Meghanology – book 1 of girldragongizzard

Not every dragon can fly. Astraia can’t. She doesn’t even have wings.

I’ve only seen Whitman and Wilhelm flying.

It seems like everyone else has been homebodies so far.

I’m kind of really hoping, of all things, that Waits can fly. And I’ll feel really lucky and fortunate if more than half of the others can fly, too.

It could be that they could fly if they tried and practiced, but haven’t gotten to that point yet.

Oh, and I have no idea how truly eclectic they all are. I just have some guesses based on their calls, and the other three dragons I’ve seen. Wilhelm looked kind of like a sheep-horned buzzard with a serpentine tail, by the way. I think that’s actually a significant sample size for a small population of local dragons, four out of fourteen. Three others and me out of thirteen others and me. Not all the city’s dragons. Just the ones I get to talk to in the morning, plus Whitman. There have been other cries further out, but they’re too faint for me to describe.

I’m going to leave Whitman out of this plan, because they don’t actually need any more harassment and trouble from me, assuming they even survived our last encounter.

Anyway, I decide to give Waits some warning, because I need them to call out a few times as I fly around their territory, so that I know where they are. Because a single distant fly-by challenge isn’t going to do the trick.

I start squawking. Not so loud that it might carry to other neighborhoods, but loud enough for Waits to get annoyed and answer. It’s not my full challenge. I want them confused.

As I’m doing this, I notice that one of the helicopters is pacing me from higher up. Which makes me really nervous, but they’re not going to be firing anything at me over the city.

The rest of the eviction force, including the other helicopter, is surrounding and securing my building.

I can guess which chopper has come after me.

I adjust my calls to be louder than its blades, and Waits returns them with their challenge, loud enough to annoy their neighbors.

Fine.

A couple more call-and-responses, and I manage to triangulate where they are and wing it over there while Waits’ neighbors add their clamoring to the night’s racket.

All in all, the humans are actually being a little louder than us dragons. We sound like rather large birds, really. The humans sound like machined bullshit.

Helicopters are loud.

Which means it takes a lot of work to get Waits to pay attention to me.

Waits is the closest other dragon to me. Way closer to my own lair than any of the other dragons are to each other. Which makes it so that my lair isn’t actually in the middle of my territory, nor theirs their own. Which is also why I think of the library and courthouse as belonging to them.

And there’s really only one of three places Waits could hide during the day.

There’s a creek with three bridges that go over it, and they’re under the largest one, across the creek from the trail that goes under the bridge.

And if I go fast enough, which I do, I can pull my wings in and zip under the bridge, right past Waits, without plowing into the creek, and I’ve got plenty of winging room on the other side to pull up and circle around to do it again.

I do my full challenge as I make my first pass, and Waits hates that.

Waits’ challenge sounds almost mechanical, creaky and squeaky and rattly. I’ve heard a cockatiel make a similar sound, but much more quietly. And there’s a definite rhythm to it, like a contraption that’s being cranked. They’re the only other dragon I’ve heard so far that incorporates knocking into their cry, too. And their sound follows me as I take back to the sky and work to get the altitude I need for another strafe.

My helicopter circles the opposite direction to me as I rise, and I can’t decide if they decided to do that or I did. It’s grandly annoying that it’s there, and I think that’s the idea.

Briefly, I get that search light beamed right into my eyes, and my nictitating membranes flip shut immediately. I’m not as blinded as they might have hoped, but it does delay my next dive.

This time, as I start my cry, Waits starts theirs, and we’re shouting as loudly at each other as we can as I pass under their bridge.

I love it.

Third time’s a charm, and this time I manage to avoid the search light.

As I shoot under the bridge, a giant ball of porcupine quills with wings built like gorilla arms launches itself at me and just brushes my tail barb before slamming into one of the bridge supports. I don’t get a better look at Waits than that. Neither of us are appreciably hurt.

There’s a growl and a sound like a tree falling, and I glance behind myself to see a shadow flapping out from under the bridge to follow me. So I circle a couple of times, challenging repeatedly to stir up their ire some more, and let them get closer.

Then I shoot out toward Wilhem’s territory in the lettered streets, because I want at least one other flier as soon as possible, with Waits’ rhythmic cacophony following me.

The helicopter lazily alters course to maintain pursuit and harassment at a safe altitude.

Waits and I are chattering back and forth at each other for several blocks of the city.

And Wilhelm panics and takes to the sky long before I get us near them.

Nice.

Maybe.

With how skittish they are, I’m not sure I can taunt them into joining the chase, rather than simply flee. But their dying man’s anguished scream fills the night, and that’s cool.

I veer to try to circle them and intercept them, but they’re much faster than me with their feathers.

And that change in angle gives me a better view of Waits, who is gaining on me.

The helicopter’s search light washes over Waits’ form as I’m paying attention to them, and I get a good look at what’s about to slam into me.

Have you ever seen a potoo? It’s this weird frog mouthed bird with huge black eyes and a body that looks like it’s a small broken off stump of a tree branch. Take that and blow it up to the size of a wolf, which means every time you look at it it is bigger than you remember. Cover it in long quills. Give it those weird gorilla arm wings and freaking frog legs. And a whole damn scorpion tail with horizontal fish fins on it. That’s Waits.

If I couldn’t figure out how Whitman flew, Waits has me utterly stymied.

I pull in my wings and drop.

And I feel a sharp searing ripping sensation across my left shoulder as Waits’ beak, or something, scrapes along my wing and into my back. And I almost go all the way down hard.

I don’t know how deep they got, but that’s one of my flight muscles there. I need that.

And I’m reluctant to move it from the pain.

But my body knows that unless I move that wing I’ll be dead against the ground, and it stretches out nearly of its own accord. 

It’s almost like an autopilot has kicked in and is insisting on making a landing. Weak, rapid flapping slows my descent just enough to give me time to think while Waits wheels around to make another attack, and the helicopter pins me with light.

Not. Good.

And having used my fire to get the attention of the helicopter in the first place, it’ll be a while before I can use it again.

I need to start thinking of my fire like it’s the wave motion gun of the Space Battleship Yamato. The one anime I’ve watched, way back when I was five.

Why am I thinking about cartoons when I’m about to be obliterated by something that looks like John Carpenter’s Where the Wild Things Are?

Landing seems like as bad an idea as continuing to fly.

Waits is faster than me in both realms and pointier than me. And that helicopter is bent on making me an easier target.

I thought what I was going to do was a play made by one of my favorite web serial heroines - well, villainess - and instead, I think I may have allowed myself to be played by a spicy egg beater with a stadium grade flashlight and piloted by a semi-domesticated ape. And I’m not talking about Waits there.

The whole show of force by the police and whoever else is helping them was meant to flush me out and scare me off my building. And then drive me into some other dragon’s territory to stir up a fight.

Of course it was.

They wouldn’t have sent a chopper across the bay, my only safe escape, if they weren’t trying to do that.

And I thought I’d turn it against them by gathering a string of angry airborne monsters to tether along and bring back to the action.

I was so worried not enough of them could fly, I didn’t think about if they could fly better than me.

I feel a shift from the direction of downtown.

I mentally brace myself for an impact from Waits again, but then drop just as I hear their chattering rise in volume over the helicopter blades.

Waits can pounce. In that short distance, they can move faster than I can over ground. But in an all out sprint, or maybe the closest thing to an endurance run that a dragon can do, I’m thinking I’m faster on average then they are.

Waits flies right over me without contact as I plummet.

Well before I hit the ground, I screech against the pain in my shoulder as I stretch my wings out as far as they’ll go. Once there, the unharmed muscles across my chest are more important for keeping them there, and it’s easier to just glide and even swerve to go another direction. I feel my left back muscles tighten and stiffen as I’m doing this, though.

And I shoot down a street at just below tree level and come to a skidding, stumbling halt on the pavement just at an intersection with an alleyway running between houses.

I flap my wings a couple of times, inflaming the agony in my back, then pull them tight against me and dodge into the alley and start galloping down it, turning my head this way and that to get a visual bead on Waits.

That damn chopper and its light are making that hard.

There’s another shift.

Chapman is doing something, but what? And does it matter to me right this instant?

Oh, there’s Waits!

I duck and dodge into the direction they’re swooping in from, so that I go under them and have as little potential contact time as possible.

This sends me right at a classic white picket fence, and instead of scrambling over it like a civilized dragon, I bow my head and hit it full force with my horned skull.

I honestly didn’t think I was that strong or impervious to impact.

Planks and splinters shatter around me and I’m stumbling into someone’s backyard.

There’s a dog.

Suddenly awake, startled, barking immediately, brown, dense, and under me as I turn and leap over them to land and then bound over another part of the fence into a neighbor’s yard.

The light’s following me with ease and I know Waits is circling to dive at me again. Which is why I’m sticking to the sides of houses now.

I partially circle this house, dashing left down a walkway between houses toward the street, then turn right again to cut across the next neighbor’s front porch, where I get a short reprieve from the light because of the awning there.

But then I’m crossing another street and out in the open and Waits is ready for me, swooping in perpendicular to my path, following the street.

To slam right into a furious Wilhelm, just as I duck and dodge again!

Which is good for me, because I’m feeling wiped out.

But also bad, because none of this is helping our cause at all.

I don’t pause.

I don’t catch my breath.

I don’t look.

I keep moving, against the burning in my back and the growing empty aching of the rest of my muscles. The sudden drop in energy reminds me of my old chronic fatigue, and I don’t need that.

Part of me panics that I’m going to collapse unexpectedly and then be bed bound for several days after this. An old part of me that isn’t up to date on my situation.

An even older part of me that predates my own birth drives me to keep going.

I veer toward the alley again and dash down it in the direction I was going before. And dammit, the helicopter is still dogging me, undistracted by the furball I left behind me.

Another shift.

I wish that would do something clear and obvious here.

Yet another shift.

I can tell now that Chapman is definitely on the move.

And another shift, and the helicopter sputters and veers away.

I save my thoughts for when I’m not moving.

Which is soon, because I fortuitously find a beat up looking garage with a door that’s stuck open. Or carelessly left open by the owners, and just slide into it amongst the crap they’re keeping in there. Into a space that rapidly gets too small for me, and makes noise as I jostle all the boxes and piles around me.

And then I hold still, craning my neck to peer out of the garage, out the short drive and into the alley, on the look out for following trouble.

Shift.

There seem to be two categories of things Chapman is good at. Either reading my mind or my near future and seeing what I’m about to do, which I know elicits a shift. And altering technology, which, in at least one case, didn’t cause a shift to occur. But putting a file on my tablet may have involved slight of hand while sie was out of sight and mind, while sabotaging a helicopter probably required some supernatural or metaphysical effort.

Assuming I’m correct in identifying Chapman as a wizard.

As if sie possibly isn't.

I have the glimmer of an idea, but I don’t know exactly what I’ll use it for.

Oh.

Haha.

I can also communicate with my tablet, which I brought with me, and which is still safe and unharmed hanging from my neck.

I can do the think loudly and repeatedly about an important thing to see if Chapman can read it later, when the tablet isn’t handy.

Shift.

Or maybe we should practice it, but not right now.

Carefully, slowly so as not to jostle anything more, and failing a little at that, I pull out my tablet to look at it and think.

I have to extricate myself from junk and turn around to get enough floor to lie it down and turn it on. But I can hear squabbling between my neighbors still going on down the street, and the helicopter having trouble as it retreats. I think I’m fine.

Turning the tablet on, I see a considerable number of notifications in our group chat, and I open that.

It’s a lot.

But the latest message is from Chapman, saying simply, “Unnecessary, Meg. It doesn’t work like that.” And it’s a total non-sequitur to the rest of the conversation.

I respond with a single letter, “k.”