Katya flew above the town staring intently at the land below, where could my mother be? she wondered curving suddenly to not be seen. Katya slowly began to lose hope, she had looked everywhere her mother would be, but no luck. Katya wanted to give her mother a good scare. As punishment for years of torture. She glanced to the ground yet again but it held no sign of where her mother would be.
She extended her wings and slowly she glided to the ground where she landed with a soft thud. Katya glanced all around her looking for humans, but she had landed in a remote field that people rarely visited. But, the reason that people rarely visited this field naturally made Katya curious and she felt a strong want to explore and see the surroundings. She took a step forward in the tall grass that was nearly up to her stomach. But in this yellowing field, all she wanted to do was to run and soar right above the grass, brushing it with the tip of her claws. And not questioning this strange desire, she did just that. The wind caught under her wings making her spin and fly basically in the grass. Looking around her surroundings, she saw that there were a lot of trees around the edge of the field. Acting on another urge, Katya flew right up to them brushing the branches with her wings. She did a few more flying laps around and then landed back in the middle of the field.
But Katya's fun didn't HAVE to stop there. She bounded over the small and scattered hills, wings catching on every gust of wind and lifting her a few inches off the ground each time. When she approached the forest she saw bushes and bushes filled to the bursting point with berries. She ran even faster with the joy of this discovery, and when she was there Katya took talon-full after talon-full of berries and stuffed them in her mouth, happily savoring each bite of the fresh flavor. Then, she looked around, looking for something else to eat.
Katya was stalking a puny squirrel when her sensitive ears picked up a voice, a HUMAN voice. Katya leaped back into the shadows and the ‘puny squirrel’ ran away. She hissed in disappointment but quickly quieted down as the voices passed her.
“-says there was a dragon,” a deep male voice said
“And do you believe them sir?!” a squeaky male voice (or Katya thought it was a male voice) spoke up only a fraction of a second after the first one.
The first man laughed, making Katya dislike him, but she wasn't quite sure why, “Well Pirma, I guess that depends on what happens next!” he lowered his voice a bit "but, if the other one- well I mean he refuses to speak, so we can't be sure if he even is one. But let's take it slowly, who knows the dragon could've been a hoax. we will never know till we see it and can do extensive research on this 'dragon'." Katya sank farther back into the shadows, knowing that they were talking about her, but she didn't know what the man meant about 'the other one. Another dragon? was Katya's first thought, but that seemed much too good to be true.
“Well yes sir- of course,” Prima said. By now, the men had both strolled near enough for Katya to get a good look at them. The short one with a squeaky voice was extremely thin, and looked a lot like a snake and rat hybrid, with dirty-blonde hair that for some reason looked grayish, and dark black eyes.
“I wonder- do you think this ‘dragon’ has anything to do with the destruction of the Woodhouse?” The first man (who Katya decided to call Sir) wondered aloud
“That is a good inference, sir! Makes perfect sense!” declared Prima, even though his tone was confused.
Sir smirked “That’s the thing, Prima, It doesn't make any sense!” Prima didn't seem able to speak and stood there spluttering. Sir continued what he was saying: “But if the dragons are no hoax or hallucination, then how did it come to this world, and will it harm humans? The safest thing to do would be to eliminate the creature immediately before it can make any of its offspring.”
Prima nodded as if he understood what Sir was saying, but he didn't, “Of course sir! Very wise, very wise!” Sir nodded as if he approved of Prima’s new behavior and the two men started walking away.
Katya started creeping away as fast as she could without making any noise, but Prima turned and saw her. He screamed “DRAGON! SIR, THERE IS A DRAGON!!!!” Sir turned and everything slowed down.
The human part of Katya was paralyzed, Sir was extremely handsome, and Katya had a desire to rake her sharp talons across this guy's face, but luckily she didn't. Instead, Katya slowly spread her wings attempting to lift herself into the air. But her whole body felt sluggish and she fell back to the ground. Suddenly she realized what had happened, cursing herself for not noticing it before. But it was too late the man had hit her with a tranquilizer dart. Prima walked nervously up to her and stuck something behind one of her horns, then quickly backed up. Sir took out his phone and hit a button then he too walked up to her, and smiling he carefully injected some liquid into an unprotected her scales and the world faded to black.
Katya woke up in some sort of lab. Her legs were chained to the wall behind her like in some medieval dungeon. But instead of stone, it was made of white metal and chrome. Katya scanned her surroundings, wondering where she was. She blew some azure sparks into one of the chrome shackles experimentally. Nothing happened. She sighed and flopped down on the ground. About an hour later a guard in a lab coat entered the lab, a nerdy guard Katya thought, unimpressed.
“Here's little beasty” he smirked “time for you foodie foodie!” he shook the huge bowl like he was calling a dog to dinner. I crept forward, then leaped back in disgust. In the bowl was a mass of fish. Like someone put entire fish into a masher and tried to mash it like applesauce. The man scowled “Fine beasty! If ya dun eat stinkin' food is fine with me!” He threw the bowl on the ground. It splattered its contents everywhere and the bowl bounced away, banging.
Katya tried to walk forward more but the chains were too short. She sighed, now the only thing she wanted was to be back out in that gold and yellow field. Frolicking around and eating berries. There has to be some way for me to get out of this! She thought about examining the bonds. She tried to stretch her wings, but couldn’t. For they too were bound tight, making Katya unable to even extend them the slightest bit. She made a low growl, then let out a huge roar. She heard many voices talking but she could only pick up a few words
“The Dragon!”
“Hungry?”
“Nope, I just fed it!”
“-one go che-”
Then a grumpy-looking female worker appeared at the entrance
“What do you want, Dragon?” she huffed, obviously wishing to be somewhere else. Katya roared again. “Better go fetch the Master- tell him to do the work early” the woman grumbled quickly exiting the room.
“WAIT! What do you mean- ‘do the work early?’” Katya asked desperately, but of course, the woman just thought she was roaring some more. She walked out of the room, rolling her eyes. probably muttering something about people needing to stop mutating animals, so she could stop having to deal with them.
Looks like I have a lot of time. or not, if the ‘work gets done early’ Katya thought, pondering the woman’s words. Katya settled down in the darkest corner of the room. Her silver eyes flashed to the door, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened. Katya closed those flashing silver eyes and focused on her rumbling stomach and not having a really good sleep. And then for the third time, the world dissolved.
Katya woke, or maybe she was dreaming, a man, was it Sir? Approached her and loaded her onto a cart. Katya didn’t feel anything so she assumed it was a dream. The man, Katya was pretty sure he was Sir, pushed her off the cart and onto a table. He chained down her legs and wings. He also put a band around her snout. Katya took no notice of this. As the dream progressed Katya realized that this dream was very different than her other dreams.
Katya realized it too late- it wasn’t a dream. But she was already bonded to the table. Katya strained, trying to escape but the bonds were tight. Sir smirked “It's now used, Dragon. I fasten you too tight.” he turned around. “AHA!” he yelled, holding up a small box that looked like a translator. He fastened it to Katya’s neck. “Hopefully this will translate your roar to English!” he said, smiling. “So go on say something.”
“Roar roar. Will eat you,” she grumbled trying to sound like a natural dragon, and not like a human that had been turned into one (not that she knew what a natural dragon sounded like). And to Katya’s surprise, her human voice crackled out of the box.
Sir jumped up and down like an excited little kid. Then he stopped his cheeks blushing red, he straightened his coat and continued. “It works! I'd like you to say something that you would say to other dragons. I can tell that is not how you would speak naturally.”
She rolled her eyes, “Yum, human meat, satisfying to bite!” she said in a sarcastic tone, not even feeling like attempting to fool Sir. Sir sighed and took off the translator.
“Guess that's enough but I want to learn more about your kind,” He told her, starting to unfasten the shackles. Oh, I'm sure, that's why you said: “eliminate the creature immediately” when you were talking to Prima. she thought sourly. Then she roared and Sir jumped back “Alright! Alright! I’ll get you back in your cell!” he yelped, quickly undoing the rest of the chains. Once the last one was off, Katya leaped up and swirled her wings around herself, lifting off into the air and knocking over everything, including Sir. He fell to the ground with a crash and the cart toppled on top of him, he lay motionless, Katya was pretty sure she had only knocked him out. But she didn’t stay to watch, there was a lot of commotion in the corridor outside the lab and Katya knew it wouldn’t be too long till one of them came in and saw her. Katya tried to melt a hole in the ceiling but that's when she figured out the wire was still around her snout, making her unable to breathe flames. Katya panicked, trying to claw it off her snout, but it was on too tight. She started searching for a key, or something that would remove the thing. Finally, she found something that looked like a key of some sort she started jabbing it at a hole in her shackle and after a few seconds it clicked and fell off. Katya sighed in relief for just a moment, then one of the laboratory people burst into the room. Katya roared and the humans screamed. They just started at Katya as she melted a hole in the ceiling and flew out, roaring in triumph. Now all she could see as she flew out into the air was the bright blue stretch of the sky in front of her.
And so, Sir woke up and realized what a big dum dum he was.