‘What the fuck am I looking at right now?’ is all I can wonder as the angry squirrel waves a small branch at me threateningly.

‘No, seriously, what the fuck am I looking at?’

The squirrel screeches at me loudly enough to make my ears ring, then it waves its branch again, sweeping it in an arc in front of me, in a manner that a smarter creature would have realized by now is a futile attempt to scare me off.

I sigh.

‘Okay, Theodore, I don’t know what kind of territorial shit this is, but—’ and that’s when the squirrel darts forward and smacks me on the head with the branch.

Then it screeches extra loud, right in my face for good measure.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and count to three. When I open them, I stare right at the motherfucker and say with complete seriousness, ‘I’m gonna eat you.’

The squirrel either understands me, or it can tell from the expression on my face that it done fucked up, because it immediately ditches its weapon and scurries into the nearest hole in the tree.

‘Where are you going?’ I call after it. ‘It’s just you and me, you piece of shit. You’re only delaying the inevitable.’

I take my time getting to the hole, and when I do, I call out; ‘Knock, knock, little piggy. Anybody home? It’s the big bad dragon and I’m about to huff and motherfucking puff.’

On the last word, I stick my head into the hole, and immediately regret it as a flurry of blows from way too many fists and claws pound into my snout.

Pain, but mostly shock, causes me to jerk back, which then causes me to loose my grip on the trunk and fall off the tree.

‘Oh, shit!’ I scream, as I flail as hard as I can in the hope of keeping myself from falling to my death.

Through a combination of luck and... well, just luck actually, my wing-arms manage to catch enough wind to help me glide to a lower branch, and I grip that motherflunker like a long lost brother.

When my heartbeat finally stops pounding in my ears, chittering from above draws my attention back to the hole, where I see three squirrel heads poking out.

Apparently, the motherfucker has friends, and I’m pretty sure they’re laughing at me right now.

A realization dawns upon me in that moment, closely accompanied by a feeling of deep shame as I feel my ego shatter into a million, tiny, irreparable pieces: ‘I just lost to a bunch of squirrels.’

A deep voice from an unidentified location behind me agrees; ‘yes, you did.’

‘Jesus Christ in a titty bar!’ I scream, almost jumping out of my scales.

‘Who said that?’ I ask, searching around for the source of the voice, but besides the squirrels up above who are now staring at me oddly, I see no one e—wait a minute.

Is that—the creature blinks, and spotting its eyes suddenly makes me able to map out its form.

It’s an owl.

It’s perched on a nearby tree, and with how still it’s sitting and the pattern on its feathers, it had blended almost perfectly into its surroundings.

‘Hey, was that you?’ I call, but the owl doesn’t answer.

Before I can even think about it, and maybe weigh the pros and cons, I jump off the branch that I’m on and glide semi-gracefully to the branch the owl is on.

Closer now, I’m suddenly able to tell that the owl is bigger than I’d first thought. Much bigger. I’m not sure how it would compare to something like a human, but against my teeny ass, well, let me just say that it’ll be good for everyone involved if it doesn’t suddenly decide that it would like to eat me.

The owl watches me placidly as I slowly approach its perch.

Stopping well before entering its personal space (since, you know, I’m polite and shit), I ask the owl; ‘Hey, can you talk?’

The owl blinks at me, slowly, then, without its beak moving, that same deep voice emanates from it. ‘Yes. I can.’

Despite expecting (read: hoping for) a response, getting one still surprises me, and for a second, all I do is stare.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

‘Holy shit,’ I say. ‘A talking owl.’

The owl, who looks unimpressed with my perfectly accurate observation, says back; ‘And you’re a talking dragonling. I suppose we’re both seeing something new today.’

I blink at that. ‘Fair enough, I guess.

‘Hey, since we’re on the subject of talking; how are you talking without moving your mouth... beak, whatever? Are you telepathic, or something?’

The owl tilts its head at me. ‘You mean how am I doing the same thing you’re doing?’ it asks.

I blink at the owl’s question before realizing what it (or, he, I guess) means; my voice isn’t coming from my mouth. This entire time I’ve been speaking, I’ve been doing it with my mind.

To confirm though, I press a wing-arm to my throat and recite my favourite tongue twister as fast as I can; ‘Titty, booty, booby, gazongas. Hey, you’re right! I am talking with my mind.

‘Huh. This is fucking awesome. I wonder how I’m doing it.’

‘What I’m wondering,’ the owl says, ‘is where a dragon as young as you learnt such foul language.’

‘Learnt? Pfft! Nah, dude, that’s all me. It’s my God-given gift and I exercise the fuck out of it any chance I get.’

‘I see,’ the owl says, then falls silent.

Naturally, I don’t let the silence last, not when I’ve spent the last week thinking that actual human (or whatever the hell this is) conversation was a thing of the past.

Fuck no, I intend to talk this poor bastard’s ears off until he either kills me, or kills himself.

‘Seriously, though, how can you talk? Because I’m pretty sure normal owls can’t—’ I pause midsentence as a thought occurs to me.

‘Wait. Are you like me?’ I ask.

I mean, it would make sense, wouldn’t it? After all, if I could be here then why not him?

‘Like you?’ the owl (heh) parrots.

‘Yeah, like me. You know a... reincarnator.’

The obvious confusion I can see in the owl’s attitude, despite how unfamiliar I am with his expressions, causes the little kernel of excitement that had begun to grow in my chest over my hypothesis, to fizzle out long before he even asks; ‘Reincarnator?’

‘Yeah, it’s nothing,’ I say, feeling more disappointed than I would have thought. ‘Forget about it.’

The owl hums thoughtfully. ‘I understand wanting to find kinship, little dragon, especially when you’re odd. But I can assure you that I am a perfectly ordinary specimen of my species. You, on the other hand, appear to be a rather... unique specimen of yours.’

We both stare at each other in silence for a beat.

‘Did you just politely call me a freak of nature?’ I ask finally.

The owl splutters. ‘What? Of course not. I was simply... and why are you on your own, anyway? You look a little young to be left unattended.’

Uh-huh, real smooth. Totally seamless transition there, old guy. I never noticed a thing.

Deciding to throw the owl a bone though, I answer his question.

‘My mom was killed. Just a few hours ago actually.’

I practically feel the owl’s astonishment as he asks; ‘Killed? How? By what?’

‘Humans,’ I reply simply, but, to my surprise, the owl’s response is a confused ‘humans?’

Wait. Does he not know what humans are? Huh. Well, in that case, get ready for a biology lesson, old guy.

‘Yeah, humans. They’re basically hairless, bipedal monkeys who are really good at killing things.’

The owl digests this information, then asks: ‘And how many of these humans killed your mother?’

I go over the event in my head, ignoring the strong urge I feel to flinch at certain parts of it.

‘Three. I think.’

Wrong. I don’t think, I know. One was named Sage, another, Myrrh.

The third had been a guy, and I still clearly remember the look of realization on his face about how stupid they’d been to attack us when Mom cooked him.

‘Why did they attack you?’ the owl asks.

I almost laugh.

‘Dude, humans don’t need a reason to attack someone who they see as different. That’s their whole thing. They kill shit, burn shit, cut down shit, dig up shit, poison shit, and when there’s nothing left, they move somewhere else and start over.’

Maybe I’m not being too fair to my former species, after all, they’ve done some amazing things too; built some cool shit.

But then, the question still has to be asked; how many other nonhuman species, species like I am now, had to die for all that cool shit to exist?

All the fur jackets, the genuine leather boots, the fancy suburbs, the breathtaking skyscrapers, even Jeff Bezos’ penis rocket; how many habitats, how many species, how many nonhumans like me had to be wiped out for all that to look just right?

A lot. That’s how many.

So, you know what? Fuck, humans.

And fuck those three dead cunts for trying to turn Dragon Mama into a fucking belt.

Yeah, sure, she was a bitch, but she was my bitch, goddammit!

‘These humans,’ the owl says, his voice pulling me from my aggressive thoughts, ‘how large are they?’

I shrug.

The gesture comes out weirdly, since my shoulders aren’t really built for it.

‘I don’t know; maybe two, three times your height. Why does it matter?’

‘Because they’re dangerous,’ the owl says simply. ‘And they’re powerful.’

He seems to deliberate on something for several seconds, then, decisively, he shakes out his wings, looking like he’s getting ready to take off.

‘Come,’ he says, ‘I’ll take you to my parliament. You’ll tell them everything you know.’

Dafuq?

This motherfucker’s got a parliament?

More importantly though—

‘Uh, we can’t go anywhere actually,’ I say before the owl can take off.

The bird stares at me.

‘Why?’

‘Well, I assume that we’ll need to fly to reach this parliament, or whatever, right?’

‘Yes?’ he answers cautiously.

‘Yeah, see, that’s kinda totally a problem then, since I can’t fly.’

The owl stares at me.

‘Surely, you jest.’

‘Surely, I do not.’

The owl continues to watch me for several seconds, almost like he’s waiting for me to suddenly go ‘ha! Got you.’

After several seconds of waiting fruitlessly however, he finally accepts reality and sighs.

‘Fine,’ he grouches. ‘I’ll teach you to use your wings.’

My stomach rumbles.

‘Yeah, how about before I learn to use my wings, I first grab myself a chicken wing? Get it?’

‘No,’ the owl says. ‘I don’t.’

Buzzkill.