Draconic - Chapter 8

Getting up onto the wooden chair’s cushion proves harder than I had anticipated. It is not exactly hard to move the lightweight construction, and with my method, the chair topples rather than choosing to remain standing. What’s worse, now that it is lying down, I can’t seem to get it back up. The angle and reach needed is simply not available to me, not to mention that, were I to simply press down on the “front” legs to try and get it upright, I would probably just break it. With the chair out, however, I will need to position myself elsewhere – up onto the table it is, I suppose.

I crouch down, preparing a leap in the exact same manner as pretty much every other time that I wish to get into the air for one reason or another. My well-practiced movement quickly sends me where I wish to go, my claws digging into the polished wood of the table, leaving it… less than perfect-looking. It creaks ominously under my weight, but seems to be able to support it as I turn myself towards the small, black piece of technology positioned right in the centre of the wooden construction.

Quickly, another problem joins the pile as I realize that I somehow need to actually open it up in order to give me access to both the keyboard and the screen. Now, before I hatched, that would be easy, but now, my claws are a lot thicker than my nails used to be – I would just as likely break the thing as actually succeed in my venture, and to be truthful, I do not think I would have the leverage. Then, even if I do get it up, I need to turn it on, somehow navigate with a touch pad that would never register my claws as something valid, figure out how to press buttons properly and- what am I even doing here? This is never going to work, is it?

I can’t just give up though, can I? If I had given up on flying back when I had no idea how to do it properly, where would that have left me today? No, I cannot have gone all this way only to give up without at least trying to do what I came for. Talk about a waste of time.

I still know that I am not going to get the laptop open without something flat and thin, yet strong, however. Something that can serve the role of fingers, seeing as my claws are clearly not going to do the trick. Thus, my next objective must be to search for one such object. Something like my… wings…?

Hold on, could I just use my wings for this? They are flat enough, certainly, and should be able to handle opening the laptop if I am just careful. That, and then of course there is the fact that I have my doubts about being able to coordinate my wingtip in a precise enough manner. It is definitely worth trying, though, and so I gently start to unfold my wings once more. They are far too wide to end comfortably at the laptop’s edge, but as they can bend in order to fold, getting it closer to the piece of tech itself is not all that hard. Of course, this is where the hard part begins, as I gently start to shuffle closer to the closed laptop, trying to get my wing in between the two halves.

The first attempt fails. The second, likewise. Third and fourth both go the same way, but the fifth, finally, is a success. The tip of my wing is pushed in, its position optimal for an attempt to lift the lid – I am ready, and so, I begin to move it. My muscles start to work, moving the bones of my wing as the stubborn resistance of the laptop-lid slowly but surely, gradually begins to relent. It barely moves at first, but then, I push it up a little bit, then a bit more, and suddenly, the screen flips up without warning, visible for the world to see. That is one step done, at least.

The next is fairly simple: press the ‘on’ button. It is a small button, at the top-right of the keyboard, separated from the other keys with a bit of empty space. Yet somehow, despite the task’s apparent simplicity, I manage to screw it up. How do I manage to do it? The answer is quite simple. Whilst I do manage to get a claw out, hovering it above the button before pressing down, I forget a rather simple fact. If you take a sharp claw and add too much force behind it when you press a button, the button is going to break. Once I press it, the venture initially goes well… right up until the point when the button finds it appropriate to split in half, rendering it thoroughly unusable.

For a moment, everything is silent as I stare in surprise, the laptop now impossible to start up in the usual fashion. Disappointment flows through me, both at myself and at the device, before it is abruptly replaced with relief as the sound of a fan suddenly fills the air. It is being emitted from the laptop itself, and soon, its screen flickers on – apparently, I at least managed to turn it on before I went and broke the button, though it is clear that the age-old tactic of turning it off and on again is now completely and utterly out of the picture.

It feels as though the start-up process takes ages. Though I know it to be no more than half a minute, at the absolute maximum, it feels like the time that actually passes is far longer than that. Before I can actually access it, however, one obstacle remains: the login screen.

Though remembering the password itself (av9G55sT) is a relatively simple matter of using one’s memory, actually keying in said password is a different matter entirely. I press one button, and two more triggers with it. What is worse, I cannot know which of the sudden symbols is the one that is necessary, leaving me with no other choice than to delete all the new ones every. Single. Time.

Needless to say, my patience soon starts to wear thin, and before long I find myself sorely tempted to just set the whole thing on fire, no matter how counterproductive that would be. The capital letters are especially annoying, what with the whole “hold shift” thing. By the time that I finally get the combination right, I have lost track of how many times my claws have grazed the backspace button, as I’ve had to start over more than once, and find myself with the need to take a break simply to relieve some of this annoyance that now flows through my system. Yet, I know that the worst is still to come.

I head over to the bedroom, within which a quick glance in the mirror soon gives me a wholly new reason to be annoyed. My scales are dirty, covered in all sorts of dust and grime from the dirt and mud of the forest to the occasional splatter of blood from my prey. Beneath it, I have no doubt that their shine still resides, ready to be unleashed, but right now, my looks have definitely seen better days. I really do care about my scales, though I cannot quite explain why, and now that I can actually look over my physique in its entirety, it quickly becomes apparent that what I had simply disregarded as ‘a speck of dirt that will go away in time’ or ‘it is probably nothing’ actually makes a serious mess if you add all the little pieces together. I really do look quite terrible, to be truthful.

I look down at the thick, wine-red carpet beneath my feet. This did the job last time, if I recall correctly, but then again, the dirt had been wet then. It is quite clear where I slept – there is a big splotch of old mud dried into the carpet right beneath the bed itself. As dirty and messy as that spot may be, it is proof that the carpet has the capability to clean off dirt and filth, and even if it does not rid me of all of it, anything it does accomplish is still better than nothing. As such, I make the decision to simply roll myself in it, trying to get my scales to become as shiny as the day I hatched. Afterwards, a look in the mirror more or less confirms my estimates. With the carpet now possessing a second dirtied area, my scales are cleaner, though regrettably not completely clean. Most likely, I am going to need a bath to get rid of the last of it, and the thought isn’t exactly appealing. However, the improvement of my looks also helped my mood a bit, allowing me to stride back to the waiting laptop, climb back up and continue with my attempts to use it, this time without the powerful desire to simply set the whole thing aflame.

Thankfully, my e-mail application has a shortcut on the desktop, allowing me to start it by a few simple uses of the arrow keys, as well as a solitary ‘enter’. To my great fortune, it still recalls my login, saving me the effort of another password session, though it ambushes me with another problem once it is active. Going to have to use the mouse for this… and neither claw nor scale seems to work. My wings are equally ineffective, and I try a few other, admittedly rather stupid ideas as well before I finally find one that works. As it turns out, licking the touchpad moves the mouse. I honestly had not expected that to work, but one should never look a gift horse in the mouth (even though I do not know what a horse actually tastes like), and so begins the struggle of trying to move the mouse in the right direction through licking it.

Saliva gets a bit here and there, though fortunately the computer does not short circuit… yet, and eventually I manage to get to ‘new mail’ and input the receiver’s address. From there, I move the focus to the text-field itself, and begin to write. The end result takes a long time to accomplish, especially since the backspace button gave up on me halfway through (it is not my fault that it popped off when my claw got in under it), thus forcing me to resort to the delete button instead, which is much smaller and thus harder to press properly. However, I manage it, and though the result is not exactly long, it should hopefully serve its purposes. In the end, it reads:

“Carrie. It’s Marcie. I know you have a lot of questions, but I cannot answer them here.

Meet me at the picnic spot at noon tomorrow. I will be able to explain there. Come alone and unarmed, or I won’t be there.

See you tomorrow.

Marcie.”

Satisfied, I press the ‘send’ button, await the notification that the message has been sent… and then promptly find myself driving a claw through the screen. It flickers out, going black as I drive a second claw through its surface, needing to somehow express this annoyance within me. The stupid laptop was reacting to the buttons that I actually pressed, rather than the buttons that I wanted to press, and though this technically makes perfect sense, I still can’t help but be angry at it.

Giving the screen a solid whack with my tail for good measure, I jump back down to the floor, safe in the knowledge that, hopefully, Carrie should show up in roughly thirty-four hours from now at that little place in the forest where she and Marcie usually went whenever they felt like going on a picnic in the woods. It is roughly in the same direction as my cave, so I should be able to get back ‘home’ in between. It still felt a bit weird to address myself as Marcie again, though. It is a name that I have associated with my pre-hatching life, but she wouldn’t recognise my new name even if I had one in the first place, so I suppose it turned out fine in the end.

I briefly consider having a look in the refrigerator, just to see if that terrible smell is truly representative of its contents. However, once I go in there, said smell quickly dissuades me from actually proceeding any further, and I turn around, setting my heading for the opening in the back. Through it, out I leap, and prepare to fly back home. The take-off goes well, and though I do not quite get out of the settlement in one go, the chilly night-time air poses no problems for my flight, and before long I am back on the fields outside, resolving to walk from there. After all the flying I have been doing, my wings are thoroughly exhausted. If I can help it, I won’t be using them any more during this venture.

The air is silent, empty and somewhat chilly around me. It is calm, and for the remainder of my journey nothing happens that is really worth mentioning. I stumble back into my cave roughly at dawn, blaming the length of my journey on my (relative to humans) short legs, feeling both tired and hungry. My exhaustion wins out, leading me to find a nice, shadowy corner within my cave and lie down for a nap, resolving to go hunting once I wake up.

My sleep is dreamless, as usual, and when I wake up, little has changed. Same damp, shadowy cave as usual, the sun’s shine nothing out of the ordinary, the water-pool just as full as usual. I go out hunting, just as usual, though my efforts are fruitless. I keep getting distracted by my thoughts, my worries. Did Carrie get my message? What will she say? How will she react? Will she even be there at all? If she is, how can I communicate with her?

These are the kinds of questions that buzz around my head the entire day, leaving me with far too little concentration to catch anything to fill my stomach with. At least I manage to figure out the answer to the last question, though. I knew how to write as a human, and, I reason, it should not be too hard to replicate the skill with my claws. I should be able to manage it, right?

Of course, the idea to actually practice my writing never comes to me. It’ll be fine, I convince myself; I know how to write.

The evening sun shines rather dimly through the treetops by the time I make my way back home, stomach empty and growling, though at least I have not seen any humans searching for me in the last few days. Thus, being rather certain that they have given up by now, I find myself walking on the forest’s ground level in a rather calm and relaxed manner rather than in a tense, alert way. As I expected, the journey is uninterrupted, and before long I am back in my cave, planning to sleep a little before I head out towards the picnic spot. I have a rather rough idea of which direction it is in, but as I am not all that certain on the finer details, I will probably have to guess my way there.

It takes a bit longer than usual to reach the state of sleep that I seek, as I have to spend some time trying to calm my still-bustling thoughts, but eventually I still succeed, and before I know it, several hours have gone by in an instant. It is morning, and if I want to get to the meeting spot in time, I need to get going quickly. Thus, after a quick drink from the water-pool (the idea of taking a bath being discarded due to my still-unexplained, powerful fear of drowning), I head off back out into the forest, my path set towards a destination once again.

At first, my path is practically identical to the one I took just the other night, a decision being unconsciously made within my mind to avoid the risk of getting lost. I head past the thick, strong trees and the weaker yet far denser growth of the bushes further out, dawn’s light guiding my way through the gloom of the forest. At the edge of the fields, however, I divert from the path, turning left and following the border between woods and fields. My feet do the brunt of the work as they carry me across the somewhat muddy ground, as I dare not take flight so close to the town itself. Not with the sun’s rather powerful rays lighting up the whole place, at any rate.

I move along this trajectory for quite some time, until finally, I see something I recognise. It is a fallen tree. Old and rotten, most people would disregard it at a glance. It is, after all, obvious that it has lain there for a long time; certainly longer than my memory cares to recall. However, it is not the tree itself that matters, but rather what it signifies. It is a landmark. I am close to my destination, and judging by the position of the sun, I would guess that I am going to arrive a bit early. Here’s hoping that Carrie actually shows.

I turn my stride into the woods, my path eased by the considerably lighter vegetation. It is considerably more open than the path to my cave, and once I head in, other memorable features start to appear. A weirdly bent tree, a moss-covered rock which is... unique, to say the least, and an overgrown hill which appears all but impenetrable short of destroying the vegetation itself. I recognise them all, and through them, my path receives the guidance necessary for me to reach my destination.

A small clearing hidden amongst the trees is what I find. Relatively short, lush grass mingle with flowers of various kinds, working together to create a colourful display fit for a painting. Healthy, strong trees frame the clearing from all sides, their thick trunks and lush canopies working to further improve the already impressing scene, and closer to the centre, a worn-looking, wooden picnic table sits, looking for all intents and purposes as if it does not have a care in the world. As I recall, it took quite a lot of effort to move it all the way out here, even if we did assemble it on the spot.

Seeing as I am early, I take some time to look around, eyes and ears peeled in search of potential prey as I am in fact quite hungry. Before long, I start to detect life a bit here and there. I come across a family of small rodents, but am dismayed to find them hiding in a hole where they are out of my reach, and thus I am forced to abandon that particular chance. Birds zip past every now and again, still managing to handle their flight far more gracefully than I have ever managed, leaving me with... serious doubts about being able to catch them up there. A lone squirrel hides in a tree, but when I deem it fit to try and pursue, it just jumps to another one of the great plants, and when it does so yet again, I give up on it.

A large hawk stares at me from the treetops, evaluating me as if it is not quite certain whether I am its predator or its prey, taking no action to my presence. It is a large one, and though my fire and scales give me an advantage, I would rather be in one piece once –or if– Carrie arrives. She’ll be here, right? Right?

My mind soon gets dragged back into thought after that question, pondering it for a few moments before all the other worries start to slip in as well. Can I really be so certain that she will be here, that she hasn’t brought anyone else, and that she didn’t take a gun with her? What if she flees at the sight of me? What if, what if...

The loud cracking of a branch abruptly pulls me back from my worried state of mind, forcing my rational self into the back seat for a moment as I look anxiously around myself. For the most part, things are silent, and I almost deem it to be my imagination before a second crack follows the first. I turn towards its source, listening intently, and a whole array of smaller noises become audible as my hearing grows more focused. Whatever it is that is making them, it is by no means quiet, but from its position... I could almost believe that it is heading for the picnic spot. I may be aware of the fact that Carrie was never exactly quiet, but this loud?

Needless to say, I have my doubts, but that does not stop my hopes from growing as I begin to hurry back, intent on being there first and finding a good overlook spot. The noise continues to approach at a steady rate, but I get there before it does. It is near, however, and so I do not really get all that much time to think, electing to simply climb the nearest tree as fast as I can. It is a close call, but with the aid of my claws I manage to get up there, turning just in time to behold the rustling of bushes on the right side of the spot’s opposite end. A figure slowly pushes through them. I recognise her immediately.

Carrie. She came after all. As I realize this, tension that I did not know was in me flows out, yet it is quickly replaced by another form of tension: the more direct, hands-on version. She may be here, but that does not mean that all my other fears are entirely un-founded. There are a lot of things that I do not know, such as whether she has a weapon hidden somewhere, whether someone followed her, how she will react to my appearance, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Then again, all the thinking in the world would not be able to answer those questions. I’ll observe for a bit, and if everything looks good, I will come down, or at least so goes my plan.

I look over her clothing first. She is dressed in a rather thin-looking, light brown jacket which is clearly rather worn – she’s owned it for a while. The zipper is open, allowing a view of the dark-blue, low-neck shirt beneath, enough to reveal some manner of cleavage with her relatively busty physique. A pair of tough-looking jeans, their blue coloration somewhat lighter, compliments the look, though it looks like these are relatively new. In addition, a pair of leather boots which appear resilient covers her feet, looking far more fitting for a trek in the forest than the jeans above them.

“Marcie...?” she carefully, rather quietly calls out, her head turning anxiously from side to side. She seems uncertain. A bit afraid, even. Having been a human once, even if that life feels like it took place half a lifetime ago (which really is strange considering I hatched just a few weeks ago), I still know them quite well, and right now, she does not look like someone with bad intentions. Just nervous, and understandably worried given the situation. She is probably worrying that whatever happened to me will happen to her as well, maybe even debating her choice to come here. However, as there was only one egg, I do not think that a repeat is very likely. Not within the foreseeable future, at any rate.

It looks safe. This is as good as it is going to get, clearly. Thus, it is time to reveal myself.

I lean down slightly, gliding down a bit along the trunk before leaping off of it, falling towards the ground. My wings come out just a bit, catching the air long enough to turn my fall into a quite soft landing, allowing me to slow down as I approach the ground. I nearly screw it up, but my trajectory is recovered at the last moment, allowing me to take a landing without an accomplinary face-plant. My claws dig into the earth, finding a solid grip within the dirt of the ground and pulling my body to an almost abrupt halt within moments. Then, safe on the ground, I pull my head up, looking towards Carrie.

Our eyes meet.