The dragon spent the entire day trying to teach me basic concepts. Though I was still far from forgiving it for what it had done to me, I had to admire its dedication to this task, and I was continually surprised at how broad of an understanding this beast had of abstract concepts. I began to believe that dragons were no less intelligent than humans.

In spite of that, I continued to try my best to express to the dragon how much I hated that it had hunted my tribe, and presumably countless others over the years, and that it still believed this was okay. “Don’t eat humans!” I told it. “It’s bad to kill humans! Humans don’t kill dragons! Humans and dragons should live without killing the other!”

“Humans are food. I won’t eat you, you and I speak. But dragons eat humans, same as humans eat animals.”

“All humans speak,” I say. “You don’t know how they speak. They speak different. But they speak. You don’t tell other humans how to speak like you. They don’t know how to speak like you.”

“They speak different?” asked the dragon.

“They speak like this: ‘like this’”. I said the last part in my own language to demonstrate.

“All humans speak to humans?” it asked me. I wondered how it had not realized this before: if one human could speak, surely any of them could! “Yes, all humans speak!”

After that, the language training continued, until the sun was getting low in the sky. I was starting to get thirsty, as I had not had any water for nearly a full day, so after a brief struggle to get the dragon to understand that I needed water, and another nausea-inducing flight to a nearby stream where I could drink, the dragon decided it would leave me alone.

“I will go to the mountain, you stay here,” said the dragon. “The… other dragons I know and like… the word is ‘friends’, they don’t like you.”

A day ago, I would have been terrified to say anything this dragon might have found offensive, even if I had known how. But I was confident that this dragon at least would not harm me, not after spending so much time teaching me its (his? her?) language. So I had to make one last comment.

“Humans don’t like dragons. Dragons kill humans, humans don’t like to die. Humans can’t kill dragons but many want to.”

The dragon was silent at that, so I added on, “I had many human friends. You and other dragons kill my friends.”

“I will think,” said the dragon, before flying off, leaving me behind in the wild, by myself.

=====================================================================

I thought about what the human had said as I flew. After today I was completely convinced that humans thought and talked just like dragons, just with different words. The human (it? he?) had said that he hated me and other dragons for eating humans. But I didn’t hate humans, and neither did any of the other dragons. We were just looking for food anywhere we could get it.

Still, I could now understand better why the humans would think this way. They had thoughts and feelings of their own, friends and family of their own, just like dragons did. Of course they wouldn’t want to be eaten, or see their friends and family get eaten by dragons, and they wouldn’t care what kind of argument I made for it, no matter how reasonable. I would think the same way if there were some bigger creatures that ate dragons.

When I thought about it this way, I could also tell why my mate had been so annoyed and disturbed by the presence of the talking human. It wasn’t just that he had been woken up. He was someone with strong principles for treating others right, and it made sense that the idea of humans being just like dragons would be disturbing to him, given that he had eaten humans before.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

When I arrived back at my home, the others wanted to know what I had decided to do about the talking human. I lied and told them I had eaten it. I wanted our family to be happy, and I didn’t want to stir up conflict over something like this. But I was still curious. I would search for the human again tomorrow.

=====================================================================

With the dragon finally gone, I collapsed to my knees in a mixture of relief and exhaustion. I was all too aware that I wasn’t completely safe, as I was far too close to those mountains, and other dragons could fly down and grab me. But even though I had known for a while that the dragon wouldn’t eat me, being around it put me endlessly on edge, and my mind was finally free to relax a bit.

But with that relief also came grief. My entire tribe was lost to me, my family, and all my “friends”, as I had said to the dragon. Some of them were probably still alive, but I had no way of knowing who, or how many. I knew that even though I had achieved the previously unheard-of feat of surviving a direct encounter with a dragon, I would probably die here, in the shadow of these mountains, before ever seeing another human, let alone a friendly face.

For a while, I curled up into a ball on the ground and sobbed. I had lost all hope and motivation. But of course, this did not last forever. Eventually, I picked myself up, and thought about how to survive the days ahead.

First, I needed food, water and shelter, particularly from dragon attacks. Then, I needed to find a way to get out of this place, to a comparatively safer land. If I survived until then, I would search for my tribe, but it was a big world and they would be constantly moving around, so it would be a long time, if ever, before I would succeed.

For now, I just searched the land around the stream, until I found a cave I could hide in. Mere moments after finding this temporary shelter, I collapsed onto the ground, and fell asleep. I dreamt of dragons saying things in their growly voices, and me desperately trying to understand and mimic it.

“You should be a human!” I told the dragon. “See what it’s like!” The dragon then turned into a human, one of my tribe’s elders telling a story to the tribe’s children.

“The gods created the world for us humans to live in, and live off of,” the man said. “They gave us animals for our food and clothing, trees and stones for our huts and weapons, fire for our warmth in winter. But dragons were once gods who didn’t agree that the world should serve mankind, and they were cast out of the heavens onto Earth. Now they wander the Earth, believing it is their own.”

Alongside this I heard the voice of the dragon, laughing and speaking into my ear: “No, the gods made the world for dragons. They gave us wings to fly, mouths to eat and make fire. They gave to us animals, including humans, for our food.”

I remembered that my father had told me something different from either of these stories. He had said that the dragons were not rejected by the gods, or blessed by them, but put here as a challenge to test the strength and resilience of humans.

But now I had no idea what to believe. My father had thought the dragons could talk, and now I knew for sure that they could. But what the dragon had told me had only brought more questions than answers. Why did they eat humans, when there were plenty of perfectly good animals around? How was it that this dragon I had spoken to honestly didn’t seem to have any malice towards me, even though it had eaten others in my tribe and had been about to eat me?

I woke up with a start and found myself in the cave again. It would not be the last time that happened that night.

=====================================================================

I dreamed of silly humans and their high-pitched voices, and of trying to tell them what words meant.

I flew across the landscape, finding many humans to eat. The first human I found just squawked like usual, but the second kept repeating everything I said. The third said “No kill I” and I kept trying to get it to understand how to say it properly, before giving up and eating it. The fourth one told me “Dragons and humans friends! Dragons not eat humans!” I rolled my eyes, let it go, and moved on.

But the fifth human spoke perfectly. It (or he?) kept yelling at me, told me I should be ashamed of myself, what I was doing was evil and wrong, that I should let them and all their friends alone. Annoyed by this, I eventually ate him as well, but I began wondering if what he was saying was right.

Then, a whole line of humans was walking past me with their spears, babbling incoherent gibberish. I grabbed one and ate it, but then all the others turned on me. “I’ll kill you!” they all yelled, stabbing their spears at me. It didn’t matter that it had no effect. They kept trying to stab me with their spears, anger and hatred written on their faces.

I couldn’t think of anything else to do, other than simply fly off, and wonder what I was supposed to do.