times when the songs would fade, and the sun would burn while the world spun. However, he had not actually lived so long that he had experienced such times himself, and he could not accurately judge whether this was the beginning of such a time.


    When he had hesitantly spoken of it, his first servant within this generation had assured him that the sun was actually cooling. The confidence of this simple declaration stunned him far more than any of the devices that were displayed, or the trains that crossed his territory faster than he could fly. His people had advanced enough to study the sun on their own.


    He had wasted so much time sleeping, foolishly believing the words of his elders who had insisted that they were doomed to consume themselves to death within a few hands of their generations. He should have believed in those he had claimed as his. His heart ached as he thought of how much they had accomplished with such fleeting lives.


    He was not oblivious as to the reason for his attachment to them. As they had become more like him, he had become more like them. As he had raised them, to covet learning and development, so they had raised him to covet the transitory beauty and passion within them. He had changed.


    He raised his face to the sun and closed his eyes.


    "Why can''t I fly all the way to the sun?"


    "That which we drink from the heart, that which binds the world with song, does not stretch so far. We are creatures of the world, and cannot survive if we leave it behind."

 Fragment 53

    He was lucky. A thousand times lucky, blessed, or perhaps he was just a cold hearted, intelligent, and opportunistic man.


    He personally did not discount the existence of luck, even if on some atomic level it eventually turned out that luck was some perfectly controlled and measurable force like gravity. There were too many factors and too many inexplicable things in the world for luck to be entirely superstition. Those who claimed that he made his own luck didn''t know how many times life had surprised him.


    He eyed the notification list that had replaced the stacks of paper that would have confronted one of his predecessors and stifled a sigh. Breathing out your luck was definitely a superstition, unless you were one of the unfortunate portion of the population infected with the virus that kept refusing to be easily classified. It was the mushroom of viri, neither plant nor animal, neither cold, nor flu, nor neurotoxin, and yet presenting attributes of all of them.


    A smile lifted the corner of his mouth as he sorted through the reports. It wasn''t the virus that had stirred up the world that had risen to the top, it was the dragons.


    He skimmed the report from the research team. It was littered with wild speculations that made him want to laugh. The sudden reappearance of dragons in the world at this time seemed to be pure luck, but he was grasping at that golden straw and hoping to spin it into a lifeline. He did not rise from his seat and run to where the dragon was housed, safely immersed in her studies, but he opened a document and added questions to it.


    The security team''s anxious speculations that the dragons were actually aliens, who might be controlling his mind were just as amusing as the research team''s speculations that the ''strings'' the dragons could see, and claimed to manipulate through what was essentially landscaping, were visualizations of magnetism.


    Hard science had already quite easily proven that the dragons were earthlings, through simple genetic testing. To begin with, they shared the same basic DNA structure that every living thing in the world carried. It was the same reasoning that could be used to prove that the new virus was not some alien plague released from an asteroid. Like all of the others, it targeted them through their own DNA.


    Compared to a spider with only a sixty percent similarity to humans, the dragons were practically their cousins. Like the frogs who seemed to have descended from some common ancestor, the dragons shared almost a ninety percent similarity with human DNA sequences. No one could yet explain how they could display scales and wings from other more distant families, or even reshape themselves so completely that they could actually mimic humans, but on a cellular level they were actually quite ordinary and reassuringly unchanging no matter their surface appearance.


    As for the inexplicable ''strings'', the researchers seemed to have forgotten that the dragons regarded them as food sources. Their froggy cousins might be even more magnetically sensitive than fish or fowl, who knew, but magnetism wasn''t an energy source, it was an alignment. Which of course did not mean that the two were entirely separate. He certainly wasn''t going to discount the possibility that the ''life energy'' the dragons spoke of was running along magnetically aligned channels.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    He returned praises and reassurances to each group as he worked his way through the most ''urgent'' reports. He needed them to keep throwing out their wild ideas and chasing every detail until someone could catch hold of just how a species seemingly so similar could consciously manipulate their bodies on a cellular level. A species of magicians that had been lurking in the legends of every society from one end of the globe to another had just walked, or flown, out into the light. A species that could, as a few rather risky tests had proven, stop an infection by paying attention to it.


    A dragon''s blood could be infected with a virus. It couldn''t yet be infected with the one that was currently sweeping the world, despite the fact that the new virus was proving that it could jump from one species to another with terrifying speed compared to previously known limitations. But the dragon who had been infected with the virus that had happily infected her blood had shown no trace of it, not even on a cellular level, and that¡­ was frightening and wonderful.


    It was easy enough to prove that the dragons weren''t aliens feeding off the Earth''s magnetic fields. The timing of their appearance was like a thousand strokes of good fortune. The real difficulty was that for all of their technology, for all of his rationality, it was far too easy to look at a dragon and see a god.


    The dragon herself had easily denied such an idea. She had explained quite cheerfully that dragons were no different from any other species in the world. She insisted that dragons had developed control over themselves, and could not control the tides and the sun. She had also quite reasonably explained how one might be able to create a tornado, if such a ridiculous waste of energy were attempted.


    --


    Anne sat on the couch and watched Chris meditating thoughtfully. He was trying to learn his ''pattern'' without being able to see it as the others of his kind apparently could. The fact that it might take him hundreds of years, or more, didn''t seem to bother him. She could quite literally see his concentration, as the ripples of light that were usually a faint wavering brightened.


    The dragon who was teaching him, and who had taught her just what it was she''d been seeing her whole life, Amaru, had told her dismissively that humans did not live long enough to learn their own patterns even if they were able to see clearly. Ironically she could actually see more than Chris could, but she knew that she could not see with the clarity and detail that Amaru described.


    Anne looked at her own hands, and flexed her fingers. They were ordinary looking hands, and even though she was quite familiar with their shape, she wasn''t certain that she could even recognize her own hands out of a photo lineup of similar hands. She couldn''t even imagine knowing your own structure well enough to reassemble it with your mind, the way the two dragons could.


    Even the bodhisattva of that religion that had the Budda, who had ascended from the mortal world by surmounting the desires of the flesh, weren''t described as having such an incredible understanding of themselves. On the other hand, what she''d read about them since meeting the dragons had emphasized that the god-like beings had once been completely human, unlike the gods of other religions.


    She closed her eyes so that she could see the life force that moved through her own hands more clearly, and focused on the ripples that moved like water, the darker branches of stillness that lay beneath, and tried to imprint the patterns that were moving as she watched into her memory. She might not be a saint or a dragon, and she might not succeed in changing anything before she died, but with proof of the possibilities before her, wasn''t it worth trying.

 Fragment 54

    Chris sat, as he often sat these days, in the middle of Mac''s place in his ''true'' form. A small green tinted snake-like form with four limbs and wisps of fur or feathers drifting around his horse-like face. The shape of a young wingless dragon.


    His eyes were closed, both his physical eyes and his ''true'' eyes, which were both physical and yet created more than a mere physical conduit when open. Normally he would be concentrating on learning his own form, exploring his own shape with his mind and all of his senses, and trying to capture his own essence. However, a different, but arguably related, puzzle was occupying his mind.


    ''How had Amaru''s plane managed to get off the ground?'' He couldn''t answer it, any more than he could sink through the floor beneath him. It should be completely impossible for even the largest commercial jet to take off with a being whose natural form was larger than a football stadium inside.


    The older dragon insisted that if he truly understood his own essence, then he would be able to slide through the spaces that existed within the atoms of all things, without losing his own structure. But even if that were true, and the older dragon had demonstrated it for him more than once, it should still be impossible for Amaru to both compress the space within himself to fit into the human disguise he''d been wearing, and to spread his weight out through the air at the same time. And even if he could perform that impossible feat, how could he do such a thing at the speed the aircraft would be traveling.


    Chris had honestly expected Amaru to fall through the floor of the plane as it lifted off the ground, or to see it explode or something before making it farther than the city limits, but it had flown away quite normally.


    It was really hard to believe the older dragon''s insistence that magic didn''t exist, and that dragons were a natural species that had developed gradually in the same way that millions of others had come and gone from the world.


    He opened his eyes and stared at his own small clawed hands, and felt the weight of the doubts that whispered that he couldn''t possibly be the same species as the elder dragon who was apparently even older than the human race. A monster that could eat even a person''s memory as he consumed their life blood, a monster that lived for centuries, a monster that could change his very shape¡­ he was all of these.


    But was he truly a dragon? He wanted to be one, to have others of his kind, and yet¡­


    He was no human, that much was certain. He was an immortal who had nearly died a thousand times. He had lived long, lifetime after lifetime. He had been a thief, a hero, a criminal, a helping hand, a brother, a parent, and a child. A servant, a true love, a student, and a teacher, he had been all of these to various people over the centuries. But everything that he had ever learned trembled before concepts that a dragon regarded as simple facts.


    Arrogance. The man who had first accepted him as a brother had often warned him against it. Powerful, old, and dangerous, he''d thought of himself in these terms for centuries. But when compared to Amaru he was revealed to be as powerless and ignorant as a small child.


    It was a very human expression of frustration that escaped him as he shifted back into his ''usual'' shape and protested to the universe at large, "There have to be physical limits to what is really possible!"


    Memory itself had physical limits¡­ at least in theory?


    --


    The child had insisted that he maintain a ridiculous number of small rituals and customs of the tribes while he traveled among them. He had not argued against the advice either, as it served the same purpose that imitating their physical forms did, and let him wander about their territory undisturbed. Many of the rituals were incomprehensible, but they were surprisingly effective.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    The girl''s fear after seeing him open his true eyes so that he could examine the craft''s flight in more detail vanished almost instantly as he explained, "The latest VR glasses."


    If the human had actually studied the available technology for vision to the extent that he had, she would have immediately realized how nonsensical the claim was, but instead she nodded and replied, "How cool! I''ve only heard about them!"


    "Can I try them out?" one of the passengers asked eagerly as he leaned over the back of his seat.


    "No. Prototype," Amaru responded shortly.


    The man looked disappointed, but didn''t argue.


    Amaru silently surveyed the way the air moved through the tube that sparkled with ''electricity'' and the flow across the wing itself. He had misjudged them, the mankind. Their capacity.


    He did not share their impatience as they disembarked from the aircraft and made their way through the checkpoints set up for them. He was also in a hurry, but he suspected that he was either far too late, or that a few more hours were unlikely to matter. He seemed to have misjudged many things, the imminent demise of the mankind, the cause of the fragmentation of the strings, and perhaps even the wisdom of the guiding songs.


    The youths of two species, Chris and Anne, had viewed the small country that was still accepting travelers as a potential hotbed of suicidal plague victims, but all of the individuals he could see at the moment looked healthy and alert. The technology they were using to examine the passengers was surprisingly advanced as well, they were subtly taking temperatures with lasers, and keeping their distance even as they quickly processed each one''s documentation.


    There were many interesting things to observe in the small airport. He could see a small double winged aircraft with its side open and much of its interior structure exposed. While it would have been even more interesting to view the craft up close, his experimentation with lense creation had given him a few new tricks and he simply magnified his own vision until he could see the exposed mechanisms in great detail.


    He was slow to respond when his turn at the counter came, and the heavily accented English took him a bit of effort to puzzle out. The men moving carts in the background were speaking far more intelligibly, despite the fact that he hadn''t heard the tongue of their tribe for most of a millennia. Their words had not changed as much as those of the tribe of the conquerors, perhaps because of their mountainous isolation, but they had changed, and he listened. He calmly accepted the piece of paper that proved that ''George Albright'' had entered the small country legally.


    The eager child who tried to corner him before he reached the men with carts and cars that displayed the technology of a handful of centuries at once in a colorful display, was startled when he explained in a fair approximation of the modern version of the child''s language, "I will not need transportation or lodgings."


    The men around them added disbelieving protests, until he held up the curious bag that was bedecked in ties and clips. The young dragon had insisted that since some kind of luggage would be expected, he might as well carry the kind that would lead people to expect that he would be traveling the mountains on foot, and then he wouldn''t need to pretend to need a room anywhere.


    The brief silence suggested that the odd tactic had worked, but it lasted only a moment, and was followed by shocked and protesting outcries. The references to his obvious age, and impressive girth, made him feel that the young dragon had been mistaken. However, no one actually tried to stop him as he followed the rocky road away from the airport.


    Maintaining the form was rather tiring, and he did not intend to waste any more time than necessary. His eyes and ears were not idle as he studied everything from the placement of the stones beneath his feet to the varied buildings along the slope. Their ever changing variety had always been the most interesting thing about them, just as their prolific expansion and ever increasing consumption had been the most terrible.


    A group of men accompanied by dogs moved across his path as though they intended to stop him. He did not even threaten to eat the quiet dogs, but when he met their wary gazes, they retreated as though he had. The men looked confused, but after glancing at their dogs, they did not make any move to interfere as he passed.

 Fragment 55

    She had been learning new things almost since she''d crawled out of the snow. It was invigorating. And the interruptions were annoying, but every exchange of knowledge was owed its price.


    "What do you want now?" the dragon grumbled without looking away from her screens.


    "A cure for the world," the man replied mockingly. But beneath the mockery lay both sincerity and fatigue.


    She answered sincerely, but with the understanding that she was simply answering one meaning of the words while ignoring another. "Lead your species away from this world, fly away, and it will quickly recover."


    "While we conveniently die somewhere else?" another of the humans asked bitterly.


    The man held up his hand and shook his head, but even his controlled expression wavered as the dragon looked up and winked at him. The evolution of the expression that used the voluntary and momentary closure of one eye had been interesting to read about. It''s meaning was vague, but often implied, ''We have an understanding.''


    "That is impossible, even if we could convince every government on the planet to agree to it, which is perhaps even more impossible," the man said coldly.


    "Oh, how disappointing. It would have been so much easier if the conspiracy theorists had been correct about the levels of cooperation being maintained across the world to create the great virus hoax," she said with mock disappointment.


    "So much easier for you to rule the world," he agreed dryly, sharply, and with no mockery beneath his words this time.


    She cocked her head at him, like a bird might, and asked curiously, "Who would ever wish to do such a thing? It sounds exceedingly troublesome."


    "Ha," his response was less a laugh than a sigh.


    Another spoke up and argued, "Why bother to pretend! One of your kind has already declared himself Emperor in the East!"


    "The blind child still lives?" she asked curiously, and her question raised his eyebrows. "But that one has been cultivating one of your tribes for millennia, silly thing, surely you all must know of him. Or perhaps it is another of the youngest playing at kingdoms again?"


    "You think ruling over us is silly?" he asked warily, with more distrust than she''d ever heard from him before. "Something merely for children or the impaired to occupy their time with?"


    "Perhaps. Mostly I think it to be a laborious and unrewarding task, and what could you possibly offer that could not be acquired much more easily by other means?" she asked with real curiosity. The knowledge they had acquired and stored might actually be worth such a labor, for a while, but just because dragons did not collect material things, did not mean they did not understand the concept of bargaining.


    "Your lives?" the man suggested dryly, his mistrust hidden behind the threat.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Even the others of his kind regarded him with surprise, but she did not. She had studied as much about humans themselves as about their creations in the days and nights spent in this enclosed space.


    "Rule us, or we will kill you? Just as effective as cure us or we''ll kill you, I suspect, and you know that as well as I do, or you''d have tried it," she replied mockingly.


    The man actually bowed his head, and then knelt before her. He silenced the protests of his subordinates, and slowly, reluctantly, they joined him on the floor of the artificial cavern.


    She held her tongue, and assumed nothing, even though the show of submission targeted instincts that even dragons shared. Her kind had pursued control and clarity of mind for millions of years, longer than mankind had existed. Her true eyes opened and she looked farther than the walls allowed physical sight to see, to measure the beat of his heart.


    A tiny smile curved his mouth. It seemed to imply that he understood what she saw, but his words were completely serious as he asked simply, "Would you cure my people if I could offer you any price? Even the world itself?"


    "Of course not," she replied neutrally. "It is something that one only does for oneself, like a compression. Few of your kind even live long enough for any of my kind to learn even a single individual''s essence before an infant would die of old age."


    "I see," he replied a little uncertainly. The others rose to their feet, but he just raised his head and looked at her expectantly. "But you could if we lived longer?"


    "There are other complications and dangers in crossing the boundaries between self and other," she prevaricated. "However, I suspect that your kind will also learn to reinforce your own patterns eventually, using tools that I cannot yet imagine, no doubt. If I am wrong, and you cannot¡­" She glanced at the screens she''d been studying, and his eyes widened as he followed her gaze to the screens that spoke of using a virus to manipulate DNA strands, "¡­then we can only hope that you have not given the unweavers the power to unravel all that lives before your end."


    --


    The golden straw burned from both ends and was quickly extinguished as the last fragment blew gently away from small fingers. The dirty child grinned and silently lifted another to the old man''s pipe and waited for his sleeping breath to enliven the spark that still lurked in the bowl.


    A dragon observed the small play from a distance. If he had woken beneath this mountain, he wondered how long it would have taken him to learn of the extent of the changes the mankind had carved into the world. Away from the airport, many of the mountain tribe were living much as they had lived for centuries. Although even here he could see ''batteries'' and small devices glowing almost like a scattering of miniscule hearts across the slopes.


    He currently stood beside a faded heart, that resembled the small one on a much younger mountain on the other side of the world, and had perhaps even been carved by the same pair of claws. The strings here sang of life rising in the distance, but not with the power of the rising tide of spring that had swept across the world earlier in the year, nor yet with the spring that would rise when the sun began to warm the other side sufficiently. They sang with a voice that he knew well.


    A small child looked up, and went completely still as the stars above the mountain went dark and the wind snapped like the beat of enormous wings. The flame that had been his plaything bit at his fingers before dying. The old man, who had seemingly been deeply asleep a moment ago, stared upward and whispered a word that meant ''dragon'' in the tongue of his childhood. He glanced at the child and repeated the word in a more familiar tongue.


    "Dragons are kind and wise and ride the storms!" the child argued, and then stuck its burned fingers into its mouth.


    The old man puffed at his pipe and released a mouthful of smoke as the stars twinkled back into existence above them. "In these lands dragons may speak elegantly with rulers and wise men," he agreed with a nod. "But that only means that entire countries will shed blood when their wings sweep across the world again." His eyes looked toward a darkness that could hardly be seen. "In the far north they talk less perhaps¡­"

 Fragment 56

    She wouldn''t shut up.


    The woman¡­ the dragon¡­ in front of him was nothing like Amaru, and that wasn''t because her human form had curves a succubus would envy and nearly metallic copper strands of hair that reflected sunlight in the colors of flames. Actually her almost inhuman coloring was the only non human thing about her, unlike Amaru.


    The elder dragon was usually convincing enough, but often seemed oblivious to the more subtle nuances of human anatomy and behavior, although fortunately there were plenty of humans like that too. This dragon was obviously well aware of the nuances, she was just ignoring them whenever she pleased.


    ¡°I even told him I was coming,¡± she protested with a very human pout.


    Actually, Chris¡¯s first clue that the woman was a dragon had been Anne¡¯s reaction. He had recognized what Amaru was by meeting his true eyes, but this dragon hid her eyes from him until he revealed his own.


    With his true eyes open he could see her light. It was far brighter than any human, but it was a much smaller light than that of the elder dragon that he was familiar with. As soon as he had revealed his own identity, she opened her own true eyes and her behavior changed, even though the flow of words only slowed instead of stopping.


    "A child! Are you his? No¡­ but whose?" she muttered.


    "How can you tell that I''m not?" Chris asked a bit crossly.


    His doubts about his own identity rushed back to the surface. New questions were forming with every passing moment. Was the brightness related to her age or her gender, he wondered. She was also carrying everything that Amaru had lacked during their first meeting, including a phone, a tablet, and real clothing.


    ¡°Information for information. Between two dragons there must always be a balance, so what will you teach me in return little one?¡± she sang with amusement.


    Anne''s eyes widened at the rumbling song of a dragon, even though she had been the first to see the woman for what she really was.


    Chris blinked at the dragon. So much was implied in that question, including her immediate certainty that he was also a dragon. Amaru had sung him the guiding songs, reinforcing what he had barely remembered, so he understood her demand. But the elder dragon had always answered his questions freely, and had never asked him to keep a balance between what they learn from each other.


    His eyes moved toward the mobile devices that she held as more casually than most older humans, and definitely with more ease than a certain elder dragon had originally displayed. "I don''t know," he admitted. "What kinds of things would you like to learn?"


    "Oh, you can choose anything! I''ve so rarely had the opportunity to be the generous elder who can even teach the patterns that form clouds in the sky in return for the pattern of a simple flower!"This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Chris almost opened his mouth to admit that he couldn''t see in enough detail to see the ''patterns'' of things, but another objection occurred to him. "In some ways, I think a small flower actually contains a great deal more information than a weather pattern."


    "I guess I don''t need to ask for proof that you have been taught by a certain elder who ignores songs and messages in the most aggravating way," she growled.


    --


    He had crossed the world faster than ever before in his long existence, but the journey across the mountainous region had become frustratingly slow, increasingly so as he neared the more coastal region.


    After a while he realized that he was nearly inaudibly singing his irritation. It was becoming difficult to find a spot where he could listen to the strings without the songs being drowned by the cacophony of human noises, but just because he couldn''t hear them clearly, it didn''t mean that the strings weren''t resonating, and the strings nearby were magnifying the sound of his irritation. It was also difficult to tell if their connections to the songs of the world were fading, or if they were simply being drowned out.


    The hive-like city that had grown up at the foot of the mountain where he''d been sleeping was dwarfed by the density of the mankind here. The self declared emperor of the tribes of this region had gifted them with more stability than the wild tribes held, and they had always been numerous than the others. He had doubted that such an expansive and nomadic species could be trusted to maintain a heart which stood immovable, but what he''d heard before descending from the quieter mountains told him that he had also been wrong about that.


    He didn''t understand how a relatively young dragon could sing the influence of a season across an entire region, but he did not doubt what he had heard within the strings that merely echoed what had already been sung.


    He moved away from the roads and found a brighter string to sink his claws into. He listened with his bones as much as his ears, and verified the direction he wanted, before compressing himself further. His hair darkened and his skin changed its tone.


    He had thought he should be able to blend quite well with his new appearance, but armed men rushed out to stop him when he passed through the gate, as though they could see him for what he was.


    --


    His emperor was nervous. Another dragon had evidently been caught sneaking into a nearby city. The elderly custodian, whose title hadn''t changed even though he hadn''t lifted a cloth himself in months, wondered if he should fear that the self declared emperor was about to be deposed.


    The dragon who normally assumed the form of a plump man for formal occasions, was currently curled up around his usual seat in his serpentine form, and gouging claw marks into ancient decorative flooring in a way that tempted the custodian to dare to slap the large scaled hands. Instead he cleared his throat and pointed out, "The floor cannot be mended cheaply."


    Large eyes blinked as though sending a ''wait for processing'' signal, and then the emperor glanced down at his own claws and apologized in a very uncharacteristic manner, "Pardon, I wasn''t thinking. I suppose I can ask him to mend it for you when he arrives."


    It was the custodian''s turn to blink. "The¡­ ah, guest we are expecting, he is good at repairs?"


    The emperor shrugged his scaled shoulders. "That one can see the structure of things. Actually, I don''t know if he can put it back together¡­ but he can easily slice the palace in half."


    The custodian tensed, and glanced around the room that was decorated with ancient historical treasures. Now that the emperor had privately been acknowledged by the government, he probably wouldn''t be executed if any of the treasures were destroyed by a dragon¡­ but¡­


    "Do you think you could persuade him not to?" he requested hopefully.

 Fragment 57

    The bullet bounced off.


    After a moment of silent incredulity shared by all parties, he sighed and closed his eyes. It was perhaps fortunate that his form was currently held compressed at the very edge of his limits, even if he could have simply reinforced his own pattern in order to repair an injury.


    A moment later dozens of small metallic projectiles followed the first, creating a dangerous spray of ricochet around him, and one of the brash youths who had stepped forward to wield heavy sticks against his head was pierced by a round. The weapons fell silent as the uniformed guards realized that they were only hurting their own. A single round bounced directly off of his small human-seeming eye as the dragon opened his eyes again to glare at the men blocking his way.


    Amaru released his tight grip on the world enough to allow his human shaped feet to compress the pavement beneath him enough to make a sharp crack resound, and then announced into the silence, "I am going to the palace."


    One of the men hesitantly raised an open hand. His companions'' eyes moved to him questioningly, so the dragon also examined him curiously. "Which palace?" the man asked nervously.


    "The Emperor''s," Amaru replied simply.


    The humans still looked confused as they exchanged worried glances. Rather than attempting to explain further, the dragon released his compression somewhat, and assumed the compressed version of himself that he often used to visit the child and his companions inside their crowded dwelling. He was barely larger than one of their small cars in this form, but they all stumbled backward as though he had grown enormously.


    Amaru stepped forward, even allowing his claws to sink into the paving in an intimidating manner, but to his irritation the group immediately rallied, and moved back into position to block his way again.


    He debated whether to command them to move or to simply fly the rest of the way, but to his surprise, they all bowed low as their leader requested politely, "Please let us guide you great dragon." He snuck a glance at the dragon''s face and added quickly, "It will be simpler if you can travel in your human guise."


    Despite their compressed form, Amaru''s ears had no difficulty hearing the worried whisper of the man who asked, "But the last emperor is long gone?"


    "Idiot!" his companions hissed.


    Amaru gazed at the broad but faded strings that still lead straight to the elaborate heart he''d carved for his blind child millennia ago. "You may follow me if you don''t know the way," he announced as he stepped forward again. As he moved he pulled the compression of himself tighter and reached out to the heart of the world again for balance as he shifted his shape back into the smaller form of an average looking man of this tribe.


    This time they did not try to block his way, but fell into an awkward formation around him.


    --


    Amaru was not oblivious to the flurry of much more silent communication going on around him as he strolled calmly through the city and, unknowingly, out the other side and across the kilometers that separated the cities in this region on paper.


    He did not suggest that they take one of the cars that humans were so fond of, because one of the wheeled conveyances would not have been able to follow the string he was using as his guide. The men did not suggest calling for a van either, despite the sudden forced march of more kilometers than any of them had traveled since their early training. The delay allowed them to communicate with the people whose orders they had abandoned to follow the intruder that they couldn''t stop, arrange reinforcements, and receive new orders.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Hearts that had been under a great deal of strain ever since the new virus had been unleashed upon their world, as those they had sworn to protect became carriers of the invisible enemy, and the stubborn and ignorant went from being common nuisances to active threats, trembled and were shaken. Orders came, calmly, without the questions that they had expected and feared. Their leaders knew.


    Their leaders knew about the return of dragons, the return of the ancient emperor, and they were marching toward their own history. Toward their legends. Beside a tall man who looked like someone''s neighbor, who spoke a bit archaically at times, but with no trace of accent. Beside the human guise of the dragon who had not floated as a cloud, but had cracked the pavement with his earthly solidity.


    They marched across small walled fields, streets, through alleyways, and over rails. They marched on the city. Ancient stones felt their footsteps as they marched through streets that were eerily empty of the tourists who had occupied these spaces in recent decades. Other men dressed in costumes from historical dramas stood guard here, but their body language and their weapons did not match their garments.


    They were not stopped, they were not questioned as the dragon silently led them up, and stones gave way to ancient timbers beneath their dirty feet. They were expected. They did not even stop in front of the empty throne.


    Amaru walked straight into the garden that held the vast heart and gazed at its depleted pool in dismay. He lifted his eyes and the younger dragon flinched.


    --


    Tanwen glared at Chris. "Impudent brat!"


    Chris rubbed his forehead and drew a deep breath. He was the one being treated as a child, but he felt like he was dealing with a child. "Amaru, the elder, said that the nearest heart will probably need years to refill. He went to the coast and ate fish when he first came down the mountain," he explained patiently. "I can guide you to the more distant heart he led me to, but we''ll have to drive, and you don''t have a¡­"


    "I have an international license!" Tanwen interrupted with a very human toss of her coppery hair.


    Chris gaped at her for a moment. "Seriously?" he asked. "From how long ago?" he added suspiciously. Licenses had once been issued by the manufacturer of the vehicle upon purchase.


    "I''ve already had it for two weeks!" she announced triumphantly.


    "Didn''t you say that you came from England though?" Anne asked worriedly.


    Tanwen smiled at Anne and answered much more kindly than she spoke to Chris. "Yes, and the countries are friendly now, so it is valid here, I checked."


    He didn''t know if it was because Anne was female or because she wasn''t a dragon, but the older dragon was actually quite gentle with his human companion.


    "But we drive on the other side of the road," Anne pointed out uncertainly.


    "What?" Tanwen asked blankly, and then she looked at Chris expectantly.


    Chris gritted his teeth for a moment, and then released the tension in his jaw and replied as politely as possible, "Yes, Britain and most of the formerly British countries drive on the left, but in this one and a many others, one drives on the right. There are other differences, but that is probably the most important."


    "We should just fly there," Tanwen insisted again.


    "It is 250 miles away," Chris protested again. "Over 400 kilometers," he added for clarity.


    "I am familiar with the term miles," Tanwen huffed. After a moment she added, "That is actually quite far, is it truely the next closest?"


    "As far as I know," Chris affirmed.


    "But you flew like 5000 miles to get here didn''t you?" Anne asked.


    "Yes," Tanwen agreed. "But in most of the world there are several hearts carved within such a distance." She looked Anne over and added with disappointment, "I have not even seen anyone wearing feathers since landing here."


    Chris and Anne both gazed at her with silent confusion.

 Fragment 58

    The government servants and soldiers assigned to the historic palace eyed each other nervously. The dragon who had declared himself Emperor spoke their language, and most of them had never considered that odd, but the sounds that were coming from the gardens were not recognizable words from any language any of them had ever heard. They didn''t even sound like words at all really, but the air seemed to hum with meaning.


    The spy for the country far to the North suddenly wondered if the people who had sent him here knew how dragons spoke to each other.


    --


    "I guess you heard." Turquoise and gold shimmered beneath the bright sun as the younger dragon watched the compressed form of his more colorful parent staring at the heart beneath the garden with his true eyes. He knew that the elder dragon could never have stood within the garden walls if he hadn''t compressed his form. Play houses, the humans called the small houses they built sometimes for their children, and that''s what this vast palace his people had built for him had always been to the elder dragon. "I didn''t think it would travel so far so quickly, or were you nearby?" he added when there was no immediate response.


    The elder dragon blinked and considered his child who was no longer a child like the little half blind one he had promised to teach. "I was not, and I heard no whisper of it on the strings until I landed in the mountains to the north. I was curious about how you sang a wave of energy strong enough to rival a season but the empty heart explains much of it. However, that is not why I have come."


    "Why have you come?" the self declared emperor asked diffidently.


    "I was wrong, about many things," Amaru admitted.


    Surprise rippled outward without being spoken, but the younger dragon nodded calmly and replied, "They did not exceed the world''s capacity for them. They survive."


    Amaru shrugged in the manner of dragons. "For now," he agreed.


    "They will survive the unweavers this time as well," the younger dragon promptly insisted.


    "It seems likely. At first I assumed that I had woken to the song of an unusually strong spring and that the world was recovering from the plague of the mankind. I was surprised to discover that they had actually continued to multiply and yet somehow still prosper. Even more surprising was that their unbalanced expansion has actually begun to extend beyond this world. "


    "Satellites fly above us like stars, and have even been sent to other planets," the younger dragon added rather excitedly. "There are even a few people living above the sky!"


    "For now," Amaru agreed. "But they may fall back to the ground."


    "What?" the younger dragon objected indignantly. "They won''t fall!"


    "The heart is refilling too slowly isn''t it?" Amaru questioned, as though changing the subject.


    "My people," the word the emperor used implied descendants, and Amaru gazed at him with mild astonishment as he continued, "maintained the strings better than I expected, but even though I can''t see them, I can still sense that they have moved out of alignment. I adjusted things here back to the old pattern, but it hasn''t changed the sound much. I think it is not just the shift, because the sun seems hotter and the strings sound muted¡­ so I wondered if perhaps it was like the songs and they are gradually fading away?"The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    The elder dragon nodded and approval hummed beneath his words. "Yes, things here have barely shifted compared to the untended strings. I suspect that they are fragmenting because the time has come for the world to turn upside down. And from my understanding of the ''devices'' that the ''humans'' depend on to guide them, I suspect that they will become confused like the birds and other animals who use their sense of the flow of the world to guide them, until the world settles and the strings sing clearly again."


    "How long will it take? The guiding songs do not speak clearly of those times."


    Amaru shrugged again. "The world sings at its own pace. But it is possible that they may fade too quickly to replenish this heart, and then what? How will you sustain yourself? I fear that you may starve before the world settles."


    "I won''t leave, I mean, I won''t abandon my people again. They are barely recovering from a long bout with the unweavers that may not yet have run its course," the self declared emperor of his chosen tribe declared firmly. "I will eat living things. The crops of my people are doing well since I returned the energy of the heart to the lands around it."


    "How?" Amaru asked curiously. "I have learned many new things that I can teach you in exchange."


    "You needn''t mock me," the younger dragon insisted abruptly. "I know that I have discovered nothing that you have not already mastered."


    Amaru narrowed his eyes and replied sharply, "I would not ask if I knew."


    The smaller dragon who could not see the world as others of his kind saw it blinked in surprise. His parent had taught him to trade knowledge as others did, and had always listened to his descriptions quite seriously, but for the hundreds of thousands of seasons that he had lived, he had always believed that the elder who had lived more than a dozen times his own span actually already knew everything that was known and only traded for the joy of teaching others.


    Rather hesitantly, the emperor began to explain, "When we shout our songs into the strings I think we are adding to the energy they carry as much as we are adding or sound, but the songs fade with distance, and only whispers of distant voices travel the world." He described the energy he sensed and his feelings about the way the energy of the world flowed, and then summarized it all, "So if you sing the same song that echoes through the strings when everything is growing, it tells everything that senses the song that it is time to grow, and since the energy flows from where there is more to where there is less all really did was let the heart''s energy flow out of the heart''s pattern into me, and back into the world through my song."


    Amaru listened intently to every nuance of the song the younger dragon imparted. There were too many factors to be certain, but long ago he had taught this one to listen to the strings he could not see through his own bones, however it had never even occurred to him to study the vibrations of the songs the strings carried through his own bones in such detail. Perhaps it was something that only one who was blind could ''see'' so clearly.


    --


    Chris had a hard time focusing when he began his shift. The female dragon, Tanwen, was apparently around 3000 years old, not quite ten times his age, which would have been extremely impressive if Amaru weren''t far older than the human race according to both himself and Tanwen. But that wasn''t what was occupying his thoughts.


    As he''d been leaving, a stray remark had revealed that Tanwen had been in the region he had lived in during his earliest years at around the same time. He hadn''t quite been able to bring himself to ask if there were any chance that she might be his mother, or if she might have known who else had been around that area at the time.


    He wasn''t even certain that dragons normally raised their young as mammals tended to. Amaru had not said much about the subject, although he had mentioned that they sang the guiding songs to their children while they were still in the egg.

 Fragment 59

    "I was wondering if you could smooth wooden flooring the way you smoothed the stone floor in the cave that you carved for me," the emperor asked a bit diffidently.


    Amaru was not too surprised by the question, as he had more skill at cutting things than most of his kind. He didn¡¯t actually scrape away material with his claws as he sliced. Instead he expanded the material of his claws into the spaces between the tiny pieces of the material that he was cutting, and then absorbed the pieces he surrounded. It was actually similar to the way he could swim through the heart of a mountain and call the gold within the rock into his hands to carry it out. The result was a cut the width of the smallest fragments, that was only truly effective on very rigid things. If the material was as flexible as most living things, such a thin slice would often seal back together nearly imperceptibly.


    It was yet another skill that the blind dragon could never master, but Amaru had no regret for the time and energy spent on the youth''s behalf. Possibilities that he could never see with his true eyes had been clear to the younger dragon.


    His gaze wandered to the uneasy individuals who were trying to watch ''their emperor'' without disturbing him or his guest. ''Pets'', ''domestic animals'', these had been unfamiliar words when he''d last visited this region, but they described the way he''d thought of the mankind who had lived here at that time. Now¡­ their kind too were seeing new possibilities that no dragon had likely ever considered looking for.


    When the younger dragon showed Amaru the floor that he wished to have smoothed, he was taken aback. The youth indicated the places where material had been carved out of the wood by his own claws. Rough cuts gouged the intricate parquetry of the wooden tiles that had been carefully crafted from many small pieces of different sorts of wood.


    After a long moment Amaru explained, "I could perhaps level the entire floor to a new layer below the deepest mark, but I cannot create new material where it has been removed."


    The protest hummed in the air between the two dragons, before Amaru wondered if it was actually true. True, it was not within his abilities at the moment, but perhaps it was a possibility in the future.


    The child had unknowingly guided him somewhat in his studies of the sciences of the mankind, and people were discovering that while matter was indeed made up of the smallest fragments that he could see, those fragments were made from even smaller fragments, and some of those fragments were as much a motion as a particle. If he could truly create a drop of water from the fragments that composed it, rather than calling it out of the air, why couldn''t he someday call the fragments themselves out by creating the proper waves in the energy of the world.


    The blind dragon stared at the marks with his merely physical eyes, and then looked up and suggested hesitantly, "Perhaps I could sing into the wood as I sang into the heart. ''My people'' say that even old and dry wood can still contain life and will grow again if planted. And then you could just cut it flat again?"


    The elder dragon blinked at the younger one. Their ideas were different, but their thoughts were aligned. His own echo was too faint for him to detect in the blind dragon''s pattern, but perhaps a trace of it still remained after tens of thousands of years.


    There hadn''t been any other way to teach one who could not see his own pattern, but even though he had been so careful not to destroy the separation that was all that kept I a distinct identity for each of them, the echo his will had left on his child had transmitted more than the patterns he had written into the other''s memory.


    --


    It had been a long time since she had written a change into her own pattern, but human hands were more comfortable for using human devices, and she was seriously considering it. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Maintaining a human form was far more convenient for doing research, but such a tight compression consumed a significant amount of energy over time. If she would merely be spending a few years interacting with their devices, changing her pattern would be foolish, however despite her warning to the human who wished to bargain for his species instead of himself, she suspected that such small, soft, flexible hands would be quite useful to her for many millennia.


    Reading about her own species was quite amusing. The current generation of humanity seemed to assume that their ancestors had been mistaken, confused, or had been trying to describe things that they did not understand when they described dragons. This generation of humans weren''t really much more intelligent than their ancestors had been. Certainly over time the species had changed and developed, but within the short span of years since they had developed their forms of writing, there was very little difference in their individual capacities.


    Take this example, which said the dragon had the tail of a fish, the scales of a carp, the neck of a snake, the belly of a clam, the head of a camel, the claws of an eagle, the paws of a tiger, the ears of a cow, the beard of a goat, the horns of a stag, and the eyes of a demon or a god. If you allowed that a dragon''s true eyes appeared divine, then there were dozens of dragons who probably fit that description quite literally. She could also sing the identity of an elder who fit the description of an ''Amaru'' dragon quite well, although the smaller head of a ''bird'' had probably been one of the children he often allowed to ride upon his back while he taught them to look at the world. He was described as a huge colorful serpent that dwells underground, with the head and fur of a puma, and the wings and feet of a colorful bird.


    She flexed her own bird-like taloned hands, which had once been patterned after a bird by one of her ancestors as she was contemplating patterning them after a human. None of the descriptions of dragons were wrong, and in another generation perhaps the list of a dragon''s attributes would include the hands of a man.


    --


    Old Jose held the possibly magical shell against his overheated forehead. It was blessedly cool. The heat this summer seemed to be everywhere. Usually the heat waves moved from region to region, but this year the heat was sweeping the entire country, perhaps the entire world. He thought he even had a bit of a sunburn despite his weather darkened skin. Maybe it was that thinning of the ozone layer that everyone talked about.


    He never really believed in global warming, and the evidence was hotly debated, but this year seemed like proof of the theory. Ironic, considering that pollution was supposedly at an all time low because of the pandemic that had swept across the world during the past winter.


    The virus was still actively wreaking havoc, as evidenced by the way various governments kept deciding to open things up again, and then immediately began shutting down again a few weeks later as another outbreak swamped their hospitals. He thanked whatever deities might exist that he was relatively healthy. His city had not suffered as much as the ones in the news, but the hospitals were not treating anything much that wasn''t life threatening.


    Nobody really talked about it, but the strain the virus was putting on the medical community was killing off a lot more than its own victims. More people with cancer, heart problems, and other long term illnesses were quietly dying. More traffic accidents were fatal. And more people were slipping through the ''cracks''.


    A young couple who had quietly taken up residence in one of his ''safe'' places tried to shush their little one. Jose looked at the sweat rolling off the red faced child, and pulled the worn fabric of his scarf up over his nose before approaching.


    "Hey, you kids, take this and let your little one hold onto it. I''ll bring you some bottles of water in a bit," Jose said firmly, as he held out the precious shell the stranger had given him.


    "We don''t," the young man began uncertainly.


    "It''s cold. I can''t explain how it works. It was a gift from¡­ an unusual man," Jose said quickly.


    The young woman reached out and took the shell, and her eyes widened as she felt the cool surface. She hurriedly rubbed it with her shirt before holding it against her youngster''s body.


    Jose shrugged and turned away. He was pretty sure the shell was harmless, and there was no point in telling the girl that if it had dangerous germs on it she was just spreading it around, both on the surface of the shell and onto her clothing. If she''d had any water, she''d already given it to her child.


    He turned his feet toward the place, the place along the river where the alcohol was expensive, but the water was clean and free. He was already humming before the music reached his old ears.

 Fragment 60

    Restrictions that had been loosened had been tightened again recently, and there was a minor incident during Chris'' shift when two women attempted to loiter in the large lobby that had been a seating area the year before.


    The fact that he knew both of them and was fairly confident that neither Anne nor Tanwen were likely to carry the virus only made the situation more awkward. He seriously considered pretending he didn''t know them and making one of the cashier''s deal with them, but made his way around the waiting customers who were standing on their marks.


    "What are you doing here?" he asked from six feet away.


    Even though he lived with Anne and had seen both of them only hours ago, it was important to provide a good example. If one person saw someone without a mask or not keeping their distance, a dozen more would follow their lead. Anne stepped forward, but stopped when Chris held up his hand.


    Tanwen regarded him with fascination and amusement hummed beneath her words as she exclaimed too loudly, "Sweety the question is what are you doing? Are you pretending you don''t know us?"


    Every eye in the fast food joint turned toward the voluptuous redhead. She would have given redheads a bad name if her hair hadn''t seemed unnaturally metallic.


    Chris almost unconsciously tilted his head as he gave her a look. His lips quirked and he replied sweetly on the surface, but with a threatening hum beneath his own words that he''d never been aware of until meeting Amaru, "Tanwen dear, I told you when I left that I was going to work. You can''t linger here, it''s against regulations at the best of times, which these aren''t. Please run along sweetheart, if you''re bored at home you can have Anne show you to the market and do the week''s shopping."


    Both human and dragon regarded him with startled expressions.


    "She didn''t believe me when I described your job," Anne muttered as she tried not to meet anyone''s eyes.


    Tanwen bared her teeth at Chris, in an expression that he knew most people would take as a smile. She was playing to the crowd as she replied archly, "What a presumptuous babe."


    He smiled back at her, surprised by her awareness of the people around them. Genuine amusement laced his voice as he asked, "Are you going to complain about how I''m not respecting my elders next?"


    That was exactly what he was doing, but not how it would appear to observers. Anne reacted more obviously than the dragon, as she covered her mouth.


    Tanwen gave him a slight toss of her coppery hair, and flipped her hand in a slightly old-fashioned manner from another place, that subtly showed the amount of time that she had lived alongside humanity. "Nonsense. I will simply require your attention when you are finished," she replied almost mockingly in her simple honesty.


    Chris was actually rather impressed by Tanwen''s understanding of human appearances. Amaru probably wouldn''t have cared, and he doubted that the elder dragon would even have understood the nuances of the situation. She was giving in to his demand, but showing that he was subservient to her. He gave her an ever so slight bow as he promised, "After I am finished with all of my scheduled tasks tonight."If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Anne whispered to Tanwen, softly enough that most humans wouldn''t have been able to hear her, "He''s scheduled to sing later."


    Tanwen actually glanced at him with interest, but then glanced at the employees at the counter who were dawdling in their tasks in order to watch the small drama. Chris sighed internally. He ought to scold them a little for that, but they were all exhausted and doing their best to comply with all the new regulations.


    As Tanwen and Anne made their way out and Chris edged back to his place behind the counter, Eric whispered curiously, "Your girlfriend? Or are they both¡­ ?"


    Chris glanced at the teenager who was currently supporting his mother and two younger siblings on a paycheck that wouldn''t even cover a new car payment these days. "You probably won''t believe me," he told the boy mirthfully, "but that woman is old enough to be my mother."


    Eric emitted a nearly inaudible whistle-like breath. "Damn. But I''d still go for it! She''s smoking hot dude."


    "She''s a dragon, she can probably breathe fire," Chris replied dryly.


    Eric laughed, but his hands never stopped moving.


    --


    She watched everything with interest, as her fingers traced idle circles in the ring of liquid left by a cup on the bar. The girl, Anne, had delivered her to the bar with the slightly offensive air of a nanny delivering her charge to a daycare facility, and then made her escape.


    The place down beside the river, like the fast food joint that ''Chris'' worked in, was the kind that you could find in any large human city. People were scattered across the room in an exaggerated version of the wary isolation and comradeship that had characterized the communities that gathered at watering holes since long before she had existed.


    Their eyes observed her with a variety of emotions, but her flashy appearance attracted their attention. It was her ''win'' in the ''game'' she played among them. Observed but undetected, seen but unseen, as she imitated them, studied them, and continued to learn about the world she lived in as her kind had always done.


    The people here were more settled, less anxious, than most of those she''d observed in the western city. One of the old women was even wearing a feather at the end of her whitening braid. It was just a small blue feather, hardly the colorful array that the tribes had worn when she''d visited this continent in her early years, but Tanwen gave her an approving smile that was returned with wary curiosity.


    She watched Chris walk onto the stage, felt smug about the way the younger dragon''s gaze settled on her. She was actually quite excited about meeting him, because as one of the youngest dragons in the world she hadn''t had many chances to see children younger than herself. She was an elder in his eyes, and would be able to teach him many of the things her elders had taught her. It pleased her very much.


    She was disconcerted when he began to sing. The eyes that had been watching her turned to him, and for a moment she was quite indignant. He was manipulating them directly, commanding their attention, and¡­ only after a moment she realized that he hadn''t opened his true eyes and he was still meeting her own gaze.


    He wasn¡¯t commanding them, but they were watching him with joy and expectation. As he sang, she realized that he was actually energizing them. His song was leaking energy, but it wasn''t leaking precisely, rather it was being poured out and the audience was absorbing it as though it were a natural pool.


    His song faltered for the barest moment as she opened her true eyes, and he turned his gaze away from her rude examination. Her observation of the younger dragon''s energy ended only moments later, as a hint of a familiar scent tickled her nose, and she turned away to seek its source. The weathered face of an older human male watched the stage like all the others.

 Fragment 61

    Old Jose collected the growlers full of water from the bartender. The jugs were designed for beer refills before the new virus put a damper on reusable bags and containers, but they would do a fine job of keeping water cool.


    He lingered a moment to enjoy the song that the young man on stage was singing. The tune was from another time, old when he was young, but it spoke to him more than it had when he''d first heard it. The youngster was also putting a lilt into the words that belonged to another place as well as another time, and he was really good.


    People in this era instinctively camouflaged themselves with conformity. Accents were sanded away to the best of their ability, and jeans and t-shirts were common in a hundred countries. Everyone wanted to be different, to be seen as an individual, but at the same time, no one wanted to stand out too much.


    The young woman who turned away from the stage rather abruptly was an excellent example of that. Her almost metallic hair called for attention, but her clothes were conservative. She returned his gaze with surprising intensity.


    Jose felt nervous beneath her intensely curious stare, and oddly, it reminded him of another exceedingly curious gaze.


    "You smell¡­" she began but then hesitated uncertainly.


    Jose felt an uncustomary heat rise in his weathered cheeks. He very likely did smell, but few people had ever commented on it from six paces away. He instinctively took a step backward as she stepped forward, crowding the personal space of the person behind him at the bar even further.


    He froze when she opened her already open eyes like a cat, or like an alien from television back when all the aliens had human shapes because CGI didn''t exist yet. Only¡­ Jose had never found any of those frightening. This was like meeting the gaze of a tiger without any barrier. Her eyes spoke to nerves at the base of his spine.


    Old, despite her smooth skin, dangerous, despite her small soft hands, and utterly inhuman in that moment. She stalked closer, and suddenly a short stream of water shot over his shoulder and hit her in the face. A breath he hadn''t realized he''d taken escaped him as she blinked against the onslaught, and closed that otherness in her eyes.


    "Social distancing," the bartender reminded almost nonchalantly.


    The copper haired woman, who wasn''t quite human, took a long step back and pouted cutely as she raised a hand to scrub at her face. Jose shifted sideways so that he wasn''t crowding the bar as closely, but he didn''t dare step toward her.


    "What''s he smell like?" a familiar girl''s voice asked.


    Jose blinked and dared a glance over his shoulder. It took him a moment to recognize her face. It wasn''t just that she was plumper and cleaner than the last time he''d seen her. It was her interested and amused expression that had changed Anne''s face the most.


    "Like he''s been wearing dragon hide recently," the copper haired one replied sharply. "I thought you left?"


    Jose froze. There was only one thing he''d been wearing recently that wasn''t on him now. The shell the dangerous stranger had given him.


    "I had to pee, hu- normal people do that," Anne replied dryly. Her voice shifted as she addressed Jose apologetically with a trace of guilt, "And hi, um, I''ve been meaning to¡­" She waved her hands helplessly in Jose'' peripheral vision. "¡­visit, I guess?"


    Jose blinked. He felt disoriented by Anne''s normality in the face of the dangerous copper haired woman, and her apparent awareness that the woman was not exactly human.


    The woman tossed her coppery hair and huffed, "You know him? Does, ah, Amaru spend time with him often?"


    Jose dared to turn away from her long enough to watch Anne''s face as she insisted with confusion, "I know Old Jose, and he''s a good person. But as far as I know Amaru spends most of his time up on the mountain."This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Their conversation was necessarily loud because of the required spacing among the bar''s patrons, and people were giving all three of them disapproving looks. The copper haired woman returned her gaze to the young singer on the stage as he belted the chorus verse out with more energy and volume.


    "Sorry," Anne whispered loudly.


    Jose glanced at the stage and lowered his voice as he asked nervously, "Amaru?" The name sounded vaguely Japanese or something, which didn''t really match the large dangerous person who had given him the shell, but he had been a foreigner.


    "You won''t believe me, but he''s actually a really old dragon," Anne confided.


    --


    Chris felt tired when he finished the last song. Utterly bone weary. The energy he had spent wasn''t exactly gone, it still hovered in the room intangible and yet tangible in some way, as it was reflected in the relaxed smiles on the faces surrounding him.


    Even if it was a small thing, this moment of harmony was gifted to them by music, despite, or perhaps in spite of, the glasses of poison that they had downed during the performance. Not that any of them thought of the alcohol as a poison, but then, they were human.


    Hunger tugged at the edges of his skin, and he was very aware that he had woken from his sleep far too early. He still didn''t know why he''d woken decades before he''d expected to, and neither did Amaru, although they had theories.


    Tanwen and Anne had come to listen for a while, but had gotten into some sort of dispute with an older looking man with traces of the streets in his manner and his attire. They had left again after only a couple of songs. He did not feel like dealing with the noisy older dragon while tired and hungry, but even though she and Anne were already gone, he was afraid that they were probably waiting in Mac¡¯s apartment.


    Mac himself was waving and smiling from his usual spot at the bar. Chris smiled back, and made his way across the floor occupied by widely scattered tables. Even Bobby was smiling as she set a glass of water and plate full of uncut fruit and vegetables on the bar.


    Chris'' own smile widened.


    "She''s quite a beauty," Mac stated as Chris took the seat beside him.


    Chris paused with a carrot halfway to his mouth, and glanced at Bobby. "Who?"


    "The¡­ lady who''s visiting us?" Mac replied.


    Across the bar Bobby raised an expressive eyebrow. Chris shrugged. He wasn''t sure what to say. Mac should know as well as anyone that surface appearance didn''t matter much for people who could change on a whim if they wanted to.


    --


    He looked at the small blossoms on the tree that had five kinds of wood twining together to form it''s trunk, and wondered whether he should ask them to just leave it like that, or get someone to cut it out of the floor and move it to the garden before they moved back to that area.


    The dragons had utterly ruined parts of the floor beyond belief with their attempts to restore the claw marks the emperor had left in the floor, but neither he nor any of the soldiers who had been assigned to the historical palace could bring themselves to object. Living legends stood before their eyes performing magic that they had thought existed only in stories. It wasn''t trickery or illusion either.


    He caught a paper thin shaving of parqueted wood that drifted within reach on the light breeze that came from the garden outside, and held it between his wrinkled fingers. He no longer feared that he was ill and hallucinating the dragons in front of him, but he still hadn''t returned home. If he could have, he would even have called his family to come and live in the historical buildings with him now.


    The dragon he had chosen to serve was not an all knowing god, but he was a quite worthy being in his own way. The newcomer was quite colorful, a rainbow of fur and scales, with an air of distracted urgency about him.


    He wasn''t sure what to think when the colorful one suddenly began waving a broken cell phone, that he''d pulled out of nowhere, at the dragon who had declared himself emperor. One of the soldiers who had escorted the new dragon to the old palace twitched at the sight of it, and he looked more closely. The phone looked like¡­ that was a bullet wasn''t it?


    He gulped. The soldiers had arrived with some minor wounds, and he''d overheard them mentioning someone who''d been shot and had to stay behind, but he wondered who had been brave and stupid enough to shoot at a dragon. His emperor beckoned and he stepped forward.


    "Please see if you can find a replacement for this device," the emperor instructed.


    The other dragon held the broken phone out with an amazingly reluctant expression. He reached out to take it as though he had no fear of the long claws that tipped the fingers of the dragon''s surprisingly small hands, and wanted to heave a sigh of relief when the dragon released the device. He quickly carried it to the doorway and then hesitated and looked back.


    He didn''t want to leave the room, but at least now they actually did seem to be successfully repairing the floor¡­ visually at least. The age and artistry of the historical parquet could never be restored even if it appeared identical. He shook his head and stepped out. Dragons were rebuilding the floor from wood grown out of the original surface. Mere human craftsmanship could never replace that.

 Fragment 62

    It must be one of those chemical ice packs she decided as she held the large shell against her son''s body, like the expensive hiking gear that recreational enthusiasts measured in fractions of an ounce.


    It wasn''t that cold, but the coolness seemed to suck the heat up and touching it felt comforting. She glanced at her husband and opened her mouth to encourage him to try holding their son and the shell for a while, but closed it again when she saw the despair in his face. She wanted to say something comforting, but there was nothing.


    They had nothing left except each other. Her eyes lingered on his weary face. His eyes were closed and she wondered what he saw in that darkness. He''d always been a bit of an unreliable dreamer, but he''d never been idle or a layabout. They weren''t sitting on the street right now because he hadn''t tried. The timing of everything had just been awful.


    Her hours had been cut, and cut again, and he''d abandoned another dream to look for anything he could get right now to carry them through the tough times¡­ again. But this time there had been no last minute save.


    Her heart jumped into her throat when she realized how quiet her son had gone. She had been terrified that he''d caught the virus, and the testing had been where the last of their money had gone. The horrible thing was that she''d been disappointed in a way when the test had come back negative. If he''d had the new virus they would have admitted him to the hospital, but because he only had a ''common flu'' he was released.


    She breathed again as she saw that he was just sleeping more easily than he had since getting sick.


    "Things can''t get any worse," her husband groaned suddenly.


    She jumped at the sound of his voice, and shifted her gaze from her child to her husband again. "Don''t say that."


    He rubbed his hands over his face and then met her eyes. "Homeless people are giving us stuff," he explained wearily.


    "We''ve given them stuff before," she pointed out uncertainly.


    He looked at her expressionlessly for a long moment. She didn''t know what to say.


    "I''m afraid the shell is just a short term loan, but you kids can keep these," an elderly voice said dryly.


    They both jumped. Their friends had always teased them about the synchrony between them, claiming they''d never seen two people so suited to each other. The weathered face of the homeless man who''d given her the shell was amused.


    Her hand pressed the shell against her child too firmly and he stirred restlessly. ''These'' appeared to be two jugs of beer, and she stared blankly as her husband reached for them.


    "Thanks mister," he said, as though it was perfectly ordinary.


    The old man glanced behind himself warily, as though he expected something to be standing there. Maybe he saw things. Maybe he drank to forget them. You heard all kinds of horror stories about the kinds of things that put people in the street.Stolen novel; please report.


    Or maybe he was just like them, and the rent had kept rising while the corporations had kept cutting hours and benefits until all he had left was debts. She wanted to complain that alcohol wasn''t going to help anything, but her husband was right. At this point they could only be grateful for anything that anyone was willing to give them.


    She couldn''t even stop herself from bowing her head and asking the old man, "Can we at least borrow this until he gets better?"


    The old man didn''t reply right away and she looked up uncertainly, and was startled by the conflicted expression on his face. "Do you believe in dragons?" he asked a bit anxiously.


    She glanced at her husband, and felt a burst of anger at the sight of him lifting the jug of beer to drink from, that faded at the surprise on his face. He met her eyes, glanced at the old man and nodded, while holding the jug out to her and announcing, "It''s just cold water, it''s good. Give it to him."


    "I¡­ don''t know," she admitted. She couldn''t bring herself to lie, even as she took the gift of water and sat her son up to wake him. "They said there were real sightings of dragons in Europe, and with all the news about endangered species coming out into the open while everything has been shut down for the quarantines, I guess it''s possible? But¡­"


    "This mountain," the old man said, pointing in the direction of the volcano that dominated postcards of the city. "Maybe they came from Europe, or distant places, but there''s dragons living right here, and they are dangerous."


    "We''ll keep an eye out," her husband promised, as though he was agreeing to watch for raccoons which regularly came down the mountain and raided the trash cans and cat food dishes of the suburbs.


    She and the old man shook their heads in unison, but she was distracted by her son''s sleepy realization that cool water was being offered. "Drink slowly," she warned him as he grabbed the jug with surprising strength and gulped greedily at the contents.


    "No," the old man said, "I mean that," he pointed at the shell, "is apparently a dragon''s scale."


    She looked down at the shell, and back up at the old man doubtfully. "But it''s white," she protested without any reasonable explanation for why that made it unable to be a dragon''s scale. The shell didn''t have the ragged edge of a lizard''s scale either, but it also didn''t have the flared edges of a clam shell.


    "It was given to me," the old man announced overly loudly.


    "We appreciate you lending it to us," her husband said quickly, and reached over to take it from her.


    She was embarrassed by her own reluctance to release it, and his surprise as he felt her resistance, and muttered, "Sorry," even as she forced her fingers to release what was probably just an expensive device.


    Thinking of it as an expensive device made it easier to release. Whatever this old man believed about it, it was a valuable and useful thing, and she had no right to take it from him. He''d shown her family only kindness.


    She felt humiliated when the old man held out a prepaid credit card after accepting the shell from her husband. That she could see the same emotion reflected in her husband''s face even as he accepted the card only made it worse. He''d been right, things couldn''t get any worse. But they couldn''t refuse any help with a sick child.


    The old man seemed to be able to read her mind as he said kindly, "Don''t take it so hard. You kids are too young to know the truth of the old sayings, but it really has always taken a village to raise a child."


    Tears began to flow, no matter how she blinked them back.


    "Hey! Wait up!" a young woman shouted somewhere nearby.


    A woman out of a fairytale or a movie strode around the corner and reached out to snatch the shell out of the old man''s hands. Her hair was metallic copper and her clothes looked far too ordinary for her.

 Fragment 63

    Amaru examined the replacement phone he''d been given. The ability to adapt was indubitably one of the few things that all of the longest lived species shared, and he had underestimated the strength of the mankind''s ability. But even he was amazed when he considered that he hadn''t even dreamed of such a device before, and yet had become so accustomed to its use in less than a year.


    The technician had assured him that all of his data had been restored, but that apparently didn''t include the location of the icons. It had been some time since Chris and Anne had set up his first devices, and even though he could recall it with a clarity that a human would envy, at the time he hadn''t really understood what they were doing, so he hadn''t necessarily remembered the significant things. Compared to trailing an animal back to its den, locating everything he wanted to access took no time at all.


    "Add me," Amaru instructed the younger dragon.


    "Add you?" the other asked blankly.


    "To the list of contacts in your device," he explained.


    "I don''t have one."


    A brief silence filled the garden. The sound of a bird singing was loud. A human throat was cleared, and Amaru looked over.


    The human who had arranged the repair of his phone spoke diffidently, "The imperial treasury is empty because, well, it had been abolished."


    "Then I shall receive a bill for this?" Amaru asked after a moment, as he held up his phone. Chris, Anne, and the elderly one, Mac, had spent a great deal of time trying to explain the concepts of human finances.


    "It was paid for with discretionary funds, you will not be billed," the elderly human assured him quickly.


    "Acquire another one," Amaru instructed.


    --


    "You weren''t lying!" Tanwen said with amazement as Anne caught up to her. "It really is maintaining a different temperature."


    Old Jose looked like he wanted to snap at the dragon, but he merely responded politely, "No miss."


    Gasps came from the small family huddled behind him as Tanwen opened her true eyes to examine the scale in her hands. She stared at it with fascination and Anne blinked as she realized that the scale was making its own ripples in Tanwen''s hands. If the female dragon had shown as brightly to Anne''s other sight as Amaru did, she wouldn''t have been able to tell, but the dragon''s own ripples were only a bit brighter than the ones Chris made.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    "How sly! I wonder if this pattern runs through all of his scales¡­ I bet it does." Tanwen muttered before looking up. "Getting information from an elder is a lot like trying to find it on the internet. You have to know what to ask about."


    Anne blinked. "But this is something that''s kind of visible even to me?"


    Tanwen appeared to be slightly chagrined as she nodded. "Sometimes it''s hardest to see what you''re most familiar with."


    "That''s true for everyone," Old Jose said kindly.


    "Is it still alive?" Anne asked hesitantly.


    Tanwen gave her a funny look, and glanced at the scale. "Oh, no, not really. But I can see why you''d think it might be with the energy locked inside like this."


    "What kind of energy?" Jose asked nervously with a glance toward the distressed family.


    Anne felt guilty when she looked at them. She''d been where they were now, and she''d been rescued. She still didn''t have much in the way of personal resources, but she felt bad because she hadn''t really done anything for the people who were still trapped in the streets.


    Tanwen looked perplexed. "Just energy. The same kind that''s in you and me and everything else. But it''s almost empty now," she announced with more assurance.


    "I''m sorry," the mother said anxiously.


    Old Jose waved a hand dismissively at the young mother. "Not your fault," he said quickly with his eyes still on Tanwen.


    "Of course it''s not my fault," Tanwen huffed with disdain.


    "Can we refill it?" Anne asked suddenly.


    Old Jose had said that Amaru''s gift had been very useful to him, and he''d obviously lent it to the little family. Tanwen turned and raised an eyebrow at her, and she flushed.


    "I doubt that you could," Tanwen replied rather bitingly. "But sure, give it a try." She pushed the scale toward Anne and smiled.


    Anne stared blankly at the scale that felt lighter than the shell it resembled would have. Amaru and Chris had taught her what she was seeing when the world was overlaid with ripples of light reflecting from invisible streams. And Amaru had taught her that she could absorb the light when it was pooled thickly enough around her, but she had no idea how to fill the scale.


    On the other hand, Chris had lived by drinking from the hearts of living creatures like the vampire that he''d assumed himself to be, and she had a perfectly good heart within her, so it shouldn''t be that she lacked the energy to do it.


    She didn''t dare meet anyone''s gaze as she lifted the scale and hugged it to her chest. She was certain that she looked ridiculous, and she could see the ripples better with her eyes closed anyway. The ripples that her own heart emitted were miniscule compared to what radiated from the skin of any of the dragons. The scale itself seemed to be nearly as bright.


    She wasn''t sure what she was even trying to do, but she focused on the way the waves met. She tried to calm her heart until the ripples blended instead of bouncing, but even though she''d decided that she should try to master herself and reach the state of enlightenment that only legends had achieved, she hadn''t really accomplished much in the last few months.


    "What are you doing?" Tanwen asked with interest.


    Anne bit her lip, opened her eyes, and thrust the scale back toward the dragon. "Can you refill it then?" she demanded challengingly.


    To her surprise, the dragon replied thoughtfully, "Maybe? You were trying to synchronize your energy with it weren''t you?"

 Fragment 64

    Nobody was waiting at home when Chris and Mac arrived. Chris didn''t know whether to be relieved or not. He had gone from dreading the guaralous questioning that Tanwen would subject him to, to hoping that she would immediately quell Mac''s hopes for a pairing between them, but the apartment was quiet and empty.


    Mac seemed to feel that the appearance of a female of his kind meant that some kind of romantic relationship was destined to occur. And even though Chris was more than four times older than the elderly man, Mac was acting just like a grandfather encouraging a beloved grandson to marry before he died.


    The lights on Anne''s computer seemed unusually bright in the darkness, until Mac turned on the overhead light. There was nothing unusual about either the flashing notification light or the soft red glow of the low power notification, but Chris wondered if she''d been out all day. Anne hadn''t actually been dying of the new virus when he''d found her, but the fear that she might have been had made her observation of the public safety advisories quite strict.


    He plugged the computer in and observed the obvious, "They aren''t back yet."


    "Those girls can take care of themselves. Especially the pretty one. Anyone who messes with them is in for quite a surprise, no doubt," Mac replied cheerfully.


    Chris shrugged. He was losing track of how often Mac had complimented the other dragon''s appearance, but even if the two were still together, he wasn''t sure how reassuring that was. Perhaps because of his time believing himself to be a vampire, or the fact that a thousand other human legends also warned that the most beautiful monsters were the most deadly, he was aware that Tanwen''s presence didn''t guarantee Anne''s safety.


    Not just vampires, the fair folk, the shapeshifters, and the magicians of old stories were all quite dangerous companions for mortals. Even if Tanwen wasn''t going to eat Anne, and treated her with kindness, it didn''t mean that she was safe. He startled when his phone rang loudly, and blinked in surprise at the identity of his caller.


    "Hello, how is your search going," Chris asked Amaru with relief. He wouldn''t have admitted to being worried about the elder in front of Tanwen, but even if dragons didn''t die of old age, it didn''t mean they couldn''t be hurt or killed.


    "My search? Oh, I am here, he was here. I want you two to add each other as contacts," Amaru replied promptly.


    "Okay¡­" Chris replied in the drawn out tones of one of the young people working at the fast food place. It wasn''t that he had any objection to making the acquaintance of another dragon, it just seemed like an odd request for Amaru to make. "Is there something you want us to do together?"


    "Teach each other," Amaru replied. The phone couldn''t. handle the range of Amaru''s voice as he shifted to the tongue of dragons and added, "If you want to learn something, then teach something. He is completely blind to true sight, but he has learned to hear the songs of the strings through his bones far more clearly than you have."


    Chris puzzled out the meaning and then replied in his usual language, "Well, they do say that losing your sight improves your hearing?"


    "It is not that simple," Amaru informed him strictly. "The sight and sound of the strings are linked, neither truly sight nor sound, I think that it is merely our way of interpreting them."The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Is that why the lenses don''t really work?" Chris asked.


    A thoughtful silence, that lasted so long that he checked the connection, answered him. "Perhaps," the older dragon grumbled. "I will think on it. I plan to return soon."


    "Will he be coming with you?" Chris asked curiously.


    The door opened with a bang as it rocked on its hinges from the force of the push that another dragon had given it. Chris missed Amaru''s reply as Tanwen caught sight of him and exclaimed, "His scales hold a pattern that stores energy to keep him comfortable!"


    "What?" Chris asked blankly, and then remembered the call and informed Amaru, "By the way, your former student has arrived."


    "I am not his former student!" Tanwen protested. "I still have a great deal to learn from the elder! Is that him?"


    She darted forward and snatched the phone from Chris'' hand and growled, "Elder! Why didn''t you ever teach me the pattern in your scales?"


    Chris didn''t protest or prevent the other dragon from taking his phone, as Anne appeared in the doorway behind Tanwen, and reached out to steady the door and then close it nearly silently. The traditions of other eras illustrated the scene as if Anne were a lady''s maid tidying up after her mistress. Her slightly weary air only lent authenticity to the illusion.


    "That''s not what I mean!" Tanwen complained loudly in her dragon voice, as her form transitioned into a compressed version of her natural one, and her clothing fell at her feet in an undamaged heap that had to have been intentional.


    Chris held up his hand when Anne stepped forward and bent to collect the pile himself. He kind of wanted to ask Tanwen to do it again so he could see how she''d gotten out of the pants without appearing to lift her feet. But perhaps she simply allowed her atoms to pass through the spaces within the atoms of the clothing the way Amaru could swim through stone.


    "Yes, your words are incomplete as well. He''s very smart, I agree," Tanwen said clearly in English despite her dragon shape.


    Chris finished depositing the pile of laundry into the hamper beside the machines before turning back to raise an eyebrow questioningly.


    "I''m putting you on speaker, so repeat that from the beginning," Tanwen instructed Amaru.


    Even the most modern phone couldn''t entirely remove the momentary lag that the transmission time added to the conversation, and a moment later the elder dragon said clearly, "The heart here is one of the largest in the world and its alignment has been maintained well enough during the last millennia to make it obvious that the fragmentation of the strings is not entirely due to disruptions created by the man- by the humans."


    "What else could be causing it?" Tanwen protested.


    Even Chris, who couldn''t see the strings, could easily imagine that the effect humans were having on the environment would carry over to what seemed to be lifeforce flowing across the surface of the planet.


    Amaru replied simply, "The world itself. The world is ready to turn over once more." He went on to explain, "The strings are fading quickly, and most likely the strength of the song of the season of growing was akin to the prosperous summers that often precede an extra long winter. Likely our instincts woke us so that we could fatten up before the lean times ahead."


    "Why haven''t the string carried warnings then?" Tanwen asked uneasily.


    "We have sung the warning into the strings, and I''m sure that others will sing them onward, but the phone is faster. The echoes of our songs probably won''t reach across the world for weeks yet. It is unfortunate that the strings do not carry numbers clearly."


    "I suppose a website address would also be quite difficult to transmit," Chris replied dryly.


    Tanwen blinked at him in surprise, and Anne covered a smile, but Amaru responded, "How would that¡­ oh, we could post our numbers on one? That might be possible, like a riddle, hmm¡­"


    "We could just set up a dragon network on the social media site that Tanwen contacted you from, or start a chat group," Chris suggested.

 Fragment 65

    Their child was sleeping peacefully against the scale of a dragon, but the young couple were still silently staring at the sky without talking.


    Jose was hanging around, for no good reason he guessed, but the things his old ears had heard during the last few hours felt like they were engraved on his mind. He hadn''t even protested when Anne had silently shoved money into his hands before running after the dragon who was disguised as a copper haired woman.


    He looked down and realized that he was still clutching the tightly rolled currency and shook his head in silent argument with himself. The kid shouldn''t be feeling guilty about escaping from the streets just because others were still on them. She also shouldn''t be carrying cash¡­ unless she still couldn''t get her own cards.


    He made up his mind to find her and ask more details, but he knew that it was just a distraction from the overwhelming reality of the dragon. Another detail rattled loose from the many things the frustrated dragon had said. Apparently powering up another dragon''s scale wasn''t easy.


    The young singer at the place down by the water, she''d told him to take the scale to that kid if it needed to be recharged again. Certainly the kid sang well enough to be a bard out of legends, enchanting people with nothing but music, but Jose couldn''t quite believe that he was actually a dragon. He didn''t radiate danger in his movements the way the stranger had, despite the harmless encounters they''d shared, or the way the copper haired beauty did.


    And also, Jose was pretty sure the young man was working at a fast food place about a mile from the bar he sang in. Somehow it was easier to believe in dragon scales embedded with magical patterns that controlled their temperature, that could be recharged by another dragon singing the right song into them, than it was to believe that young dragons worked as fry cooks. That just¡­ made them seem too much like ordinary people for comfort.


    A childish temptation to go there and order something to see if it tasted magical whispered in the back of his mind.


    --


    "Wait, he''s the Emperor?" Anne questioned doubtfully. "Really?"


    "Yes," Tanwen affirmed that they''d heard correctly.


    "That''s horrible," Anne informed her with wide eyes.


    "Because he''s not human?" Tanwen asked a bit sharply.


    "No, because they keep people in camps like the Nazis did, and during the epidemic they''ve done horrible things like welding apartments with sick people living in them shut, and just letting them all die! And he''s the ruler who did all this stuff? He''s horrible!" She turned to Chris and insisted, "You can''t help him!"


    "It''s not that simple," Chris protested helplessly.


    "Sounds quite reasonable to me," Tanwen huffed. "At least if you assume that you''re trying to keep even more humans alive. The elders aren''t wrong about one thing, there are too many of you, and humans are destructive to their habitats."


    "People are dying horribly!" Anne argued.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "Death is always horrible," Chris replied reasonably. "Fewer deaths are better."


    "Fewer? More deaths would be better for the world I think," Tanwen argued.


    Both Chris and Anne looked at her with incredulous expressions, and Mac spoke up suddenly, "Didn''t Amaru say that his son woke up about the same time Chris did? I''m sure the president is still the one controlling the country. The rulers there have always claimed to have had dragons on their side, and even in their ancestry, and he''s probably just using the appearance of the dragon emperor to bolster his position."


    "That''s just as bad," Anne complained. "He shouldn''t be supporting someone who would do such horrible things!"


    "Who cares if humans kill each other?" Tanwen asked cooly. "Why should we interfere? Wouldn''t it be more wrong to interfere directly. To raise you like cattle and cull the aggressive ones?"


    Anne stared at Tanwen with her mouth open, while Chris was afraid to admit that he had often interfered directly, participated in wars, and nursed the ill. He was afraid that he''d been breaking some guiding law that he hadn''t learned properly.


    "A ruler should rule," Mac said softly. When Chris turned to raise an eyebrow at the old man, he added, "An odd sentiment from someone raised in a country ruled by committees? But if you take the position, you should take the responsibility."


    Tanwen commented with interest, "I have read about this country that stacks up more laws with every year, even if they conflict with existing ones, and runs on a ridiculously complex system of precedence. It changes its leadership as often as a university club would, does it not?"


    "Sort of," Chris agreed.


    "I just feel like if there''s an emperor, he should be able to stop the president from doing horrible things¡­" Anne complained weakly. She looked back and forth between the two dragons and edged closer to Mac.


    Chris looked at his phone and then asked without expecting an answer, "I wonder if he knows that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he''s taking responsibility for everything the government there does?"


    Tanwen tilted her head and gazed at the younger dragon curiously. "All of the humans? Or the planet?"


    "What?" Chris asked.


    "Yes, humans. Maybe. I mean¡­ who knows how many people aren''t actually human?" Anne responded nervously, with a sideways glance at Mac and then Chris. "The rest of the world means everybody who isn''t there. The people."


    "Many people will judge him," Chris added.


    Tanwen nodded soberly. "Yes," she agreed. "I too hold him responsible for the actions of his tribe. It is true. I think I understand what you mean, I just don''t think that it is a bad thing if more humans die."


    Mac and Anne both took a step backwards, while Chris had to stop himself from doing the same thing. The instinctive protest that rose to his lips died before being spoken. It was an inhumane sentiment, but she wasn''t human, and neither was he. He glanced at Anne and Mac, at his friends.


    "They are people, not just humans," he argued.


    "Yes. I like them too. But even though I''m young, if not as young as you, I can see the strain that they put upon the world," Tanwen replied reasonably.


    "How can you say that you like them but still hope that they will die off?" Anne protested.


    Tanwen shrugged. "Do you like cats? But in many places humans systematically kill cats to prevent overpopulation."


    Chris wanted to protest that it wasn''t the same, but he was afraid that maybe it was the same. He still had memories from his early life as a snake, and how he had been hunted. Amaru had also said that every species had a few of the wise, as though to dragons humans really were no different than deer or cats.


    If you couldn''t draw a line for who counted as people by their species, then where did that leave you? And yet, he didn''t think that killing and eating other species was wrong, because it was what almost every species did to survive. Some waited patiently for the nutrients of the dead to reach them, as plants did, but everything cycled life from one entity to another in one fashion or another.


    "Where does the life that runs across the world in strings come from?" Chris asked suddenly.


    Tanwen blinked at him. "I do not know."

 Fragment 66

    He massaged his temples, drew in a deep breath, and released it slowly. The world needed a dragon registration system. They needed a form of ID that could be accepted worldwide, since boundaries meant little to them.


    There was too much paperwork involved in keeping track of them. He needed to answer the inquiry about the traveler that may or may not have entered his country illegally and then vanished. Because the dragon had been scooped up by the blockade guards this time, they knew exactly what had happened to the "traveler".


    It would have been convenient if there had been a dragon country that had suddenly appeared like the fabled Atlantis in the west, instead of having a few of them pop up individually here and there all over the world. Then negotiations could have been made with them as a group, and standardized regulations couple have been agreed upon. Passports, such as most of the industrialized nations provided their citizens.


    His finger hovered over the photo for a moment, and he compared it to the appearance of the dragon an hour ago. Passport photos were going to be useless. Fingerprints too most likely. He wondered briefly whether or not retinal scans would work.


    After a moment he shrugged off the useless speculations. The dragons claimed that they communicated across long distances by listening to the echoes of songs. They didn''t have any laws either, just more songs passed from parent to child. They were obviously not going to have a governing body to issue proper documentation any time soon.


    --


    Amaru made his return journey the slow way, on his own wings, feeling the wind dance across the world.


    How strange it was to think of his flight as being slow.


    Seen from this elevation the fragmentation of the strings was more obvious, but he was even more certain that it was because their strength was fading than just because their flow was being interrupted. Anywhere that the path was disturbed the strings were broken instead of stretched.


    When he dove into the sea to speak to the seafolk, the strings there were still less fragmented than those that ran across the land, but now that he knew what to look for, he could sense their tenuousness. The echoes of the song that would normally have carried from one shore to another were too faint.


    The devices that the mankind had created were much more efficient than the strings at transmitting information via the words the mankind used. But they were limited in the range of information that they were configured for, they did not convey the songs or speech of dragons well. The child''s suggestion of creating a chat group had been a good one, but it would be even better if the transmissions weren''t so limited. The devices had bad ears, or perhaps it was their voices that lacked the proper range.


    The other problem was that both methods of communication seemed likely to be unavailable while the world turned over. Or perhaps, since the stars remained in their accustomed places, it was actually just the flow of its pull upon the particles that turned over. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    As far as his own senses could discern in the past, when the heart of the world finished turning over, the strings that reformed flowed in reverse as though the world had been turned upside down. The ''down time'' had never lasted for as many tens or hundreds of thousands of years as the ''upright'' alignment, and the capacity of the strings never reached the same strength. Because of this he had speculated that perhaps the world slept for a while after it turned over.


    The youths all seemed to believe that the ''digital communication'' carried by waves of light and powered by tamed lightning would continue to work, even if their guesses that magnetism was the way humans had defined the pull of the Earth that guided the strings proved true. But despite their optimism he still thought it likely that the crafts that flew above the world would fall when their sense of direction became muddled. However, the information they carried was quite useful, and perhaps they could be modified to follow an artificial guide until the strings regained their strength.


    He did not hurry, despite his desire to begin investigating the structures and functions of the devices that rode the fragile crafts high above him. There was still much to learn along the way.


    --


    "We got our first dragon applicant!" Tanwen announced triumphantly.


    "How can you tell that the person is really a dragon?" Mac asked the copper haired woman who wasn''t a woman curiously.


    Tanwen pouted as convincingly as any human ever had, and replied, "I recognize her." She added a little sourly,  I suppose that it''s possible that someone else could have photographed her though¡­"


    According to Chris the other dragon was probably over thirty times his own advanced age, but her disappointment over her realization was as poignant as a child''s.


    "If you know her, there might be something you could ask about that only she would know?" he suggested.


    Tanwen brightened for a moment, but then frowned again. After a bit she nodded at him and agreed, "Yes, I can confirm her identity easily enough, but there will be difficulties when it is an individual I am not acquainted with. Thank you for the suggestion."


    When she remembered that he existed, she was oddly polite, charming, and even alluring most of the time. But it felt like her interactions with mere humans were something like a game that she was very good at, if she paid attention. Unlike Chris, she did not seem to regard any humans as true friends, family, and well¡­ real people.


    "You''re welcome," he assured her anyway.


    Even if his own life was as short as the life of a cat or a dog to Chris, he knew that he would be mourned when he was gone. This ancient child was waiting here to meet someone that she obviously idolized, so she had the capacity for strong emotions, but there was apparently a line in her heart that humans had yet to cross.


    Her eyes watched him curiously. The intensity of her curiosity would have sent him running when he''d been a child. Intense interest in others without hostility or desire was rare, so attracting someone''s interest usually meant you were in danger of losing something.


    The ancient dragon who came and went as he pleased from the mountain above the city seemed to regard humans in general as a pestilence, but consistently treated individuals as people. Rather deficient people, and he was rarely polite about it, but¡­ somehow he knew Mac''s kind quite well, even if there were many things about the world they both lived in that seemed strange and new to him.


    "Why haven''t you asked to join?" she asked.


    He blinked at her. "I''m not a dragon?"


    "But you talk to dragons all the time," Tanwen pointed out airily.


    A twinge of guilt stabbed his old heart as he wondered if he''d misjudged her.


    "Your application would be a good test, since you know so much about us. If I can''t keep people like you out I probably need to think of a better challenge," she muttered.

 Fragment 67

    It had taken her this long to consider that many others of her own kind would be doing the same thing, even if they lacked the resources and access that she had. Hers had been traded in exchange for allowing the humans to take samples of herself, so that they could learn about her using their own methods. Knowledge for knowledge, if not in the usual way.


    Actually, it hadn''t occurred to her at all until the group suggestion had popped up as she was dismissing notifications. ''Dragons of Science Song Share''. If you knew of both Dragons and Science, it was a logical name for a ''chat'' group. There was little doubt that whoever had created it was familiar with at least one dragon, because the image used to represent the group was that of the elder who was perhaps the eldest of them all by now, or perhaps not.


    He was a good choice in any case, as it was likely that all but the youngest would have encountered him at one time or another in their lives. Humans too had engraved his image into their history, but this was no painting or carving, it was the current style of picture that people captured with tiny artificial eyes on their data devices.


    ''Dragons of Science Song Share'' was a private group, and the application required a ''full body image of the applicant''s natural form''. It also asked, "What''s your favorite food? When did you wake up? What do you trade for knowledge?"


    It was rather bothersome, since it required her to ask someone to take her photo.


    --


    "Perhaps the reason so many species are coming to an end is that the humans are hogging the available lifeforce within the sea of life that fills this world?" Tanwen speculated.


    "That''s ridiculous. People and animals can live in outer space, they aren''t tied to the planet," Chris argued.


    "Dragons are tied to the planet," Tanwen countered.


    Chris couldn''t prove her wrong, because he didn''t know if any dragon had actually gone into space yet, but he couldn''t help wondering if it wasn''t just that they ran out of air to lift themselves through when they got too high.


    "Weren''t prehistoric creatures all a lot bigger than the ones now? What if it''s not just humans, but all of the species on Earth? What if she''s right and the amount of lifeforce is limited, and that''s why plants and animals have gotten smaller over time?" Anne asked.


    "Amaru said that the strings are fading, but he never mentioned anything about everything dying off. If living things were suddenly going to die when they reached the lifeforce capacity of the planet, overpopulation would never really be a problem right?" Chris replied reasonably.


    "Who knows? I doubt that the elders knew that the time for the world to turn over was coming so soon when they settled into sleep. Anne could be right," Tanwen argued.


    "What if that''s why? Why the virus can''t be stopped, and can mutate to infect other species so fast? Because the rivers of life are fading and everything is going die soon?" Anne asked nervously.


    "Everything will not die," Tanwen assured her kindly. "There are obviously many species that have survived the reversal of the world before, and my teacher has even lived through several."Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Anne suddenly turned and stared toward the door. "He''s back!"


    The door opened a moment later and Tanwen dropped her human form in a flash and dashed over to greet Amaru in her own compressed form.


    Chris recovered from his surprise and greeted Amaru with questions instead, "If the world runs out of lifeforce when the strings fade, will the unweavers get stronger? Will people get weaker and die because there isn''t enough lifeforce to sustain them?"


    The elder dragon laughed. Amaru stepped inside, politely closed the door as Mac had taught him, and then followed Tanwen''s example. He shifted into a compressed version of his natural form, and briefly touched noses with the smaller dragon.


    Chris wondered if it was a customary dragon thing that neither of them had mentioned to him, or if it was a more private little ritual.


    While he was hesitating, Amaru replied to his question as usual, "I do not know if the unweavers will thrive as the energy carried within the strings disperses. It is an interesting idea, but life is stronger than you think."


    "See, everything will not die!" Tanwen repeated.


    "Where does the energy go?" Anne asked.


    "And where does it come from in the first place? Does drinking from a living heart provide lifeforce because that is where it is generated?" Chris added.


    Amaru gave them all a draconic shrug. "The energy carried within the strings is not vanishing, it is merely dispersing, like water into mist. It is more like the pull of the world that is weakening."


    "Gravity is not weakening," Chris immediately refuted the elder dragon. But a moment later he asked, "Is it? I wonder how that''s measured?"


    "The physical pull of the world does not change when it turns over,"Amaru affirmed.


    "But if life energy is dispersing won''t living things grow weaker, or even run out of energy completely?" Anne asked again. Everything that she was learning about sensing the strings or streams of life and absorbing energy from the pools would be useless if they vanished.


    "No. Perhaps it is even the reverse?" Amaru speculated. "I think this is a time of abundance as living things respond to the strength of the song of the world."


    "Then the strings are pulling lifeforce away from living things?" Tanwen asked doubtfully. "But a strong lifeforce pulls them toward it."


    Amaru stretched his clawed hands as he explained, "The energy of life flows like water flows, and when the world vibrates with the song of growing, the energy scatters out like rain storms. But when the world settles the energy forms streams and pools again."


    Chris frowned. The analogy seemed to support Tanwen''s theory that the lifeforce available was finite, but that didn''t fit what he knew of the scientific theories about the formation of life itself, because at one time nothing had lived on the planet.


    Amaru continued though, "Plants and animals alike can be energized by the world''s song. The unweavers might also be strengthened, but living things which carry the energy of life within themselves definitely grow stronger and reproduce more often. And perhaps, like the flow within the strings, the flow between the world and the life that populates it can change directions and replenish the energy of the world when it weakens. It is not something that can be seen clearly even with true sight."


    "The world is a giant battery?" Anne asked incredulously.


    "Actually, yes. At least in theory," Chris replied with sudden amusement. "There have been people who have wanted to charge up the Earth itself so that free electricity could be distributed worldwide."


    Anne and Tanwen stared at him disbelievingly, but Amaru simply nodded. Perhaps the dragon had read about the idea. Oddly, the theory settled his own worries about the finite nature of life energy. If the Earth could act as a storage device, then the circular flow could be explained without the energy itself being limited to the single container''s capacity.

 Fragment 68

    ''Dragons of Science Song Share'' grew far more quickly than Chris had expected. In the time it had taken one dragon outside of their small household to join, five more had joined. Five became thirty, and thirty became three hundred.


    The strings seemed like a slow and inefficient method of communication, especially after having listened to Amaru grumbling about the time it was taking the echos to travel any significant distance as they thinned and fragmented, but it was the method dragons had used to communicate for millennia. The three hundred dragons within the growing online community quickly became three thousand. And then, almost suddenly, a new member became a rare event as a straggler joined now and then.


    Chris gazed at the screen beneath his fingertips thoughtfully. Tanwen had quickly gotten bored with being the administrator, and he''d expected to have to take over, but another dragon had received the dubious honor. There were more discussion threads than there were members. A new one popped up as he read, suggesting that dragons have themselves declared an endangered species.


    Chris looked up from the screen when Mac settled into the chair across from him.


    "Interesting times," Mac suggested.


    Chris grinned at the wrinkled old man that he''d known as a young boy. "There has never been a time that hasn''t been interesting."


    "Maybe before we were born?" Mac suggested. "They say that the world moved slower once."


    Chris shrugged. Mischief sparkled in his eyes as how''s fingers danced across the screen and he posted the question to the main chatroom.


    It only took a moment for an older dragon somewhere on the other side of the world to reply. "The world moves very quickly, faster than anyone can fly, and it is actually slowing down over time."


    Another dragon, one of the ''young ones'' who was at least twenty times as old as Chris, immediately responded, "I think that the child wasn''t asking about actual movement speeds. The development speed of the humans has been increasing for as long as I have existed. We were obviously wrong about them having reached their limits, as they are developing even faster despite the new encroachment of the unweavers."


    "Life is always interesting, and life has always moved quickly," another older individual added.


    Chris smiled wryly as he read the first replies to Mac. "The child," seemed to be sticking as his name among those of his own kind. Amaru assured him that there would no doubt be at least a few more children within the year, but he was currently still the youngest known.


    Amaru and Tanwen were traveling the continent, locating the stone hearts that still stood and strengthening their alignment. Chris had wanted to go with them, but he had things he needed to stay for.


    Mac chuckled as he listened to the quick flow of words from ancient beings that had walked the world when it was young. Chris read another, more philosophical reply, "The world is like a tree that blooms in its own time, and while the blossoms are engraved within my memory long after those moments have passed, time is the wind that carries them."The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Mac''s wrinkled face scrunched as he considered the reply, and then he nodded. "Sounds like one of those poems written by a man of war, whose memories are the bulk of his possessions. But it''s true, events do seem to come in waves that could be called seasons."


    "I will always remember you," Chris promised.


    Mac grinned at him, unphased by the admission that he would be gone long before the youngest of the dragons. "I know," he replied simply.


    --


    "I''ve given up on getting revenge," Anne announced.


    Chris didn''t respond right away, and she wondered if he''d even heard her. He glowed brightly in her vision, and the waves spilling off of him danced with reflections as bright as a noon sun. Part of her felt a little bitter about the fact that the man with thousands of years ahead of him was learning to control that energy faster than she was.


    A hundred years had always seemed like a nearly endless span to her. When she''d been very young, it had sounded like a goal, when she''d been alone in the dark it had sounded like a sentence. Now it was not enough, a fraction of the time she wanted to spend in this world.


    Chris dimmed in her vision before he opened his eyes and asked seriously, "Do you want me to stop?"


    She blinked at him. The words didn''t make sense for a minute. "Stop? You mean¡­ I didn''t think you had done anything yet?"


    Chris smiled at her, and his teeth looked disturbingly sharp in his draconic face, before his form shifted in a wave of light that only she could see. It blinded her for a moment, and when her vision cleared his too ordinary human face returned her stare.


    "You didn''t understand why I told Amaru that I couldn''t travel right now because I need to keep my job?" he asked with amusement.


    "Well¡­ living expenses I guess?" she suggested hesitantly.


    "I promised you your revenge. I imagine he''s suffering quite a lot at the moment," Chris said a bit smugly.


    "Because you work at a fast food place?" Anne asked doubtfully.


    Chris nodded. "He lost his job, and he hasn''t been able to prove that he''s eligible for government support. I knew it was working when they asked me to prove my identity. I''m fairly certain that we both turned in the same documents, but I had his family members to vouch for me."


    Anne gazed at Chris blankly. "Why wouldn''t they vouch for him first?"


    "I''ve been sending support money to Juan''s half sister, who has two small children and has apparently been estranged from him for years," Chris explained cheerfully. "I speak to her once or twice a month now."


    "He had a sister? I didn''t know about her, how did you find that out?" she asked.


    "I sent his grandparents a message claiming I was changing my phone number, and they called and scolded me about how I should be helping out more," he explained.


    "You talked to them? And they seriously didn''t realize you weren''t him?"


    "It''s not that hard to imitate a voice," Chris said silkily, in Juan''s voice. Anne shuddered, and was glad when he continued in his ordinary tones, "At least not for me."


    "Oh."


    Chris tilted his head and his smile was still disturbingly sharp even with his relatively dull human teeth, as he said, "I believe he''s been living in the street lately. With his identity in question, he hasn''t been able to get another job, and his girlfriend apparently threw him out recently. But if you are ready to let the matter go, I can stop maintaining this identity."


    Anne discovered that she wasn''t the nice person that she''d always kind of believed herself to be, despite some guilty moments, and self doubts. "Don''t stop," she replied almost instantly. Guilt made her add, "Unless you want to, I mean, you don''t have to live as that jerk forever."


    As the word forever left her lips, she wondered when it had become false. A mere human lifetime wasn''t even close to forever. She wasn''t going to have enough time to learn as much as she needed to.


    "It won''t be that long," Chris assured her.

 Fragment 69 - Final

    Anne stood beside Mac who bowed his old head as the stone slid into place. ''Gregory Vincent'' rested here, according to the words engraved in the surface. It was an unfamiliar name, and the body beneath the stone wore an unfamiliar face.


    Mac''s hand was surprisingly warm as he squeezed her fingers. "I''m glad," he announced.


    She looked away from the stone surface to examine his face doubtfully. "Glad?" she asked tremulously.


    Mac reached out and patted the stone with his other hand. "I haven''t got much time left, and it''s the hardest thing in the world to watch your child die."


    She gazed at him with confusion, and couldn''t stop the tears that blurred her vision. "But he¡­ he said," she protested weakly.


    Mac moved his other hand over to pat hers where it was held between his small warm fingers. "I know, he wanted to stay awake this time until I was gone. But it''s better like this, and he''ll find you when he wakes up again, he promised."


    Anne nodded numbly. Chris had talked almost continuously since realizing that his fatigue lately was signaling his need for sleep. Mac looked cheerful now, but he''d been outraged when he''d learned that the dragon had known weeks in advance. Not because Chris had hidden anything from the two of them this time, but because of how the dragon had left him half a century ago.


    The two of them exited the little crypt and pulled up the exaggerated lapels that were part of every new jacket design, and covered their faces against the breath of the world, and the snowflakes that stung as they whipped around on the twisting winds of the storm.


    The world was restless. War had written more bloody stories into the new century, beginning in the far East. But those skirmishes had died down surprisingly quickly when the Emperor of one of the oldest countries in the world had flown out of his sheltered palace and descended upon the bureaucrats who had long ruled in his place. It seemed like humanity hadn''t yet evolved to a point where fights could be broken up without kicking some people in the head.


    The unweavers, as the dragons knew the viruses that had plagued the world for longer than any species that currently lived had existed, were still waging war on far more individual fronts across the entire globe. The promised vaccines were only temporary measures to reduce large outbreaks, but every day a little more was learned about exactly how a virus could rewrite a cell. And every day a little more was learned about how a dragon could modify its own DNA.


    Chris wasn''t the only dragon who had woken at the beginning of the turn, but he might be the first to fall asleep. Amaru had informed them calmly that it was likely because Chris was so young and his sleep had been interrupted. But it seemed unfair, when even the newest babies hadn''t fallen asleep yet.


    Two years, she''d only had him as a friend for a little over two years, and he might sleep for decades. Anne stared at the sky without seeing the clouds, as ripples of light on the water that spilled out of the heart of the vast dragon who hovered above her covered the sky.


    Teacher. Generations of dragons called the one currently known as Amaru Drakon their teacher. In her strange vision, no longer untrustworthy, he shone like a god, despite the way the strings had faded into a pale mist that resembled what Chris had seen when he looked at the world with his half blind true eyes.


    "You okay?" Mac asked.


    Anne lowered her gaze to his wrinkled face. Ordinary, human, mortal. There was no bitterness over those facts within this cheerful old man. "Yeah, I''m okay," she assured him.


    They walked out of the old fashioned garden of stone where the so-called monster who had saved them now rested, and into a city of glass and steel. New buildings shone in the dim light, standing tall against the freezing storm that swept toward the mountain. Housing for those who had once had none. Safe, clean, and free.


    Anne had never imagined her broken country would be one of the first where people realized that protecting their own health was easier when they protected the health of everyone one around them. Old Jose had resided briefly in one of those towers, although now he lived in another town with the little family that he had unofficially adopted.


    "They aren''t gods, but there are good men among them," Mac said.


    Anne glanced at him, and he nodded toward a church where the figure of a dragon perched where a cross had once stood. "And women," Anne added after a moment.


    Mac flashed a grin that belonged on a younger face at her. "Even so," he agreed cheerfully. "Never would have guessed that brat would be the one who pioneered a new branch of science."


    Anne grinned back at him. "Tanwen is actually amazing with human technology, and you know it!"This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Mac nodded. "A beautiful narcissist, an unapologetic speciesist, older than Christ, but she''s a good kid at heart. That poor ex spy though¡­" he clicked his tongue in a sympathetic noise. "Guess it just goes to show that those who are willing to cross the boundaries are the ones who can push the edges of our limits."


    "I wish¡­" Anne murmured.


    "Live long, live well, you''ll be one of the first when they get it working, so you have to behave yourself young miss," Mac spoke teasingly.


    She nodded. It wasn''t magic. It wasn''t a cure all. And Tanwen and the elder who had developed it guessed that only the ''wise'' among them would be able to attune themselves with their own patterns until they could build machines that could directly push the patterns through their existing structures.


    --


    It was time to move, Sarah decided abruptly as she watched the college students digging up the garden that the dragon had once dug up in a far more destructive fashion. She would miss the capstone that covered the mysterious ''heart'' that seemingly collected an energy that dragons could consume, but her days were never quiet anymore.


    "An expert on dragons," they called her now. She scoffed silently at anyone who believed that, as she gulped down the last of her tea.


    All she''d done was search for evidence that what the dragons had told her had been true. It wasn''t her fault that there had actually been quite a lot of evidence lying around. Misidentified relics, unsolved puzzles, and even a few bones.


    An island, she decided. A nice flat little island in the middle of a warm sea, someplace without any mountains. Not too many people.


    --


    He stretched, and reached for the heart of the world as the fires began to burn. His compressed form was far too heavy for the fragile craft to carry, but to the world his entire being was merely a small fragment.


    The heart of the world felt slippery, and hard to grasp. It was constantly moving as curtains of alignment shifted within the molten core, pulling and tugging at the intangible shrouds that wrapped the Earth. The strings had almost completely dissipated, and the magnetic fields rolled and spun like dancers around the planet. Only the newest and the oldest of the aircraft were able to fly safely during the turning of the world, when the birds flew in strange patterns over hills and seas that they had never seen before.


    But this fragile craft was never meant to be confined to the sea of air that cradled the Earth. Many of the youngest had vied for this uncomfortable seat, surrounded by devices that watched him with hundreds of artificial eyes and ears. But only the oldest and strongest of the dragons were able to grasp its heart, and so Amaru was the one who would test the boundaries of the world. The child had once suggested that the only reason that dragons were tied to the Earth was because they had reached the limits of the atmosphere, but Amaru suspected that he would reach the limits of his grasp before he escaped the limits of the world''s pull.


    His true eyes were not limited by the boundaries of physical sight, and he watched with interest as the curve of the Earth grew more pronounced. Even though the craft was traveling upward faster than he could fly on his own wings, it felt slow. It was a pity that this test hadn''t been possible before the strings had dissolved and he had missed a chance to learn the pattern of the world itself as its true roundness was revealed ever so slowly. He would have to try this again after the world had settled into its new patterns.


    The fragile material beneath him crumpled as the spacecraft tried to rise faster than the dragon it carried. He had reached the limit of his grasp, and his true weight tore through the fragile materials that were moving too quickly for him to align himself to move through before the craft split and shattered around him. Perhaps the very youngest children could ride a spacecraft all the way beyond the Earth''s pull, but this was his current limit.


    He expanded as he fell into nothingness above the sea of air. The void above the sky pulled at his fragments, trying to force him to expand faster, thinner, and farther. He held to his pattern and reached for the distant heart of the world that had slipped from his grasp. A less experienced dragon might have burned to death as pieces of the fragments that made up the world tried to slice through the whole fragments that made up himself, but he had experienced nearly every environment the world had offered him.


    His wings caught the thinnest air high above the clouds, and he flew. Breath was still denied him, but one who had swum into the Earth far enough to feel the stone soften could endure without breath for long enough. He circled the world on his way home, and observed everything beneath his eyes impartially.


    The world had changed beyond his expectations, but it was still filled with familiar patterns. The mankind, the plague that consumed seemingly without limit, was very similar to the unweavers in another way. They both wrote their own pattern into what had existed before.


    It had not yet been spoken, or sung, that he knew of, but despite attaining the separation of I from us, some knowledge was still shared from one heart to another. Their kind must write their own pattern into the hearts of the mankind if they wanted to survive.


    Perhaps some had known this longer than others, or perhaps the mankind had been writing themselves into the hearts of dragons ever since they had begun to create their own words. Had there ever been a human language that did not have a word for dragon?


    The sea sparkled in the sunlight beneath him, and the seafolk leapt into the air and called out to him as he skimmed the surface.


    --


    The car hummed quietly as it passed overhead.


    The young dragon formerly known as J. Chris Torres in his last brief ''life'' watched it drive away with an expression that contained no trace of the world weary vampire who had once walked this city.


    He fingered the small card that had been placed in his hand while he slept, and examined the more familiar watch on his wrist. Only two decades had passed, but the world had obviously changed beyond recognition.


    The card belonged to Chris T''Andy, a Dragon registered with the United Nations of Earth.


    He had so much to learn.