Field Trip Special (Part Two)

Dakota had seen a few pictures of other humans, but she couldn’t wait to actually see one though. Surely there had to be some at a shop. Not to mention, they would never have seen a dragonette, so that should be fun.

She had gotten a window seat with Fengi ending up in the middle, being the smallest. They came across a few other cars going the other way and overtook one too, much to the excitement of the others. More to the point, Dakota was marveling at just how much work had gone into both Tom’s car and also the fact that all the other cars looked very different. He had talked about factories, but the others had to be built in other factories, which meant there had to be a lot of them.

Tom had talked about big supermarkets where you could get anything, this though was clearly smaller, as they pulled into a big square where they parked in a little box that was painted on the ground. There were actually other people walking around, a mother with her child, a group of youths, and a lone man all seemingly unarmed, just like Tom had said. ‘No threats then… that’s nice.’

They had caused quite the stir as they stepped out of the car since, well, they weren’t exactly quiet.

“Do they have sugar here? What about candy?” Fengi started out, gaining the attention of all around, though people seemed to be keeping their distance. Either scared or shocked by what they were seeing. Tom was clearly also looking around to gauge people's reactions as the other girls got out of the car.

“Hey look, a kid. Hello… Wave hello,” Jacky went, holding up Kiran as he waved at the mother with the child who picked up her kid, retreating towards her car.

“They don’t speak draconic girls, hell some of them might not even speak English. But good luck with Danish,” Tom went with a chuckle before he shouted out something incomprehensible. “Come on, let’s go shopping.”

It was indeed quite the store as they went inside. Tom greeted a few people sitting at the entrance, who appeared to be in uniforms matching the store’s big sign out front. The two were unarmed, and Dakota hadn’t seen a single guard. ‘Perhaps he really wasn’t lying about it?’ she questioned herself as she put on her best smile and had a crack at English. “Hello.”

One of them held up a hand for a cautious wave, though none of them said anything, instead just sitting there staring, rather rudely so in fact. Then again, she couldn’t be too harsh on them, and she certainly had plenty to gawk at too in here. The walls were lined with colorful items of all kinds, and there were long lines of shelving everywhere.

“Right girls, I’m gonna be buying dinner and a few other things, if you find anything you fancy then put it in the cart and we'll get it if it’s not too expensive.”

“Do they take gold here?” Dakota questioned. She knew they had their own currency, though gold must be valuable to them.

“Nah. I’ll pay by card, it’s no big deal. There’s still a bit left on it?”

“Card?” Dakota had to ask, as the other girls went about looking over the shelves.

“Oh yeah, we don’t pay physically most of the time… Don't worry about it,” Tom replied in the familiar tone of ‘this would be a long explanation.’ Dakota let him off the hook for it; if they wouldn’t take her money then there wasn’t much she could do except barter for it.

She elected to follow Tom to see what he was planning, not to mention it made it a lot easier to ask what things were as the others had begun running around the different aisles, trying to figure out what it was they had found.

The pictures helped a lot, though there were a lot of things that just didn't make sense. The mix your own candy aisle had been a marked success, Tom having to put limits in place on how much they were allowed to take each. He and Dakota worked together to make a bag for Essy.

The perfume isle had also been raided rather thoroughly by all of them. Jacky expressed her frustration they didn’t have anything gun or explosive related. She had settled for something called ‘AXE’ which sounded sufficiently up her alley.

They had started to gather a bit of a crowd by now. Dakota had a crack at saying ’Hi,’ waving, and generally being friendly to the most curious ones, as they blabbered away in their strange language. A few of them replied in English though, trying to strike up a conversation with her which was pretty much where her English skills ran out. She had been doing a lot more reading than talking in English, and her vocabulary was rather lacking.

“Yes, dragon… woman.”

“What is ‘costume?’ ”

“Yes, me pretty. Thank you.”

“Tom, I don’t think I quite get it?” she eventually had to concede to the by now clearly amused Tom as he started replying to questions, which apparently did little to diminish the amount of attention.

“Tom quite a few of them are taking pictures, is that bad?” Sapphire questioned as she backed up towards the cart Tom was pushing.

“Nah, they’ve never seen someone like you before, no one has. So they don't quite believe it. Some of them think you’re in costume.”

“Ha, that’s fucking hilarious,” Jacky let out, Fengi scooting in behind her.

A younger man came up to Dakota and turned his back to her, holding up a phone and making an odd face before turning back around and holding up a clenched fist. Tom had done that before, so Dakota bumped it as was apparently tradition. The kid said something that sounded English to some extent before leaving her be again.

Looking to Fengi, Tom seemingly decided enough was enough and shouted something out, which did get people to at least back off a bit, even if all eyes were still very much so on them. “Come on, I think we have what we need.”

They had proceeded to where the uniformed individuals had been sitting, and Tom started putting things up onto a moving belt. Each item was picked up by the uniformed person who did something with it that made the machine let out a beeping noise.

“What’s she doing?” Dakota asked as she began helping put things on the belt with one hand, making sure Kiran didn’t runoff.

“She’s scanning what we bought so she knows what it costs. The machine knows what everything is worth.”

“Can it tell me what I’m worth?” Jacky asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Are you sure you want to know that?” Sapphire retorted with a chuckle.

“As long as it’s more than you.”

“Tom worth most,” Kiran let out as he tried to get free from Dakota’s grasp.

“I mean, duh. I said more than Sapphire.”

It took Tom a second to process that before he broke out laughing, apparently relaying the joke to the person sitting down who also began to chuckle a bit, though that stopped when Jacky turned her attention to her, demanding to know what she was worth.

“No Jacky, it’s not like that. It reads this little label, nothing more. Besides human trafficking is very illegal.”

“Well technically,” Fengi added, cautiously holding up a finger.

The uniformed person said something, and Tom took out a small card and held it against the machine, putting in a number on the buttons as the thing beeped a bit. “There we go not exactly cheap, but what the hell.”

“What did you pay for all this?”

“Uhhh… like three gold.”

“Oh, this better be some good stuff then, yikes!” Sapphire added.

“Meat is expensive here, and you girls need more than most—and all that candy isn't cheap either. Still, it’s gonna be worth it, I promise.”

“What are we having?”

__________________________________________________________________________________

“Right, they’re gone now… actually just five more minutes,” Esmeralda let out, sinking a bit deeper into the warm tub. The water was slowly becoming colder though and she had a plan, so it was time to get to work. After she had dried herself off and gotten her clothes back on she made for the computer.

Sitting down in front of the arcane machine, she quickly found the on button and was confronted by the login screen. 'What are the chances it’s the same passwords as the laptop… pretty good I say.’ She was indeed correct as a machine accepted the passphrase.

‘Right now, internet… What Apuma wouldn’t give for this,’ she mused to herself as she began clicking buttons, being careful not to scratch the keyboard, just in case she needed to keep Tom from finding out.

‘Oh this is easy. There we go google, he talked about that. Right, let’s see what these idiots think a dragon looks like,’ the simple search query for dragon yielded a lot of lines of text and a few very strange pictures…

‘What the fuck is that...? Oh, it’s good Jarix isn’t here, he would have even more trouble seeming badass enough… What a shitty mother… Anywho, pictures, yes please. I would like more pictures… now come on! Hell, even Baron would be jealous of that guy… I doubt it could even fly though.’

Essy took some time going through the myriad of pictures, the list seemingly continuing forever as she kept scrolling down. It rather quickly became less and less dragon pictures and more just random things. ‘Right then what about… Dragon people?’

That search yielded a lot fewer relevant hits, but there were a few pictures of what sort of looked like a dragonette. At least if you had gotten someone to draw one by a second hand account of a man who had been drunk at the time.

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‘Aww that one is quite sweet, a happy little family… Wait a second… Oh, Jacky’s not gonna like that,’ Essy concluded as her eyes landed on the mother's chest. ‘Hang on a second… Dragon woman… Eww no, that’s not what I wanted…. Oh, she’s quite pretty… She’s showing an awful lot of skin though… Right then, let’s try sexy dragon. Let’s see what Jacky’s up against. I doubt they can beat Sapphire.’ Esmeralda’s curiosity definitely had nothing to do with her wanting to know, this was all for Jacky’s sake and the honor of their people.

That resulted in a whole new level of rabbit hole as Esmeralda discovered the results of clicking a picture to find more like it. ‘Oh, Jacky is gonna be so pissed… Why do they have to put boobs on everything! It’s not fair!... I wonder what I would look like with boobs? They seem like they would be annoying as hell though?’

“Oh god!” she let out as she found a series of rather more disturbing images. Of some completely naked dragon… whatever the fucks, in some very suggestive poses. ‘Wait… Why do they have these?... Oh fuck no!... What else do I know… Cute, that works. Let’s try cute… Awwww that’s better… What is that...? Cat, kitten? I want more of those, yes please.”

Having gotten the hang of finding what she actually wanted to look at, while working hard to repress the thought of just what they were doing with drawings of sexy naked dragon people, she forged on into the depths of whatever these kitten creatures are. She eventually also found puppies and a few other cute little animals.

Eventually, she ended up on a place called youtube where they had a plethora of videos of these cute little things being hilarious. ‘Oh, we need one of those at the keep… Maybe we can get a cat? They look so damn cute, even if they seem a tad useless.’

As with the pictures, there seemed to be no end to the amount of videos. In fact, she found so many she apparently lost track of time completely, only being warned by the luckily rather loud car approaching as she hastily closed down what she had been looking at, turning off the machine. She hadn't asked for permission, so it was probably best if Tom didn’t know what she had been up to. Not to mention he might be in trouble if Jacky found out about the importance of boobs.

She had to curse herself a bit though, she had wanted to look for so many things. Still, she needed a cover. She couldn’t have been doing nothing for all this time of course. ‘What to do what to do… got it.’

It took more than a bit of fiddling and frantic button mashing, but eventually the living room stereo came to life, filling the room with music just as she heard the car shut off outside.

“What the hell is this? ‘Life in’ what… ‘I’m fantastic?’ Sounds like something Fengi would enjoy though… How do you change it?” she didn't get to, though, as the others came barging in. Tom had a bit of a laugh at the music selection, Fengi beginning to bob her head, immediately trying to dance a bit in place without spilling her cargo of things.

Tom then set about delegating tasks. At the keep tasks might include cleaning, laundry, wall scrubbing, firewood, or other such boring stuff. Here, though, things seemed a bit different. Esmeralda had been assigned to setting the tables and watching over Kiran as Tom dumped out several boxes of what he described as “the best toy in the world.”

“So what do you do with it?” Essy had to ask as she pondered the little strange block.

“You build whatever you want. Maybe a house, a car, a plane. Only the imagination sets the limits,” Tom replied, looking back to the ones unloading the food and putting it in the cold box. “Fuck it, I can spare it, I’ll show ya.”

It was a rather relaxing way to go about playing, and Kiran was definitely utterly engaged by it. Though that might have just as much to do with Tom’s enthusiasm. Essy’s attempts at making a keep, were rather quickly put to shame by the resident inventor, as Tom quickly had some sort of carriage put together with steering and everything.

‘So that’s how they do it,’ she mussed to herself as she saw Kiran doing his best to put wheels on some plates to make a car like Tom’s, Essy quickly being reallocated to finding more blue bricks for the project. ‘Kiran the engineer, just like that.’

__________________________________________________________________________________

This was quickly becoming one of the best days Fengi could remember. She had gotten candy, perfume, a nice bath, and Tom had even let her get the cool-looking sunglasses that actually fit. It had been a bit too much attention at the shop, though it was nowhere near as bad as she had feared it might be. Then again, that had clearly been a village shop of some kind, so much smaller in comparison to what he had talked about in the past. Now though, she had ended up on kitchen duty with him…

‘In some ways the world doesn't change, I guess,’ she sighed to herself a bit. The kitchen was nothing like what she had been in before though, so there was at least that element of excitement.

“What are we making? I’m guessing something with a lot of veggies in it?” she joked as she got out the cutting boards. They looked just like any other cutting board she had ever seen, so she guessed no major advances on that front then.

“Sort of, I guess. We are making lasagna.”

“Which is?” Fengi questioned with a shrug. Honestly, what chance did she know of figuring that out?

“You’ll see. We don’t actually need to do much.”

That sounded just fine by her, nor was he kidding. In fact, she ended up spending most of the time looking at what he was doing. The stove was pretty damn cool, not to mention the oven that you could just turn on. Tom had been real smug about that one. Click a few switches and wait five minutes. Fengi could get used to that for sure.

It was an odd concoction that they were making though. She knew what minced meat was obviously, but vegetables in a metal can? That was rather strange; she didn’t know what the fuck a tomato was either, well apart from the picture on said metal can which looked nothing like the contents. Tom insisted though, so in it went. They had also bought a rather nice block of cheese, which Tom then proceeded to grind into pieces for some reason.

It was a neat arrangement though. Just one big block ready to eat, and it smelled fabulous when it came out of the oven. Fengi really hoped those hard parts in there had gone at least a bit softer. She had tried to nibble on one when Tom wasn’t looking, wondering what it was. It was incredibly hard and crunchy which was rather nice, the result though were sharp splinters which she had to pick out from her teeth, giving the excuse that she needed to go to the bathroom.

The big thing though was that they would be getting a desert. In fact, after much pestering, they were getting several. Even if Tom had to enact a rationing policy to prevent them from going through the roof later that evening. She had wanted to try ice cream ever since Dakota and the others... well, mainly Sapphire and Balethon actually had been bragging about it. They were about to be put to shame though as Tom got out several tubs of the near-mythical substance.

They had so many flavors, and they had each been allowed to pick one. Fengi went for peach since Tom had called her sweet as a peach before. So it had to be sweet… Unless that had been an insult… No, she had picked the best one for sure, she knew that much. That didn’t have anything to do with it being her job to plate the ice cream, thus giving her a nice opportunity to try them all with a sneaky finger. The taste was truly wondrous; it was all she could do not to go for a second scoop.

Tom had decided they would have both cookies and what he called hot chocolate to help with the brain freeze, overruling Dakota’s suggestion about sweet tea. It didn’t look particularly delectable, but there had been chocolate in the candy aisle at the shop so she guessed it had to be good.

The lasagna had been very nice. It had actually managed to make the entire meal taste like meat rather than having the annoying stuff on the side as a chore to go through. The beer in a glass bottle had taken a little getting used to, but it tasted amazing so light and crisp. According to Tom, it was definitely the best light beer in the world. Though he did seem to make those kinds of claims rather loosely when it came to things from his home.

But when Fengi got her first scoop of ice cream she damn near fainted. She had never tasted anything like it, not in a million years… Hell, she hadn't dared dream of something like this. When Tom had looked expectantly at Saph and Dakota there had been no question. Humans did ice cream better than they did. It wasn’t even a contest. And there was more on the table than they could safely eat in several days. The definitely not magic cold box in the kitchen provided reassurance that none of it would go to waste.

Predictably, it hadn’t even taken a minute before Jacky dropped her spoon, face twisting into a vicious snarl as she fought the brain freeze. Tom mostly ignored her distress as he held up the hot mug for her to drink from, which apparently solved the problem. Fengi had no desire to try that, so she went for her mug to try out the brown liquid hidden under the whipped cream as it was. Tom had topped it with Colorful sprinkle, which really did help with the appearance. ‘Oh god that’s nice,’ Fengi had to conclude as the hot liquid ran down her throat. It was nice and sweet, yet somehow different. It tasted heavenly, though she had no way to even describe the flavor. It was so soft and kind like a liquid friend. ‘Chocolate, fuck yeah.’

When Tom declared everyone had gotten their ration of sugar and then some, he had set about clearing off the table. Kiran cried out in despair, complaining he hadn’t gotten anywhere near as much as the others, though Dakota and Essy quickly managed to get the little guy calmed down with the promise of more playtime. Not having been told to help, normally Fengi might have tried to run from the responsibility, though after that experience she was not gonna leave Tom to clean up by himself. Not to mention, she really felt like she needed to do something right now.

“So then, where are the washbasins? Do we just use the sink?” she let out, trying to keep still, putting down the plates to stop them from rattling.

“Nope, we use this. Just put it in, push a button, and it comes out clean,” Tom replied, opening a small hatch under the table.

“Oh, would you stop being so much better than us?” Fengi let out jokingly as Tom looked up. “No, never mind, just make one for home, okay?”

“I can only promise to try,” Tom replied with a chuckle as they set about loading the machine, Tom moving frustratingly slowly for some reason. It was almost enough for Fengi to snap at him to hurry it up. She didn’t though. He had done so much for them today, paid for everything, showed them his home, shared his things, and generally let them play with just about whatever they pleased.

When they were finally done with the dishes, Fengi dried off the table in a heartbeat, going to join the others in the living room. Jacky and Sapphire were fighting over the remote control as Kiran ran around, being play chased by Dakota. Essy had gotten the music going again, apparently starting at that same song from when they got home.

‘Ah what the hell, let's go,’ Fengi went to herself as she let loose on what she was labeling tonight's dance floor. She needed to let off some steam right now, and that song was perfect. It didn’t take long to get Essy to sing along to the song, joining her. She was clearly also feeling more than a little hyper right now. Even Dakota seemed to find it a good idea.

Tom came in and sat down on the couch, being jumped by Jacky immediately. She put the TV remote on the table then, and Tom was apparently expecting to cuddle. To his apparent surprise, she lifted him up and started to do bench presses with him while Sapphire watched, foot tapping nervously.

“She will never learn, will she?” Fengi said happily.

“Nope, she never will,” Essy replied with another laugh, as Tom consigned himself to his fate as ballast. “Best part is i think they want to watch the same thing”

Tom managed to get Kiran to climb onboard, scoring some complaints from Sapphire that it wasn’t fair that he hadn’t been there the whole time.

Tom got a hold of the remote, putting on some kind of dance show, much to Fengi’s enjoyment. It didn’t take long to learn the really rather simple moves, which inevitably lead to her starting to improvise ways of making them more fun. Humans just didn’t seem to have any flex to them at all. The lack of wings and a tail was clearly limiting too, even if you had to watch your surroundings when using them.

They had kept up the dancing for longer than both Saph and Jacky could keep lifting Tom and Kiran. In the end Sapphire had to admit defeat and Jacky triumphantly claimed the remote. With some help from Tom, the TV was set to some kind of car race.

As Fengi’s sugar high wore off, Tom had dragged in a mattress and pillows, setting it down on the floor and leaning it against the table as a sort of second sofa as the snacks were brought out. Starting with chips and popcorn, Tom claiming more sugar probably wasn’t smart right now.

From there on it had been movie night, Fengi hadn’t learned a lot of English, either written or spoken, so she was struggling quite a bit. They had gone for a bit of action though, nothing too bad yet of course; Kiran was still with them after all. Eventually, though, the little guy gave out. It had been one hell of a day for him too, that was for sure. So he was put to bed in the other end of the house.

Then Tom had gotten out the more violent stuff. The bags of sweet candy were brought out. It had been much the same as many of the movies they had seen before, but the TV was way better than the projector Tom had brought.

The candy though was definitely the high point. Fengi almost wished she had picked more chocolate in the shop, but how could she have known? They didn’t exactly allow taste tests. Not to mention, the bag she was currently holding would be the envy of the king back home, so it was rather hard to complain.

When she finally worked up the willpower to save the rest of the precious candy for later, she rather quickly learned just how late it was, as she at first just wanted to rest her eyes for a bit, only to doze off to sleep.