How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

It’s cold, it’s overcast. I’m not shivering, but I feel a little sluggish and very cuddly and I’m wishing I had a heat lamp. And I’m wondering what the winter is going to be like for me.

Ptarmigan’s outfit, which she never changes, actually looks appropriate for this dark, sixty-two degree with high humidity Pacific Northwest weather. 

So does Chapman’s. Sie is dressed like a classic witch, if that witch was also a carney and an Elvis impersonator, but with a cloak.

We’re on the roof of my building, and looking around I think I can see where the insulation is thin, because the colors are shifted here and there just ever so subtly.

My tablet is at my feet, and I’m sitting on my haunches.

They’ve both already scanned or made a divination for me, as a baseline for today. And I’ve reported how it felt.

I’ve also arranged with a couple of other dragons to participate in this.

Now, I turn to Chapman, “Scan Anurak.”

And I switch over to Discord as Chapman turns to face the direction of the library and touches the tattoos on hir wrists together.

I feel the shift, and then send Anurak a simple message, “Now.”

“No,” comes the reply.

“You,” I say to Ptarmigan with my syrinx.

Ptarmigan nods, looks in the direction of the library, holds up her little journal and scribbles furiously with her pen.

I feel her particular brand of warm, staticky shift, stretched out and a little itchy.

“Again,” I send.

“No,” Anurak replies.

“Thank you,” I tell him. And then to Chapman, “Next.”

This time Chapman turns toward where we know Astraia to be. I’ve invited her into my territory for this, and she’s tucked away into a different coffee shop, two blocks away, and very curious about how this will go. And Chapman does hir thing.

And I feel it.

And I notify Astraia.

She does not.

I look at Ptarmigan, who then does the same thing.

I feel it.

And she does not.

One out of three dragons so far can feel this, and it doesn’t have to be directed right at them. So far, I am a little special.

Except, I remember seeing Joel twitch in response to Chapman’s Art.

Joel’s been warned, and has been told to make a noise when he notices something. So far, he hasn’t.

I switch back to my app and say, “Now, in turn, each do Joel.”

Shift.

“Yawp!”

Shift.

“Yawp!”

So, he’s a little special, too.

I didn’t organize this with anybody else, yet. I wanted to keep it as much on the downlow as I could while at least confirming a basic premise. But now I do want to test this with nearly every dragon in town.

I report, “No Anurak. No Astraia. Joel yes only direct scan, both of you. Me yes every time.” And so I’ve spilled my tiny little secret to Ptarmigan.

She raises an eyebrow and her head slowly tilts up and to the side as she looks at me, expression otherwise deadpan.

“You say not done with me,” I tell her.

“I’m definitely not,” she responds. “But this does give us a really good idea of where to start, doesn’t it.”

“Other dragons,” I say.

“Yes, we should test them,” she says. “We could do that with a little less prep work, if you like, too. Chapman and I could tour the town over the next few days, and get permission from each one and test them then. And every time you feel a shift from either of us, you message the one you felt it from. Then we’ll report back and compare notes.”

“Good plan,” I say. “Watch for Säure.”

“Of course,” Ptarmigan says as Chapman watches her passively. “Meanwhile, I’d like you to meditate on that sense. See if you can pick up anything else happening around town, even subtly. Any little change in feeling, any direction or lack of direction. Even if you don’t really notice anything, paying attention to it will hone your ability to use it. And every time one of us pings you, you’ll get definitive feedback to reinforce it.”

“Okay,” I agree.

Over the next couple of days, I have one more pointless counseling appointment and continue my daily routine, which includes a lot of me time just resting on my roof. And, any time I feel a shift from either of my Artist friends, I send the relevant one a thumbs up emoji.

It happens a lot more frequently than I expected, but then tapers off pretty quick. By the second day, I’m getting nothing.

And I’ve been thinking about just what I can sense.

With Ptarmigan, so far, I sense it the moment she puts pen to paper, and it lasts the whole time she’s doing it.

With Chapman, however, I sense it when sie activates hir glyphs, such as when putting hir wrists together. But I definitely feel it coming from the middle of hir being.

Ptarmigan’s is less specific, her whole being sort of vibrates, and so does the pen.

But, I also experiment with the transformation pendant a few times, really focusing on it, and I don’t feel a thing except the transformation itself. That is pretty disruptive, though, and I know I can't sense anything at all when I’m wearing the pendant.

This tells me a little bit about how Ptarmigan and Chapman each channel and use their Arts.

And also, the fact that my sense of their shifts got weaker and disappeared as they got further away definitely seems to indicate I’ve got a range. A lot like how sounds will be fainter as they happen further and further away. That makes sense to me.

I suspect, with 900,000 Artists on Earth, it would be a nervous cacophony to me if I could sense whenever any one of them used their Art at any moment, regardless of range.

Chapman messages me at one point to say, “I think you have a range of about a mile with me. Roughly.”

Ptarmigan doesn’t send anything.

I don’t hear from her until they’re done and they both get back in person on Friday evening.

Before either of them have a chance to talk, I ask them a question as they climb up onto my roof to join me in private again. I’d been working on it for a bit.

“Can you sense each other like I can?”

“No,” Chapman says.

“No,” agrees Ptarmigan. “Not the same way you do.”

Chapman nods, and adds, “I can watch Ptarmigan do her art, and I can see most of what she’s doing when she does it. But, I don’t have some kind of warning sense that alerts me to when she’s doing it. I don’t think any of us actually have anything like that. It’s almost like the difference could be described by saying you have the equivalent to a fly or a cockroach having a hair on their back or leg that’s connected to a reflex that makes it fly or run when triggered by an air current. While, we each can see the wind as if it has layers of dyed smoke in it.”

“Yes,” Ptarmigan says. “Different senses with different evolutionary purposes, essentially.”

“What next?” I ask.

“We didn’t go all the way out into the county,” Chapman reports. “So we don’t have a survey of the dragons that live out in the other cities and such. But it looks like about one in ten local dragons has some degree of your sense. But you have the strongest. Locally, at least.”

“What mean?” I press.

“Well,” Ptarmigan says, crossing her legs and plopping down on the rooftop in one awkward jarring motion. “If your sense is a defense mechanism to alert you to the working of Art, and only a smattering of dragons have it and you have it the strongest. It feels like it’s new. And it feels like it suggests that maybe you have the trait because the dracomorphosis was caused by an Artist who was using you as the target of their work, the locus, the focus, the center of it, the catalyst. Something like that. But I don’t know.”

“And,” Chapman says, “because we don’t usually notice when another Artist is doing their work unless we’re paying attention to them, we don’t know who it was. Not definitively.”

Ptarmigan continues their tag team explanation by saying, then, “There are a handful of our siblings who could have done this. The Artist of Transformation is only one of them. But it would take a lot longer than a couple of days to seek them all out and ask them. And that’s only if they’re not hiding. And then we have to just trust that they’d tell us the truth. However, of course, I’m going to do just that. Just don’t expect results for a while. And in the meantime, we should think of other ways to investigate this.”

“This was a really good exercise,” Chapman says. “Thank you for suggesting it.”

Hm.

“Chapman,” I say. “You said dragons could appear naturally.”

“That’s still a possibility, yes,” sie says. “But that’s a harder hypothesis to test for right now. It’s easier to eliminate the possibility that someone triggered it first.” Then sie looks at Ptarmigan, “Unfortunately, the only other angle I can think of right now, for what might have set the dracomorphosis off, is to find out what’s happened with Daniel Säure. Why did he go into hiding, or outright disappear on August 24th when it happened? There might be nothing there, but it is conspicuous, especially along with one or more of his companies interfering with the lives of local dragons.”

“Yeah,” Ptarmigan agrees. “It’s more than one. He’s using all the clout he’s got to lobby the City and County Councils. The Daily keeps publishing stories about noise complaints against dragons, property damage, and fights. And their editorials are just full of fear and hate. That has to be Säure’s influence over the paper. Nevermind he’s the only reason it’s still in business. Morning Glory Inc. is his land holding company. That’s where his money makes more money. So it can stay apolitical, but it’s helping, too, really.”

That makes a lot of sense, and I want to get into figuring out what to do about it. Though I can think of anything remotely legal or peaceful. My mind is too bloody when it comes to this subject.

Instead, while I’ve been listening to this, I’ve been typing out another complete sentence. So, I hit “talk”.

“You two are very cooperative today.”

Ptarmigan looks at Chapman with mock alarm and says in utter deadpan, “What? No. Not with this asshole.”

“I strenuously object to being called an asshole,” Chapman says. “That term is inaccurate and incorrect. I am a jerk.”

“Are not.”

“I really am. I can be a complete jerk.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Okay,” I interject. “Shit.”

Their behavior is obviously a reminder to me that they think of themselves as siblings. And, it makes sense, they’ve been sharing this tiny little planet since before memory. And, of course siblings, especially ancient immortal siblings, will have complex relationships.

But then my mind turns to us dragons and how we interact with each other. And then I think of diversity, and how not all of us dragons can sense when an Artist is doing something nearby. But then I think about the rest of our physical and psychological diversity, and also where we come from.

Anurak’s human ancestry is Thai.

I’m pretty sure Astraia is Latina, like her boyfriend, though she has the Greek spelling of her name.

My family comes from a variety of European colonialist nations. Mostly Scandinavian and Germanic.

I don’t know about the rest of the dragons in Fairport, unfortunately, but I can guess we might be at least as diverse as the local population of humans. I know that I’ve seen the global demographics in an article on the internet, and no ethnicity is without their dragons.

But, like, Anurak doesn’t resemble any Thai dragon that I know of. He doesn’t even look anything like his namesake angel.

Astraia looks like an old Hollywood take on a hydra, a Greek monster. But, if she’s Latina, her ancestry might include Maya or Aztec, and a hydra doesn’t fit well there.

I’m the only stereotype I know personally, at the moment. And I’m pretty damn stereotypical for a modern fantasy dragon, though I’d probably fit in in a tapestry or illuminated manuscript.

I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that implication, so I want to look things up, see what’s going on around the rest of the world.

My two Artists have noticed me thinking and have been waiting for me to say something more. Their heads are tilted opposite directions, in imitation of my own favorite quizzical expression.

“Need to interview dragons,” I say. “Find out why shapes they have. Maybe clue.”

“You could ask that on your Discord,” Ptarmigan says.

I huff, and then say, “Yes.” Then I go into the appropriate channel and type out the questions more carefully, “@everyone Why do you think you look like you do? Is it how you feel you should be? Is it wrong? Imposed on you? May be clue to something. Thank you.”

I show it to Chapman and Ptarmigan before hitting “send”, and they both nod.

Almost immediately the words “someone is typing” appear with the animated ellipses.

All three of us are huddled over my tablet on the rooftop, Ptarmigan having scooted closer and Chapman kneeling down. We watch.

Anurak replies, “I am me. This is me. Don’t know why. I love myself this way. I look like my own monster doodles.”

Almost immediately afterward, Astraia responds, “We’ve always been a hydra. It just makes sense.”

And that’s it, for now. Those two were already logged into Discord for our experiment before, and have been paying close attention since apparently. The others may take time to filter in.

I start to feel quite a bit better. It seems like, so far, we’ve each known who and what we were.

Chapman points to the screen, “This is also good. It’s definitely backing up what I’ve seen elsewhere. But, again, thank you for reminding me of this.”

“Oh?” Ptarmigan prompts.

“Yeah,” Chapman says. “Across the world, dragons have appeared in every culture and every demographic conceivable, at about an equal rate. And they’re incredibly diverse. As diverse as their mythological counterparts. And while, say, you’ll find that almost all nagas, which weren’t typically thought of as dragons by their native cultures but have manifested, have the appropriate ancestries – which is quite a lot of cultures – those cultures also exhibit a lot of dragons of different origins or even purely chaotic physiologies. Like Anurak, who looks like a cross between something Maurice Sendak might have drawn and Trogdor, kinda. But, in every case where a dragon can be interviewed, they report being happy with what they are, or having always known it.”

“So, either this is an Artistry designed to provide wish fulfillment to people with severe species dysphoria, or…”

“This is what dragons are and this is the first wave of them emerging. Or something like that,” Chapman says. “I can think of all sorts of scenarios between those two. Compromises. Different triggers or origins.”

“Mm,” Ptarmigan nods. “And this eliminates any mechanism that involved transforming people against their will. At first glance, at least.”

“Makes it seem less like the work of an Art, doesn’t it?” Chapman asks.

My gaze is switching back and forth between the two as they talk, though I’m switching from right eye to left eye, and my head is moving in a small twitch instead of pointing at each one.

“In what way?” Ptarmigan asks.

“When one of us attempts something at this scale, it’s not this nuanced,” Chapman says. “There are too many variables to keep track of, even for one of us. But if we combine our Arts and do something collaborative, it gets really chaotic. This would require an eon of setup, one Artist laying the ground work before passing on a finished product for another Artist to work on, without creating a disastrous synergy, and narrowing it in with each phase until it was ready.”

“How do you know this?” Ptarmigan squints at hir.

“How do you not?” Chapman looks at her out of the corner of hir eye incredulously. “Well. It doesn’t matter. I’m the Physicist. Dragons might be my special interest of the epoch, but I know how energy and matter function, and this is that. When I really look at this evidence, the numbers don’t add up.”

“Which epoch? The anthropocene, or…”

“Don’t be obnoxious.”

“Don’t be vague.”

“Ptarmigan, how long have nightmares been a thing?” Chapman asks.

“Since I came into existence, at the very least.”

“Physics is older than that, and I also have my hands on a thesis written by a delightful student that suggests that dragons are really an emergent behavior of the general chaos of the universe itself. Physics,” Chapman says.

“Chapman,” Ptarmigan snorts. “Every time you go about describing what dragons are, you contradict yourself. You say something wildly different than before.”

“Dragons are like that,” Chapman says. “Isn’t that right, Meg?”

“Yes,” I say, without thinking. And then realize that I’ve spoken up between arguing immortal beings.

Ptarmigan apparently recognizes my expression, because she says, “Don’t worry, we’re not gods. We don’t smite people.”

“Well, except for the Artist of Smiting,” Chapman says.

Ptarmigan tilts her head and points at Chapman.

I look down at my tablet briefly

Wentin, of all dragons, has responded next to my query, “I’ve always had this recurring dream that I was chasing a terrified child through the woods. It was a different child every time, sometimes an adult, but this form is what I’ve always been in that dream.”

I wonder how it typed all that with its massive paws. If it uses speech to text, I feel like I’m going to be even more annoyed about it than I already am.

“That’s not disproving our theory,” Chapman says, pointing at the screen.

Ptarmigan looks, “Huh. I know that one.”

I glance at Ptarmigan as I wonder what that statement must mean.

Follow up question time. This seems like a non-sequitur but I’ve been thinking about this for a while, so I type in, “Do you think there will be more like us?”

“Don’t know,” Astraia responds.

“No clue,” says Anurak.

“Oh dear, yes please. I do hope that there are.” And I can just hear Wentin’s creaky breaking croon as I read the words.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Ptarmigan says. “It’s been around since before English was a language, at the very least. In the recurring nightmares of so many people. I’ve talked to it in an early Ingvaeonic once, I forget what that language called itself.”

We all look at each other.