‘I’m sailiiiing awaaaaay!’

The blue flamingo closest to me gives an indignant squawk, then stares at me like my singing has personally upset it.

I ignore it; ain’t got time for no haters.

‘Set an open course for the endless seeeeaaaa!’

Realizing that the magnificence of my singing might be too much for it handle at such close proximity, the flamingo swims farther away from me.

For all of one second, I consider swimming after the bird, just to be a dick, but then quickly decide not to. While the flamingoes have generally ignored me so far, there’s still about twenty of them to one little old me, and those beaks of theirs look like they could do some serious damage if used right.

I certainly don’t want a picture of my battered corpse on the news tomorrow, captioned with the headline: IRATE FLAMINGO MOB BEATS ANNOYING DRAGON TO DEATH.

That’d just be a shit way to go.

With my only source of entertainment now avoiding me like an angry ex, I go back to enjoying my leisurely swim.

I’ve been on the river for hours now, ever since I left dragon mama’s corpse behind, and even though I’m not going particularly fast, certainly not as fast as I feel like I could go, I’ve covered more than a fair bit of ground.

The river is wider now, deeper too, and the trees on either side are much bigger; I’m thinking I’ll follow it all the way to the end, see where it leads.

It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do with my time.

Seeing as I started this little trip sometime in the afternoon and have now been at it for hours, night is fast approaching.

The sun has already dipped behind the trees and the temperature is dropping, and for a moment, I worry about finding shelter for the night, then I remember; ‘duh, I’m an amphibian.’

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Well, to be accurate I’m an amphibious, avian, warm-blooded reptile, but let’s not be pedantic.

Thinking about my lack of need for shelter for the night makes me wonder about my flamingo buddies.

They’d shown up about an hour back, and the entire flock had descended down to the water, I’m guessing for fish, seeing how they keep diving underwater every now and then.

I’m pretty sure flamingoes don’t live on water though, so I would have thought that, with the fading sun, they would have skedaddled to wherever they call home.

Then again, I’m also pretty fucking sure that flamingoes aren’t blue either, yet these ones are. So, who knows, maybe they live on water too.

After all, I’m an amphibious dragon, and I just saw a human girl pull off a Hulk jump, so clearly wherever I am, anyone can be anything they set their minds to be.

Right as I think that, a flamingo shoots out from the water with a terrified squawk and takes off into the air, and, as though a signal has been lit, or a shot fired, all the other flamingoes immediately follow.

I watch as the flamingoes rush out of the water like people in a public pool who suddenly realize that someone in there is peeing, then I swallow.

‘You know, maybe finding shelter on the ground isn’t the worst idea,’ I think, as I begin to head for the nearest bank as quickly as I can. ‘Or a tree. A tree sounds good. A very tall tree.’

Halfway to the riverbank, something changes; some indescribable feeling that gives me the impression that there is something in the water underneath me.

I don’t stop to look and see what it is, or stop to check and confirm if there is actually anything there.

Shit, I don’t stop at all, the only thing I do is leap out of the fucking water while flapping my wing-arms like a bat outta hell.

There’s a splash as something bursts out of the water behind me, but I don’t turn to see what it is, because fuck that horror movie shit.

All I do is zero in on the nearest tree and try my hardest to reach it, regretting all the while that I didn’t learn to fly before now, because fuck water. I am never going in there again.

Dragons are beasts of the air for a reason, goddammit!

Finally making it to the tree, I cling to a branch and quickly scan the water to see if whatever the fuck that was is still following.

But there’s nothing there. The river’s empty, calm. If it hadn’t just tried to eat my scaly ass I would never have imagined that there was something under there besides maybe fish.

‘Fuck me, that is diabolical.’

With my heart rate finally slowing, and a severe distrust of all bodies of water forever ingrained in my soul, I decide to head higher up the tree.

And it is when I do that I get accosted by an angry squirrel, because, you know, that’s my life now.