How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

There are a lot of exclamation points.

In the air. In people’s eyes. And on the screen of my tablet.

There are a lot of red notifications on Discord, too, which I’m currently studiously ignoring, because I’m starting closer to home. I’m starting here. I’m starting with my humans.

Or, rather, Rhoda is, while Cerce stands behind her, hands on hips, face drawn back in a sympathetic grimace. And while Jill cleans furiously behind the counter to distract herself.

Maybe my C-PTSD isn’t all cleared up like my fatigue seems to be. I’m so tense. I cannot bring myself to look at any messages. I don’t even want to hear them. And I find I want to burn everything down, quickly and as expediently as possible, so that I don’t have to deal with it.

Instead, I’m carefully tasting the steam of a huge bowl of Genmaicha tea, to try to ground myself in something pleasant.

“There’s a lot here from Kimberly and Nathan,” Rhoda says. “They’ve been paying attention to the local news for us. But Chapman is chiming in with important observations. You’re not needed by any of them. They all just want you to know what’s going on.”

Cerce relaxes just a little bit, and I bow my head.

“Let’s start with the biggest news,” Rhoda says. “Equisetum Wildlife has been dissolved, and Daniel Säure has issued a statement condemning its practices in the weeks following August 24th. But, the statement was issued by letter. He still hasn’t shown his voice or face.”

Cerce shakes her head, seeking eye contact with me to make sure I see her doing that. She tenses her face when I look at her with my right eye.

“Now the rough stuff,” Rhoda says, scrolling on my tablet with a finger. “A county dragon has been found murdered. The details are gruesome, and if you really want them I can read them for you. But it looks like it was done by a group of human beings.”

Fuck.

My claws dig right into the wood floor and my wings stretch out as far as they can without hitting anything, and my tail whips over and slaps the floor, my eyes suddenly very wide.

Everyone jumps a little away from me, and I realize I’m rumbling.

I can’t stop, but I can keep myself from doing more.

Rhoda, more composed than everyone else is, puts a hand on the table and looks at me, “If you need me to stop, I will stop. You do not need to concern yourself with anything you cannot handle right now. Or, if you want to take this outside where you can let loose a little more, I will follow you and continue reading for you. Or, we can continue right here. You let me know.”

Cerce looks like she wants to say something, but doesn’t. She looks afraid to say something.

She looks afraid of me.

I look around.

So does everyone else.

This is not how I want my humans to look at me. Not at all.

I take a deep breath into my lungs, not my fire sack, and carefully, slowly disengage my claws as I let it out, rearranging my wings and trying to relax my muscles.

Then I look toward the door, and say, “Go.”

Rhoda nods.

She gets up, cane in hand, tablet in the other, and leads me toward the door, which Cerce rushes over to hold open for us.

“Take care, Meghan” Cerce says as I pass her. “We all support you.”

I feel a little better hearing that, but she sounds so shaky.

Outside, when Rhoda looks at me, I look over at the parking lot across the street. It’s fortuitously mostly empty at the moment, and I should have enough room to really flap my wings in rage and frustration if I have to.

Rhoda nods, and we wait for the light and head over to the middle of that space.

Rhoda stands a dragon length away from me, before holding up the tablet to read it some more.

I give her a human-like nod to make sure she knows I approve of her stance and am OK with it.

She seems to feel that she needs to speak a little louder because of this distance and from being outside, but she has no trouble doing so, projecting like a choir director, a minister, or an experienced thespian.

“The murder has alarmed most of the other dragons, and many other people, and there’s been more violence all over the county and the city. All in the past hour.” She looks up at me. “I didn’t hear any sirens, and still don’t, and there’s a reason for that. The police and the Sheriff aren’t doing anything about it. And the local fire departments haven’t been called yet, though some have been needed in Jam and a couple of the other towns. Meghan, I don’t need to tell you that this looks bad.”

To punctuate this, I hear Wilhelm, or rather Jasen, scream from his neighborhood.

A few other unique dragon cries echo out from the other neighborhoods. But most of the members of my Discord remain eerily silent.

My own reaction is different this time. I feel suddenly drained. The cool damp air makes me feel sleepy, too, but this is the fawn response. The urge to lie down and be vulnerable, to either survive by contrition, or to suffer least through lack of struggle. My muscles feel so limp and weak.

But I don’t collapse.

I simply compose myself into a loaf and lower my head to about the height of Rhoda’s knees.

“Meghan. This isn’t on you. You are not responsible for this. You do not need to save anybody,” Rhoda says. “No one is asking you to do anything. I know I’ve made a demand or two on you the past month, but I rescind them. You hear me? If you stay calm and alert and take care of yourself, we’ll all get through this. OK?”

I look at her and then tilt my forehead at my tablet that’s in her hand.

“There isn’t anything more that’s important in the chat. That’s the news,” she says.

I tilt my head down and sideways, looking at her as meaningfully as I can with my left eye. It’s a similar expression to something I’ve seen her and other humans do.

“You want me to check your Discord next?” she asks.

I lower my head a little and partially close my eyes. I don’t feel like making a noise yet. I’ve long stopped rumbling.

She switches to the app and starts flipping through it.

“I don’t know how to make sense of this, if I’m honest,” she says. “It’s confusing and I feel like I shouldn’t be looking at it. But you’ve got some direct messages, and I think those need answering first?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay…” she says. “Wecollectshinies, prickly_ottoman, or eat_you? Which first?”

That’s Astraia, Anurak, and Wentin.

The more I learn about Anurak and his interests and sense of humor, the more I want to get to know him better. That username kills me every time I read it. I don’t even know what he means by calling himself an ottoman. But messages from the other two concern me more.

Wentin scares the shit out of me. I feel like it’s trying to manipulate me into a position where it can eat me. And though I’m telling myself that’s an unreasonable reaction, it still colors my decisions.

I care about Astraia. She’s currently as close to a friend as I’ve got in a dragon.

Ironically, maybe Joel is too, but I’m not hearing from him.

Rhoda has the tablet and I don’t have words I can use to tell her which one to read first.

She gets it.

She starts at the beginning of the list, asking a name as if it’s a yes or no question.

“Wecollectshinies?”

“Yes,” I say.

She sighs with relief and says, “OK.” Then she mutters, “I don’t really like the names of the other two, sorry.”

I make a couple of knocking noises, which she knows as usually laughter coming from me. Especially if it’s as quiet as I just did.

Rhoda takes a deep breath, “She reports that there’s disagreement and infighting in the Discord, in case you hadn’t looked. And from what she’s heard, a lot of the violence around the city is dragon on dragon violence. She wants to hear that you’re OK.”

“Yes. Okay. Please,” I say.

“Got it,” she says. “Done.”

“Prickly_ottoman next?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Then she gives me a questioning look as she moves her finger.

“Yes,” I say.

“Eat_you?” she asks for confirmation.

“Yes.”

“One line,” she reports. “‘Meet me in the Arboretum now.’”

No.

“No,” I say.

“You want me to send that?”

“No.”

“You’re just not going.”

“Yes.”

“Ok. Prickly_ottoman?”

“Yes.”

“Says, ‘Congratulations, Meghan.’ That’s it. That’s actually very nice,” she says.

“Rhoda,” I say with my syrinx, because you bet I learned her name. “Thanks.”

She considers me with thoughtful eyes and then says, “You’re very welcome.” Then she looks over my tablet screen and asks, “Do you want me to try reading you these other notifications? I think I might be able to figure it out if I go slow.”

I huff. I should. I should deal with that. But I can’t. I still can’t.

So, what I say is, “Rhoda. Yes. Meghan. No.”

“Meghan,” Rhoda says, sighing and dropping her shoulders. “I can’t hold that for you. It sounds like Astraia is, from her message. Don’t put it on me, please. I worry enough.” I think she understood what I meant, and she’s telling me she won’t do it.

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

She holds the tablet back toward me, so that I can take it, and asks, “You want this now?”

I get up to move forward to take it, but on the way I stop and say, “Chapman.”

She smiles and says, “You learned hir name, too.”

“Yes.”

“Well done,” she replies. “Yes, I think you should talk to Chapman. Message hir. I’ll go back inside and fill everyone else in and settle them down, OK?”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Are you OK now?”

“No.”

“Can you be alone?”

I think about it before saying, “Yes.”

“OK. You should hang out on your roof while you contact Chapman. That way you can keep an eye out for things.”

“Yes. Go.”

“Meghan?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I’m proud of you. For so many reasons today.”

I haven’t forgotten about Molly.

I’ve been thinking about Molly, the trans demigirl dragon who helped me shed, all day. Especially in the courthouse. And especially while talking to Rhoda in that parking lot.

I know Rhoda just absolved me of the promise she made me make to do what I can for Molly. But I’m not absolving myself.

Everything I’m doing today, I’m doing for her.

I wish I could do more.

From the roof of my building, I message Chapman, “What do I do?”

I’m actually seriously fucking panicked. It’s to the point that I can’t articulate it to anyone, and I have to ride a raft of dissociation to write even the simplest thing and appear to maintain my composure. I told Rhoda I wasn’t OK, but I couldn’t possibly tell her how not OK I am, even if I’d had my tablet in front of me with the AAC app open and ready to use.

“What do I do?” is the most honest thing I could say to anybody right now. It pretty much sums everything up.

In light of the authorities withholding their own actions, I’m seriously so damn suspicious of Säure’s statement and the dissolution of Equisetum Wildlife, as much as I’m glad to see that business go. I’m distraught at the death of a dragon, and the eruption of violence county-wide, right on the perpetual eve of dangerous legislation, both local and national. And less than two months before the Presidential election. And I’m worried sick about the idea of infighting in my own Discord server.

I feel like I should do something. Like I’m supposed to do something. But the only thing I can think of to do right now is go fight Wentin.

I don’t think it even wants to fight me, actually. But it scares me so much that I want to fight it, to prove to it that it can’t eat me, or to get it over with as quickly as possible. And in the absence of any other reasonable thing to do, it’s the idea that’s got my muscles buzzing with tension, ready to move.

Even if it doesn’t want to fight me, I don’t trust it. When it talks, Wentin sounds like that archetypal cartoon villain’s conniving lieutenant. The one that wants to take command, but is willing to work with anyone to do it, including a stray dog it might encounter. That might just be my prejudice against its voice, and my jealousy of how articulate and expressive it is. But, I don’t think the circumstances of our first meeting was all that flattering of it, either.

I think if I go there and meet it, it’s going to tell me who not to trust, and I don’t need that kind of shit right now.

And if I don’t, I worry I’m going to make it mad.

All of these feelings, all of this self recrimination and second guessing, all of this fear is making me feel human. And in feeling human, I’m feeling dysphoric. And that’s not a feeling I ever expected to experience again outside of wearing my human disguise.

It feels gross and makes me feel sick. Kind of like whenever someone called me “sir”, or when I looked down at myself in the shower.

Being small and weak and emotional is not necessarily a set of human traits. It’s not reasonable to equate being human with feeling that way. But dysphoria and self doubt are not reasonable things.

And I just never thought of feeling this way while being a dragon. It’s not how dragons are supposed to be.

Joel yawps from somewhere down in his territory, and I knock back a few times half heartedly.

Then my tablet buzzes with a message from Chapman.

These two bits of interaction pull me back onto my dissociative mental raft long enough that I can move myself to look at the message.

“Do your roll call, Meg. Do it and keep it up until everyone is doing it. Stay right where you are and just keep repeating it.”

I don’t remember how or when I made the transition from loafing on my roof in the cold feeling panic and self pity in front of my tablet waiting for Chapman’s word to pacing the rim of the building and rumbling.

I don’t really need to have that memory.

I have something to do.

I pull my voice from the deepest of sounds, a thunder that humans can only vaguely feel in their bones, that makes pebbles vibrate maybe for a block around me, and I draw it up into the loudest squawk I have ever rendered. It’s almost like a rooster crowing, with a parrot’s crack at the end. And then I follow it with my signature five wood block knocks, sharp enough to echo off the building and hills well beyond downtown Fairport.

Anurak responds almost immediately, followed by Joel, and then Astraia.

Tannis is not far behind Astraia, our collective morning song taking on its eclectic melody.

Beyond those voices, I hear some other dragons I haven’t identified crying faintly farther away.

But not all of my neighbors join in, and by the time the answers fade I’m already rumbling again, halfway around the roof’s perimeter from where I’d let first loose.

I know I think to myself that I don’t know what to do a lot.

It’s because I really don’t.

It’s not just that my mind goes blank. Though it does. At least until something obvious presents itself.

I’m pretty sure that a lot of the problems I feel like are mine to tackle don’t actually have solutions.

Nothing easy and simple.

Wentin is scheming something, I don’t know what, and the only thing I can think of is to fight it, face to face, in a battle I’ll almost surely lose quickly.

I don’t how many of the other dragons are caught up in what it’s doing, and I feel like pressing any of them would drive them away from me. If they have half a loyalty to Wentin, questioning it and acting suspicious would only strengthen it.

I’ve seen how that works amongst humans.

To lead, I must do something else.

And this might just be it.

I let loose my cry again, and nail those knocks as hard as I can. I’m not sure how I make them, really. It’s almost like the keel in my chest, my breast bone made for anchoring flight muscles, is being struck itself. That’s what it feels like.

And I like to imagine the most distant echo came back from Kwelshán, the most visible mountain on the Eastern horizon.

A few more dragons join in with my favorite neighbors in response, and I’m starting the cycle again.

If the police respond to this, but not the violence, I’ll laugh like a human in their faces, I swear. I’ll cackle, those assholes.

Daniel Säure did something confusing to me today. He countermanded his own people and rebuked them, punished them for their actions against me and Joel, and whatever other shenanigans Equisetum Wildlife was up to. This despite what his other holdings have been doing or saying, and the local election campaigns he’s said to have been funding.

Is it purely a political move? Is it a faint? Is he genuinely, personally against the capture and relocation of dragons?

Is he a dragon himself?

How do I find out?

There’s nothing I can do today to meet those ends. I’m not the one equipped to investigate him. Not yet.

But I can make my voice heard in the way I have been doing every morning that I’ve been in town since my awakening.

And so I do it.

And we’ve lost a couple of voices, but my key four are still there in the response.

A different set of distant voices echo their way to me afterward as I’m rumbling again.

Whenever I hear or read something from beyond our city, whether it’s state, national, or global news, it seems like fascism is taking stronger hold, and it’s doing so because we exist.

Fear and hatred have found the most dangerous looking target – and we are dangerous! – and it’s rallying the reactionaries to a terrifying frenzy.

Here, at home, this very morning, before the roll call, a dragon was murdered by a pack of humans.

I can’t hunt them down to confront them in any way without becoming the very monster that they’re afraid we all are.

It’s my natural instinct to do that. I need to kill the threat. I need to eliminate the competing predators. I need to make the land safe for my eggs and children. I need to protect Molly.

But if I do, we lose.

But what I can do is sing my true name, and lead the county’s dragons to do the same.

And so I do.

There’s that gronk_lizard, that Godzilla-like screechy honk, and then even Wentin joins in with its eerie warble. And Jasen screams like a falling man. And we roll, our voices cascading off wall and land, off the sky itself, and the islands beyond the water.

Voices from the Lummi Reservation reach me.

Molly needs to transition. She needs her dracomorphosis, whether her parents are ready for it or not. Her human guise is killing her, and it’s visible in her eyes. When she’s ready for it, it needs to be activated somehow. She needs a path, a way.

Some Artist says I was the center of it before, but I have no knowledge of how it was done. There are clues. There is evidence of something. But I don’t seem to be equipped to suss it out myself. Not on my own.

But I do have a kind of a say.

I can let Molly know that we’re all here. That her elders are present, and strong, and safe. And that being a dragon is something to be proud of.

And so I

fucking 

roar.

I screech.

And I rattle my bones like boulders falling down a mountain.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And each time, more of the city responds.

Someone out there, in a neighborhood right on the edge of my hearing, even starts blaring a set of air horns. I don’t think it’s a dragon. I think it’s a bunch of humans, maybe speaking on a dragon’s behalf. They’re honking cars and trucks, using compressed air noise makers, and using a megaphone. And they’re timing it with the cries of the dragons around them.

And they get answers from further out.

My tablet buzzes, and I barely notice it, but I also ignore it.

I think I know what it says.

It’s working.

I keep going.

I keep doing it.

And maybe even the Earth hears me.

I’ll stop when she tells me to.