My wings are heavy, my lungs ache, and I’m pretty sure if I could sweat I would be drenched in it.

I don’t know exactly how long I chased after Longtail fruitlessly, but I know that it must have been a couple of hours at least.

Hours of diving and taking off and sharp, aerobatic maneuvers at high speed. Yeah, fuck that. I’m done. He can call me whatever the fuck he wants.

Collapsed on my back, with my wings spread out to the sides, and my unfocused eyes staring sightlessly up at the bright morning sky, I suck in air through my gaping maw, my teeny slit nostrils not feeling up to the task.

Longtail perches by my head.

‘Your stamina needs work,’ the owl says, his tone and words making his opinion of my performance clear.

‘Yeah, fuck you too,’ I reply most wittily, even as I suck in more air to soothe my burning lungs.

That’s the best part of this mental speech thing we do, in my opinion, the fact that a pesky little thing like being short of breath can no longer prevent me from verbally flipping off a motherfucker.

I swear, it’s like my dream superpower.

‘Articulate as always,’ Longtail says, every word dipped in sarcasm.

‘Yep!’ I agree with false cheer. 'You can call me Mr. Bombastic.’

‘Speaking of things to be called,’ Longtail begins at my comment, and I groan.

‘Dude, seriously?’ I whine. ‘You can’t actually have expected me to catch you; this is my first time flying.’

The owl sighs.

‘I’m not going to give you some juvenile name, dragonling,’ he says. ‘I only said I would to motivate you.’

Oh, right. Yeah, I knew that. And in his shoes I would totally do the same. You know, be all mature and shit.

Totally.

Longtail continues: ‘I was simply wondering if you’ve finally picked a name.’

‘Oh, that? Yeah, I did; Kilgharah. I’m Kilgharah.’

Longtail stares at me.

‘Kilgharah?’ he asks, the word coming out slowly, as though he’s trying to confirm if I heard the word I just said.

‘Yeah, Kilgharah,’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Besides that it sounds like you put together a trio of nonsensical sounds to make a longer nonsensical sound? Nothing at all.’

My glance at him showcases how unamused I am with his opinion.

‘Okay, first of all, a guy named Longtail automatically loses the right to badmouth someone else’s name. And, second of all, Kilgharah’s an awesome, dragonly name.’

‘I’m sure you think so,’ Longtail says, and before I can make any sort of rebuttal, continues: ‘Now, come, we’ve wasted too much time.’

‘Wasted too much time for what?’ I wonder, struggling onto my feet.

Longtail looks at me like I’m an idiot, which, I’ve got to say; rude.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

‘The whole point of teaching you to fly was so you could accompany me to Great Oak,’ Longtail says, and, from his tone, it almost sounds like he’s starting to rethink that a little bit.

Although, now that I think of it myself, would that be so bad? If he rethinks it, I mean. Because I don’t know if I even wanna go to this Great Oak place. Hell, I don’t even know where it is.

Longtail sure as hell hadn’t told me, or asked for my opinion on the matter actually, he’d just decided I would be going back with him, and, for some reason, I’d gone along with it.

Why had I gone along with it?

No, better question: why am I going along with it?

‘Dragonling,’ Longtail calls, snapping me out of my thoughts.

‘Huh? What?’

The owl huffs out a short, irritated breath. ‘I said, that we have several days of flying ahead of us, and with you slowing me do—’

‘Wait, wait, stop. Several days? What do you mean several days? How far away is Great Oak?’

‘A few thousand miles east,’ Longtail says curiously. ‘Why does it m—’

‘A few thousand miles!?’ I ask aghast. ‘Dude, what the fuck? That’s bigger than some countries.’

And he wants us to fly that? Is he insane? What the fuck has he been smoking?

Longtail sighs. ‘Let me guess,’ he says tiredly, ‘you’re too hungry and tired to fly that far.’

Something about the way he says that gets to me. I don’t know what it is, but something about the way he says those words just rubs me in all the wrong ways, and in the next moment, I’m not annoyed, I’m not irritated. No, I’m mad.

‘You know what?’ I say with faux calm. ‘You’re right. I am tired. And hungry. I’m also thirsty too now that you mention it.

‘And I am oh so sorry that that is inconvenient for you. I apologize that I’m not more excited to go flying off with you, a literally random dude I just met yesterday, to some fucking place that I couldn’t give less of a shit about.

‘And most of all, please forgive me for telling you that if you don’t like that, then you can kindly fuck off.’

You know, I get what had pissed me off about what he said now. It’s the way he keeps acting like I’m disappointing or something.

Like I should be tougher, stronger, faster. Better equipped for life alone in the wild, like the concept of a hunt for me until a week ago, wasn’t a two minute walk to the nearest store.

And yes, I realize that he doesn’t actually know any of that, but that still doesn’t make his attitude any less annoying.

Longtail and I stare each other down for several seconds, long enough for me to begin to wonder if owls actually need to blink, and if I’ve just inadvertently screwed myself over by getting into a staring contest with one.

To my great surprise, Longtail blinks first, and his next words are even more surprising.

‘Very well then. If that’s how you feel, then I suppose this is where we part ways.’

Wait, what?

The owl spreads out his wings.

‘May the wind only ever blow at your back,’ he says in greeting(?), then he takes off and shoots off into the sky. He’s gone in seconds.

I keep staring at the sky, waiting for him to come back. Because he has to be coming back right? I mean, who leaves that abruptly?

After almost two minutes of waiting though, I finally accept the truth.

Longtail’s gone.

‘Huh,’ I say. ‘Motherfucker actually left me.’

That... kinda stings, to be honest.

Which is silly, because we weren’t friends. I barely knew him; and for the time I did, he seemed mostly annoyed to be around me.

You know what? Fuck him.

And good riddance, I say.

Speaking of riddances, time to rid myself of my parched throat. After that I’ll see about getting myself something to eat.

God, hunting will be a bitch. Hmm, I wonder if dragon’s can eat plants here.

It’ll be a blessing if I can; my food problem will be pretty much solved.

Time for that later though. For now, water.

The only body of water I know of is the river, so, without further ado, I fly to it.

You know, flying’s actually quite nice, now that I’m not chasing after that bloody owl. It’s pretty neat, and not as hard as I’d thought it’d be either.

It's like my body knows what to do. Like it does with swimming.

Immediately spotting the river as I break out of the forest, I dive in, and the feeling of the water enveloping me is the highlight of my day.

I open my mouth, drinking my fill of the water as I swim (I’m not gross, you’re gross), and I can’t help but wonder why I ever left in the first place.

No, seriously, why had I left the water yesterday? I recall that I’d planned to spend the night in it since—

Oh, yeah, it was because of some monster that almost ate...

Oh fu—

—❈—

The squirrel heard a splash, and poked his head out to see the golden lizard from the evening before swimming in the river.

What an idiot, the squirrel thought. Didn’t he almost die in there yesterday?

Right then, an inky blackness, like shadow given solid form, burst out from under the water and swallowed the stupid lizard whole.

The squirrel burst out laughing, and when his brothers came to ask him what was going on, he told them what he’d seen and they laughed too.

Ah, dumb lizards.