Our Kind of People

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, you know,” Margery Riddlehouse said to her new neighbor, Alyse Bower. They were sitting on Alyse’s just-delivered sofa in the Bowers’ freshly repainted living room, with a view from (still!) curtainless front windows to the house across the street. “But you know how it is,” Margery went on. “One has no control over who buys a house these days," she said with a nod towards the children playing noisily in the front yard of the Robinettes' home.

Margery and Stan Riddlehouse had lived in this quiet community, in the ranch-style home directly to the left of the Bowers’ new house, since they were married twelve years earlier. Their two boys were now nine and eleven, enrolled in the recently-renamed Phineas Cartheginia Elementary School. So many things were changing around them! They had loved being part of a community of people like them and never having to worry about those sorts of people moving in. But those days, it seemed, were all but gone now.

Since the federal government passed a new law against housing discrimination (along with a whole raft of other laws in favor of them) during the last session of Congress, it seemed that a certain class of people were everywhere. And things in the Riddlehouses’ peaceful neighborhood in the suburbs were already going to heck in a handbasket!

With a moue of sympathy, Alyse Bower picked up her great-grandmother’s Wedgwood teapot and topped off Mrs. Riddlehouse’s cup. She had taken note of Margery’s preferences earlier and now dropped two cubes of sugar into the bone china teacup using a pair of sterling silver tongs. The practiced smile never left Alyse’s lips as she lifted a second slice of lemon cake onto Margery’s now-empty plate.

Alyse always felt that it served her well to get to know her neighbors, and welcomed this chance to get to know the local busybody a little bit better.

“In my mother’s day, you never had to worry about what kind of people you lived next door to,” Margery said after lifting her cup and taking a sip of the Earl Grey. “Folks kept themselves in their place, you know. That kind knew they weren’t welcome in an upscale neighborhood like this. ‘The other side of the tracks is the only place they belong,’ as my old grandpappy used to say.”

“Uhm-hmm,” Alyse made a noise in her throat that was noncommittal. Unfortunately, Margery Riddlehouse took it as agreement with her rather biased attitudes.

"I mean,” Margery said, looking around at the brand-new living room suite, the unmarked walls, and noting the lack of anything suitable for small children, “I know you haven’t been blessed to start your family yet, you and Mr. Bower. But someday you’re going to have children. Would you really feel comfortable knowing that they’re playing with that sort?”

“And what sort is that, exactly, Margery?”

“Why, dragons, of course! They just aren’t up to our standards, you understand. They don’t know how to live like decent folk!”

Alyse had listened to just about enough of this. She had little tolerance for prejudice in any form. And coming from this woman—her new next-door neighbor, who she would have to deal with for the next however-many years—well, it was time Alyse made it clear that she didn’t share the woman’s racist bent. She put down her empty cup and saucer on the coffee table and rose from her seat beside Mrs. Riddlehouse on the new sofa.

“As a matter of fact,” Alyse said with a small smile, “Mr. Bower and I are expecting. Would you like to see how we’ve decorated the nursery in anticipation of our blessed event?”

Margery Riddlehouse was thrilled to be given the first tour of the Bowers’ new home. She eagerly followed Alyse upstairs and along the hallway to a closed door. When Alyse pushed open the door and led the way into the room she’d set aside for the nursery, Margery stepped inside with a thrill, knowing she would be the first to see their well-to-do new neighbors' no doubt top-of-the-line decorating job.

What a cachet it would be to tell the girls at the garden club what she’d seen!

Alyse closed the door of the dim room behind Margery. “Don’t want it to get too cold in here,” she said before flipping on the lights. Then she gazed down with pride on the graveled nest in the corner.

Wherein there rested a brood of seven dragon eggs, kept warm by a designer brazier installed beneath the nest. After all, in this day and age, a mother-to-be couldn’t spend all of her time sitting on her eggs. A woman had shopping to do, and entertaining, and registering her future children for the best preschool in town.

Margery Riddlehouse’s blood froze in her veins as she realized what she was seeing. She turned to her new neighbor, an expression of shock on her face. “But…I didn’t…You don’t look like one of them!”

Alyse allowed her teeth to grow a little longer, a little sharper. Maybe her jaw grew a little more pronounced. And those were definitely scales starting to peek out from beneath her Winifred and Me ™ lace-collared linen blouse.

“I’m sure our children are going to be great friends,” Alyse said.

But Margery Riddlehouse, unfortunately, didn’t hear her, for she had fainted dead away.

And Alyse would be sure to tell all of the women at her book club about how her neighbor had looked sprawled out on the floor of Alyse’s newly-decorated nursery.

Some people just didn’t know how to behave properly in other people’s homes!

***

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, and pledges are always cherished, like a dragon treasures a cavern filled with gold. And books.

I have challenged myself to write twenty-seven dragon prologues/stories for the Vocal.media Fantasy Prologue Challenge, one for each day the challenge runs. Here's a link to another of my entries: