Winging It

There weren’t always dragons in the valley, or the fair folk in the northern forests.. Unicorns in upstate New York.. witches in Wichita.. You get the idea. Like one of the Grimm brothers threw up all over the country, maybe even the world, but that’s unconfirmed. We haven’t had contact with the majority of the globe since the satellites went dark over a decade ago, and the oceans are a no-mans land full of leviathans and who knows what else.

Anyways, the real story isn’t the fairytale creatures, although they’ve been a riot, it’s the snails. There was no precedent in the stories to prepare us for the giant carnivorous snails that have become an indestructible plague, always on the move and always on the hunt.

That’s where I come in, I guess.

The fields where our colony has been trying to grow more food are pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as scout shifts go, but everyone has to start somewhere, and they stuck me on the squash circuit with the dullest partner on the roster, despite the fact that I’m the only person that has actually killed a snail. It’s enough to make a girl strongly consider walking the thousand miles right back down south. The colony organizers promised a better life up here, which I incorrectly interpreted to mean a more exciting life than merely surviving in the dust and crumbs of our old world. Color me an optimist.

We’re one of the northernmost human settlements, most of the people who were willing to move up here had to survive a rough road to get this far, and it’s only five years old. It took that long for the skies to clear. The clouds of ash from the volcanic winter had nearly blocked the sun this far north, but it was a little better towards the Caribbean. At least down south there was enough light to grow some crops during the worst years. I remember leaving Michigan as a kid, the sun was blue in the sky.

“Hey, Connor, what do you call a dead snail?” I could practically hear his teeth grind as he kept marching on in front of me, trying to ignore the loaded silence that demanded his response. I grin when he caves.

“I don’t know, what?”

“An escarghost,” I grin, shrugging when he shakes his head. If you ask me, the real tragedy of our fragmented reality is the collective death of humor. Nearly everyone is as stoic as Connor. I get it, we’ve all lived through some shit, but it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy life once in a while, even if we’re under siege constantly by the grossest possible monster. It’s almost insulting, all that humanity accomplished in history, including surviving an asteroid strike that triggered super volcanoes full of pixie dust and the ensuing volcanic winter, just to be humbled by snails. I don’t know for sure that the volcanoes actually had pixie dust, but something happened in that series of deadly catastrophes that decimated humankind while also opening the door for everything else to waltz in with magical flare, and pixie dust is as good of a theory as any other I’ve heard.

“When is the last time someone has even seen a snail in the squash fields?” I ask after a few minutes pass in itchy silence. I can’t help but wonder if we’re assigned to the fields just to scare any rabbits or deer away.

Winter squash was a bit of an experiment, but the colony had found a pretty nice collection of old farm implements so we had some new acres to plant this past spring, and the leaders are always trying to find better crops for storage.

“Dunno,” Connor replies. It’s like walking around with a giant thumb.

“You know, it really is no surprise that you’re such a hit with the colony girls. I bet they love the broody silence,” I tell him, half-heartedly scanning the horizon for the gleam of a pearly shell the size of a cargo van.

“Maybe I’m not silent when I’m with better company.”

“Oh dang, look at you! A whole sentence, I’m so-” I bite my tongue as we both freeze to watch the behemoth soaring in our direction from the trees to the west. The dragons that I’ve seen in my travels were all shades of grey and green, but this old man we call Wilson swears he saw a red one last summer. He’s also the one that taught the Saginaw colony how to make better hooch, so I take his stories with an extra large grain of salt while wishing we had tequila instead of applejack.

“You ever see a black one, Connor?” I turn to my partner, rolling my eyes when I find him gone. “For crying out loud, you know they don’t like eating people!” I call out to his back, but he’s already a couple hundred yards away, his yellow belly flashing in the midday sun.

I stay standing, knowing that the dragon probably saw us before we saw it, and running away is a waste of energy because there’s no way to outrun a whole dragon when you’re on a path in the middle of an open field. Also, I’m already sweating and it’s too hot to run, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not shaking when it soars down in lazy circles around me, making the leaves dance. I’m actually not positive it won’t eat me, but I like to listen almost as much as I like to talk, and I’ve learned quite a bit during my time in the colonies. That’s how I know the ridge of tall spikes down it’s spine mean I've caught the attention of a male dragon.

Even with the graceful landing, my knees buckle as the ground trembles beneath his settling weight. His body is the length of a school bus, with a wingspan that is easily two or three times wider. I hold my ground when he swings a massive head to face me, drawing closer until our noses are only a foot apart. In his eyes, greens and golds swirl like galaxies around the slitted black pupils, and I hold my breath for a long, terrifying moment as I stare into them, until he snorts a little puff of hot air and makes me jump so bad I fall onto my tailbone with a yelp.

“Jesus Henry Christ,” I gasp, holding my hand over my heart. “That was the worst jump scare I’ve had since my run in with the green men in Ohio.”

In myths, green men are typically solitary, but there’s a small community of them living in what used to be Hocking Hills and let me tell you, they are professionals at hide and seek.

“What makes you think I won’t eat you?” the dragon asks, his deep rumbling voice vibrating my ear canals in a way that is almost unbearable. I think the adrenaline spike from the first scare used up the rest of my fear, because the dragon talking doesn’t even make me flinch. I’ve never heard anything about them talking, and if I were the more organized type I might jot that little tidbit down somewhere. Somebody should really be taking notes if humanity is to stand a chance in the long run.

“I didn’t know you could talk,” I choke out from my back, mouth going dry as he looms over me with an alien grace. The inky scales around his mouth shimmer with a rainbow iridescence that is truly beautiful from where I’m laying.

“Answer the question, vermin,” he orders, sliding a clawed foot to rest beside me. I swallow and prop myself up on my elbows, trying to ignore the talons as long as my forearm.

“It’s just my working theory. I’ve never heard of a dragon eating anyone, and most of us vermin are scrawny from poor diets, so I can’t imagine a bunch of bones and skin being super appetizing. Plus the clothes, who would want to eat all that. Unless your kind are like owls, and just cough up giant pellets of hair and bones and clothes-”

“Enough. We are not like owls, we would simply burn your clothes and hair off first,” the dragon shifts back so I can sit up. “Your logic is flawed on many levels. Who would tell you if a dragon ate them? Your kind would blame the cessals.”

“Pardon my ignorance, but what is a cessal?”

“The large shelled creatures that are now crawling over this land, they come from Draegos.” He does the dragon equivalent of examining his nails and looks over his shiny talons.

“We just call them giant snails, but cessals is a better name. Where is Draegos?”

“Do vermin really know so little?”

“Definitely,” I nod, climbing to my feet with a little hop and making a big show of dusting off my clothes. My life has suddenly become so much more surreal than the tedious trudge through some squash, and I am here for it, even if I could die at any moment. Honestly, the whole ‘die at any moment’ theme has really played itself out over the years, so carpe diem and all that.

“It’s no wonder there are so few of you left. Draegos is the home realm of my kind,” he informs me.

“Very cool, very cool. Quick touch back here, are you going to eat me?”

“I don’t think so, you would taste terrible, humans have no standards for their own diets. I much prefer the meat of the hooved animals here.”

“So you’re into grass-fed, that’s a relief. Hey, how come you don’t bother our cows?”

“The swollen ones you keep in fences? They don’t taste the same as the ones that aren’t fenced.”

“Deer? You’re telling me dragons prefer free range meat?”

“Meat tastes better when it has known freedom and a natural diet. Too much interference with the cows.”

“Huh. You would’ve loved Trader Joe’s,” I say with a grin. People haven’t had the privilege of being picky about food since I was ten, and the fact that we even have cows in the colonies is almost miraculous. Between the snails, the raiders, and the various beasts, maintaining a cow herd is labor intensive.

“Do all vermin speak so much nonsense?”

“No, most of the vermin I’ve met don’t have the natural charm that I do. It makes for a very boring dystopia,” I sigh. Sometimes I wish I could just fade away like they’ve done, but the voice in my head chatters relentlessly about how much more there could be for us. The human settlements are like life in black and white. No singing, no dancing, no laughing. All that stuff that made humanity special has been dialed back to almost nothing, like nobody remembers how it used to be. Or maybe that’s the problem, they all cling to how it was and can’t be present in how it is because they know too well what we had is gone forever, like Trader Joe’s.

“Survival is not boring, young vermin,” he admonishes.

“Not if you’re a huge dragon.”

“By the standards of my kind, I am indeed very large,” he preens, opening a fan of spikes around his face for me to admire.

“Well, that’s something. Can I ask you a question?”

“Evidently,” his droll tone would make Connor jealous.

“How do you speak my language if you’re from a different realm?”

“I possess the superior magic of my kind, it allows for universal communication, amongst other things,”

“Yeah, that makes sense, I suppose, although it is kind of confusing how you’re physically talking without lips. One more question, why did you swoop down to chat with me if you’re not going to eat me? Not that I mind or anything, it’s tough to find a good conversation around here.” The Saginaw colony is small by any standard, and with the exception of Wilson, nobody really cares to chat.

“I was curious. You stayed while your companion ran.”

“Seemed kind of dumb to run when you could easily catch me either way,” I admit.

“Very dumb,” he agreed. “But running would still be better than doing nothing.”

“I don’t think I do have any survival instincts, just a whole pile of dumb luck.”

“I could eat you just to disprove that good fortune.”

“We’re back to this?” I groan.

“It was just a thought,” he responds. I don’t think dragons have the anatomical ability to smile, but I swear I could hear the grin in his voice.

“Here I thought we were becoming friends.”

“Draegos don’t have friends that are so fragile.”

“I thought Draegos was the name of your realm?”

“It is also the name of my kind.”

“Seems a bit egotistical to name your whole realm after yourselves,” I roll my eyes.

“We are the supreme entities of the realm.”

“What about the cessals?”

“In Draegos they cannot bother us.”

“Do they bother you here? Can’t you kill them? I killed one once with salt, but nobody believes me.”

“They have pressed a new advantage here,” the dragon shakes himself out, scales rippling like waves before snapping his wings open to their full width, blocking out the sun around me.

“You know, it’s kind of terrifying what you’re doing right now,” I point out, taking a small step backwards while he lifts his snout to the sky, waving it around for a long moment before looking back down at me.

“Terror is an appropriate emotion for a little vermin about to be taken by a Draegos.”