Camelatte

“Don’t be daft. Dragons aren’t real.”

The moment he says it, I have to hold back my urge to respond with a scathing “Thank you captain obvious.” Instead, I force another smile that strains the muscles of my face and makes that vein throb in my temple. For the love of all things holy, all I wanted was to take a photo. Just one simple photo. And now it’s turned into this.

He’s offering me back my phone and I can tell he’s unamused. His mustache bristles, his brow furrows, and his eyes shift from me to the burning building at my back. “Must’ve been the boiler. These old buildings all keep using those outdated things. We’re just lucky that all got evacuated.”

“I’m telling you,” I say slowly. I hold the phone out again and my voice shakes the slightest amount in frustration. “Just look.”

This time, the look that I am fixed with tells me he’s unamused. “Detective Cartwright—as much as your jokes may amuse others at the precinct, I’m not one of them. Now, if you are going to stick about and impede my investigation, I’m going to have to see to it that the Sargent is made aware.”

That thought makes my jaw clamp shut. I slip the phone into my pocket and turn round to stare at what was—until this morning—my favorite coffee establishment. Now, it’s fire and ash and an acrid smell that burns my nose and my eyes. Mournfully, I think of the almost untouched Americana that I will never drink because it’s been incinerated. The coffee that I only had a chance to snap that single photo to send my fiancé.

“Right,” I say at last, turning back to the officer with his clear sense of self-importance. The ridiculousness of what I’ve just said is dawning over me. Superb. I’ve given all the more reason for others to question my sanity. Straightening, I gesture toward the fire. “I apologize, Greg. It must have been something of the shock of the matter and I chose to take it out in poor humor. Look, if you’re alright with it, I’m going to go back to my flat. I’ll call out for the day—as this was a bit more rattling than I needed before coffee.”

Greg grunts his agreement in the same way that he grunts most things—a low noise that makes the dark thatch of hair atop his lip flutter like a disgruntled cat’s tail. “Very well, Marcus.”

Orange light dances onto the old cobbled side street and shines like molten lava on the puddles that I slosh through on my way back along the road. Fog has settled its heavy presence over me—another reminder that I couldn’t possibly have seen what I thought I did. Because how could I see a dragon through this fog? Moreover and far more importantly, how the hell was I supposed to have seen a dragon at all? As Greg has so rightfully pointed out—dragons aren’t real.

But if that’s the case….

Only when I am around the corner do I fish my phone from my pocket again and pause to tap the screen. I’m greeted with the beautiful smile of my fiancé, Rachel, before the technology recognizes my face and unlocks. There. The photo. It’s still on the screen, still right where I left it after showing Greg.

My long evaporated black coffee in a paper cup on a shining pub-style table top. The lights of the café shine in its surface and there, reflected through the window … there it is. Part of me wants to turn around and shove the screen in Greg’s face again and ask him if he’d like to get his eyes checked since he didn’t see it. The part of me that has dealt with far more nutters than I’d care to admit tells me that I will only reassure him that I’ve lost my mind if I do that. But it’s there. It’s reflected in the cup, its wings thrown wide, its eye glinting even in that black coffee and phone screen. It really was there.

It really was there or perhaps I am losing my mind.

Either do seem possible between the stress of a promotion and planning a wedding.

My thoughts are interrupted with a low rumble in the skies above. Age old instincts of another time awake in my chest and I catch my breath, staring into that predawn darkness that drapes the clouded sky. How can one tell the difference in thunder and a flying reptile with an apparent vendetta against small cafes?

“I’m losing my mind.” Strangely enough, even when I say it aloud, it doesn’t bring me any comfort or closure.

With my head ducked against the cold, I hurry the rest of the way through the maze of streets while my sleepy side of London is slow to stir on what should be a lazy Sunday. Should be, though, isn’t a very cooperative thought today.

Just like there should be no dragons swooping about and burning up the only good pastries and Americanas in walking distance of my flat. But here we are, aren’t we?

I slip my key into the door of apartment number 12 five minutes later and push the door wide. It’s the first time in two weeks that I’ve been glad to come back and find the place empty. There are still ten days to decide if I’ve lost my mind before Rachel gets back from visiting her family in the United State. Ten days in which to decide if this groom to be will wear a tux or a strait jacket in the coming weeks.

When I shut the door at my back, my fingers fumble the chain into place before I realize how ridiculous it is to do so. After all, dragons don’t mind if the door is locked. They just blast through them. And, more importantly still I realize when I turn, it’s fairly useless to lock the door when the creature you’re trying to escape is already waiting.

My fingers tighten on the door handle at my back and my mind goes blank. Even if I could outrun the burst of flame I watched this same monster produce less than an hour ago, it’d be useless. Because, clever me, I’ve locked the door.

Lounging across the floor like some cruel joke of a horse-sized dog, the dragon lifts it long neck. Eyes the same color as the fire-reflecting puddles at the café blink and it tilts its head to the side. Each scale shines red in the almost pure dark of my flat. Massive talons tap a slow rhythm over my tiled floor.

We survey one another—terror flooding my every muscle and bone. Yet there is a different expression in the face of the monster. Not fear, not anger, not the intent to murder. I could almost swear that it’s the same look my mother has fixed me with a thousand times before.

The dragon sighs a trailing breath of smoke through its slitted nostrils and makes a sound that I could nearly swear is tutting. “I won’t lie,” it hisses. “I find myself disappointed. I expected more from you.”

There. I was right. It’s good to know that I can read the facial expressions of a dragon just as well as my own mother. Then again, perhaps this isn’t the first dragon I’ve seen. I decide that, if I live, I won’t ask my mother if she’s a dragon too.

“Disappointed?” I ask slowly and I’m annoyed to hear indignance in my voice. As if I care what a dragon thinks of me?

“Yes,” the dragon agrees. It rocks back onto its haunches to better survey me. “I expected something a little more impressive of the last descendant Merlin.”