There was still some debris in the lot when I drove up, but all the flags and banners and reminders of what happened had been removed.  I was still a little shocky and in disbelief about the situation, kind of pushing it away like it had been something I’d read about or seen on TV.  You know, not actually there at the scene of the devastation.  I’d seen footage of tsunami (is that the plural, too) and I think there’s a level of escapism and a level of “sheer overwhelm” that us folk who get their information from the net have in handling real life.  I also think there’s probably a correlation between that and the adrenaline junkies amongst us – we spend so much time in the virtual it’s hard to remember the physical, so we’ll do extreme things to feel “alive.”

Just a theory, of course.

I walked up, tossing my keys in my right hand.  I’d have to return the car in the morning, but I was tired from the drive. 

I saw a letter in the gutter between the corners of my roof.  I’m sure there’s terms for it in carpentry and construction, but it was the little corner of overhang.  It took me a few tries with a stick to knock it down before I made it inside.  I knew who it was from.  After all, I’d seen her naked around there before…which is something for a good X-rated game of Clue, I thought.  (“On the roof, naked, and with a bat.”  Well, this one was “Previously as a bat,” but nevermind.)

I unlocked my door, dropped my keys in the octopus cup, turned on a light, closed & locked the door behind me (you remember who’s telling the story, right?) and then dropped down onto the futon, opening the letter to read.

“Huh,” I grunted, about a few minutes later.

Nothing for me to worry about now, that was for sure.  I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the futon.  I was asleep maybe fifty seconds later.

This time I didn’t dream.  I forgot how exhausting driving could be.  I mean, you’re sitting and watching things and maybe (all the rental cars I’ve ever driven were automatics) occasionally extending your foot.  It’s all the other things, because it’s not just like passive TV, where the most interest you get in a show (minus your being a powerful creature holding the magical might of an entire kingdom of fey who is most definitely concerned about the well-being of some meerkats) is in occasionally throwing popcorn at it if you’re disappointed in the lack of wit and character development.  While driving you actually have to react, sometimes to actual events (like that bag of leaves that blew off the truck in front of me) and sometimes to perceived possibilities (like my occasional, “No, really.  Is he going to stop at the stop sign or crash into me? No, he’s going to do a screeching halt and create the potential for an accident anyway.”)  After just a couple of hours, your tailbone is beginning to complain, anyway.  The scenery is moving past, but in long stretches of the west it’s not very different.  (I’ve driven up in the Pacific Northwest and that scenery is riveting.  If you like the colour green, of course.)  And then, especially at night you’re looking for the deer who is going to take this moment to cross the road, and other than that, it’s dark and fields and lots of dark. 

I can see why that kind of scenery is prone to myths of killers in cornfields, and abductions outside of places where there might be a payphone.  Alas, while a lot of my friends have concerns about there not being original ideas due to the number of remakes of movies and TV shows, I don’t share their concerns.  Cellphones change the plot of so many horror flicks it’s silly.  “I’m in your house,” is still scary.  “Good, then you know I have my shotgun in my hand,” is a fine response to that.  Sure, there are short-distance cellphone disruptors, but I think it’s requiring horror movie writers to come up with new hooks, um, so to speak.

I woke up because something was pressing against my thigh in a very uncomfortable fashion.  Well, that’s the reason I woke up, but the reason I didn’t just take the dragon tooth out of my pocket and roll back over for another couple of hours was because of the Dragon.

“Peredur?” I asked, groggily, staring at the face and the faint smell of burned wood.  It wasn’t sulphur, it was more like a campfire.  Great.  Dragons have signature smoke scents, maybe like perfume.

The eyes were right.

“Flee, wizard.”  He couldn’t fit in my place.  He was there, and not there at the same time, like he had slipped into the skin of the house but not the physical space. 

“G’way. I’m sleepin’.”  I am a lot braver when I’m groggy and things could still be part of my dream.

Then he roared.  It wasn’t…loud.  It wasn’t made of sound.  It was made of terror and heartbreak.  It was made of the breath of thorns and the coming of fire in the desert, where the resin of the cacti makes everything explode.  It was made of heat and hot and there was something of lost music to it, like the kind that swells up in your dreams and makes you feel like crying, but you can’t remember anything of the tune.  There were tears in it, and of course, fears, and it wasn’t at all like a shout.  Sorry.  I blame the still being asleep.

I froze.  It’s what we do with predators.  Then I moved, trying to get up, but apparently I wasn’t fast enough.  I saw his teeth come at me, and I was terrified, too much so to figure out even where I was, let alone catch the fact that his claw was aiming to pin me down.  He was black and red and like those really good pictures of Smaug, except right there in my face, in my house, and then I was flung out into space.

I rolled as I hit the grass, coughing, and aching.  I picked myself up.  I recognized this place.  It was in between the eight corners of Monaco.

I didn’t recognize the shadow that had burst through my door, the last thing I had seen as Peredur turned to face it.

I took a deep breath.  “Flee,” he said.  Well, I had business in this Kingdom. 

“To bedlam, then,” I said, aloud, and I walked between the trees.