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Apres 6

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"No shit? You guys woke up a dragon? I thought they were all dead or fled," said Richard. He leaned back in his chair behind his desk.

"None. Apparently this one slept through it all," Mike replied. He sprawled in an armchair in the way characteristic of men whose usual seats are logs or tocks.

"Then what happened?"

Mike shrugged, "It made us cook it dinner and then, the next morning, got stoned out of its mind on coffee and passed out. Turns out coffee is some kind of dragon laudanum."

"Don't forget the part where the dragon molested Lauren," Kara chimed in with a grin. She leaned forward and snagged another cookie off the coffee table.

"Don't laugh, that wasn't funny!" Lauren protested from the couch. Tom gave her a gentle squeeze with his arm around her shoulders.

"That's what you get for being a sleepy head," Kara teased.

"And then you guys skedaddled?"

"More or less," Mike shrugged, "Yrog seemed pretty chill, so I'm sure it would've been fine. We might've lost Lauren, though. I didn't feel like waiting around for it wake up."

"That wouldn't have been 'fine', guys," interjected Tom.

"Wait," Lauren sitting up from Tom's embrace, "Did you say the dragon's name was Yrog?"

"Yeah. That's how it introduced itself."

"Yrog? As in, The Yrog?"

Mike turned his hands palm up, "I mean, I don't know any other dragons named Yrog."

"Care to explain to us plebeians?" asked Kara.

"You guys at least know who Sarah Sheppard was, right? The woman who made the first accurate star charts, wrote `On the Observing of Things`, and negotiated human access to the elven libraries for the first time ever?"

"Yeah," said Kara, "She's that ancient wizard chick you keep going on about."

"She wasn't a wizard! Her book and her observations helped kick off the Great Epiphany!"

"Yeah, yeah, she knew magic, didn't she?"

"There's no such thing!"

Tom put his hand on Lauren's back.

"Just sufficiently advanced technology," he put in.

"So, tell us about this Yrog."

"Well, Yrog was Sarah's sponsor. In all the stories, the two are practically inseparable. And Yrog had just a big an effect on dragon society as Sarah had on ours. It's a bit ironic, but the advancements of both societies those two started led directly to their later conflict." Lauren's eyes went big as she had her own epiphany, "And that means it was reading to me from Sarah's original diaries!" She buried her face in her hands.

"So," Richard clarified, "you guys woke up an ancient beast of untold power and wisdom, discovered it was friendly, then ran away?"

"I guess," admitted Lauren.

Kara stuck her tongue out, "Sounds like you missed your boat. Or rather, dragon."

Lauren glared across the coffee table.

"Who knows? If it wanted to track us, I'm sure it could have. If it were me, my first stop would be my old home," opined Mike.

"If so, then it went to Tonnerg," Lauren pointed out.

"Isn't that area still hot?" asked Kara.

"Dunno. It's almost fifty years," said Tom.

"But that stuff lasts, like, forever."

"That also means it's untouched. It is probably worth an expedition. I should be able to scrounge up an airship and some rad suits. I want you guys to go check this out."