Hungover

He was hungover. That was the human word, hungover. He had never taken a sip of alcohol in his life. Not beer or wine or liquor or whatever other concoction of inebriating drink a human could brew. But he was still hungover because that’s the only feeling it could have been, hungover. A thief had told him once, what “hungover” was. It feels like your skull has been cracked open and a torch was shoved inside. It feels like your feet are hollow and filled with sand. It feels like your throat is about to close and bile is forming at the tip of your tongue. Granted, he had never felt any of these feelings either, but if he had ever felt something akin to those probably terrible things, then it was what he was feeling right now. 

He just felt bad. So, he must have been hungover, because that’s as bad as it gets. Or so said the thief who was more than probably a liar.

He had asked why, when it happened. It was all he was capable of with his patagium ripped and his talons dulled. They had said it was to make jewelry, as if their wives could fit any more gold on their wrists. They had said it was to forge swords and armor, as if they had not already conquered the world. They had said it was to conjure ships capable of sailing furious seas and treacherous oceans, as if there was anything more past The Great Salt Lake. They had said and said and taken and excused themselves when his coffers went barren, and when they had not put a spear through his reversed scale or showered him with bolts of steel as they had some time ago, they had called it another thing, another feeling foreign to anything but a human.

Mercy. 

He was the crest of the kingdom, the sigil branded onto the flags they took to battle, his figure was what struck fear into the fearful. And so, they spared him because he was a treasure. A different kind of treasure than gold and metal. 

They marched off in their steel clothes and their chained beasts hauled all they could of his child away, his kin forever hidden behind their large walls. It was more than gold they had taken, more than metals and shiny objects, it was his legacy, his future as well. But they could never understand, they did not reproduce the way he did, how could they see his child as anything more than bracelets for their wives? Steel for their wars? Metal for their ships? It was those things that created a child.

He could not help but feel hungover as the scarlet blood dripped from his wings and his eyelids fell heavy for more than sleep.

A dragon was no human. And on the day of his first offspring’s birth, they had desecrated his home, aborted his birth and stolen away the pieces of his child. But this was mercy, to be left crippled and childless, to watch as his everything was stolen by thieves in royal attire. But how could he understand what mercy was?—He was not human.

So they would never see eye to eye, would never understand each other.

But he understood one thing, he knew what being hungover was and he was sick of it. 

In time, his patagium would reshape itself, his talons would naturally sharpen, his breath would burn hot again and not in one hundred years or ten or one. A human could never regrow a limb or create a new eye but his kind could. This too they failed to understand. A dragon is much more than a sigil, there was a reason long ago why men had placed his image on their war flags. 

He would remind them.

And when he was finished, he would no longer remember the feeling of being hungover.

Come the following day, the rise of the sun brought with it more than sunlight. Casting a shadow over a land of golden wheat and reinforced walls was the image of a bird, its wings impossibly wide, its tail whipping the air it glided across. With its slow descent, the castle watch squinted to discover that this particular bird was scaled, its neck was elongated, its eyes burned like an eternal forge, its rising chest beamed the color of the sun behind it and when they discovered that this was no bird, no roaming vulture or eagle, it was too late.

Like a candlestick, the stone walls of the outer city melted into red magma before cooling at the base of the wall. There were no ballistae here, nothing but a city by the sea, it had few soldiers, fewer knights, but the one thing it had in magnitude was a navy, docked here, ready to sail The Great Salt Lake, their hulls reinforced with the bones of his child, metal that would have made his skeleton.

Flexing the mighty muscles in his wings, he flew towards their ships, their captains drunk and their sailors docked in brothels. He spewed dragon fire across the harbor and set the wharf ablaze, the ships fell to their anchors, all that was left of them.

Flying towards a cathedral bell tower, he perched atop its tallest spire and continued breathing dragon fire into the city of wood and stone, the flame made way down to the deepest alleys as if the fire was a river out of control. He heard the bellows of humans, the wives pleading for mercy in the church directly below him, his child gleaming on the gold of their jewelry. He had never known mercy, but if mercy was to destroy and desecrate, as they had done to him, then he would have no qualms with showing his mercy.

The gold that adorned the women seared into their flesh, their flesh burned away into their bones and their bones became ash in the firestorm he deemed mercy.

Knights which bore the crest of his kind arrived on horseback with swords and shields that would have made his child's organs, surrounding him on the belfry, they pointed the steel weapons at him and spoke the human tongue. They had not now spoken of mercy but of vengeance and promises of death. A dragon knows no tongue of a human except that of death, and so he could speak their language with brimstone and fire, the steel clad knights burned within the armor they had stolen from him, his child becoming their coffins and their swords going limp under the pressure his fury wrought upon them.

But this was no fury. It was not anger or vengeance for a dragon knew no human emotion except for one. And no matter how many ships he sank, women he burned, knights he killed, he could not help but fall deeper into the emotion a thief had taught him so long ago.

Hungover. And it was worse now, he understood what it meant to have your skull split open and have a torch shoved inside, he understood the feeling of hollow feet filled with sand, he understood the closing of his throat and the feeling of bile at the tip of his tongue. In this death, in this desecration and destruction of a city now blackened by ash, he had become a human. He understood what it meant to be part of mankind.

He was hungover. As long as there was war and knights and kings and death and destruction there would be this feeling. And he was sick of it.

He wondered how many more cities existed.