“So, this Queen, she rules each of these citadels of ice cream?\u00a0 Is it her Knights who declare these treats? Where is her consort?\u00a0 Could it be this King I have seen tell with the meat sandwiches?”<\/p>\n
“It’s a conceit.\u00a0 There are no true Kings in this land,” I made a mental note that ice cream left Doloise slightly hyperactive.<\/p>\n
“That is a foul lie!\u00a0 I have seen reference to many courts.”<\/p>\n
I sighed and rolled through the DQ onto the street.\u00a0 What do you call rulership by Dragon? “Doloise, are you a democracy?”<\/p>\n
There was silence.\u00a0 “We do not believe we know the term.”<\/p>\n
“It’s complicated, but in a way it’s governing via a certain level of consensus made by the greatest number of otherwise equal votes.”\u00a0 I listened back to what I had said and amended it.\u00a0 “Look, it’s like if two of us liked chocolate ice cream and one of us liked vanilla, we’d do chocolate but we’d recognize there was a vanilla vote.\u00a0 Kind of.”<\/p>\n
“We like chocolate.”<\/p>\n
“I know.\u00a0 The sun rises in the East, it sets in the West, and Doloise likes chocolate.\u00a0 It’s a law of the universe.”\u00a0 I sighed.\u00a0 I mean, I like chocolate.\u00a0 I like everything about chocolate, but I won’t pull the arm off a drive-through attendant to get it.\u00a0 Not saying that that was what Doloise did and that we were now involved in a high speed chase down the streets of Denver.\u00a0 Not saying that at all.<\/p>\n
Actually, we were just a few blocks from my place when the car coming through the intersection against the light hit us with a rushing sound, like the passage of a train.\u00a0 There was the smell of sulfur, and flames all around us for a moment.\u00a0 I remember spinning around a few times, the chugging sound of the engine, and then the whizz-pow-bang of the airbags.\u00a0\u00a0 There was a snaking sound, maybe a seatbelt failing, and then Doloise was no longer in her seat, no longer in the car at all.<\/p>\n
I came to as a very pretty paramedic was shaking my arm.\u00a0 “Sir?\u00a0 Sir?”<\/p>\n
I think I made some kind of noise that served as acknowledgement, but I could not recollect what it because I immediately set off coughing from the powder of the airbags.\u00a0 A few minutes of wheezing and I was able to remember my name and some essential facts about me.<\/p>\n
Like, where was Doloise?<\/p>\n
“Were there any witnesses to the event?” someone was asking in general.<\/p>\n
“Have you seen a tall blonde with sunglasses wandering around looking distant and slightly disgruntled with life?”<\/p>\n
“You were hit on the head pretty hard, sir.”\u00a0 They looked concerned.\u00a0 “There was no one else in the vehicle.”<\/p>\n
I turned and looked at the car.\u00a0 The top of the car looked like a cliff racer had pulled off the top at high speed.\u00a0 Huge rake-like claws in the metal.<\/p>\n
Actually, I felt fine.<\/p>\n
I told the paramedics that.\u00a0 I was even feeling a little frisky, so I offered my phone number a second time to the one who had brought me to consciousness.<\/p>\n
“We’d really like to take you to be looked at,” she said.\u00a0 “Sometimes these injuries cause stress that you don’t acknowledge immediately but can still be quite dangerous, even deadly to you the next day.”<\/p>\n
“Oh, I was going to go look up how to negotiate with a Dragon,” I said, brightly. “Any suggestions on good books?\u00a0 Maybe something on power diplomacy or hard bargaining?”<\/p>\n
“Can you do any of that without tilting at windmills?” she asked.\u00a0 “Come on, into the ambulance with you.\u00a0 Be a good boy.”<\/p>\n
I bit back a variety of smart-aleck remarks, which may have proved her correct about a bump on my head.\u00a0 “What about my ice cream?” I asked, laying down on the stretcher-thing.\u00a0 “I worked very hard for that sundae.\u00a0 I paid extra for the nuts and whipped cream.”<\/p>\n
I started getting right back up and looked at the wreckage of my car.<\/p>\n
Huge claw marks.\u00a0 I remember the rush of the other car, but it was really a roar, and the smell of the Dragon’s fiery breath, as if flames had erupted around us.\u00a0\u00a0 I guess a Dragon had decided to make a move.<\/p>\n
But which one?\u00a0 And where was Doloise?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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