Meghanology – book 1 of girldragongizzard

What can I do?

The funny thing is, the police are actually holding my territory for me while I’m away. Whitman is likely in no shape to tangle with them while they’re there. And I can hear that they’re still there.

I can also hear that Wilhelm and Waits are not directly hurting each other, but still facing off, with low cries and calls coming from the direction of where I’d left them.

Maybe I can salvage this?

I’m at a loss.

And I’m hurting more.

I’m hunkered down in the garage, breathing as long and slow and deeply as my body will let me, which isn’t very, and I’m trying to make sense of the messages on my tablet. But there are too many words and I’m too discombobulated.

I can see, though, that more of my humans have joined the group. That’s a good thing.

And I get the gist that the Council sessions adjourned unresolved shortly after tonight’s action began, with notes of alarm and confusion from Council members.

Oh, shit, my back is starting to really sting.

I don’t think it’s as bad as what Astraia suffered at the claws of Loreena, but it makes me think of going to the vet anyway, and I reflexively let out a few nervous knocks of I guess it’s laughter.

Then I fall silent and still and wait for Waits and Wilhelm to zero in on me.

Which it doesn’t sound like they’re doing.

OK.

Shift.

Chapman’s still keeping tabs on me, if more slowly.

A couple moments later, a message from hir appears in our group chat.

“Meg. A child approaches.”

And then I hear the scrunch of gravel under sneaker.

Oh, no.

“What do?” I type.

And just as I hear and see the child come into view, the reply returns, “I’m not Morphius.”

“Oh,” a soft, low voice says, and I look up.

As I’ve gotten older and less human and further removed from my middle school years, I’ve had a harder time gauging the ages of, well, all humans. But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d want to say that this one was around 13 or 14. Voice just recently dropped from testosterone, most likely. Maybe that would be 15.

They’re small, still, though. Mousy brown shag cut for hair, and a T-shirt with a graphic I do not understand on it. Basketball shorts and some brand of garish sports shoes that are probably reasonably supportive and cost more than the amount of use they’re likely to see is worth.

In the night, even in the light cast by the bulb by the back door, they seem to glow to me. Not just the details that are in ultraviolet, but an overall lightness in color than the surrounding world. That’s their heat.

I’m used to that from whoever I look at now, and have been since I first really noticed it, but it’s a detail that really strikes me in the moment for some reason.

“What are you doing in there, little guy?” the teenager asks.

Little. I’m bigger than they are.

I look down at my tablet, hit home, hit the ACC app, and then hit the words, “Am girl.”

“Oh!” They say. “I’m a boy, uh, he/him. My name is Jeremy. You look hurt. Were you fighting those other dragons dad’s watching?”

“Yes,” I say.

Speaking of the other dragons, I hear that squabbling die down considerably. And then, as Jeremy continues to talk to me, I watch as Waits hops into view down at the intersection of the alleyway and the street, looks down at the two of us talking, and then continues on toward their home on foot without a word.

Both choppers are getting quieter, too, and there aren’t any sirens anymore.

“I didn’t know dragons could talk,” he says. “Though, I guess that makes sense, because some of you can in the stories the movies are based on. But, I don’t think anybody has said that real dragons can talk.” He squints and tilts his head. “You were a person once, right?”

“Yes. No,” I answer. Then take the time to type out, “Therian.” I’m making a pretty educated guess he’ll know what that means.

“Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense,” he replies.

“Other dragons AAC?” I ask, and then point at my tablet and tilt my head.

“I guess? I don’t know what AAC is, but I’m guessing you mean text to speech?” he asks. “Obviously, yeah. I mean, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic is literally still leading his country, and done interviews over text, so, yeah.” He shrugs. “Though, everyone says that’s not going to last. We learned that in school, anyway.”

That interests me. That gives me the idea that what I want to do locally should be possible, even if I have no real clear idea about how to go about it.

I want to talk to Jeremy a lot more, right now, so I go to start asking another question.

But he says, “Look, I’m supposed to close the garage door and get back to my dad. And you can’t be in there when I close it. He’s gonna wonder why I’m taking so long. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I say, and move to put my tablet away.

I don’t really need to interview Jeremy to do my research and thinking. It was just nice to be talking to someone who’s not trying to hurt me tonight, really.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks me as I start to walk out of the garage, with him backing up.

“Yes,” I say.

“What’s it like –”

I interrupt him by saying, “Stop.” Then I say, slowly, “Yes. No.”

“Oh,” he says, kind of glumly. Then cheers up a bit, “That’s why you were using the tablet for the other words. Me dumb. Got it. Um.. Do you like being a dragon?”

I give him a good cat smile and say, “Yes.”

“Cool.”

I don’t fly home.

I crawl by way of one of the bridges that Waits hasn’t claimed as their lair. And I’m quiet about it.

It takes me longer, but I manage to make it.

The only problem is that the police are still camped out on my block with lights flashing. Especially in front of my fire escape.

So, if I want to get back onto my roof, I’ve gotta fly. And if I do, they’ll probably see or hear me land. And I don’t know and can’t see what’s waiting up there for me. The heat of the day is still radiating off the top of it and giving me no clues.

Instead, I bypass my building by circling around it from two blocks away and head toward the parking garage that’s a street East and a street South of my building. Well within my territory. It’s not as tall as my building, but it’ll give me a decent lookout.

While I’m making this journey, I’m thinking to myself, “You can never go home.” Which sure is melodramatic, but it feels like it fits anyway. Too much of my life has been never-being-able-to-go-home before this, anyway.

And I’m also out of immediate contact with my friends, because I’m walking and I can’t chat on my tablet while doing that.

But I do feel a couple more shifts from Chapman, and in the process learn that they seem to have figured out where I’m going and plan to meet me there. And when I sneak in via the Southern-most entrance to the structure, from the alley and down a set of steps to the bottom floor, Chapman’s there.

“Don’t go to the roof,” sie says. “That’s where the helicopter that I altered ended up landing, and they’ve got people there guarding it. Please also don’t ask questions.”

“Yes,” I say.

“You’re injured,” sie leans in to look at my shoulder and back. “That looks really nasty. No wonder you didn’t fly.”

“Yes,” I respond.

“I’m worried about the injuries you’re all doing to each other,” Chapman says, almost poking at it. “It’s not good for any of you, and I doubt any doctors or vets will serve you, with the way things are going right now. Those gashes on Astraia looked like they should kill her. I’m hoping they don’t even make her sick, but all I can do is hope. For now.”

Now that I’m in the light of the entrance of the parking garage, which isn’t great, but works wonderfully for my eyes, I can see my injury clearly.

Oh, yeah, this is part of how I know what my markings look like! I haven’t mentioned that in the excitement of everything else, but I can preen myself almost like a swan. There are still a few scales here and there that I can’t reach with my tongue or eyes, but I can reach those with my wing claws. I mean, obviously, I can’t look at the back of my own head.

It’s a gnarly gash and kinda scary to look at.

It’s not muscle deep, though, I don’t think. Looks like it made it to my subcutaneous fat. There’s a layer of white visible that’s marked with red blood. And it did bleed a lot, because there’s dried blood all over my back. But it is bleeding much less now.

Astraia’s wounds cut into muscle, visibly from across the street.

“Yes,” I say again.

“I’m thinking you should go for the other parking garage that’s even further away,” Chapman suggests. “You’ll want a good place to do your morning calls, away from the police presence, with lots of escape options and decent visibility. But it’s still just barely in your territory. When you chased Hippoface out of town, you got their territory.”

Oh, that’s what I had thought might have been the case.

Sie holds up a finger and says, “That’s not like some dragon custom, either. Not from what I’m seeing globally. There is no dragon culture. You all work things out and are making your own cultures regionally, locally to you, based on who you were to begin with, from what I can see.” Sie looks at the floor. “Which is admittedly a lot more than most people can see. But I’m sure historians and dracopsychologists will look back and come to the same conclusions.” Sie looks pointedly back at me. “Most of you were all raised by humans. You have dragon feelings, but you think like humans. You interpret your feelings from a human cultural perspective.”

I tilt my head quizzically. I’m going to have to think about that. It feels like it matches some of my previous thoughts and observations, but now I’m not sure how to untangle it all. What is draconic and what is human?

“Come,” Chapman says and starts heading back up the stairs I just came down. “Let’s get you to your new spot, and I’ll fill you in on the way while I text everyone to update them on your status.”

“Yes.”

The next morning. Saturday. August 31. A full week since I first woke up as a physical dragon.

I lead the morning cries again, but this time from the southern parking garage.

And while I’m doing that, I’m thinking about the dreams I’ve been having for the past week. I know I’ve been having them. But I only remember them vaguely. Until last night’s dreams.

It had seemed like the dreams of Friday night a week ago, that ushered in my new life, had been the last vivid dreams of my life, but not anymore.

That night I’d dreamt that I’d gone back to school naked. College, I think. One of those nightmares. Only, when I looked down and discovered that that was the case, I solved the problem by tearing off my disguise, and spent the rest of the dream as the dragon I was always meant to be. And it was great!

Last night, on the other hand, I dreamt that I was touring the world and talking to dragons from different communities, and learning how they did things. It was like a continuation of Chapman’s discussion with me. Maybe like I was processing it, internalizing it, and making sense of it.

It was also, most of it, a really great dream. But it was clearly a dream, because no matter where I went I was able to talk to any dragon just as if we both spoke English perfectly fine. Only, it was dream speech, with no actual words most of the time. We were just sort of conversationally thinking at each other with our dream syrinxes.

I don’t think that itself was a breakthrough of any sort. Just a convention I sort of learned from shows like Star Trek with their universal translator, or other science fiction or fantasy stories where everyone just speaks the same language, which is usually English. I’ve had a lot of experience with linguistic barriers this past week, but it’s still all in the context of English for everyone around me, including myself. So, I haven’t been training myself to think outside of that language, obviously.

But it’s got me thinking about the morning territory calls.

I’ve been calling them challenging cries, or calls of challenge. And, yes, we’ve all been using them outside of the morning routine, and I used my own last night to terrorize two other dragons.

But it really feels different in the morning.

It’s almost more like we’re just calling out our own names to let each other know we’re still alive, still here, and to say something like, “Good morning, everyone!”

And it especially feels like that when every dragon I’ve met personally, plus at least one more, has been injured in some way.

Anyway, to hear it from Chapman, apparently a lot of dragons worldwide do fight upon seeing each other, especially when caught in one another’s territory. But not all of them. There are some corners of the globe where that’s not happening at all. Usually specific towns or small cities in the smaller countries. Where the population is big enough to still pack the dragons nearly as tightly as here, but in a smaller area. But where the local culture is just somehow conducive to not thinking in terms of the whole alpha/beta/omega garbage that got misinterpreted from wolves and spread around so thoroughly where European languages might be spoken, even in trade.

I’ve also read that that garbage is still kind of applicable to wolves. And some – lupologists? – people who study wolves still stick to that interpretation and provide lots of evidence for it from the wild. But then lots of other evidence is provided to counter various claims of the theory. And the general conclusion that is agreed upon is that some sort of anthropomorphization is going on that needs to be kept in check.

Anyway, dragons aren’t wolves!

We are the furthest thing from pack hunters entirely!

Most of us are very solitary ambush predators, from the looks of it. And our instincts tend to make us very decent guardians. Which matches all the myths.

I do wonder, for personal reasons that haunt the back of my mind, if some of those guardian instincts come from the need to protect clutches of eggs as much as needing to claim feeding grounds and chase competitors away.

I also wonder what my hoarding instincts are meant for. Collecting food for lean months? Or collecting something for mating rituals? Or, what?

I’d take the time to look it up for birds, like crows and ravens, that are known to collect shiny things. But less than halfway through the morning roll call, police sirens from around my building start up and, I presume, start heading my way.

Just as expected.

Now to try out escape plan A, as proposed and arranged by Chapman.

Without any humans around, sie felt much more free in introducing me to what sie can do. Sie did ask me to swear to secrecy as well, but not the same kind of vow. Not as verbally binding.

Hir vow isn’t bound by magic, by the way. It’s just a solemn promise to protect hir knowledge and sources of it, and to keep hir practices as secret and hidden as possible. With some strategic loopholes worked into the specific wording so that sie can still function and do hir practices without explicitly breaking the promise. But, failure to comply only leads to being found out.

And, sie figures that that can be bad enough.

For me, sie just asked that I don’t write any of it down, nor tell any human about any of it. Not immediately, at least.

And then sie gave me the most clichéd MacGuffin ever, which I’ve been keeping in my purse. An amulet. Or pendant, really. I’m using the word amulet because it sounds more magical.

It’s really simple looking, though.

It’s a silver chain with a big silver Venus symbol on it. Like, woo, feminism!

With an emphasis on the “woo”, though.

It has Chapman’s signature style of sigils engraved all over the back of it. Which is why it’s as big as it is, because these ones are extremely complicated.

When sie’d handed it to me, sie had said, “A lot of my work takes a lot of preparation. And, I’ve been working on this one for a few years, specifically for someone like you.” Sie lowered hir head to look at me through hir brows. “I’m implying a lot there that I’m not going to explain. Suffice it to say, this might be the most vulgar craftsmanship you will witness from me for at least half a decade.” Then sie had looked over at the stairwell of the Southern parking garage and said, “I’ve also spent part of yesterday preparing this space for you, in case you needed it. And there’s a change of clothes in a duffel bag under the stairs back there. You will know when to use them.”

I had tilted my head, just as I am doing now as I pull the pendant from my purse with a single claw. I feel like putting it on is going to be really tricky, despite what sie had said. It’s not big enough to fit over my head, even without my horns. And I can’t work a clasp.

“When you need to use it, just hold the loop open with both your claws and start to slip your snout into it. It will take care of the rest,” sie had said. “It’s been pretty warm in the mornings, so it might not be so chilly. But, from what I understand, the sense of temperature might be a shock to you all the same.”

With that in mind, I do as instructed.

And everything happens exactly as sie had described.

And, realizing that, I run, slap slap slap slap, to the stairwell. On two feet. Thinking as I go, I should have done that in the stairwell!

And something feels wrong.