One of the suggested reasons behind birds flying in the classic “V” formation is that it provides significant uplift for the bird behind them, as well as their own line of sight.  Dragons don’t pump their wings like birds, I learned.  The blades of my back cut through air and occasionally I felt the build up of a kind of static electricity.  Movement forward was not related to any of the forces I’d learned as relevant to flight, like propulsive thrust.  I believed that maybe the shock was some kind of buoyancy factor, but I didn’t know.  I now had anecdotal experience pushing my theory that the Lung likely used qi energy for flight, following leys for speed, and they probably had crazy power-ups like a video game.

In fact, my tail didn’t have anything like a vertical stabilizer on it, and I didn’t even tilt for some directional purposes.  Not that any of it was really under my control.  I understand that the theory of “alpha” domination is flawed, but I don’t think they used Dragons for their observations.  I suppose Peredur could have done some kind of compelling on me as well as the transformation.  All I knew is that if he pulled some kind of line like, “Wow, that’s the least talking you’ve done around me since we’ve met,” I was going to punch him the first chance I got.  If it was magical compulsion, it certainly wasn’t affecting my brain.

You know, he still hadn’t answered the question.  It wasn’t that I was hung up on a knock or anything, just that I was trying to define my reality.  Did I hear him announce his presence with a clap or a gentle rapping on my outside door, or does there really exist an aura of Beyond around powerful creatures that starts to make reality hazy?  Honestly, it’s the tiny little things that begin to go wacky first, and I was going to hold on to a tiny little thing in hopes it had some kind of mission statement that would impress the really weird stuff and keep that weird stuff from happening.  You know, like being a dragon, and currently speeding above the earth at night due to electrical impulses not unlike the signals that drive muscles.  Yeah, I was going to try some kind of analogy.  I don’t think that one worked.

I have noted before how easy it is to think of the eyes as the porthole one’s brain looks out from the body, and to forget the system that is the body is actually as connected.  It’s why I remember to eat breakfast; I need to feed my brain.  Exercise, even, although I hadn’t been doing too much of that.  If the dragon I was had a potbelly, I was to blame.  Of course, it wasn’t even that I was a dragon. I mean, I was more than a passive observer in a dragon body, but it wasn’t really my body. I didn’t have the signals that taught me how to use my tail, or wings, or whatever bizarre organ processes this kind of flight.  I did, but I was not what I did, if that made any sense.

The world looks different from above.  I happen to look up more than people usually do because, one, I’m a gamer and there might be lurkers above, and two, because I read once that people don’t.  I have never caught a ninja hanging out in the corner near two door frames.  I only find questionable things, like bugs, or why the doctor’s office had funny posters taped to the ceilings.  I’m not saying womens’ health is icky. I’m saying that speculums look very uncomfortable.

That’s different than looking down.  I’ve done it on airplanes, of course, watched it go from normal to abstract and back again for landing.  Too much time is spent above clouds or deserts, or that just might be why I was flying instead of driving.  I don’t count it as part of my acrophobia, which I only have in the curious way of not being bothered by heights, but being almost paranoid about the final splat of falling.  Things start to make less sense from a different perspective.  You could go the whole, “They are ants,” idea, but you could also go with the interconnectedness of seeing Earth from space, its fragility and its strength.

If we were above Earth, anyway.  I was beginning to doubt it, even with the hypersensitivity of dragon eyes.  I could see a moth fluttering one second, and then understand the roots of a mountain, and the way it strained and shifted to grow in the areas between the great plates of the world.  I saw life and light, and I didn’t recognize any landmarks, and I didn’t know how to gauge how fast we were going.  I didn’t think this magic had much to do with calculus.

The sounds of the night sky were too loud, the wind only one of the songs in the cacophony.

And then there were the things up in the heavens, Horatio.  Oh, the things you don’t know, and writers like Lovecraft apparently did. I was never, ever, going to be able to look up at the stars again and say, “How beautiful.”  It would make me want to wear a hat.  (Not a badger, though.  Badgers on peoples’ heads is bad business.  Badger on the brain, man.  They burrow in and are too stubborn to dislodge easily.)  Mists and tendrils of things, thoughts and dreams ephemeral but physical, some with proto-sentience, some  malevolent, most apathetic of the little things scurrying below.  As we phased in and out of reality skimming the surface of the Beyond I mostly avoided any touch of them, but our skies are as full as our seas and stone.

We were beginning to come to a landing, I guessed, or at least I felt we were slowing, and I saw beneath us a great deal of dark water, the waves a hundred-thousand phosphorescent fillips, more beautiful than the stars, full of life and movement.  For a moment, I felt a rush of inhumanity, a sinking understanding that I understood Rayya and Nen, with the sea a cradle, a womb of possibilities, and one from which monsters could be born.  It wasn’t a human thought. It was too big to be human.  Too much poetry and horror, and maybe that was what was human about it.  I suspected we came from the shallows, not the depths.

We touched down into the tide, and my scales went to skin, and my wings to a shirt, and my claws into shoes, which immediately got wet.  It became dark, and the transformation twisted me, and ripped the seeming away like wax to hair.  I fell into the water, a cold shock, effervescent and yet cloying.  The water smelled like rose oil for a moment, and then like salt, as if it had been caught between wardrobe changes and decided to wear something more comfortable.  I sneezed involuntarily a few times, and then sat back, soaking wet and cold and with an arthritic ache in the water.

Smoke and lightning and fire swirled into a pillar and then Peredur was there, on the sand, in front of me.

I coughed trying to spit on his shoes.  I don’t believe in so-called ‘instant karma,’ but it probably did suit, given the situation.  I sneezed again, and my eyesight finally took into account the pale moonlight and lack of other, distracting signs of civilization.

The lion roared.

I jumped out of the water, and up towards Peredur.  It roared again, and I heard the Gate, a battering of water against the wall, the lion’s call, the sulphur of the angel’s fall, the mushroom squish of rotten pall… I was not moved to rhyme, the Gate was lashing out at me, aware of my presence.  I stood next to Peredur, figuring anything coming from that Gate would have to go through him, first.

“That is the beast that threatens to wake thirteen gods,” Peredur said.

“Very specific number there,” I pointed out, brushing sand from my pants.  “I meant, when getting your seventy-two virgins, or your thousand islands, you ought to count your change.”

“There are thirteen gods sleeping here, who should not awaken.  There are little signs of discontent, pressures of economics, the concerns of analysts and broadcasters, all suggesting battle. Do you have a Shadow, little wizard, who might seek such chaos?”

“You’re asking me pointedly, like both of us don’t know that he’s a pain in the tuchas.  Might I remind you, oh great Dragon?” I tried for the exact same tone he used when calling me, “little wizard.” “I think it was your need that drove me to close him out of your gate, and thus get him on my scent instead.  If that’s not some kind of mixed metaphor.”  In the metaphor department, I was really batting badly tonight.  They were going to have to get a designated poet and put me on the beat bench or something.

“Muak-Lal,” Peredur said.  “Your protector named him right,” he said, and he looked out at the waves.  “He is an amalgam of older powers, given life by whispers and fears.  He has made alliances too quickly, and already feeds on the conflict of your witches.”

“Hey, they aren’t my witches,” I said, quickly.  “I’m trying to break the habit, you see.  I admit I had more of a problem than I’d expected, but this man is now a witch-free zone.”  I reflected on what he’d actually said. “So Mister Shadowking, stealer of my good looks, is riling up a beast that will wake up gods and cause some kind of war?  Is this kind of Revelations-style stuff?”

“You refer unironically to the words of prophets and those with grudges and allegorical rhetoric, I presume?”

“Where do Dragons stand on the topic of religion?”

“We have been deified and demonized,” he made a little shrug.

“Not the D&D I’m used to,” I quipped.

He ignored me, of course.  “I have known gods.  I have walked in their palaces, and pleasured their sons and daughters.  I have visited their realms and flown across, watching as they drifted away.  Some fade, some merely no longer intersect with your world.  Some have wandered in as monsters, created by creatures that dream in dark depths.  Some collide with others, yet originate far, far beyond.”  He shook his head.  “That speaks of identity.  The power, the relics of faith, that is different.   In the place the children of Ashya come from there are legends of archers who have made mortals of the suns, piercing them with arrows to prevent the stars from destroying the seas.  The religions there are like those here, made of rules, you shalts and you shalt nots, to differentiate behavior and to provide access to blessings and ward away curses.  It is so intertwined with what you name magic that it is easy to paint it with the same brush, but where its color is subtly different is where it is most dangerous.”

I listened, fascinated.  He went quiet for a moment afterwards, as if thinking.

“But these beings were chained to this island for good reasons, the doors locked and the seas grown from seeds to drown their dreams with the lullaby of tides.  It was Naul who watched as they turned the keys the first time; kin of her roots knew the dangers of the native folk.  Perhaps it is her absence which drew the Beast.”

I had frowned at the mention of her name, but he turned on me, then, his strange, physics-repelling Dragon eyes luminescent and fixed on me.  The fire within them was brighter, as if it had been fed.  “You wished to make things right, to scrub the blood off your hands?  Then push out this roaring  Beast, and make sure the door is closed.  We spoke of faith?  Let us speak now of penance.”

“What I’m trying to remember right this moment,” I said, looking into the darkness behind his teeth rather than their ivory masses, “is whether or not you actually knocked on my door.  I had the argument with the Spriggan Sibs and I remembered thinking you almost always knocked.”

“Your flight into philosophy is more allegorical than you might have guessed,” he said, and I was able to focus on his eyes again rather than the reptilian nature of his mouth.  “A knock is a notification.  If you are otherwise notified, have I not knocked?  Is your opening the door an acknowledgement?  You are indeed a wizard to ask these questions,” he said.

I began to reflexively disagree, but he shook his head violently.  “Let us fly,” he said.

“I’m trying to think of happy thoughts,” I lied.  “Things like, ‘This is all a dream,’ and ‘I don’t know any Dragons, just buxom dark-skinned completely human non-witchy women with–‘” my litany of fantasy was broken by a sharp pain in my back.

“Hey, who stabbed me?” I whirled around, catching a faint ember, as if the fall of a firework.  I smelled steak for a moment, then the pain doubled and I bent over involuntarily, bumping and scraping my arm into the brick of the wall.  It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten because the next thing I felt was a wave of nausea and dizziness.  I heard discord, the smashing of hands on piano keys, the smell of hot foil around fish, the clanging of a siren, the cold of a gate.  My tail lashed out and helped my balance before I hit my head against the frame of the door.

My…tail?

Like Smaug, Puff, and Pete before me, I let out a mighty roar.  Well, it was more a moan of anguish coupled with a squeak of aggravation and a choir of disbelief wrapped up in a symphony of violation, but that together made a pretty loud roar.  Of course, it also kind of sounded like a motorcycle revving its engine, so it was doubtful the neighbors would even blink.

Peredur leaned casually against the rail and rolled his eyes at me.  I recognized him saying, “Get over yourself,” pretty clear in body language, but my reflexes were not my own.  I snapped at him, and his hand rose up and grabbed my chin.  I thrashed in his iron grip, but something about his expression took over, as instincts I never had reacted to his presence.  I felt myself kneel of sorts, knees bending, head pulled down, eyes closed.

I took in a deep breath.  The faint sound of the gate remained, but it surrounded me, as if every move I made had some kind of related to some kind of instrument.  There were horns in my ears, and a static kind of drum as I walked.  My eyes were watering, and my ears hurt, and the wings I had grown were knives slicing at my back, a different stretch of pain each time I inhaled or exhaled.    The parallels to a certain little mermaid were not lost to me.

“We will fly,” Peredur chuckled.  I heard it as if spoken from a variety of voices, in chorus.  When I was able to open my eyes again, I was blinded by color and texture.  I closed my eyes just as quickly, preferring darkness to the almost obscene pain of sight.  I didn’t even know transformation of this type was possible.  I felt wrong inside.  I felt like he had done this to me without my permission.  I had no consent in this, and it made me angry.

I think most men my age have a little bit of constant anger bubbling inside of them.  Yes, the connection to fear is always there, but there’s just this low level of resentment we work with and try not to feed.  This fear of not being good enough, this anger of not making it big, of not being everything you might have wanted to be.  The fear of not being wanted, and yet the anger of wanting.  I don’t really even think of it most of the time, but if someone asked if I was angry, I’d have to say yes, yes I am.

The problem is, there’s nothing to do with it.  Oh, sure, if I was some kind of self-help guru, maybe I’d gone on about how you use that passion to drive yourself towards your dreams.  Not everyone’s got that kind of drive.  A lot of us just kind of mosey through life – meandering in a maudlin fashion and never really going anywhere.  There’s too much stuff to do, and never enough time or money or other resources to get it all done.  Sometimes winning and quitting look kind of the same.

So anger when given an outlet isn’t mistaken by being compared to the eruption of a volcano.  Since reasonable folk stay far away from those that simmer constantly, we don’t know how to handle the sudden spewing of magma… or lava, I guess, once it hits air.  Neither the angry person or those around them really has a how-to guide of how to go from there.  We’re not taught how to be angry in a rational sense because anger has so little to do with rationality, even if there is a, well, rational reason.  We get our fight or flight or fornicate instinct in response, and then things go past the point that we can behave in a civilized fashion.  If civilization has all that much to do with it; we still like our blood shows, after all.

This anger made me uncomfortable because I didn’t know what to do with it.   Worse, I wasn’t me.  I was disoriented, I was clumsy, I was a baby in the body of a beast, and worse than that, a dangerous beast.  A toddler with TNT.  An infant with insufficient intel.  How did Peredur come to this conclusion?  I couldn’t open my eyes without a headache and an inability to process all of the things I could suddenly see.  If my mind had come along into this body, or if it was my body transformed, and I wasn’t getting enough reasonable signals to determine which.  I was past phenomenon and into noumenon.

It was real magic.

Okay, you’ve been with me for a while.  I’m dealing with more magic on a daily basis, with creatures who are not of our world as mundane roommates (and apparently, occasionally as bodyguards) so that I don’t notice the antinomy.   I like to figure how things work – if there was an ability to get a degree in magical theory, that’s where I’d shine.  (I’m sure it’s just as valid as comparative religion.)   Most people who are into magic just accept it as magic.  Take Maggie, for example.  We had a discussion once about fair housing.  (No, really, we were talking about Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.  It makes excellent campaign fodder for Shadowrun, if you know what I mean.)  One of the interesting things about fair housing is that if you’re disabled, and you request what they call a “reasonable accommodation” in order to enjoy the way of life most people do on a regular level, what a reasonable accommodation allows you to do is break the rules.  This includes mental disabilities.  Say you’ve got a brain injury that makes you forgetful, and if you did not get a reminder you’d forget to pay your rent.  Well, obviously, the front office doesn’t generally give people polite calls to remind them.  A reasonable accommodation allows you to get that call so that there isn’t any problem.  Small thing, doesn’t really break a rule exactly, but it does mean they go out of their way in a fashion they normally wouldn’t.

Maggie suggested that magic was kind of like a reasonable accommodation.  All it is is a way of breaking the rules you normally use. Which I then said made wizards scofflaws, and went on my usual tangent of maybe there are laws for a reason.  The conversation ended up in an argument, which ended up in make-up sex, and well, you can guess the rest of the story.  Anyway, that kind of stayed with me because it showed the kind of utter privilege that practitioners couldn’t see past.  “I don’t have to live by those silly laws of physics, or physiology, or reality, because I’m better.”

I’m not really one of those guys with a hard-on for social justice.  I mean I honestly self-describe as white and nerdy and I never had real poverty or debt, and I could walk into a store with a backpack and no one would think to follow me, if you know what I mean.  It was assumed I’d go to college, and assumed I would buy a house, and fall in love with a girl and really, my life was made of a thousand assumptions that put me into the ruling class of “don’t have to worry about it.”  And of course, I don’t think of myself as a bigot, although I might be learning differently.

So how does this lead me to being a dragon?  Even a little one, with my eyes closed, and a burning desire to sneeze, and another dragon chuckling at me in a way that just makes me want to bite his head off?  I mean, not that dragons are constantly angry or anything.

Peredur sighed.  “Your mind is more flexible than that,” he chided in sixteen-bit harmony.  Wait, that’s not the right term; it was just that I heard him on several different levels.  “I have only painted you with a temporary spell, one for which I have limited lease.”

I recognized that tone of voice.  That was, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You will fly for I will lead you.  Open your outside eyes, but keep your inner ones closed if it is too much.  I forget sometimes what it is like for you.  It is not safe for me to dull my senses to such a degree.  Do not fear for I have you.”

He pet my snout, such as it were, and something in his voice overrode my conscious mind again.  That, if nothing else, made me extremely angry.  I didn’t like this automatically acquiescing piece, even more than I disliked being a dragon.   From “It seemed like a good idea,” to “trust me,” in a few sentences just turned on all the warning signals I’d ever had in my brain, and there were flashing lights and a calm voice saying, “There’s an emergency going on.  It’s still going on.”

“And no, I will not change you back immediately, so do not bother to ask.”  He sounded a bit tired, which worried me.  I remembered his look, how he had been willing to beg me to help him.  I still didn’t like it, and I calmed myself a bit just holding on to that feeling.

I opened my eyes carefully.  I didn’t understand the inner and outer eye business, but figured maybe dragons had some kind of third magic eyelid.  It was still exceedingly sharp, like seeing the world in high definition.  “Remember that darkness is in some part an illusion,” I remembered it as paraphrased from some book.  But it made sense – just as the rotation into dawn had Meaning on a magical level, darkness could have its own veil of sorts, its own magic.  The night was alive, very alive, and I had to think in order to drown out its noises.

I hadn’t figured out how to talk as yet.  Peredur had removed his hand, and he had moved out further between the cars, seeking room for something.  A moment later, I figured it out – he had to transform.   I was to him like a Chihuahua was to a Rhodesian Ridgeback.  The creature I was wanted to keen in recognition of his glory, but I was able to at least resist that much.  He was gold and black and red in all the right places, with horns and wings, and smoke and darkness.  The balrog of the eastern city, the king of the ancient embers, the Dragon in my parking lot.

When he tensed to fly, his wings, more like tatters of black lightning flickered dark against the black of the night sky.  I was bending my knees, ready to jump, my wings thin and strong, like metal scything through the night.  He lit up in the air silently and easily, like most cats jumping onto a table.

I followed.

I almost asked the two of them if I was in some way required to open the door, but that was only because I was exhausted.  Let me parse that a different way: I wanted an excuse not to open the door, so I almost begged the two fey who hung out with me to find me a way to say, “No,” to a Dragon.

That might be a measure of just how crazy my life had gotten that I was treating them like they were reasonable folk.  Fair, you might even say.  Yes, I’m snickering.

Did Peredur even look up at Zach when they crossed in the parking lot? Would Zach recognize a brush with Dragonkind? Or did the Dragon fly over to the roof and climb down, doing some kind of parkour-style flip onto the threshold? I didn’t hear a gate open, so he probably didn’t rip a hole in reality and crawl out the other side, but I was stalling.

At least he had knocked. He almost always knocked.

I opened the door.

He was again in the shape of the man I knew him as, his eyes still that strange reflection of fire in the distance, a combination of red and brown and the iron grey of smoke. The saffron of his hair on top, the deepness of a glossy coal beneath, and the same jacket, red and velvety thick, the color of spilled blood. I had a sudden urge to ask him if he ever changed clothes, or if that was just part of the metamorphosis.  Did he have black scales, splattered with the red of a crime scene, or red ones and a black belly?  I didn’t remember anything but his teeth and his eyes and the smell of smoke from that night.  You know the one I’m referencing.

He breathed out smoke, a faint, thin exhalation of burning wood. It wasn’t like having bad breath, actually, because it had that nostalgic, “Roasting marshmallows,” kind of feel to it. Not that I was likely to kiss him, and I blamed Zach for the thought even popping up in my head. I still felt weird about it. Not really uncomfortable-weird, just generally off my game.

I totally needed a date. Heck, I just needed to get out more.

“Good evening?” I made it a question. I was very aware that both Nen and Rayya had tensed up, and I didn’t want a repeat (an “again”) from Nen putting the squeeze on the Dragon’s neck.

“Good evening,” he repeated to me, and there was a hint of a smile, but whenever he opened his mouth it opened way too wide, as if a portal in itself.

“Eh. Back to Freni-Fawr wit’ ye, monster,” Nen pointed at Peredur. His eyes were narrowed and his accent thick. “Ye haven’t an appointment. Just tryin’ to mess with the boy’s head again?”

“I have business with the Closer,” Peredur said, primly. “Are you to protect him against me?” he asked and again I was surprised that he was a few inches shorter than myself. I’m not that tall, really, average height for a man, and I was about to amend the coined phrase to, “Scary things come in small packages.” He gestured towards his chest with one hand and the challenge in his expression was easy to see. “I would be happy to try the son of Ashya.”

“The son and daughter of Ashya,” Rayya said, quietly.

It was very tense for a moment, and Peredur looked down at Rayya, jutting his chin out as if just barely deigning to acknowledge her.

It struck me as funny for a moment that I realized Dragons showed more recognizable human emotion than the Spriggan sibs. I suppose Dragons are known for their passions. Darwin said that facial expressions were residual actions of more complex behavioural responses, but I know that it was only a small set that are convincingly recognizable, probably seven or so, happiness, disgust, fear, that kind of thing. I don’t know if subtle signals like sarcasm are even cross-cultural.

Of course, I also don’t know if sarcasm is a subtle signal. Contempt sure isn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, although I wasn’t really apologetic. “You’ve come at a bad time. If someone had an open door, the best I could do is ask someone else to kindly get it before they let out all the cold air. After all, we can’t cool off the neighborhood.” For November, we were still having some pretty hot days. Oh well, with global climate change, the idea of “seasonal weather” was kind of being thrown away anyway.

“I do not have the time to coddle your delusions,” Peredur said, looking away from Rayya and at me with the directness that reminded me just who and what he was. Well, what he was, anyway. I had looked up the Wikipedia on the name and didn’t understand the reference. I’m sure it was something awfully clever, I just didn’t have the background in Welsh mythology to really appreciate it. I wondered briefly how he related to Y Ddraig Goch. That wasn’t any kind of scrawny wyvern, Of course, that put him in some kind of contest with the White Dragon. Who wasn’t Naul. Who was probably some other Dragon I didn’t want to contemplate for fear it would interfere more with my life.

“You know, I was just about to have dinner,” I said. Hadn’t Peredur already said I was pretty defiant? I could only be roasted to death once, and as exhausted as I felt, with the beginnings of a sore throat and extended psychic pain in all my limbs, I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be an improvement.

“I will not beg for you, Closer.” I saw something, then, something in his face. I probably could have pushed it. He would beg for me. He would, because whatever it was, it was causing him some kind of pain.

I didn’t like that look. I particularly didn’t like that look on women, to be honest, but I didn’t like that look on a Dragon’s human face, either. So it wasn’t all that misplaced chivalry that’s really misogyny under a prettier guise. Not all of it, at least.

I sighed. “You just missed someone who is far more focused than me, and probably better at the whole game. Why not choose him?” I asked. I needed to know. I know, “Why me?” is so whiny, but, really, now that I knew there was another, maybe a couple of others, I wasn’t the only game in town.

Of course, maybe I was the only game open to being played, however you wanted to parse it.

“He is not… what you are,” smoke drifted from Peredur’s mouth, faintly, and it sounded just as strange and movie-oracular as ever.

“What am I? Gullible?” I snapped. I sighed, and wiped my face with my hand. “Nevermind.” I already knew the answer to that question. “Fine, let’s go. Do you throw me across time and space again, or do we take an Audi RSQ-1 or something fancy?”

“Y’ canna be seriously thinking to go with that beast?” Nen stepped closer, as if getting between us.

“Do I void your bodyguard warranty or something that way?” I asked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t read the shrinkwrap.”

“Eh,” he made a noise and ushered my nonsense away with a wave of his hand. “We do not go with you if you go with him,” he said, and he sounded very solemn, his strange arrangement of features drawn and pale.

I considered. I even considered saying, “Well, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” but discarded it because it always seemed to be used in reference to one’s toilet. I couldn’t explain to Nen that I kind of owed Peredur. I mean, I didn’t. And yet, my guilt said I did. Because I had hurt a Dragon.

Because I’d lost Doloise.

“I have to do this,” I said. “Go ahead and hang out here if you’d like. Only touch the Rocky Road if it looks like it’s getting freezer burn, otherwise, it’s mine.” How long would I be gone? A year? Seven? Peredur wasn’t giving any clues.

“We will fly,” Peredur said, answering my question a bit belatedly. Or maybe he was just waiting to interject during the byplay.

“Nuh-uh,” I said, backing away and putting my hands in front of me. “No way. Not lifting off the earth. Just call me Antaeus, if you must,” I remembered the name belatedly. “This magic man does all his stuff on sweet terra firma.”

Rayya coughed delicately, hiding a laugh.

I glared at her. “No comments from the peanut gallery,” I said. “Look, my fear of heights kicks in at two inches above the surface. I’m a white boy and I can’t jump.”

“We will fly,” Peredur repeated.

“Look, I understand you Dragon types have infinite cosmic powers, but apparently listening isn’t one of them,” I said, ignoring the fact that ‘infinite cosmic power’ meant ‘able to chomp me in two with a single bite.’ No, that was wasting energy.  He could just swallow me whole.  “No flying. Look, you tell me where we’re going, and I’ll drive. You can take shotgun. Heck, I’ll even let you control the stereo.”

“Third time spoken, my Closing friend. There is a limit to what I will allow of your peccadilloes,” he said.

“Fancy word from a lizard,” I muttered. If he heard me (heck, we’d already discovered his auditory skills were suspect) he didn’t say anything. “So, I climb up on your neck or something? You know, I don’t think I could get my leg up on your shoulder without a boost.”

He laughed, and I realized he wasn’t going to just eat me… well, at least for the moment. “Let us be free from your walls, and you will see.”

“Yeah, let’s do whatever kind of transmogrification you’re going to do outside. I mean, you might shoot out slime, or your wings might mark the walls, or maybe there will be fire, and I don’t think homeowner’s insurance will handle it.”  I looked at Rayya, then I looked at Nen. Then I made sure I had everything I wanted in my pockets.

“I ken where th’ key be,” Nen said.

“And the password to the network, I presume.  Don’t give away the homeworld,” I said. “And if I’m not back for Thanksgiving, make sure Ed doesn’t eat all of the rolls.  Steal two before the basket gets to him.  Trust me.”  I sighed, then turned to the door. “Lay on, MacDragon.”

“So dour, Closer.  Much more becomes your life than the leaving of it.  Follow, and feel it like a man.”

I knew that was a quote, and I resolved to look it up.  I didn’t know Macbeth as well as I might like.  It wasn’t used on Iron Chef America that much.  That wasn’t as much of a non sequitur as it sounds – I learn a lot of vocabulary from Food Network.  Who knew mascarpone was a soft cheese rather than a new dance craze?  I no longer suffer as seriously from kitchen lethologica, although it’s mostly in deciphering the secret codes of restaurant menus that I shine.  (“Oh that?  They mean a bean and cheese burrito.  It’s just fancy-talk.”)

I closed the door behind me, while Nen and Rayya communicated in glances and sibling telepathy.  They were discouraged that I somehow found the company of a Dragon sufficient to guard my back, nevermind that I only saw one weird anemone-alien creature come after me ever, and had to take their word that they were beset night and day or at least once every blue moon on my behalf.  Honestly, I want to say I couldn’t think who carried that kind of magical grudge against me, but, you know, then I use my brain and I come up with a heck of a list.

“Well?” I asked, moving into the parking lot area.

Peredur grinned at me, a thousand teeth and a fire in his eyes.