What's a Dragon? - Chapter 27
Verification
In Part 3 (Ch. 18-25), our narrator became more comfortable with what she is, now that she knows it. She’s still not ready to fight to survive, but she’s ready to learn how, even if that means telling other people.
Okay, Dad wasn’t kidding. I always thought Dad’s skills were purely focused on architecture—and he’s good at that, certainly—but he’s really good at making detailed plans on anything.
I didn’t tell him everything Dragons can do because it’s a lot and I’m not even sure that I know all of it. But I did talk about the basic stuff I can do, like using the Mymoir, shifting, and my heat stuff. And Dad went and made a plan for who to talk with and when and how I’m going to learn to fight, so it looks like my free time just went to near zero. But if it saves my life, it’s worth it.
And that also took basically the whole day, so I’m actually starting it now, Sunday afternoon. Two good things: the first person to talk with is Mrs. Chesbrough, and Mom is with me. So at least I’m familiar with my audience and I have backup.
But Jess is also here. It is her house.
“That’s what you wouldn’t tell me?” she asks. I look away. “I don’t blame you. Shannon wouldn’t say, either, but she did imply it was stressful. And if you’re sneaking out—hey, hold on!” I bite my lip, anticipating what’s next. “That means you—why wouldn’t you talk to me yesterday?”
I gesture undecidedly. “Well… you weren’t loud enough. I couldn’t hear you.”
“It’s hard to yell as a bird! My lungs are only so big!”
“And also, my voice sounds exactly the same when I talk that way. I hadn’t decided yet whether to tell anyone.”
“Besides Shannon.” Jess sounds the same as Shannon did when the latter accused me of being a Mage.
“Dad made me take someone with me and Shannon figured it out herself.” I bow my head. “Telling people about this is more dangerous than hugging a bear cub. I—” I stop when I hear Jess laugh. “What?”
Jess withdraws the laughter for a smile. “I don’t think I told you. I got another spell.”
Ah. I grin. “Finally! A bear?”
“Black bear. I don’t need you to look that one up.”
I shake my head. “No, that seems pretty easy.”
Mrs. Chesbrough taps me on the shoulder. “I hate to interrupt you girls, but the Defense Force is going to need more than just someone’s word for it if you want them to act. Emilie, do you have any sort of proof?”
I think for a second. “You can’t scry me?”
She hesitates for a couple of seconds, so I bet she tried it and saw I was right. “There’s a spell for that.” News to me. I mean, I expected it, but I didn’t know for sure. “Anything else?”
I look at the ceiling. “If I shift in here, I’ll break your house. I can show you my heat magic?”
“Your what?”
“Sssorta like fire and ice.”
Mrs. Chesbrough pinches the bridge of her nose. “Anything unique to Dragons?”
I hold my palms up in defeat. “I don’t know! Anything a blue dragon can visibly do looks the same as stuff that you can do with a whole bunch of wands! All I can think of is that I’d probably have to be a Wizard to pull all of it off!”
Jess’s mom looks at my mom. “She’s got you there,” Mom states.
“Alright,” Mrs. Chesbrough relents. “But can you give me something? A scale, perhaps?”
I don’t collect scales and I’m not about to shift in town. Not today. But maybe I can do something like with the rock for Shannon. “Do you have anything that you wouldn’t mind me engraving?”
Mrs. Chesbrough frowns. “Like what?”
“I dunno,” I answer, shrugging. “A rock? Anything thick and smooth.” Anyone can make a hole in paper. Engraving instantly is harder.
“Let me check.” She walks away. From heat, I think she’s looking through cabinets or a desk or something.
“What did you have in mind?” Jess asks.
I smile. “Something archaeologists would probably kill for. If you don’t get it, I’ll explain later.”
Mrs. Chesbrough returns wielding a memory cube. “Will this work? It’s empty.”
“It should.” I take it from her and place it on the table, then hold my right palm against the top. When I remove my hand, the symbol I chose is clearly engraved in the metal block.
Mrs. Chesbrough stares at the symbol. “I thought only orange dragons could change the shape of things.”
“We can all write,” I respond.
“You call that writing?” She looks at the symbol a little closer. “Then, that… shape has a meaning?”
“It says ‘Dragon.’”
“In what language?”
“Draconic.”
“I guess that’s as good of a name as I’d come up with,” Mrs. Chesbrough admits.
“What’s this have to do with arc—” Jess pauses. “With what you said earlier?”
“Ancient Dragons wrote on a lot of things, including Egypt’s pyramids. I can tell because there are pictures in some books and it’s only slightly hard to read.”
“Huh.” Mrs. Chesbrough takes her memory cube back. “Maybe we’ll look into that when you’re not worried about dying in the near future. I’ll let you know what they say.”
Jess and I agreed not to tell Alex because, well, she’s Alex. I’m sure she’ll understand. But that made lunch slightly awkward because three of us knew that I was the Dragon in question.
“So did you get to see it?” Alex asked Jess the moment we’d all sat around the table.
“See what?” Shannon asked.
“The Dragon! Jess said she was gonna scout it out last Saturday!”
And evidently only the two of them knew that. Shannon would’ve warned me otherwise. At least, I hope she would.
Jess took a deep breath, readying her response. Thankfully, she stuck to what she knew on Saturday, though that was still a lot. “Yes, actually.”
“Really? Wow! Did it notice you?”
“It had to. I landed on its back.”
Alex blinked in surprise and actually took a moment to respond. “You’re a lot braver than I would be.”
“Well, Shannon was riding it, and Dragons fly a lot faster than I can.”
“She was—!” Alex then turned to Shannon. “You were—! Why didn’t you say anything?!”
I knew it was serious, but I couldn’t help but smile as Shannon replied: “Maybe the Dragon doesn’t want to be found.”
And then Jess and I laughed at Alex’s expression. “I can keep a secret!”
“Sure you can,” Shannon replied.
“You and your geographically closest hundred friends,” I added.
Jess was still smiling when she asked “Geo—what?” and Alex clarified, “Everyone who can hear me.”
“But you’re telling me now,” Alex continued, “so what changed?”
I hadn’t talked it over with Shannon yet. But given what I’m currently waiting for, I thought it was alright to at least say a little.
“The Dragon showed up on the news. The damage you might do is pretty much already done.” Especially since I found a “discussion page” in the Mymoir. The other Dragons made it pretty clear they know I exist.
Alex looked at me as though she’d just noticed I was present. “What do you have to do with all this?”
In browsing the Mymoir, I found an older (but not locked) excuse for the eye color change. Answering Alex, I rested my chin on my palm, index finger pointing at my right eye. “What color is the Dragon?”
Her eyes widened.
“I have the Dragon’s blessing.”
Now, that last part was a quote, or at least a translation of one. If I’d picked the words myself, it’d be more like “I share the Dragons’ curse” or something like that. The excuse is for the eye color change, reduced aging rate, magic resistance and so on; those are all relatively positive things. I just wish it didn’t come with everyone wanting to kill you. Thankfully, my family is helping with one side of that. And also thankfully, I didn’t have to explain much to Alex beyond that the Dragon and I are magically linked. I think she realized I’ll be able to tell her more soon.
Finally, Mom arrives. I’ve been waiting outside the school office for an hour. Hooray for clocks.
Per Dad’s plan, we’re not waiting on the DF to say whether they’ll train me. The normal training time for high schoolers is during school, and even the freshmen are more experienced with fighting than I am. At the present time, I’m hoping not to set more things on fire on accident, but if I want to get other Dragons to not take up residence near Blacksburg then I’ll need to actually contribute in fighting them off.
The discussion page had a lot of complaining about me being near Blacksburg. Apparently the other Dragons actually liked Blacksburg because it’s “strong without any monsters.” I don’t know what they have against monsters but if the culture here is keeping them away then maybe that’s something in my favor.
“You okay?” Mom asks, sitting down beside me.
I nod. “Trying not to think about it.”
“It’ll go fine,” she reassures me. “I’ll be doing most of the talking for you, okay?” I nod, and she stands and opens the office door.
Even though all the grades share a campus, there are three principals for the separate elementary, middle and high schools. I’ve never met the middle or high school principals in person, although my current principal gave a speech to everyone a few months ago. He seemed alright.
But I was not prepared for the appearance of who could only be the high school principal.
Shannon has remarked before that Blacksburg doesn’t have many monsters, and I just read that other Dragons say the same. So I didn’t realize until just now, but I kind of assume that any given person will be a human. Not an upright deer lady in a suit.
I’ve seen deer before. It’s not a challenge to place her species. She has hooves, and her head is like a deer’s, and she’s covered in a brown pelt. Normal hands, though, aside from the pelt.
Thankfully, she lets me recover before she says anything. “Hello, Mrs. Gaschler. Welcome, Miss Emilie. The conference room is this way, if you’ll follow me.” We’re in the middle school, but I guess my principal agreed to let her lead.
While it’s true that I could sense both principals well before the door opened, I still can’t tell what shape people are beyond “human-like” or not. I’ve only known I was a Dragon for one, two… five weeks? Okay, maybe I could stand to practice that a little.
Once we’re seated, my principal opens the conversation. “I understand that this meeting is about rearranging Miss Emilie’s schedule? Could you tell us why you believe this is necessary, Mrs. Gaschler?”
Time to just relax and pay attention. I take deep breaths while they all speak. “Last Saturday, Emilie told me that she is the Dragon that’s been on the news,” Mom starts. “At the same time, she said that other Dragons were unhappy with her, and that they were on their way to attack in retribution.”
The deer-lady (I missed her name) gives a small frown in reply. “And you believed her?”
“She used magic. She tested Static.”
“And the second part?”
“I have no reason to doubt her,” Mom answers without hesitation.
My principal cuts in. “Even if we were to believe this ridiculous claim, shouldn’t you go to the Defense Force with this?”
I start to respond “We did!” but Mom stops me with a raised hand. “We already have. But if a Dragon is going to attack Blacksburg, Emilie thought it would be best for our own Dragon to help with our defense. And the normal practice time for that is during school hours.”
The deer principal nods. “I see. In that case, Emilie, could you indulge me for a moment?”
I look to Mom, who nods. “Okay,” I answer.
“Stand up, please, away from the table.” I obey, and she follows, pulling out… a wand. But I thought monsters were all Static?
Or—oh. I could barely tell under the monster scent, but yes, that’s there too. She’s Dynamic. Which means… I need to look at my textbook again, because I don’t recall how that’s possible.
And now she’s holding out a different wand. “Take this, please.”
I accept it. “Why?”
“It’s a lightning wand.” She points to her water bottle. “Would you use it to strike that for me?”
I stare at the wand.
Okay, first, I’m Static. Second, though, this isn’t even a lightning wand. There’s a white band around the middle, which is the marking for illusion wands. I remember from my attempts at using wands under Jess’s instruction.
Now looking at the bottle, it’s a rather cheap kind. So instead of doing the impossible and using the wand, I point it at the water bottle and do what I expressly avoided with Al.
The water bottle explodes, and in its place is a bottle-shaped block of ice.
My principal stares at the ice, mouth open. “How’d you do that with a lightning wand?”
Ms. Deer taps the ice. “It’s an illusion wand. And she’s not carrying anything else—I checked. So either she’s a Mage, or she’s a Wizard who changed her hair color, or she’s telling the truth about the Dragon thing.” She turns to me, and I give her back the wand. “To be clear, you mean a true dragon, right?”
Rather than a monster shaped like a dragon, such as floral dragons. Most people just call true dragons “Dragons” as a shorthand because that’s usually what people are talking about. “Yes.”
“We’ll wait to finalize this until we can speak with someone from the Defense Force, but for now, let’s talk about your schedule.”
I think I’m looking forward to high school, if I live that long.