Fragment 19

The young dragon had been distressed by his actions, but it would be wasteful to retreat to the mountain without eating more where there was food available.

It wasn't a garden, and held no heart, but the small indoor market had obviously been positioned by someone who could see, or at least feel the strings. He opened his true eyes and nodded. A climbing plant ran from floor to ceiling along the end of the table that held the dormant roots. It was a weak influence, but it was enough so that it tugged the string into alignment.

Whoever had arranged the roots themselves had been blind, but they still benefited from the flow of energy that spilled over and around them.

He listened to the child's worried flow of new words and watched with curiosity as the youth examined one of the devices that was fed by more than one of the odd cables full of lightning, although the second one carried little more than a stray spark. The child followed the weak cable with his fingers and his physical vision, as though he were true blind, and the old dragon frowned.

He crunched another handful of the spicy roots between his teeth as he watched the child manipulate the lock on the small door that led into a small partitioned space. He hadn't recognized it as a lock, but watching the process made it clear. For all the wasteful power of the youth's song earlier, he used his hands and a wire to move the metal instead.

He grabbed the rest of the dozen varieties of small spicy roots, and moved far enough to watch the young dragon manipulate another device that hummed to itself with the power of the lightning that ran in and out of it like a harnessed stream. He blinked in surprise when it lit up.

It was too bad that there weren't many roots of this strength, each one was worth a crate full of the apples he'd eaten earlier.

--

The vampire breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the system the shop was using to record the security camera footage. "Thank God they haven't updated things lately," he muttered. He glanced at the figure perched on the desk beside the monitor. "Or perhaps Budda," he added politely.

He had flattened his fingertips so that they left no prints when he'd pushed open the door, and he was no computer wizard to magically erase the evidence and leave false footage in its place, but he could delete the last few hours and shut the system down. He felt bad about the theft, but at least they were only losing a few fruits and vegetables.

He'd been a little surprised by that. The small tank of live seafood had made his own stomach rumble, but he'd resisted. He looked up to see the older vampire watching him, while chewing on another root of some kind. Was that ginger?

Maybe he'd misidentified it. The elder didn't seem to be at all distressed as he crunched the knotty brown root. He finished shutting the system down and straightened, and the older vampire seemed to take it as a signal and turned toward the outer door.

--

It took them almost an hour to reach the upper edge of the hivelike city, even though they walked faster than most of the mankind could run where the darkness hid them.

He stopped beneath a tree and asked the child, "Should we fly from here?" He repeated the question in the old standard tongue.

The young dragon responded by showing its talent and compressing himself all the way down into a small bat. He could only stare at the child for a long moment. After a minute he decided that the form was very unlikely to draw attention from the mankind. It was very sensible really.

Unfortunately there was no way that he could duplicate the feat. He was already compressed nearly as far as he could manage at his current energy levels. He grimaced and considered all of the large birds that could still fly. The largest albatross that he could think of was only a fraction of his density. Swans were heavier, but not enough heavier.

Perhaps a bird from a previous era? There had been a variety of condors. They had lived on another continent, but since they had already departed the world, no one would notice that discrepancy. He compressed himself into that vaguely remembered shape, and launched himself awkwardly into the air.

For a moment he flew as awkwardly as a chicken, but he quickly let himself expand a little and adjusted his shape. It was still laborious, but it would be much faster than climbing the mountain on foot. He circled after a moment, looking for the young dragon. The little bat was a laborious untidy flutter of wings, and he sighed.

It might be authentically small, but that form was obviously going to be too dense to fly easily despite the young dragon's naturally small size. He didn't have to suggest landing to change shape though. The exceptionally talented little mimic copied his own current form a few moments later, and quickly caught up.

--

Sara hadn't been able to settle down. A dragon had torn up her garden, and a lot of trees, and then shredded the torn trees into what almost looked like the wood chips that used to be spread on playgrounds before that weird sponge-like rubbery paving was invented. It had also shredded the tree that had blocked her driveway.

She felt dazed and exhausted, but she couldn't sleep. And possibly weirdly, she wanted to sit here on the large stone that apparently held some kind of dragon attracting hole in the ground beneath it, where she could smell the vibrant scent of the freshly cut wood fragments. She hugged her warm cup of tea that added its own softer scent.

The cold stone beneath her felt as solid and unmovable as it had always looked. The moon followed the same path, and although she had been thinking it seemed brighter lately, she suspected that it was merely her imagination playing on the headlines that said pollution levels were dropping at amazing rates.

Wildlife was supposedly returning to large cities across the world as well. She was sceptical about the "return" though. Both because of things like the photo manipulation that was going around which showed the Loch Ness monster visiting Inverness, and because she suspected a lot of the animals were simply being noticed more because people were stuck at home with nothing to do during the quarantine restrictions.

Then again, a dragon had relandscaped her garden and a good chunk of the surrounding forest. She sipped her tea.

Two impossibly large birds caught the moonlight overhead.

Sara choked on her mouthful of tea, dropped her cup, and was inside her house, hiding underneath the heavy quilt that covered her bed in less time than it usually took her to walk across her living room. As though her fragile house and a soft blanket could protect her from something that could lift boulderers and shred trees into wood chips.