A Dragons Tail

As I slowly wake I see my parents waking up as well.

“How long do we have to stay in this cave? I mean first, it smells like rotten guts. Second, it's dark, and I mean very dark.” I say as I slowly stand up.

“There is a difference in where you want to live and where you must, to survive. After Queen Faren evicted us from her kingdom this is the best we’ve got.” My dad says as he looks at me. “If you want, you can go try and fend for yourself out there.”

Three years later… 

I then walk over to the ledge where I normally sleep. When I get onto the ledge I lay down and pretend to fall asleep.

“Night,” My dad says but I keep silent and still pretend to be asleep. 

A few hours pass by and then I check to see if my parents have fallen asleep. I then climb down carefully and silently walk past my parents to the cave entrance. Before leaving, I stop and say under my breath, “I don't need you to boss me around like I’m a baby.”

As I start to walk outside a chill breeze hits me which sends shivers down my spiky spine. I then continue.

As I am about halfway out of the cave I see a crystal in the ground. I pick it up to see it has a string on it, so I put it around my neck. Weirdly it changes color to the same color as my scales. A bluish-gray color.

I start to walk but become extremely dizzy. Stumbling, I fall to the ground and faint.

I don’t feel the grass anymore. I feel a hard stone-like object beneath me, ‘what is this?’ I silently say to myself. 

When I can somewhat see I see that I’m in a room-sized cage. Without knowing where I am I bounce upward and fall hard to the ground which knocks me out again.

When I wake up I am in a forest. Not a forest I am familiar with though. It has a funny smell. 

Weirdly a bunch of leaves began to rustle just above me, but when I look up to see who it was I don’t see anyone or anything for that matter

I then start to walk. After a little bit, I came to a rocky patch of ground with a pool of lava in the ground. 

“Hello. You lost?” someone asks.

“Yeah. I’m also confused about what this place is.” I say as I look around to see nobody.

“Ok, well I’m Ellie,” she says 

“I was never given a name,” I say defensively, as Ellie comes out of the pool of lava and looks at me.

“Well even if you had a name it would change so don’t worry. I want you to meet a friend of mine,” she says as she gets completely out of the pool. When she does I see that her tail itself is definitely at least twice as long as my body excluding my tail. Then she stretches and spike-like needles spread apart on her back. “It’s nice to be out and be able to walk around. I spend most of my time there because it’s not that busy around this part.”

We then walk for a little bit before she stops and starts to climb a tree. “Wait there for me as I go get him.”

I sit down for a little bit. I can barely hear small chatter above me. Suddenly out of nowhere another dragon lands behind me, scaring me so much that I turn invisible. 

“What's wrong with you!” Ellie says landing over top of me.

“You know you could have ju…” the other dragon starts before being cut off by Ellie, “yeah I know I could have just crushed him and I only would if I wanted to but I don’t.”

“You okay?” Ellie asks as I realize I’m visible again.

“Ye… yeah, I’m fine. A little startled but fine.” I say as she walks away from over the top of me. I then look at the other dragon to see he’s a green dragon about three times my size.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.” he apologizes. “My name’s…”

Suddenly a blaring siren starts which kills my ears.

“Let’s go!”Ellie says to the dragon that he never got to say his name.

They both start to walk to a huge door that’s opening slowly. I followed them into a big room that was covered by the door. 

“Hold up, their bud. You can’t go any farther. You’re not registered.” a human says as he steps in front of me while wearing a blue cap atop of his head, he also has a uniform like all the other humans do, blue and white which is kind of weird in my opinion. I know what humans are because where I come from they try to hunt us down and try to use our scales for protection against other dragons.

‘Registered? What does that mean?’ I wonder as I sit down and watch a whole bunch of other dragons pass by me and line up one next to another.

“Um. sir. We’ve got an unregistered dragon over here!” the human in front of me says to someone else.

“Ok. we’ll register him later. Right now is time to check if everyone is here.” the other person says as he walks towards the bunch of dragons.

After a while, I’m led to a room with multiple doors, at least one in each wall.

“Stay there for us please.” one of the people that guided me to this place says as they walk out.

After a while, I start to pace back and forth as I wait to be let out of here. ‘Is anyone going to come and get me out of here?’ I think to myself still pacing back and forth. Still, I continue to wait. 

I try to entertain myself for a while by hovering around the room and by looking around. As I look around I see the walls are scratched and the ceiling is pretty tall. ‘Was someone trying to dig their way out of this place? Why? is my question.’

After a few hours that felt like days because I have nothing to do, one of the doors open and, one by one, humans come into the room each wearing the same uniform as the people who led me here. Each one sticks their hand out for some reason but all I do is sniff them to see if they were going to do anything to me. Nope, nothing at all happened. Until one ginger-haired female. The aroma that I smelled on her was trance-inducing although I’ve smelled it before. I then just sit there in front of her for who knows how long.

By the time I looked around I realized that all the other humans went away. I and the ginger-haired human in front of me just looked at each other in the eyes like we could somehow be connected. Later we both were taken to a room with a thing that looked very uncomfortable to me but the ginger laid down in it.

I walked over to her and laid down with my head beside her hand. She then starts to scratch my muzzle which feels weird because no one has ever done that to me before. Soon I fall asleep without realizing it.

Three Days Later… 

“Hey bud how are you doing?” Sasha asks as she walks into the room. I make a small trill to show that I do like her scratching behind my ear.

“I’m fine. Thanks.” I say but this time she looks at me weirdly unlike any other time I have said this.

“Huh? When did you learn to speak English?” she asks as she kneels to see me face to face. I then give her the ‘Say what now?’ face but she looks me in the eye and asks again, “When did you learn to speak English bud?”

“What's English?” I ask her but this only makes her think even harder. “Wait, so what you’re saying is that I am speaking your language or you can understand me?”

“I do believe you’re speaking English right now. But it is super clear to me and you’ve been here for around 5 days so something is going on it’s… it’s extraordinary” she says as she starts to pace back and forth. “Either you could already speak it or you learned it quicker than any human I’ve ever seen.”

“So if I can speak your language does that mean I’m pretty much going to be a translator for y’all?” I ask looking at her in her pink and green outfit with a green cap.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask the coordinator,” she says as she sits down on her bed.

“That can’t happen,” I say as I look at her on her bed.

“Why not?” She asks. Then she gets up and walks over to the door. “Follow me.”

As we walk down the hallway with the yellow, red, and green stripes, it’s very dark. It brings back memories about my parents which makes me teary but I keep in them in because we’re trying to be as quiet as possible. We stop at each corner until we reach the hanger. It’s still dark but for the light that illuminates off the moon and onto the area around the hanger door. 

“Did you come in a container?” Sasha asks as we both sit down near the edge of the hanger door. 

“Yeah, why was I in there? What even am I?” I say as I lay down.

“That container helped you. It was to make sure you came here safely. If it wasn't for that container you wouldn’t be here. And you, my dear bud are not a dragon not a wyvern but a hybrid between the two. That's probably Why we can talk to each other. Wyverns are known to talk to humans they trust and dragons well that's another story. But a hybrid between the two is so rare that you may be the only one to exist.” she explains. “Dragons are smart, wyverns can talk, dragons can fly, wyverns are strong. Each of these traits you’ve inherited somehow although dragons and wyverns don’t mate together, here you are. You also have a genetic code within your body that changes constantly. You are pretty much a super… that's weird you would be a dygon I guess.”

“My parents always told me that we were all dragons,” I say defensively but then think of my grandma and grandad. “I heard my grandparents talking and I heard my grandma say, “don’t you remember! Ugg Dragons never remember anything!” she might have been a wyvern. She was strong but I never heard her talk to a human before. Most of the humans wanted to kill us.”

“That could very well be it. What’s more interesting is that any wyvern we’ve seen couldn’t be placed with the other dragons, but you were fine with them. Since you’re part dragon they didn’t care at all. We have a room full of wyverns but they are a bit crazy.” she says after looking as if she had an idea.

 A few minutes later…

“Do I have to go in there?” I ask as a door closes behind me and another door opens in front of me.

“You’ll be fine,” Sasha promises.

I then walk into the room where wyverns are standing on branches and the ground.

“H… Hi,” I say as the door behind me closes

“He smells like a dragon.” one says.

“He has all the traits of a wyvern though.” another says

“You’ll think this is stupid, especially coming from someone you don’t even know, but I’m a hybrid between both wyverns and dragons,” I say looking around. Suddenly everyone starts to burst out laughing but one. The one who doesn’t laugh walks forward, around and above me. 

“He speaks the truth. He is a hybrid dragon and wyvern.” She says as she lands and walks back to where she was standing.

When everyone heard this they all stopped and froze. Then they all turned and looked at me.

“W-what? Is there something wrong?” I ask as I look around.

“I will tell you that part of each wyvern in here wants to kill you and the other part, is confused. Each one other than me has a conflict inside of them.” the she-wyvern says 

“We should kill him!  We should rip him limb from limb! We can’t let any Dragon know about a Hybrid!” someone in the forest shouts.

“No! We should allow ourselves to prove he won’t hurt us or tell anything to anyone!” another shout.

“Yeah! Let him prove it. If he can prove he’s a wyvern around us we won’t have to worry!” yet again another shout. “Wyverns have four wings! Their eyes can become slits as then as a leaf completely flattened and they breathe fire or acid!”

‘Focus. Focus. Focus.’ I tell myself. ‘Four wings, slitty eyes, and fire. Here’s what I need’ 

Soon I open my wings to reveal four separate wings, I slit my eyes and start breathing a blue to a deep red flame.

  “Let wyverns be wyverns!” the second mystery wyvern shouts. 

  “‘Let wyverns be wyverns?’ I thought it was let bygones be bygones?” I say as the other wyverns start to walk away.

“Let bygones be bygones? What does that mean?” one says after turning around.

“You see the phrase “let bygones be bygones” means to forget the past mistakes of others and to not allow them to make you believe that they aren’t good people,” I say as I start to follow the rest of the group into the forest.

“Interesting. I like that,” he says. “I’m Ralph, the one who said that you should be able to prove yourself. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to talk with you. What are the dragons like now?”

“More or less friendly to me because they see me as a dragon but that’s not the case with everyone there. A few like to scare you half to death and others are more chill. I have only met two so I cannot say for all of them.” I say then go on to explain what it’s like in there.

“Wow, you got some crazy dragons in there don’t you?” Ralph says sarcastically. “Can I bolt questions out at you? Like very quickly?”

“Go for it,” I say not expecting the number of questions he was going to shoot out at me.

I answer all the questions to the fullest extent that I can. Which depending on the questions would be no answer at all. By the time he runs out of questions, the number that I counted was around about 350 questions.

“How did you have so many questions! It’s insane to think one creature could have that many questions.” I say gobstruck. When I look around I see many of the wyverns just going about their day. None of them look at me while I pass by them. 

“Follow me I have something to tell you,” Ralph says. I then follow him into a small cave.

"Listen you're making trouble for us here. I'm sorry but you have to go or else someone will try to kill you," he says

"how am I making trouble here? I've barely been here for 1 hour" I spit back.

"well, you see, a lot of us, not me but a lot of us used to hunt down hybrids and dragons alike. you must go," he explains to me.

"so what you're saying that I need to go or else I die?" I ask him. For his reply, he just nods his head. "oh, I'll leave then."

Then I walk out of the cave and quickly walk over to the door and look at where Sasha is. then a terror like look comes apon her face as I become pinned to the ground.

"you cause us a great deal of trouble and now you must pay!" I hear an unfamiliar voice say. then everything goes black and I wake up back in the cave with my parents asleep.

'was that all a dream?' I wonder to myself.