I looked out of the cave at the stream stretching down and away from the mountain. How could I make it far away from these mountains, without some dragon noticing and attacking me? There was nothing I could do if a dragon saw me. Even if I had a cave like this one to hide in, that was too small for the dragon to enter, it could still roast me from outside.
I felt fear as I noticed a dragon flying through the distant sky. The terror became a thousand times worse as I made out its shape: It was looking right at me, and flying right towards me! It was steadily getting closer, and I had to figure out what to do!
I wouldn’t panic, nor would I run. There was no safer place to be than this cave: even though it could burn me if it wanted to, it wouldn’t be able to eat me afterwards, because it still couldn’t get into the cave. Plus, now that I knew more of the language, there was the real possibility I could reason with it.
The dragon slammed down onto the ground in front of the cave, and I was ready. I immediately yelled at it, in the best dragonspeak I could manage. “No fire! You kill me, then you can’t go in, can’t eat me!”
“You know me and I know you,” said the dragon. “I won’t burn you.” I breathed a sigh of relief, though my stress was not fully gone.
“How do you say how you feel when something bad could happen to you?” I asked the dragon. “Fear,” she replied. “I don’t know you are not other dragon, here to eat me,” I said. “Now I know. But I felt fear.”
“I feel bad. Sorry.” said the dragon, or at least that’s what I assumed she had said, I didn’t know the word “sorry” yet. I sighed and walked out of the cave, only realizing after I had left the cave that I hadn’t even thought about the danger of approaching the dragon. I supposed we had developed some screwed up kind of trust over time.
“My friends don’t like you,” said the dragon. “I said to them I ate you, since they wanted me to say that.” I thought about that for a moment. I supposed it was good that at least those particular dragons wouldn’t go searching for me in particular.
“Why do they not like me?” I asked. “Humans do not kill and eat dragons.”
“They don’t like that you speak,” she replied. “They say humans should not speak.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
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“All humans can speak,” said the human. “All humans can speak to all dragons, if dragons speak to humans, not eat humans. I did not know how to speak to dragons. I did not know dragons can speak. Other humans do not know. Now I know, because you told me.”
I had been thinking about this for a while. It seemed that humans wanted to speak to dragons, but most dragons weren’t curious enough to want to speak to humans. I supposed this must be the reason why I’d never heard of talking humans before, and why the human had never heard of talking dragons before. They had just never bothered trying to talk with each other until now. The dragons were hunting, and the humans were trying to survive.
“This way is bad,” said the human. “It’s bad dragons don’t talk to humans. I want humans and dragons to talk. Maybe humans and dragons can be friends.”
“You and I are friends?” I asked. “Maybe,” he replied.
I had thought a lot about how the human thought about me, after he had told me off as I was leaving yesterday, and I had decided that he was right. It would be better if humans and dragons were friends, and could talk to each other and work together, and that couldn’t happen if dragons were hunting humans.
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It would be hard to address the harm I had done to the human with the proper tone, due to his imperfect grasp on the language. But I would try.
“You and I can’t be friends because I ate your friends,” I said bluntly. “I see. I feel bad because I have done something bad to you. I am sorry. I did not know humans could talk, or that humans could feel bad about other humans being eaten. Now I know. I will not eat humans. I will eat other animals.”
Tears streamed from the human’s eyes, and he made plaintive, squeaky noises. I would have found it funny if the situation weren’t so serious. In time he spoke again.
“You did not know. I see. You and I can be friends. But you should tell your friends humans can feel bad so they know. And you should take me far from mountains, to other humans, so other dragons don’t eat me.”
I tilted my head side to side. I would do these things for the human, and he would understand. I would never forget this strange meeting.
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I still had not gotten used to flying, but at least this time I was able to open my eyes. I was relieved to see the mountains slowly but surely receding into the distance. I could still hardly believe that I had actually managed to get out of that situation alive. If I had heard two days ago that this would have happened to me, I would not have believed it possible.
Unfortunately, I did not think that the dragon would be able to find my tribe again. The survivors who had found each other would have long since left the area in fear of another attack. They would have simply assumed that I was one of the victims, and would not be searching for me. I could only hope that whatever group we did find would be willing to accept me, and that sometime in the future I could find a way to reunite with them.
Eventually we did find a group of people, and the dragon landed nearby and finally set me down on the ground when I asked it to. I would have to hope they would not be hostile to me, but from what I had seen in my life of other tribes, they were generally friendly. Of course, all of them ran away as soon as they saw the dragon, so I said to her, “They fear you, they think you will eat them.” She tilted her head from side to side in understanding, and then took off. I never saw her again.
“There is no danger!” I yelled to the surroundings. “The dragon is gone!”
A woman carefully looked at me from behind a tree, her eyes wide. After a moment of looking frantically around, and looking into the sky to see that indeed, the dragon was leaving, she stepped out into the open. “Who are you?” she asked. “That dragon had you in its claws! How are you even still alive?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “That dragon decided it doesn’t eat us anymore.”
She looked at me with utter confusion written on her face, as others began emerging from hiding, realizing the dragon was gone.
“Dragons can talk,” I told the assembling group. “I learned how to speak with them. They think and feel similarly to us. But they don’t realize that. They think we are dumb animals. I spoke to that dragon, and it decided not to eat us anymore.”
“How could you possibly speak with dragons?” asked the woman.
I began to explain my story in detail, and the people became more interested and astounded the more details I shared. Though my story seemed unbelievable, they were ready to believe it, after witnessing me being carried by a dragon, and seeing that same dragon leave without even trying to find any of them.
By midday my initial apprehension about being accepted into their tribe were gone. They had decided that given my circumstances, I could stay with them as long as I behaved well.
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As I flew back to my mountain, I idly thought that if I had really wanted to, I probably could have gotten the human to trick the other humans into coming out by spinning some story about how I was friendly. But it was nothing more than an idle thought. I would never do something like that now that I had gotten to know him.
I remembered how the human had asked me to tell my friends, my family, about how humans could think and feel just like we could. After considering the idea for a while, I decided against it. Given their attitude towards the speaking human before, I suspected that they wouldn’t take it well, and probably wouldn’t believe me. It would cause conflict, and solve nothing.
I sighed. I did like the idea of a world where humans and dragons could be “friends”, could live together in peace. But I didn’t think it could happen. Most dragons, and probably humans as well, I supposed, were not willing to break tradition, and were not as curious as I was. The meeting between me and the human had been a chance exception to that, and would never become the rule.