Chapter Two

The night air was cool and peaceful,

aside from the echoes of Andre’s cursings that faded behind with each step.

When Petra had reached the warm, familiar awning of Crumpettail’s Bakery, he purchased a blackberry bun and left it behind the door of Andre’s office building. He could hear the dragon inside shuffling around and sulking to himself about his many misfortunes.

Petra’s own anger had already dissipated. He wouldn’t have dared brought it with him into the little brick, bun-hovel where Lucy Crumpettail stood over her oven, lovingly filling her pies with a “frilly” sort of teenage passion. Passion that tasted like none of the ingredients that dragons found to be palatable. Generous helpings of sugar or nutmeg—perhaps a drop of snot from a recent breakup.

Her father, Tom, didn’t protest to his daughter’s earnestness to please human customers. He did tell her to blow her nose. Next he would tell the drake that broke her heart to shove a morningstar up his “Great Red” hind parts.

☁︎☁︎☁︎

“You know about these things, Vingarde, right?” Tom had once asked him. Behind the counter, Petra stood polishing a glass from some customer’s sixth or seventh shot of swamp-colored whiskey.

“Can’t say I do, brother.”

“You’re a celebrity, aren’t you?”

“The knitting club down the road seems to think so.”

“Ohh I’m talking about the youth, son! What’s going on with it? I can’t make a spit of sense of Lucy anymore.” Petra withheld a smile of pitied amusement.

“Well, humans have become trendy these days, Tom. I guess, maybe more than ever.” He kept his eyes downcast on the glass he was polishing.

“But Lucy—it must be a phase,” the dragon reasoned with himself. “She says she’s given up altogether on marrying a drake. Know what she told me?” He put on his best daughter voice: “'I’d rather live alone in a toolshed, reading books about fairy tale princes before I waste my life on another idiot drake!’” Tom put his large head down on the counter and covered his brow with his paws. “Where did I go wrong,” he moaned.

Petra slung his drying cloth over his shoulder and eased himself down on folded arms.

“You’re doing fine, Tom. You’re probably the most reasonable father I know. Maybe when Lucy’s older she’ll realize that human guys have their own issues. Tom blushed, which Petra had not been aware that dragons could do.

“You’re a good kid, Vingarde.”

From around the corner, a woman wearing a button-down uniform, that resembled Petra’s own, approached with a serving tray. The dragon’s sulky face brightened as the waitress unloaded two large plates piled high with steak.

“One Mountain Meal with a side of Kettle Crackles,” announced Petra’s co-worker dryly. She reached a hand into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a little flag on a toothpick. Sticking it into the very top of the meat pile, she slid the plate down the counter where it rested beneath the customer’s snout.

Tom smiled at the tiny green and gold replica of their own country’s Parparrean flag.

“How cute! Shame they didn’t have such nice toys when I was a kindling.” Petra wondered to himself if Tom had intentionally ordered from the kid’s menu.

“If you’re done polishing those glasses, Petra, you should polish off a steak or two with me.”

Petra’s heart felt warm. He couldn’t accept Tom’s offer. Regardless of his stubbornness, he knew the big blue dragon would have Lucy bake the leftovers into a meat pie for Petra’s breakfast the next morning.

Dragons.

Good dragons. Souls that made Andre’s insufferable scheming worth putting up with.

Petra shook his head to push aside his thoughts. The pleasant memory had nearly conjured the very smell of dragon smoke and dripping steak. His stomach spoke in a very persuasive voice at the least helpful of times. But it mattered not. Paychecked or penniless, he was here to protect the dracians of Cresswoven. All of them. Yes—even sooty old bastards like Andre.

As Petra lifted one sore foot in front of the other, the usual brisk walk home suddenly felt longer than ever. Tonight, the streets of Cresswoven were scarcely lit. This sort of task was the responsibility of Night Patrol. And it was a man named Osmond Caswell’s job to keep the road lanterns burning until daybreak. Petra never saw much of Osmond. Aside from their opposing shifts, he seemed to make himself as scarce as possible.

Petra chewed the bottom of his lip. Everything was just so wrong. All the social work was done during the day. The surveillance, the problem solving, the de-escalating of proverbial “hotheads”—the hardest tasks fell upon Petra’s shoulders, and he bore them with an otherworldly patience.

In contrast, the night hours remained so uneventful it was insulting. To their own detriment, humans and dragons accidentally competed in caution against each other. The result left post-curfew Cresswoven a ghost town for naughty poltergeists—of which Petra could name a few.

With his thoughts beginning to clutter, Petra’s foot caught a dip in the path that sent him teetering sideways into one of the metal lanterns. “Skivv my after—” he swore under his breath. He took it as a sign to rest for a moment.

Closing his eyes, Petra tried to focus on nice things: like leftovers and his own warm bed. Instead, an image of Andre and Osmond shaking hands barged in where the nice things were supposed to be.

He pressed his head into his knees.

What was the use—

This was the path he’d chosen. No one had forced him to leave his home and start anew in strange country. At the time, all he’d needed was sanctuary and a daily meal to get by, which seemed simple enough on paper. Erräs had assured him that he’d achieve his full potential in Cresswoven. He had it all figured out.

He certainly did, didn’t he? Petra scoffed.

As Petra sat, mustering the strength to carry himself down the lampless path, he heard the sound of a familiar caterwauling somewhere close by. It echoed through the dense woodlands and aroused a distant chorus of primitive “bird-cackles” in its wake. This was, of course, a common sound in Cresswoven. Just the local fauna preparing for their night hunt. It wasn’t long before one showed itself.

A Cockatrice.

Sordid, scrappy little opportunists, bearing a rooster’s body and other such downgrades. Dragons recoiled at the thought that themselves and such a creature shared even a speck of common ancestry.

Yet cockatri had no interest in humans. Petra was perfectly safe as he watched it strut about, pecking at the dirt. He noticed something though—something stuck to this one’s foot. A shred of cloth that flapped and dragged in the dirt as it walked.

Petra stood up slowly. He began to move towards the cockatrice, staying within its blind spot. When he had gotten too close, the creature gave a start. Beating its scaled wings, the cockatrice took off into the underbrush, leaving its strange scrap of cloth behind.

With the road lanterns neglected there wasn’t enough light to see clearly, but Petra recalled having a box of matches in his pocket. He struck one, smoothing the cloth in his fingers while the flame revealed its colors.

They were blue.

And red.

Another bird shriek pierced through the quiet air, this time, startling Petra and causing him to drop both the match and the cloth. Few things ever frightened Cresswoven’s hero of patrol, yet here he was—pulse racing, dirt turning sticky as it clung to his sweating palms. The cloth too was wet. Still wet. And that was what made the blood in Petra’s own body grow cold.