ARWIN

“…Love is all you need

Love love love

All you need is—“

“Dude,” Jason groaned as if tortured by the stereo, “would you turn that old crap off? Who even listens to that garbage anymore?”

“Yeah!” Jason’s girlfriend Cindy chimed in, eager to jump on any bandwagon of contempt. “Put on some RnB or hip hop. Something made in the last decade.” She laughed, her voice full of scorn. Then she snuggled even closer to her boyfriend and squeezed him tight. 

Jason, Cindy, and four other friends lounged in the back of a blue pickup truck under the vast, pale blue sky. The sun was a bright yellow blaze high above. It was the end of May and warmer than usual, thanks to global warming. They were in the prairies. A farmer’s fields, freshly manured and seeded this spring, and a cattle-filled ranch stretched out on the other side of the gravel road from them. Their truck was parked next to a smaller field and nearby forest, the latter a wall of slim, scraggly prairie pine trees, now primarily gray and dead from beetle infestations over the past few years, also thanks to global warming. 

A black-and-white cow on the ranch looked up at them with placid eyes, chewing lazily on some grass. She didn’t seem very impressed by the loud humans. 

Jason’s best bud and roommate, DeShawn, shook his head, not one to listen to RnB or hip hop. “Hell no! Turn it to some country. Let’s get some real music going.” He laughed.

Three girls crowded around DeShawn, their bare, nubile arms and legs draped over him in the back of the blue pickup truck. They all cheered his musical taste. But then, they’d cheer just about anything DeShawn said. Two of them, best friends Babs and Soniq, were a good five years younger. Recent high school grads, the younger pair were super eager to please, a fact that DeShawn constantly exploited without any sense of guilt whatsoever. 

Christine, a weak-willed creature, had long been doing anything DeShawn told her, without question or complaint, ever. She wasn’t very bright, had little self-respect, and would do, and had done, anything to occasionally hear someone say that he loved her. And when he did, she was desperate enough to believe it. Whatever made DeShawn happy. She’d do anything not to lose him. Even if that love wasn’t real, she did her best to believe it was and was too inexperienced to know the real thing anyway.

Jason, relaxing in Cindy’s arms in the bed of the pickup, admired how Christine’s glorious knockers half spilled from her low-cut tank top. Jason tried not to let Cindy see him, pulling his girlfriend close for a hug with one arm so that her head remained below his own, allowing him to freely ogle DeShawn’s pet. He silently chuckled to himself. Cindy was the jealous type.

“This is the life, eh?” Jason said. “There’s nothing better than doing absolutely nothing with your day.” He was content. 

Cindy laid her head in his lap, smiling. “Absolutely,” she agreed. She stretched and got more comfortable. 

DeShawn heaved himself out of the pile of girls and jumped over the side of the truck.  

Jason heard DeShawn calling from outside the truck.

“Guys! Guys! Get over here! You gotta see this!”

Heads turned DeShawn’s way, but at first, nobody moved. Then, the girls closer to that side of the truck started getting up.

“What is that?” Babs exclaimed in her high voice. 

Soniq went wide-eyed. “Oh my gosh, what the hell?”

“Is that real?” Christine asked. 

Jason, finally curious, disengaged from Cindy and stood so that he could get a better look. 

Cindy scrambled up beside him. 

A small, baby-pink animal scampered around in the long grass at DeShawn’s feet, sniffing and investigating him.

“Did someone dye a cat or something?” Christine wondered out loud.

Jason jumped from the truck and came closer. He watched the pink creature flex a small pair of bat-style wings. “It’s a dragon!” 

DeShawn was giddy. “I know, right? How freakin’ cool is this?”

Soniq, still in the truck, tilted her head skeptically. “A dragon? Seriously, guys?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The other girls, however, eagerly raced over. Soniq, never one to be left out or stand apart, hurried after them. Soon, everyone was oohing and awing over the shocking creature.

“This can’t be real, can it?” Babs wondered, kneeling in the grass next to the animal. “I mean, it’s, like, a lizard of some kind. Right?”

Cindy reached out and gently petted the dragon’s back. The animal glanced at the hand but made no move to stop her. “It’s so smooth.” She leaned closer. “Guys! Its breath smells like cinnamon!”

“No way!”

They all sniffed and laughed at the absurdity of it. 

“Look at the wings!” Christine pointed out. “Like a butterfly.”

The dragon had tiny little wings, no doubt too small to fly with yet. While they had the shape and bone structure of bat wings, the webbing between the bones wasn’t leathery. It was patterned pink and clear and red, much like a butterfly’s wings.

“Selfie! Selfie!” Soniq chanted, jumping up and down and waving her cell phone around. 

Instantly, the other girls crowded around her, everyone with a phone out, pictures snapping. They posed and took photos from every angle, trying to find the best shot, a blend of showcasing this incredible find and making certain that each girl appeared perfectly cute — all part of their personal social media marketing campaigns.

“Here, I want to carry him,” Jason laughed. He grabbed the beast by the tail, then under the stomach and roughly heaved it up into his arms. It was surprisingly heavy. 

This got a big laugh from everyone, and soon they were taking more pics. Then everyone wanted to handle the dragon, passing it eagerly from one person to the next, laughing and posing for one selfie after another. They pulled its wings out for the camera, even pulled lips back to reveal baby fangs.

The little pink creature grew increasingly distressed from being manhandled. It bleated and wailed.

Christine spoke up. “Hey guys, I think it’s, like, hungry or something.” 

“So much for dragons being scary,” Jason laughed.

DeShawn held the dragon up. “Man, we have to take this back to town. We’re gonna make a fortune! You’re our little pink gold mine, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

The unhappy little dragon squealed.

A shadow came over the group. 

Soniq looked up — and screamed. 

Jason’s gaze shot upwards. 

The air shimmered. From that shimmer extended a serpentine neck and a massive, pink, scaled head. The head alone was even larger than the big, blue pickup truck. The older and more mature dragon, while still pink, was deeper and darker in hue, at least on the outside and back, while remaining pale pink and white on the inside of the legs and belly. Giant, reptilian eyes angrily glared down at the humans, and the giant momma dragon snorted pure white smoke. Then she roared with a maw full of enormous, sharp teeth.

Jason felt himself bowled over backwards, a leaf in cinnamon-scented wind. Blinking, he looked up just as the adult dragon breathed sparkling orange fire over his friends. The sudden, intense heat popped Christine like a balloon of fatty meat, her ragged flesh flying in all directions. DeShawn went up like a human torch, screaming through the roar of flames as he staggered around the grass, leaving flaming footprints behind him. 

Jason scrambled to his feet and took off. He clumsily made it about three steps before something large and heavy bowled him over. Teeth chomped through his legs, and he screamed. Then he was swinging upside down and rising into the air. 

He saw Soniq pawing at the door of the truck, tears streaming down her face, too panicked to get inside.

Cindy lay crushed under the dragon’s foot, a talon through her gut, her eyes unseeing. Christine’s greasy remains sizzled in a messy pile. DeShawn slipped in them and went down, screams getting quieter fast as he barbecued. 

Jason felt the dragon’s mouth bite clean through his legs. Then he fell. He landed hard on his back, not far from his dead girlfriend. He glanced down and saw blood fountaining from his cut-off legs. “N-no! No!” This couldn’t be happening! He looked back up. 

The momma dragon had fully pulled herself through that shimmering air. She was the size of a grand mansion with wings like a passenger plane. She tossed Jason’s cut-off legs back and swallowed them whole. For a moment, she seemed to savour the morsel, then her face soured. The terrifying creature spoke, “Ugh. Horrible aftertaste. What do they feed you here?” Then she flared her beautiful dragon-butterfly wings and roared a hundred times fiercer than any lion. Whipping around, she slammed her tail into Soniq and the truck, crushing the poor girl like a bug on a windshield and sending the truck tumbling side-over-side. 

The dragon looked down. 

Babs miserably huddled on the ground, frozen and shaking like a terrified bunny. She clutched the baby dragon in her arms, unable to let go. 

The mother dragon bent her head down low until her nose almost touched Babs’s own. Great, shimmering eyes narrowed, dark slits focused on the prey before her.

Babs shook and babbled, “P-please don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

A rumble sounded in the mother’s throat. “Let. Her. Go.” 

Babs uncontrollably nodded and thrust the baby dragon towards the mother, arms trembling. 

The baby safely darted off.

Babs blurted, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She hugged herself and shook back and forth. 

The mother snarled and then spoke, her voice booming. “Stupid humans. You have no respect for other creatures.”

Babs burst into frightened tears. “I will. I will, I promise. I promise I’ll never hurt another living thing ever again. I’m so sorry!”

The mother snarled again and opened her mouth. Her head came down until Babs was entirely within those humungous jaws.

Babs wailed helplessly, tears streaming down her face. 

The dragon paused there, then slowly withdrew.

Jason was shocked to see that Babs still knelt on the ground, alive and unharmed, except for the extreme emotional trauma this event was causing her. The girl collapsed in a tearful heap, getting a head start on her upcoming mental disorder. 

Despite being another species, despite being a so-called monster, there was mercy on the ‘beast’s’ draconian visage. The mother turned around and made for the shimmering air. 

Movement to the side caught Jason’s attention. He turned his head and saw the baby dragon happily scurrying towards her mother, dragging one of Soniq’s crushed legs by the ankle in her toothy little mouth like an ambitious puppy with an oversized bone.

The mother cooed the little one and shooed it towards the oddly iridescent air, and the baby vanished. The mother glanced over Jason’s way once more. She turned back towards him. Her jaws snapped down around him and lifted him up into the air once more as she headed toward the portal. But Jason knew no more pain nor saw anything more as he slid down her throat and into her belly. 

Yes, it definitely smelled like cinnamon in here. Weird.