How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

From what I’ve been able to learn from reports in my Discord, is that Wentin has the smallest territory of any local dragon.

Mine is second smallest because maybe I gave too much of it to Joel as reconciliation for hurting him so much in our fights.

One of those fights happened within Wentin’s territory, the Fairport Arboretum, and it was very loud and involved fire. And Wentin didn’t intervene or show itself at all. Pretty seriously atypical of a dragon.

It turns out that we can saunter through each others’ territories without much trouble a lot of time, if we’re quiet and lucky about it. Luck is less important now that we’re talking to each other online, though. Getting permission smooths things over a lot.

But there are still rivalries. And we also all mostly just stick to our territories as much as we can. Most of us feel very responsible for them. Anurak being something of an exception.

But that fight happened before we all started getting to know each other, and Wentin just let it happen without rebuke for some reason.

Every dragon is wildly different. Even those of us who have similar morphologies have a few significant traits that are not the same. Both physical and emotional. We don’t all share the same instincts.

So, while Wentin’s behavior is atypical, it’s also stereotypical. In that its behavior is unique to it.

One of my hopes is that Ptarmigan will have the opportunity to perform a thorough divination on it and learn more than she might with anyone else, because it is supposedly a walking nightmare. According to her.

I do find myself asking if Wentin is actually a dragon, though.

Not, does it rate as a dragon? It certainly does. But, is it something older and worse?

And right after that, I ask myself once again, what does it actually want?

Saturday. September 21. The day before the Fall Equinox.

I keep missing these old special dates with whatever I’m doing, for some reason. The full moon, the new moon, the equinox. They matter to some people. Maybe they’re important. But I keep forgetting to schedule for them because I’m more focused on what’s in front of my face, I guess.

Middle of the day. One of the last Farmer’s Markets of the season is happening up across the street from Flounder Sound Brewpub, and this park is relatively empty of people.

It’s close enough it normally wouldn’t be. There’d be kids playing in the playground. Which I was banking on, actually. I wanted human witnesses.

I wanted a reason to keep the violence and scary posturing to a minimum.

But something is keeping the humans away from Joel’s favorite park, today.

I’ve watched from my rooftop as kids have climbed on Joel like he’s a piece of playground equipment, with his eyes closed and his breath long and relaxed. So it’s not Joel.

There’s a guy at the end of the peer with a panicky dog on a leash, and he’s trying to keep the dog from jumping in the water to get away.

And there are some absolutely ignorant seagulls picking away at things left in the park by people earlier in the day.

On a picnic table, there’s the skeletal remains of a fast food meal that was just left there. And the birds have knocked over the milkshake, and popped the lid off, and it was half full. The gulls care more about that than the possibility of being swallowed by me. Or than whatever it is that’s keeping the humans away or terrifying that dog.

Are gulls the harbingers of something in someone’s culture?

If I were in my human disguise, it’d be easier to look that up real quick.

And looking at Joel and Chapman and Ptarmigan, who are arrayed to either side of me in the middle of the field, I’m thinking not think as much about any of this as I probably should.

I’m wondering how Rhoda is doing. I’m worrying about what she’s thinking while holed up in her apartment alone. I’m hoping she’s taking this moment to get down to the shop and have a nice tea there by herself without the rest of us there, maybe. And I’m hoping I’m doing something she’d actually approve of.

Even though it can’t fly, and we’re in the middle of a large field in an open park in the middle of the day, Wentin still manages to make an ominous entrance.

While glancing around at my surroundings, waiting for it to appear, there’s a moment when one of my tiny blind spots, the wedge of space directly behind my head, is aimed at the area in front of my body.

And when my head twitches to look at something else, Wentin is there.

I’m not the only one startled by this. All four of us are, including the two Artists.

Maybe it was the one moment we were all looking away.

“Hello!” Wentin croons like a saw on a chalkboard.

Joel jumps back and barks, almost like a dog but way bigger.

Chapman’s hands suddenly go out to hir sides, like sie’s trying to steady hirself.

Ptarmigan looks up and blinks and grimaces.

I find myself reared up and flapping my wings and hissing like an alligator doing an impression of a goose. It’s almost like I see this in third person, the dissociation is instant and fleeting.

“Oh! You honor me, Meghan! Thank you,” Wentin screeches. “Please, though, can we get down to – oh, hello.” It notices Ptarmigan and takes a step back to lower its head and look at her. “I recognize you.”

“I wondered if you would,” Ptarmigan said. “How’s life?”

“I’m quite enjoying it, thank you,” it answers magniloquently.

I currently come up to its breastbone. Like, the lowest point of its chest as it hangs between its two front legs, while I’m on four legs too. Rearing up, I could place my head neatly in its mouth.

While it and Ptarmigan regard each other with apparent respect, I take out my tablet and arrange it for talking.

“How much do you remember?” Ptarmigan asks Wentin.

“Oh, this and that,” it responds. “I remember what I am more than anything. Which is truly the most important thing! Don’t you think?”

“It certainly saves a lot of trouble.”

“Have I ever told you that you are not my favorite Artist?” Wentin asks, but doesn’t give room for an answer. “I quite like you and respect you, yes, dear Nightmarist. But there are others that are more inspiring to my work, it turns out. And you are more like a doctor than a muse, if I’m not incorrect. Yes?”

I notice as Ptarmigan starts saying her next words, she also begins to move her right foot in circles and swirls on the grass, and my shift nerve starts to buzz as she says, “You are quite correct. I find it satisfying that you recognize –”

“Oh, what is it that you are doing?” Wentin squeaks. “Don’t you recall that I can feel that? Especially from you.”

“I’d like to figure out what your place is in this new development. How did you get a physical form along with everyone else,” Ptarmigan says unperturbed, and continues scribbling with her foot. “It shouldn’t hurt and it shouldn’t give me an advantage over you. I’ll share my findings if you let me continue.”

“What should I do if I don’t like them?” It asks with a very suggestive tone.

I interrupt by asking, “What do you want, Wentin?”

It seems all too happy to be distracted, like it’s not actually threatened by anything that we’re doing collectively, and it says, “Oh, yes, Meghan. You are the one I really wanted to talk to. The turncoats still operate unchecked and unidentified, and I understand you have other concerns.”

I huff. I wasn’t adequately prepared for this conversation and composing the proper response will take time. And Wentin is talking in a way that makes me feel rushed. Like, if I give it too much of a pause, it will fill the silence with more of its grandiloquent ambient noise.

Fortunately, Chapman steps up and asks, “Are the turncoats actually real, Wentin?”

“Oh, there are always turncoats, especially in a population as large as Independence County,” brushes the question off. “Or should I just call them the opposition? It’s not like they declared their allegiance to Queen Meg to begin with.”

“You said options,” I manage to say.

“Yes, I did!” it chirps. “There are so many we could choose from, too. It depends on what your expectations are, I suppose. But I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if we discuss them.”

“What options? Options for what?” Chapman asks for me, as Ptarmigan starts scuffing and kicking the ground.

Joel, for his part, has plopped his butt on the ground like a giant extremely misshapen corgi, exuding the casual carelessness only the ignored can afford. It’s helping me, though. I like his manner.

Wentin actually pauses, tilting his head at Chapman and grinning to show off his broad, flat, triangular teeth that could slice through flesh like knives.

And in that pause, Ptarmigan mutters, “I should have done this long ago.”

“Scenarios,” Wentin drawls long and smoothly, tasting each syllable of the word as if it was rendering it with its mouth and not some biological stereo speaker set deep in its chest. “Oh, my dear Artist of How Things Bump, so many delicious scenarios.”

Chapman scowls and looks it up and down, and then says, “Why do I feel less scared of you with every word you say?”

“Why should you be scared of me to begin with, Artist? I’m only here to serve,” Wentin emphasizes that last word as if its meant to mean something else that pleases it too greatly.

“Yeah, no. You’re harmless,” Ptarmigan grumbles.

“Manners, please!” the monster protests.

“You’re literally one of the world’s oldest nightmares, and your job is to keep animals on their toes, their instincts honed, and ready to run when there’s a hint of danger. And talking is your weakest stance,” Ptarmigan says. “No, Wentin, I respect you. These are my manners. Interpretation is translation. It facilitates diplomacy.” She turns to me, “Wentin is effectively bearing its throat. It wants to serve you. It just doesn’t know how.”

Joel yawns and Wentin shuts up, looking just a little bewildered and maybe smaller.

It waits patiently and quietly as I look at Ptarmigan and then Chapman, tilt my head, and then look at it.

And then I’m given the time to look down at my tablet and compose a question, “Are you a dragon?”

But Ptarmigan answers for it, “Oh, yes, definitely. That was part of the whole point of my divination right now. I thought I knew exactly what it was since the first time I met it. We had a delightful series of conversations back then where I learned what it does. But, what I didn’t know was how it was related to you. It’s a dragon. Just like you are. Its place in the world is just really ancient and obvious. It might even be one of the oldest dragons.”

Chapman asks, “Wentin. May I scan you, please?”

Wentin demurely bows its head. And for some reason, now that it has fallen silent I feel more afraid of it. But Chapman takes that gesture as assent and taps hir wrists together.

Shift.

“Oh. It is there, isn’t it. It’s not in our minds, not a shared hallucination,” Chapman exclaims. Then sie asks Wentin, “How did you sneak up on us suddenly like that?”

Wentin relaxes and smiles and croons in good humor, then says, “I’ve always been able to do that. It’s just one of the little perks I provide for those morsels that deserve it.”

And suddenly I’m not scared of it again. I’m so soothed by its words and manners that for a brief moment I want to be eaten by it.

“Shit,” I say, and shake my head.

Wentin giggles.

Then it says, looking to the side to demonstrate the length of its mouth as it talks, “I can consume your vessel as many times as you may need, my lady. It is my specialty.”

I take three steps back, eyes wide, wings wide and ready to beat shit silly, tail lashing.

Joel harumphs in a bored way, and it helps me come back to myself and relax a bit. But holy shit, I feel the need to get as far away from that maw as possible. 

It’s like when I was small and wingless, standing on the edge of Ross dam and knowing that I would throw myself off it in a heartbeat if my parents weren’t there to scream at me while I did it, and holding back more because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to fly after all, even though my body insisted I could.

I wonder if humans feel something similar when I transfix them.

Ptarmigan points to me and says to Wentin, “That might be useful. If you aim it at the right person.”

“Yeah, but please don’t do that to Meghan again, thank you,” Chapman adds.

Wentin grins, “Would you like some?”

“No.”

It’s Ptarmigan’s turn to coincidentally speak for me, asking, “You don’t actually know what Daniel Säure is up to, do you?”

“I’ll never confess my weaknesses,“ Wentin complains.

“That’s OK, we can work with you anyway,” she says. “I think you’ve already helped us out immensely, and you’ll make a great messenger and agent of…” she looks at Chapman and actually grins for the second time I’ve seen, “chaos.”

“Yeah,” Chapman says. “Also, maybe stop sewing discord in the, uh.. Hm. They chose that name on purpose didn’t they? Wentin, can you please stop scaring the shit out of the other dragons?”

“Oh, but I need to eat.”

“You don’t actually eat fear, do you?” Chapman asks, squinting and frowning. Then sie looks at Ptarmigan.

“No,” Ptarmigan says. “Hilariously, it feeds on agreement. It’s just always achieved that agreement by terrifying its audiences. They agree that it’s terrifying and they run, and it grows. Or they agree to give up and die, and it eats them in their dream, and it walks away satisfied as they wake up in a self recriminating panic. For this Earthly vessel, though, I expect it needs real food.”

“I most certainly do not!” Wentin protests.

“Really.”

“I do not. Agreement, as you say, is more than enough.”

“Fantastic. That tells us more.” Then Ptarmigan turns to me with her typical stony face and says deadpan, “Meg, Your Highness, I think we may have found you a mentor. Wentin should be able to teach you things that we can’t.”

I creep carefully back to my tablet to ask, “How?”

“Wentin,” Ptarmigan addresses the nightmare. “Could you, if you wanted to, describe to Meghan what it feels like to do things like move instantly through whatever means it is that you do that? Or how to change your size and shape, as I think you can do? I’m right that I saw you shrink just a moment ago. I’m not sure she can do those things, but the sensations might be similar to other things she can do.”

“It would be a challenge,” Wentin says with an eagerness that doesn’t befit the sentence.

“Would it be more… effective? Perhaps? If, while you explained things, you did something, like…” Ptarmigan looks past Chapman at me with hooded eyes, assessing me in a way that makes me profoundly nervous, given the circumstances and present company. I realize I haven’t fully developed my trust in her. She still has an air that makes me wonder just how much of the truth she’s ever telling me. “Chase her, Wentin! And try to eat her!”

What?

It’s Saturday afternoon, broad daylight. There’s a huge gap in the clouds allowing everything to be illuminated by the sun, and I’m dissociating furiously. This is unreal. One moment, I was negotiating a deal of some sort with another dragon, hoping it would go OK, the next, I’m running for my life.

I can flap my wings. I can jump. I can even fly for fifty yards or so. But I cannot get high enough to bring my feet and tail more than a foot above Wentin’s reach.

It’s just like the recurring nightmares of my youth, and now I’m wondering if it wasn’t Wentin in those dreams, too.

I can’t be awake right now, it doesn’t make any sense.

But I also don’t dare fly out over the water, because I’ll have to land and I’ll find myself in the drink.

And while I can head into the city, and try to climb my building, that would mean leading Wentin into crowds of people, and I can’t do that.

And as I’m running and dodging and dashing and flapping all over the park, like a hapless chicken chased by a dog, Wentin is fucking lecturing me.

But it’s like taunting instead. Taunting with suggestion.

“That’s right, Meghan, this is all very real,” it cackles. “Everything you and I do in this little dance of ours has immediate consequences. It’s no dream this time! Hold onto that while I swallow you whole!”

I rumble, and I squawk, and I knock, and I shout “Mayor!” and say “shit” and none of it does any good.

I can’t keep this up. I’m not an endurance hunter like a human is. I can already feel my body flagging and running nearly on empty. Pretty soon my muscles will stop working, even as I dodge around old, abandoned storage tanks.

And the others just watch, like my family did in my nightmares.

“But there are rules to this, Meghan,” my nightmare screams. “And the rules have always been the same! You know them! You’ve followed them! You’ve successfully evaded me for hundreds of thousands of years! Millions!”

What?

I’m so distracted by that, I lose track of everything else and just become aware of where my body is and what it’s doing in relation to the monster. I don’t think I even remember to breathe.

I feel like that’s just dissociation, especially because of how aware I am of my situation in the moment, and the thought of wondering if I’m breathing or if it matters because I can’t feel it anymore.

Now it’s like I’m moving my body through sheer will, and there’s no resistance.

“I will eat you, Meghan. That much is certain,” it whispers, and I hear it perfectly clear through my own squawking and flapping. “But before I do, you will remember the rules. Through the repetition of practice and reflex, you will retrain your conscious mind. And you will live!”

Jesus shit, fucking Christ, Smaug on a biscuit, it almost got me that time!

“You can do anything your body remembers doing, Meghan, if you let it, or I will eat you now!”

As I jump straight up, flapping, and bring myself just high enough for Wentin’s teeth to snap shut an inch below the tip of my tail, I wonder what the rest of the city is seeing and hearing. How can anybody let this go on without comment or action, without social consequence? Where are the dreaded police that have been watching? Is this what they want? To see one dragon get eaten by another, cut in half by teeth that have evolved to sever scale and bone?

What are the rules?