Draka

On the one hand, I had just saved a little girl’s life and brought her back home to her parents. That felt really, really good, and I was rather pleased with myself. On the other hand, I had been repeatedly insulted by an overgrown toddler, it was getting late, and I was still hungry. I was no closer to solving that, and I would obviously need a long-term solution.

I needed to take stock of what I had available. I hadn’t properly done that so far, being too caught up in everything that had been going on, so I found a decent spot where the moss grew thick and plopped myself down to check myself out. A mirror would have helped, but I hadn’t even found a reflective pool so far. I had to rely on my hands for what I couldn’t see. Carefully starting from the top, I had two stubby horns on top of my head. No external ears, though I could hear fine, and there were two thick flaps of skin that I could move with some concentration to open or close my earholes. That might be useful. My face was kind of dog-like, I guessed, with a snout full of sharp, curved teeth and a long tongue. My eyes were set farther apart and to the sides than I was used to, but I hadn't noticed a problem with that. On the contrary, my field of view was wider, which should help with detecting anything moving to the sides, without sacrificing any ability to focus on things in front of me. I also had a great sense of smell, compared to a human. My head sat on a long neck, so that when I stretched it out as far as I could I could only just touch my horns. It could turn far enough for me to look at my own back, which took some getting used to. All of these things should make it easy to find and eat animals smaller than me. The only problem with that was that I really didn’t want to.

My torso wasn’t that different from what I was used to. I had wings and some big, beefy flight muscles of course, so that was new. Other than that my hips were set a bit wider and I wasn’t as adapted to standing or moving on two legs. I could balance on my feet, but my ankles, hips and knees got tired pretty quick. I still had opposable thumbs, so my hands could still grasp things, but my fine control was way down. On the bright side I had some pretty savage claws that I could retract, partially, and my feet were built for grasping, too. Probably to carry off prey. I was a predator, through and through.

To finish off I had a fairly narrow, tapering tail. I couldn’t do much with it other than swing it around, but it did help with balance. And under the tail… I didn’t want to use my hands for that, so I bent at the waist and used my long neck to have a look. Yep, like I’d concluded before. I was all reptile. Just one smooth slit, the combined functions of which were easy to guess. As far as I was concerned I was still female, but to be honest I had no damn way to tell what my body was. And all that had no bearing at all on the problem at hand.

I had good senses. I was strong, I had sharp teeth and claws, and I could fly and run pretty fast in bursts on all fours. I could also spray something, come to think of it, either venom or acid. Trying to remember the feeling from when I’d driven off the boar I tried to do it consciously, but only managed an embarrassing dribble. Still, it didn’t seem to do anything to the moss, so venom was more likely. I also had most of my body covered in overlapping shield-shaped scales, which proved very hard when I tested them with my claws. My belly and the inside of my joints had flatter scales that didn’t overlap, to allow for a better range of motion.

I was an apex predator. That was the only conclusion. I had fought and killed a croc on its home turf and come out fine. As long as I could find and catch something that wasn’t too much bigger than me I could probably kill it. The issue lay in the finding and catching, and the fact that I didn’t want to tear some poor animal apart and eat it raw. However, I was pretty sure that I had to eat meat to survive. Like a cat. I’d read that cats couldn’t even taste sugar, because they were so dependent on meat for a bunch of nutrients. Judging by the tastes my body had displayed, dragons were the same, and it wasn’t like I could get farmed meat from a butcher.

I wasn’t happy about the obvious conclusion. It came down to survival. I needed meat, and I had no access to fire, at least not yet. I was going to have to learn to hunt, and then get over myself and get used to eating some raw meat. Mentally, I felt disgusted. Physically, I got hungrier. No nausea or disgust, just a gnawing in my belly.

Hungry as I was, I still didn’t have it in me to start that day. I filled up on water, then got airborne and flew back to my cave, resigned to going to sleep hungry. I’d hunt in the morning.

The first thing I did back at the cave was to check on my hoard. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but neither did I question it. The feel and smell of the gold settled my nerves, and after a few minutes I returned to the entrance. I sat on the ledge, watching birds fly and the trees move with the wind, until the sun dropped beneath the mountains behind me, drowning everything in shadow. It was peaceful. No highway noise or aeroplanes passing by, just the wind and the birds. A few small patches of slight brightness must have been villages, with something larger far to the south-east. I probably wouldn’t have been able to see them with human eyes, but my new body saw much better in the dark. Not perfectly by a long shot – there was little in the way of colour – but instead of simple blackness I could see a million shades of grey and a thousand subtle shades of black, and above me there were so many more stars than I was used to.

It was beautiful.

As I lay there, relaxed and looking out, I felt my eyes getting heavy. I slunk back inside my cave to my sleeping spot, curled up with my wings covering me, and went to sleep.

Morning came and I woke, resigned to hunting for my breakfast. The most likely strategy was clear. I had wings, claws, and a long, agile neck. There must be reasons for all these things. Every predatory bird that I knew of hunted by swooping down from above and either surprising or outflying their prey. Maybe there were some flightless predatory birds, but I didn’t know and it didn't matter. Why couldn’t I do the same? I’d fly around until I saw a likely target, then swoop down and grab ‘em. Easy.

It was not at all easy. Everything I knew about my new body told me that I was set up for success, but putting that into practice seemed impossible. I found a small herd of mountain goats and just went for it, but they scattered. When I picked one to follow it turned out that even though I was faster than it while flying, it was so much more agile than I was that there was no contest. By the time I gave up I suspected that the damn thing was having fun and messing with me, standing still until the last second and then popping out of the way while I ate rock. I decided to take my bruised ego and battered flesh and try the forest instead, hoping for a boar or even a rabbit, but there I couldn’t see anything. The canopy was too dense. While hunting goats I did find a stream in the mountains near my cave, though, so that was nice.

I tried going after birds but had no more luck there. Every time, they’d spot me and either outmanoeuvre or outfly me as I got close. By the time the sun started to get close to the mountains I was far past frustrated. I was famished, and more than a little upset with myself for not being able to do the one thing my body seemed made for. Besides, I was getting genuinely worried. I’d been doing a lot of flying, and I knew that I must have spent many times more calories than I’d got from the meat and cheese I’d eaten. I was in very real danger of starving. Soon I’d start getting too weak to fly, and once that happened, I’d be done for, wouldn’t I? I’d just have to curl up with my treasure and die.

Was that how people in comas died? Did they die in a dream and just go? I still didn’t know if everything was a coma dream or whatever, but I really, really didn’t want to die. I could fly. I could talk to people. I had sort of made a friend, maybe? It didn’t seem fair that I should die because I couldn’t do the one basic thing that every hunting animal in the world could.

Maybe I could find Lahnie and beg her for something to eat.

It was with those cheerful thoughts that I headed back to the mountains for another hungry night’s sleep. I’d go to the stream and fill up on water, and then I’d wait for morning to come around so I could try again. My next plan was to use myself as bait in the lake. Croc wasn’t so bad.

One hungry night became two, then three and four. I'd go out, come back as the light failed, check on my treasure, and sleep. On the second day I tried baiting crocs, but they were either rare or smarter than I gave them credit for. On the third and fourth day I was desperate enough to dig for worms and search for carrion, flying as little as possible and trying to use updrafts to glide when I did. I raided a few nests for eggs, swallowing them whole, but it did little for my hunger.

It felt like the dragon got stronger the hungrier I got, making me angrier and less inhibited. When I curled up to sleep at the end of the fourth day I could hear the voice, my voice, whispering to me. Not an intrusive thought, but an actual voice telling me that there was one place that I knew of that was full of prey. Pine Hill was small. Surely they didn't have any warriors? And there were little ones there that liked to wander…

I would rather die. The dragon would not.

On the morning of the fifth day my life and possibly my soul were saved by a stroke of luck. Beautiful and heart wrenching all at once, I saw a mountain goat. It must have slipped or been knocked off a cliff, because one of its hind legs was badly broken and the other was pretty banged up as well. It was trying to move but barely making any progress, and it was making a horribly sad mewing sound.

I landed in front of it. It scrambled back in terror, trying to get away but falling over and over again as it tried to support itself on its broken leg. The scene was… I had a certain image of myself. I thought of myself as fairly calloused. Shit happens, and you deal with it. Sometimes people get hurt and you help them if you can, and if you can’t that’s too bad. This made me want to cry. I felt so bad for this poor goat, and I knew that there was only one thing I could do for it, but it was hard. The dragon didn't care at all, of course. It wanted to pounce and start tearing, whether the goat was living or dead, but I held back. I tried to rationalise. The thing was as good as dead. The leg would never heal, and if infection or blood loss didn’t kill it some predator would. No reason that predator shouldn’t be me. I closed in.

“It’s alright, little goat,” I lied. I guess I was trying to deal with my own guilt for what I was about to do. “It’ll be over soon. No more pain.”

I wasn’t sure how to do it, though. Not safely. I didn’t think that I could break its neck. It looked pretty sturdy. Lots of animals killed their prey by crushing the windpipe with their teeth, but I didn’t think that was a good idea because the thing was bigger than I was and it might do some real damage to me if I hung on to it until it suffocated. I decided that cutting the big veins and arteries in the throat with my claws would probably be the quickest, kindest way. I was trying to get in a good position to lunge, do the damage, and get out when the goat went on the attack. It lunged at me, horns first and broken leg be damned. In one reflexive motion I leapt back, hissed, and sprayed venom at its face, a dense mist that I could never replicate consciously. It got in the goat’s eyes, nose and mouth, and the thing went mad, screaming and tossing its head around. I stood back, horrified at what I’d done, and the screaming got softer and turned into a wheeze, and then nothing at all. The goat still moved, scrabbling with its hooves on the stone and tossing its head. It couldn’t breathe, its mouth opening and closing, its eyes bloodshot and rolling madly in its head.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Then I sprung forward. I extended my claws fully, dug them into the goat’s neck, and raked them along its throat. Blood pumped and spurted, quickly pooling on the ground. The poor thing kicked weakly a few times, and then it was still.

I had tears in my eyes as I used my claws to strip the skin from the goat’s flank, and finally got to eat my fill.