Dawnfire was having a very bad day. The previous days had been pretty dog-shit, but this one was the whole dog, and nobody had let it outside for a while.
'Crests the Skies on Wings of Knowledge', henceforth known as 'The Dragon', had returned and ruined her day.
At first, it had seemed as if this was a good thing that he was back, but she had been given time to reflect on things since then, and it really would have been much better if he'd simply decided to stay stolen.
Standing there in the middle of the park, staring up at that bright dot in the sky, hands on her hips and as naked as the day she was born. Dawnfire sighed. How had she ended up here.
First of all, his return was unexpected and sudden. After the theft, Dawnfire and her crew had noted the theft down, sent messages to the other cities in the local area to look out for him, tracked the direction he had headed, and then given up on ever seeing him again. It was a dragon, what else were they going to do, they couldn't exactly follow him!
That night they had thrown a party in the local pub, because why not. So long, it'd been a good run, thanks for delivering our mail for so many years! She was pretty sure there were some longstanding bets on how long it'd take before he left, and somebody somewhere had just won an awful lot of money.
In the week since, she had been in talks with the city council about what would happen to the park, which the post office owned the land of but the council very much coveted as prime real estate, for either housing, factories, or simply a park of their own. They had been after it for years, and without the dragon post, there would be no use for it for the post office.
She had been trying to convince them to wait another week, until head office got back to her, when out of nowhere, The Dragon had returned!
They'd found out about his return mostly by the screams and shouting echoing in through the open windows, as the benefactors of the city's newest public park discovered that their presence was very much no longer welcome. Whoops!
He had come down at speed, barely giving the picnickers time to get out of the way, the thief on his back hurling and wretching as he rolled off and into the grass. The meeting had adjourned as they all peered out the window at the spectacle. "Better send somebody to fetch the plods," one council member had stated, and the rest of them nodded in agreement.
-
She was quite impressed he had managed to cling on at all, never mind when he was so obviously very, very ill. They had given him a minute to recover and for the police to arrive, before heading in to arrest him.
It wasn't framed in such vulgar terms, of course. They didn't want to upset the dragon, and displays of violence had been known to set him off in the past. There was some history there, but she wasn't privy to it, and as far as she knew, any documents relating to it were officially sealed.
'Crests the Skies' wasn't injured, which was good. That was the first thing they checked. "Every scale intact, just a little dusty," reported back the mage, "otherwise, he seems in good shape."
The same couldn't be said for the rider. Was it possible the dragon had taken against him, and that was why they returned? The second mage into the area had done a quick check over on him, and then run off to find their superior. And then that person had gone and found theirs. By the time they'd managed to drain the sickness out of him, almost an hour had passed, and the tension was also draining out of the situation as he told his story.
They had done the full journey as documented on the board, he reported, and he had drawings. He pulled what was left of them out of the remains of his clothing and they were handed off to be copied and stabilised before they degraded more.
He carried on with his tale: they hadn't landed at either of the cities, although The Dragon had tried at one point. Later on, they had gone off course, finally coming upon two refugees, who had the whole story of what had happened.
Dawnfire and her crew had exchanged glances at that. There hadn't been any new refugees since the autumn, and they had found two new ones, by chance?
"You think it's a ploy?" her second in command whispered, so the thief wouldn't hear, "we get him medical help, send the dragon out like he says, and by the time we realise it's missing again, he's been released?"
She shook her head, "I don't know, but we shouldn't risk it. Best to get back on a regular schedule."
Her assistant nodded and went to talk to somebody else, and Dawnfire returned her focus to the thief.
He was reiterating that he wanted them to send the dragon back for them. They were on the road with no supplies, and something strange was happening in the air. Plus, then they could tell the story themselves.
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The person he was talking to was shaking their head. He'd already stolen the dragon once, and it was already more than a week behind schedule on deliveries, it wasn't going to happen.
"Look," ah, bargaining, "he understands, he's not stupid. It shouldn't take more than a couple of days, just put the harness on him and-"
He had been cut off at that point, as a police officer tried to arrest him. Theft of post office properly, cattle theft, assault of an officer, all the usual things. It was a bit hard to pin down "stole a dragon" in the books of law, but they'd had a week to work it out, and now that book was being firmly thrown.
A small scuffle had broken out as they tried to get the handcuffs on him, and then the beast had intervened.
A single tap on the shoulder with a clawed wing, and Dawnfire rolled her eyes and sighed as the officer wet himself.
"Someone go and get him a new pair of trousers, and you, send somebody more subtle!" she shouted as he was escorted out of the park by one of his co-workers, his face bone-white.
She looked at the artist. They still looked a little green around the gills, but much, much better than they had when they first landed. "What did happen to you and your clothes anyway?"
"I don't know," he replied, "they just kinda fell apart in the air." Shortly after that, he had started feeling real sick, and he didn't remember much of the rest of the journey. The next thing he knew he was on the ground, half-naked with a mage's hands around his face and several police officers all jostling to be the first to get him into handcuffs.
"Was it possible that The Dragon did this to you?"
He shook his head, "I doubt it, he seemed quite on board with the whole thing when we were on the road." He rubbed his hands over his torso as he thought about it, "it was something in the air, he tried to fly around it, I think, but it wasn't working."
Dawnfire nodded. It had been theorised that The Dragon had done it on purpose, in retaliation for being stolen, but nobody there believed it. The mages had been complaining all morning of strange colours in the air and headaches, but that was the sort of thing mages did.
"I think it's trying to tell us something", one of the workers came up to Dawnfire and nudged her on the shoulder. She turned in irritation.
"Well, can't you work it out?"
"I dunno", he shrugged, "He keeps pointing at the sky. I think he wants to leave?"
"He points a lot," the artist butted in, "and he does want to leave" and she shot him a glare.
"Well, he can't, not yet. We haven't got the correct gear for him and the bags will have to be repacked. It's going to take a couple more hours at least. Plus we have to send messages onto the next stations to let them know he's been found-"
"I thought we were gonna send him after the refugees?" another worker butted in, "I went and got the kid harness, I think I can rig it up even without the bags."
She shook her head, "he's already over a week behind schedule, we can't be sending him out after every lost soul out there. Besides, how will he even know where to go?"
The worker shrugged. "Just trying to help." next to her, the artist opened his mouth to add his own interjections.
She was about to snipe something petty at the both of them, when there was a wail from outside the area, pushed their way in through the south side, two harried-looking postal workers following behind.
"We couldn't stop her," the first one apologised to Dawnfire with a slightly out of breath bow, "she kept insisting, and when we said no-"
Whatever the rest of the sentence was, it was lost, drowned out by another loud wail. Dawnfire winced as the woman stood in front of the Dragon and screamed.
"You killed her!" she cried, tears running down her face, reaching up to him but not quite daring to touch. Her clothes were unkempt and she looked like she'd been crying for a while, her face tired and worn. Everyone in the area stilled. "You killed my baby!" she screamed again.
If animals could show emotion, Dawnfire was certain that The Dragon's would be "nonplussed", and for a moment nobody moved, as she stood there and sobbed.
The Dragon didn't move, seemingly as frozen as the rest of them, and she stared up at him through tears. "You killed her."
The artist, she ought to learn his name one of these days, slowly walked over to the woman and laid a hand around her shoulders. She struggled against him for a moment, and then all of a sudden gripped onto him like a castaway clinging onto a piece of driftwood, pulling both of them to the floor.
They stayed there for a time, the artist comforting her with quiet words as she sobbed, but what they were saying to each other, Dawnfire couldn't hear.
The crowd gave them a minute, and then the postal workers who had been following her were there, helping them both to their feet, and out of the park.
Well, that was one way to resolve things, she supposed.
"Who was she?" Dawnfire asked her second in command.
"I'll go find out."
She nodded, and they turned to go find out.
"Ok," time to go back to work. "Send Petalearth for the bags, the main office should have them repacked by now, we can send off-"
She was cut off, as the ground shook.
Oh.
Oh dear.
Everyone turned to look at The Dragon, suddenly aware that they were standing under the nose of an intelligent creature the size of a small tavern.
Ah. Fuck. Was this about the woman? Dawnfire ran down a checklist of things in her mind that had gone wrong over the past couple of hours. Arrival, arrest, woman… They hadn't had the ritual goat on hand, shit.
He seemed to puff up in size as he looked down at them, standing up on his four legs, as he rarely did when on the ground. Using one wing, he pointed at the sky, and then at them, and then at the sky again.
"Right," Dawnfire murmured to her two lackeys, "Ok, he wants to leave, just-"
Then he pointed at the pile of clothes, and they crumbled into dust.
A threat.
Dawnfire swallowed around the lump in her throat. Her voice was barely audible even to herself, as she gave out quiet orders.
"-just don't antagonise him. Brightstar, you go and fetch a goat, Allf-"
She stopped, as the wave of colour washed over them, and much more than just the clothes on the ground disintegrated. She felt her body shift and Change, and saw the same happen to those around her, bodies rippling and morphing, clothes turning to dust and plants twisting up around their feet.
As she stood there, staring at the dust that had been her garments only moments before, a very angry magical beast the size of a barn standing tall in front of her, and her all and everything all on display, a slow spiralling cold moved through Dawnfire, as she finally realised something truly horrifying.
She was never going to get that promotion, was she.