Dream of a Musing Lurker

It's been a long time since I last came here, to this school, this world. Last time, I was one of them, the students in the old uniforms. White shirts, dark slacks or skirts, for the girls who still refused to wear pants. Still the same. Even the teacher is the same, with pale red hair pulled back severely and glasses in a style most popular when my own mother went to school. She stands before a blackboard; despite technological advancements that allow interstellar travel, still classrooms around here haven't changed much, any more than the uniforms have.

Why had I come back? I was called back, for some reason, probably asked back to help in the class. It was a job, I suppose. For now, I sit to the side, observing, waiting as a boy gives a report on some project or another. A flicker of motion catches my eye near the closet. A slithering shape, green with perhaps a hint of gold, gone almost before I notice it. I blink, then see it again. A little dragon, small as a cat, pokes its head from the dark closet, then slither-runs back inside.

"Excuse me," I say after the boy has returned to his seat - I learned the hard way in my own school days not to interrupt - "but does anyone else see anything by the closet?"

Sometimes nobody else sees things like that. I remember learning that lesson, too, the hard way. This time, I'm not alone. After some staring and squinting, the class erupts in giggles and screams. Another dragon has joined the first one, translucent as polished crystal, refracting iridescent rainbows in its internal "flaws."

"We'll have to call for help," the teacher says, shaking her head as she tries to regain control of the classroom. I wander closer to the closet and squint into the shadows behind the coats.

"It's a nest," I say, seeing the telltale pile of sawdust and paper strewn with eggs like marbles.

A man comes in, dressed in janitorial coveralls and carrying a metal cylinder with a spray nozzle attached.

"They're over there," the teacher says, still trying to get her students to settle down.

"Don't worry, I'll have them out of there in a jiff," the man says.

As he sets the tube on the ground and fiddles with controls on the nozzle, I realize that he's an exterminator. He's going to kill the dragons. He can't do that. I know, with every fiber of my being, that he can't do that. The dragons have run, taking most of their eggs through a small crack in the closet wall. I consider trying to talk the man out of it, but somehow I know he won't listen. There's no time, anyway - he's already set up to spray in front of the closet. Maybe I can at least keep them from returning to Death in their nest. Ducking out of the classroom, I run, trying to figure out where they ran to.

A ways down the road is an old-fashioned store, the kind that was once a house and still is, to the proprietor. I duck inside, hoping to find help in saving the dragons which nobody on this world seems to consider worth saving. It's some sort of craftsman's shop, I realize, smelling sawdust and seeing half-finished figures stacked on uneven dusty shelves. Behind a small table sits a pot-bellied stove and an old wooden bed, neatly made with a hand-stitched quilt. The proprietor, a dark-skinned man with almost no hair left, sits on a stool before the table, looking up curiously as the door chimes ring.

"Have you seen any dragons come through here? Little ones, without wings... Asian dragons," I explain, having trouble finding the words. "Someone's trying to kill them! They sent exterminators!" I'm still indignant at the thought of exterminators treating dragons like common rats.

"You don't like seeing dragons exterminated?" he asked, though it sounds rhetorical. His sharp black eyes seem to see right through me. "I'm not surprised, seeing as how you are one."

"Me? I'm not a dragon," I protest. I grew up here, I think I'd know if I was a dragon... I think...

"Of course you are," the man says, as if it were obvious. "You just haven't hatched yet. Dragons can be human before they hatch; there's no way to tell the difference until afterward. People around here find it disturbing, so of course they're keen to see them killed."

"So I'm still in an egg?" I ask, as my eye is drawn to a small glass case, as for an animal. A familiar pile of sawdust sits in the corner, with a shining marble dragon egg on it. "Is that me?" Hand shaking, I reach into the tank, picking up the cool marble and squeezing it into my palm. I forgot because I left it for so long, but now that I'm back I can grow. I can hatch. No wonder not everyone could see dragons. No wonder my life had felt so cramped and small, I marvel, looking at the shooter-sized glass egg. It seems to melt, passing through flesh and bone... and I know it is true. I am one of the dragons of this world, and I have come home to reclaim my birthright.

"We were wondering when you'd come back," an unfamiliar voice says. I look up, and see a strange man standing in the shop, both human and not-human, a native of this world to which my kind are just invading colonists. Whatever else he was, I know he is also a dragon. I smile, knowing that whatever worlds I go to now, wherever my life takes me, I am whole again.

---

(Just a little writing warm-up, based on a bizarre dream from last night. Only the dialog has been altered for clarity. The school part was probably inspired by a recent episode of Doctor Who, but beyond that I have no idea where it came from... Hey - like I said before, I never promised to post interesting blog entries.)