How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

If I don’t want to be caught and eaten, I won’t be.

That, I think, is one of Wentin’s rules.

In all my nightmares that I remember being like this one, the only times I was ever caught and eaten were the ones where I gave up. And when I didn’t I was able to draw the dream on and on until I did, regardless of how my body felt.

Obviously, another rule is that I can’t get any further away from it than just out of reach. And it seems like it can jump a little higher every time, which means I have to strive ever more hard to get up and away from it.

Either I’ve fallen asleep and I’m dreaming while twitching on the ground, or Wentin’s very presence has shifted reality to behave just like one of its nightmares. At this point I’m convinced it’s the former, because my mind won’t accept the latter. It makes no sense.

And these were the dreams where I first figured out that I wasn’t human, because I had wings and a tail, and I breathed fire at it, futilely, every night I had one. Over and over.

So, I know I can at least do that. In this dream, I shouldn’t have the limit of needing to wait for my fire sacks to refill.

And I try that.

“Good!” shouts Wentin. “That was delicious! Do it again!”

It’s not bothered by my fire at all. It snaps at and eats the flames. No matter how many times I let loose.

The thing is, there were versions of this dream where I didn’t give up, and I awoke before I was caught. And those endings started happening just before the dreams stopped recurring.

There were a few things that I did that allowed me to get away, but I don’t know if I can remember them. It’s been so long.

There’s one maneuver that comes to me. But I don’t do it.

One time, I dove right for the monster’s mouth and as it opened wide and made to swallow me, I let out all of my fire. So much of my fire that there was an explosion, and I woke up. And I have no idea how it would have really ended.

I’m impervious to my own fire, and apparently so is Wentin. It seems like a bad idea.

“Oh, come on, Meghan,” it chatters. “You’re thinking too much! Thinking isn’t doing, and it will distract you and I’ll get you! And then you’ll be nothing but delicious! So delicious!”

I kind of want to be, because I hate this. I’ve always hated this, and being delicious would be a way to bring an end to it. It’s always worked before.

“Stop being so disagreeable, Meghan,” it whines. “My stomach won’t take it. Flee! Agree to flee! And make me really chase you!”

The fucking seagulls are watching, too. Just like my friends, and like my family did in every dream. They’re like the Muppets’ audience, jumping and chattering with every pratfall, but staying in place to catch some more.

I see Ptarmigan turn to say something to Chapman who just watches dumbly and nods.

I want to hate them both, this is so absurd and insulting.

Why am I always so abandoned and alone? Left to fight for myself?

I do one of my old tricks where I beat my wings so fast and hard I reverse direction and Wentin shoots out in front of me, teeth snapping, and lands on the ground in a twisting slide, left side facing me with little clouds of torn grass and clods of dirt flying in the air where its lion-like feet skid.

That shouldn’t have worked if this was real. I can’t do that in real life. I’ve tried it while experimenting with flight. Physics and biology won’t let me.

Confirmation that this is a dream, if my endless fire wasn’t already.

I bathe my enemy in my own light and then twist and shoot away, swimming through the air toward the acid tanks again.

Weaving through them is a dance of ease and grace, and then I circle around and alight atop one of them.

I’m certain Wentin can’t get me there. Not right away. And it gives me a moment of rest and feeling superior, which is a nice change of pace.

I look down in time to see it slam, full bodied, against the side of the tank, its teeth snapping shut just six inches from my tail, which I pull closer to my body.

Moving ever so slightly away from it makes the other side of my body feel vulnerable, and I watch it slide down and land on its feet, grinning. Then it circles the tank to that side of me, and I turn to face it, inching away.

It leaps.

Clang! Its foreclaws briefly wrap around the top lip of the tank and its mouth comes far too close to my face as I lean back the other way away from it.

One more jump and I’m done, so I leap over to the next tank, knowing that will refresh everything at least a little.

There are rules, after all.

“You’re learning, Meghan,” It drones ominously. “I’ve told you everything you need to know, and you’re learning from it. But you haven’t put it all together. You’re ignoring some of my words and it’s so disappointing!”

What words?

Its lies? Its taunting?

“Everything I’ve told you is true, Meghan! Accept it! One day, I will eat you!”

It never did eat me, did it? In every dream where I gave up and I fell, it grabbed my leg and I woke up. I still didn’t let it eat me.

And I remember when I figured that out. And eventually, I skipped the giving up and just started waking up.

Sometimes it felt like I would just rise up into the sky and out of my dream that way, flying into orbit and into wakefulness and my bed. The ultimate act of control over a lucid dream, the withdrawal of consent to experience it.

So, I decide to try it.

I want to end this, so I’m going to give it a shot.

As Wentin makes its next attack, I leap up and out, away from the acid tank and over the field and with my will, pull myself up and out of the dream.

But instead, as Wentin lets out a victorious guffaw, reality crashes in around, through, and below me and comes billowing up in the form of the thermal that should have already been there. And in just a couple long slow flaps of my wings I’m soaring well above Wentin’s reach as I should have been able to do before.

And I’m not exhausted. And Wentin simply stands under me, looking up. And it opens its mouth.

“And that, Meghan, is what it’s like to truly, fully be a dragon,” it says. “You aren’t beholden by physics. You never were. You are a story. And you are governed by the laws of your narrative.”

Chapman puts hir hands to either side of hir mouth and shouts up at me, “I think it’s right about that! More or less!”

Ptarmigan nudges hir with an elbow, watching me as she was through this whole ordeal.

I’m feeling pretty fucking angry right now. Indignant as hell. To be put through all of this without asking me if I had the time, energy, or will to do it. Without asking me if I was OK with it. It’s not OK, and I want it known, but I don’t have the words to express it.

So I take a breath into my fire sack and let out a huge gout of flame that catches on the updraft and accelerates it, lifting me even higher for a moment.

And as the flames disperse, my napalm atomizing and flaring in the air, I remember that I already breathed several gouts of flame this afternoon.

If those were as real as this one felt, as this moment feels right now, I shouldn’t be able to do that.

“I said it was all real, Meghan,” Wentin calls up to me, its voice more relaxed than usual, if smug. “Like you, I am a dream, a myth, a monster made physical. And everything I do now is so very real, with immediate consequences. Just like you.”

Ptarmigan cocks a finger gun and fires it in my direction, mouthing a sound effect for it.

Can I talk for real now that I’ve broken my own personal myth? Is that a law of biology and physics that I’m not beholden to anymore?

No.

I open my mouth and a squawk comes out, followed by Caleb’s voice saying, “shit.”

“You promised to learn that in your own voice, Meg,” Chapman says. “You’ve learned so many other words, maybe it’s time.”

We’re on the ground again, in the middle of the field, and it turns out that a crowd of people had collected to watch the dragon chase, all stopping at the perimeter of the park. It had lasted long enough that word had spread to the Farmers Market, and parents brought their children down to watch.

No one was getting hurt, so apparently they figured that it was a friendly sparring match.

Or so it seems.

We haven’t talked to any of them yet. And I’m nervously glancing at them as we confer. They’re still keeping their respectful distance.

“What kind of a dragon are you, Meghan?” Wentin asks. “The key to your survival lies in that question. What kind of a story do you fit in, and what do you do in that story?”

Chapman has quickly lost herself in thought, brows furrowed, fingers steepled in front of hir face, but sie has the agency to ask, “Will the other dragons learn this too?”

“If Wentin’s right,” Ptarmigan says. “I’m thinking some will learn it faster and easier than she did. And most won’t ever learn it at all. A rare few will have to go through a trial like this. Some of them less friendly, I imagine.”

“You think I’m friendly?” Wentin asks, sounding insulted.

“I didn’t say that,” Ptarmigan replies.

Joel is still nearby, sitting and listening attentively, soaking up everything we’re saying.

My tablet is pretty close, and I can basically just reach over with my claw and draw it to the front of me, and I knuckle in a couple words as everyone waits, “Now what?”

“I think you practice,” Chapman said. “Explore what you can do, and push yourself.”

“It like lucid dream?” I ask.

“No,” Ptarmigan says.

“It’s remembering what you are,” Wentin hums, almost a drone. “Come to my Arboretum for real practice, any time you dare, Meghan. Any time you dare.”

I squint at it. Which, for me, is as close to a smile as I can get. But this one’s mixed with suspicion.

“I nap first,” I say.

“Good call,” Chapman says. “Give your subconscious some time to process all of this.”

I type a couple more words and then point in my crooked claw way at Wentin as I hit talk, “Stay away.”

“As you wish, My Queen.”

Fucking why?

I am not anyone’s queen.

I have dreams, and I know they’re not nightmares. But they kind of vaguely feel like them. And I can’t remember them at all.

I awake to the moon shining on me, and I pull out my tablet to look up what phase it is.

Waning Gibbous.

It was a full moon two days ago, actually, on Talk Like a Pirate day. On the day I was awarded my name!

Oh, huh. I did something important on a kind of astronomically cool day after all. I just didn’t notice.

Maybe if I add the moon phases to my lock screen, I can keep better track of them.

It feels like a reasonably good idea to do.

I check the time again.

It’s only 9:30.

Normally, Rhoda and I would be starting our evening tea by now, but I haven’t heard from her since she walked away yesterday. I don’t want to push, but I miss our routine, and I want to make sure she’s OK.

I should message her.

But something is making me feel extra anxious about messages on my tablet.

I’ve had a lot of them in the past couple of weeks, all set up to happen by me, of course. I set up my Discord server for dragons and my group SMS chat for my humans, and I’ve been constantly inundated and dealing with it badly. But for Chapman, Ptarmigan, and Rhoda, I’ve always been able to make an exception and check their messages and send them responses and queries.

Not tonight.

Tonight, my brain is done with that.

I’ve been here before, too. Right at the beginning of my worst flareup of disabilities, when I lost any chance at a career right out of college. Between jobs and school, it had been too much, and messages of any sort on any device became impossible.

It’s been a long, slow recovery, and I thought that becoming my true self would help with that, since it helped with my fatigue by obliterating it.

But, no.

I’ve overexerted myself again.

But I feel the need to check in with Rhoda. I feel like letting her go a third day without at least one word from me is not a great idea.

Maybe I’m starting to get superstitious, or maybe I’m feeling like I finally come from something, and things like the moon and the number three are somehow related to that origin. Not so much because they’re neo-pagan ideas, but because those things are so often baked into the kinds of stories I apparently come from.

But, it also seems like a reasonable amount of time. Not too soon to check in. Not too late.

So, I go over to the waterproofed duffel bag full of clothes that Chapman doesn’t want anymore, put one claw on it and unzip it with my mouth to get it ready. Then I gingerly reach into my purse and feel around until I sense the chain of my pendant against my index pad, and I tighten my claw and pull it out. My forefoot, or claw, or hand used to fit in that purse just fine. My four digits were not much bigger than human fingers. I’m still a fairly small dragon. Maybe the smallest adult dragon in town. But this time it was a tight fit, and I can feel the stretch of my hide as another shed is obviously due.

It’s not too hard for me to slip my left claws into the loop of chain and pull it wider so that I can snake my head down to insert my nose into it.

It’s a wide loop, long enough that when I’m in my human disguise, the pendant hangs down to the bottom of my sternum. This makes it easy to lift off when I’m done with it, too, and to hide it under most clothing.

I understand that if I unclasp it, it will leave me permanently disguised as a human. At least until I clasp it around my neck and then lift it off again, reversing the Artistry. The spell. It’s a spell. Ptarmigan and Chapman like to say it’s Art, but it’s magic and it’s an enchantment, and it’s a spell.

At least, when I’m using it it is.

But, I pause just before activating it with my nose.

Because, below that waning gibbous moon, I have a thought.

What if I can do other things I do in my dreams? What if I try one of those things now?

I’ve always been able to switch between human guise and true dracoform when needed. Though, before it was my old self, my AMAB body that I always hated more than anything. And though, since my dracomorphosis I haven’t had such a dream, it’s still a thing I consider part of my identity. My list of lucid dream superpowers, as I used to think of them.

I’ve even set aside a small bibliography of stories in which dragons could naturally shapeshift, disguising themselves as different animals, but mostly humans. It’s a thing.

One of the things that struck me about wearing the pendant and taking it off was that it felt familiar. It felt a lot like shapeshifting in my dreams.

So, maybe it’s like a muscle I just have to flex.

And maybe I’ll find out what kind of human I look like now.

Though, it’s possible and likely that none of Chapman’s clothes will fit me. But on the other hand, in my dreams clothes have never been a problem. They’re part of the transformation. Unless it’s a naked school nightmare, and this isn’t that.

And in my mouth, I want to see if I can do this. I can always use the pendant afterward to open the access hatch and climb down the ladder. To make my way through the halls to Rhoda’s door without much question if I run into staff.

I carefully lay the pendant on top of the open duffel bag and then step back and look up at the moon.

This should be easy and smooth, if I can do it.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and just do what I do in my dreams.

I stand up, pull my tail and wings into my back, my horns into my head, and I shift, a lightweight gown falling around me and brushing against my ankles.

And I open my eyes and look at my hands, and things don’t feel quite so wrong.

It’s not exactly right. I know this is a disguise. It’s like wrapping myself in my wings and knowing that people see a kumquat or something instead of a dragon. My full movement is restricted and I’m ready to unfold at any moment. Like my breath is held, even when it’s actually not.

But I don’t feel wrong.

As they say in fairy tales, I’m sure, my dress is the color of moon and starlight. It’s pretty astounding and not at all inconspicuous.

I reach up and grab my hair and pull it forward. It appears to be the same color as I was born with. A dirty blonde. 

Eh. It’s authentic.

I wonder what my eyes are like, but I figure I’ll get a better selfie once I’m in the building and standing in the light of the hallway.

The bodice of this dress fits me absolutely perfectly, and human ranged movement is extraordinarily easy and comfortable. But, of course, the dress is part of me.

I bend over to retrieve the pendant and zip up the bag, and I feel a tug on my hair at the top of my head, like I’m wearing something metal that’s pinned into it.

Oh, no. What has my subconscious mind done to me?

I put my left hand up and place it on the spikey bejeweled tiara that seems to be sitting there and close my eyes in embarrassment.

And I sigh, and I feel my cheeks get warm with a rush of blood.

So, this disguise reacts appropriately to emotions and thoughts.

That’s probably a good thing, actually.

It’s not all that hard to lift the hatch, which Chapman has enchanted to unlock at my touch, and then to climb down into the building. I temporarily gird my dress to do it, of course, pulling it up around my pelvis and loosely tying it. I’ve maybe watched videos about how to do that too many times.

It takes a quick tug to let it loose at the bottom, though. I made sure of that. No need to have something secure enough for fighting.

And then, adjusting the way my purse hangs – it is flame orange, I think – I glide down the hallway on bare feet to the elevator to get to Rhoda’s floor.

I knock five times, just like how I make the noise with my syrinx in the morning, and then simply wait.

If she doesn’t answer, I’ll let Chapman know, and we’ll decide what to do about it together. Probably check in tomorrow. Or have Chapman do a basic scan, just to make sure Rhoda’s still alive and healthy. Keep her privacy as best we can while knowing she’s OK, and not harassing her.

We’ll figure it out.

Maybe she’ll just come down to the coffee shop on Monday Morning, and we’ll talk about it then.

I hear creaking on the other side of the door, and the tiny speck of light in the eyehole changes intensity for a moment.

“Meghan,” I hear through the door. Then she opens it and starts talking before I can see her, “I’m so tired, but you can come in so long as it’s not that damn disguise. I ain’t got time for that.”

“Okay,” I say. Then blink.

The door opens faster and Rhoda looks me up and down, then says, “Well that’s different!”

I try to put a whole sentence through my mouth, but I don’t have a larynx and I don’t have the brain for it, and there’s only one word I’ve learned that comes out this time, “Hello.”

It must have looked a little funny, my lips mouthing words I can’t say, and the one word coming out instead, out of sync.

I decide not to bother with that again. In fairytales, there’s almost always a tell, anyway. I am a dragon, not a human, after all.

“You still have your eyes,” Rhoda says, leaning forward to look me closely in my face. 

We can see eye to eye.

I can see she’s been crying, and probably crying hard. She’s still as put together as ever, besides that. But it looks like two days of constant crying.

She sighs through her nose and tightens her lips.