It's dark and I've been floating like this since... I don't know... but I remember images, flashes when I let my mind go.

The dream happens when you think of pleasant things. But what was pleasant?

Ah. Yes... the cold cuts...

I was dreaming... but I didn't realise it. I was in a town and I entered attracted by the smell of smoked meat...

Yes... there were pies, hams that were smoked and hanging from the ceiling. They were everywhere...

Pies and necklaces of sausages and that smell that hit you right up to your tongue...

I was like being in a nest with giant chocolate eggs and in my paws, a pink squared paper, with the good smell of butchery.

These were pleasant memories but I knew that if I dug any deeper, an abyss of sadness would engulf me in the dark again. So I let myself be carried away by the pleasant smells.

I flew from shop to shop, from market stall to market stall.

Sometimes I had a hand. And they would say hello to me, Professor Brilliant. Will you try this new chocolate?

Then I was sitting at a round table in the little country town...And you could see an old Panzer tank on a concrete base.

The owner of the chip shop greeted us and told us that after the war people had filled it with chip cones. It was a war memorial now...

I can't remember the name of the town, but it started with "Ouf. Or Houff?"

In front of me, my best friend, Yves... He mostly avoided me staying at the farm to do concrete work. Egyptian work considering my size and age.

In this dream I went from animal to adult to child and it made no sense, but I bathed in these pleasant moments to finally enjoy a deep and restful sleep.

I could feel myself waking up and the cold, the birdsong and the dew were pushing me back to reality.

"A little longer... but then I remembered the bad memories of begging death to come and get me. I couldn't stand this shitty life anymore.

I was working at the university on fusion devices to vaporise materials like diamond and then recrystallise them on scalpels, precision tools and nano tools to cut macromolecules, but all this was far away. And I was no longer interested.

I no longer had the flame of the researcher wanting to discover new things. Indeed, I was in sentimental distress, divorced, my children only contacted me at Christmas or on their birthdays, and one of them had left for the USA and the other for Australia... and I... I stayed here.

Then we started a kind of reactor with a tube, like a big neon tube.

And the chemical reactions were happening inside.

I had a memento from my father, but in very bad taste. A silver ring in the shape of a dragon's claw holding an Opaline that looked like a fire iris.

My ex didn't want me to keep this ring but it was the last gift from my parents before they disappeared in a car accident.

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I was alone in the world and I didn't want to part with this relic. It wasn't worth much but to me it was all that mattered.

The silver tip would blacken on contact with toxic substances and other poisons and it saved my life many times, especially when working with arsenic and other cyamides.

They were used as catalysts to reach higher temperatures.

I sighed after the umpteenth experience of the project, walking with leaden feet.

The loneliness weighed on me and I was oppressed even to breathe.

I couldn't take it anymore.

I couldn't read any more, I was like "stuck", the TV... it was gathering dust, and there was only the radio left...

At home, I had become a wreck.

So much so that I had all the same shirts, trousers and socks. So I didn't have to worry about what to wear... a bit like Einstein did.

My house was simple, with 3 bedrooms, 90m² and a garden. Only the cat brought me some comfort.

The colleagues were twisted and thought of nothing but getting the hell out of there, and stayed most of the time in front of the coffee machine.

Whether they work or not, they won't get paid less... it was the subsidies.

One or two good reports prepared years in advance would allow them to do nothing until they retired. Everything was tied up.

And nothing was said to each other, everything having been said... Just gossip about the neighbours or a break-up...

Every moment I was praying to change my life, calculating how I was going to leave everything and run away to a desert island and or rent or buy a shack in a tropical country and start a new life.

In fact I said I wanted to die, but I didn't want to die, I wanted another life, something else. To start all over again, but differently. Not to make the same mistakes again.

I didn't want to be like a colleague of mine who committed suicide because of the harassment of his manager at work and his venal wife.

He was mourned and then quickly forgotten...

Even I was beginning to forget the names...I was so bored. I had so many trials that I didn't know what pleasure looked like anymore. It was getting to the point where I was becoming helpless.

I decided to use a new disintegrating crystal for another experiment, my work being a bit of an outlet for my depressed state but again I had reached my limit.

I didn't care about radiation or arcing.

One accident and... I wouldn't be here anymore...

And that's what happened, but by surprise...

I approached the tube and the light only intensified and I couldn't look at it any more, it was so bright.

My dust cover caught fire and I reflexively put my hand in front of my eyes, but the crystal in my ring resonated and the tube exploded, the radiation surrounding me in the shape of a dragon's eye.

The next moment everything stopped and a POP was heard.

My colleagues ran into the room and saw my half-burnt clothes on the floor and my ring, without the crystal.

Apart from my shoes and a few things, there was nothing left of me.

I had been sucked into a POP.

Now I was groggy and stretched out my arm-wings, my long tail and my long neck, and the first thing I did was to jump on Mum's neck.

She brought tasty prey all the time and my old life was like a dream but here I wanted to make the most of the new chance I had been given.

I had a brother and two sisters and I cuddled them.

It wasn't very wyvern-y but they were learning.

I knew by instinct that the little ones were competing with each other and the weaker ones were chased out of the nest by their brothers but I was ahead of them.

After two weeks of feeding, I had successfully completed my first flight into the cave and had killed my rats which I was proud to eat.

Papa Wyverne and Mama were very fond of each other and were like swans stroking each other with their long necks.

Indirectly, I was looking after my siblings and I didn't want to lose any of them. Even though we were animals, love and tenderness were learned from a very young age.

I knew we were predators, maybe Apex, but that didn't stop us from cuddling once in a while.

That's why I always returned the favour to mum as soon as she licked us.

At first sight, with the tail, she must have been about 20 metres long and I about 2 metres and my brothers and sisters about 1 metre.

Basically I was the size of an average dog and they were the size of cats.

I was like "asleep" for the first 2 weeks after I hatched, vaguely remembering tearing the soft membrane of our eggs. Instincts took over and slowly my memories came back, and it was better that way.

Thus, I no longer had to suffer from my past and its bad memories. I was Mirmoelnir and no longer the professor what's-his-name. I said to myself... my knowledge, I will pass it on if I can and to survive but now, I am a Wyvern and I was only waiting for one thing: to discover this world and to build up a harem one day. Quite a programme.