How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

“Can we go into the back room?” Chapman asks Kim.

“The bosses are back there busy doing payroll,” she replies.

“Ah. Hm.”

I glance around at everyone, and then say one word with my tablet, “Roof.”

“Oh?” Ptarmigan asks.

“Yes,” I say.

Rhoda sighs and thumps her cane.

So then, after getting us up onto the roof of my building without notice, where I sleep and sun myself, and what I consider to be my home, Chapman explains most of the details that Ptarmigan has glossed over.

Kimberly remarks early on that Nathan is going to be so annoyed that he’s being left out.

Kim says Cerce and Jill will be, too.

“We’ll fill them in,” Rhoda says, looking meaningfully at Chapman. She’s sitting on a folding stool she brought up from her apartment.

So, according to Chapman, Ptarmigan wasn’t lying about anything, nor telling the full truth.

They’ve been calling themselves Artists, or words that mean a similar thing, since language was invented. And while Chapman had said to us, when we first met, that people like hir had awoken years before dragons did, sie hadn’t specified how many. Eons are, after all, collections of years.

Both Chapman and Ptarmigan are quick and decisive to say that they are not gods. Spirits might be a better description, but they’re both put off by that word as well. They like being called Artists.

Lots of humans have called them gods or spirits before, though. There’s a history there that seems to rankle them both.

Also, there are considerably less Artists than there are dragons. Apparently, somewhere around nine-hundred thousand of them. And their numbers do not shrink or grow, but they are somehow still mortal, in a sense. Though, immortal in a sense as well.

Chapman seems very reluctant to explain that, so Ptarmigan does.

“Oh, come on. We incarnate at will,” she says. “And we experience death like everyone else. Just, maybe more often.”

“So, this time around you’re forty-nine years old?” Kimberly asks.

“No.”

Chapman scoffs and keeps explaining things.

Each Artist has their own medium that no other Artist has, and they can use it to do all sorts of things. Again, there’s reluctant vagueness there, but my amulet of human disguise that lets me look like a pretransition Chapman is pointed to as an example. An Artist’s medium isn’t necessarily pen and paper or clay or something like that. It’s more a particular aspect of spacetime and existence itself, which can then be manipulated more easily with various mundane mediums than with others. So Ptarmigan’s work will not look nor function the same way as Chapman’s, for example, even though they can both use pen and paper to do their Arts.

These Arts of theirs aren’t the end all be all of what they can do. They, of course, have metaphysical functions that are like biological processes that they all share. There’s a basic nature to them that is beyond what human science can currently explain.

And, they actually don’t know how they came into being any more than anyone else does. We’re told by our parents or guardians, upon gaining awareness and memory that sticks, that we were born from our mothers. But very, very few of us actually know that’s true or remember that happening. And no one was there to tell the Artists where they came from.

Now, when it comes to Artists being responsible for the existence of dragons, Chapman has a disagreement with Ptarmigan. While Ptarmigan claims that there is an obvious direct connection, like it was the act of a single Artist, Chapman contradicts her harshly and definitively.

Chapman turns to me and says, “I’ve been studying dragons far longer than anyone like Ptarmigan can even have thought about you. And from what I can tell, you and humanity exist because of each other. We Artists may have shaped your destinies together, and influenced the way the world has turned out, though I’d argue that that’s giving us way too much credit, too. But you would have evolved together regardless.”

“Sure,” Ptarmigan says, not at all agreeing by the use of that word.

“Dragons are like the id of life itself made manifest through humanity’s dreaming,” Chapman says. “Though ‘id’ is a terrible word for it. It’s so annoyingly accurate but misunderstood anyway. And coined by a person who only saw part of what he was trying to talk about.”

“That last bit I can agree with,” Ptarmigan says.

Chapman keeps talking, eying Ptarmigan with a furrowed brow, “And if we Artists hadn’t chosen apes to work with to cultivate civilization, it would have been a different species, but dragons would still exist. You’d have just manifested through their dreams instead. Heck, for all anyone’s investigated, there could be octopus dragons under the ocean right now.”

“That’s a neat idea, but twenty bucks says there aren’t. I’ll check.”

“Would you?”

“Not yet.”

“Fine.”

“Now, crow dragons. I think I might have to concede your point, because I bet there are crow dragons, like, right now,” Ptarmigan says.

“Would they be about this big?” Kim asks, holding her hands up to indicate something maybe slightly larger than a crow.

“Maybe,” Ptarmigan says. “But they’d be dragons. They could get bigger.”

And then everyone looks at me.

I get the gist.

I sit up on my haunches as straight as I can and look at Chapman and then at Rhoda, trying to gauge by how tall they look to me whether I’ve grown or not.

I feel like I have, but I can’t tell.

“Yeah, you’ve grown,” Ptarmigan says.

“How long have you been watching her?” Kimberly asks, wrinkling her nose.

“At least as long as Chapman has,” replies the Artist in black.

“I –” Chapman starts to say, then scrunches hir mouth shut and pouts. Then sie says, “We literally first met a couple Tuesdays ago, right outside our counselor’s office. I was taken by surprise then, and Meg can vouch for me I think. If you’ve been watching her longer than that. Well, you’re the stalker, not me.”

Ptarmigan remains quiet.

“How big is Meg likely to get?” Kim asks in the silence.

“I don’t know,” Chapman says. “Dragons are said to come in all sizes. She could stop growing at the size of a cow, or the size of a school bus, or… bigger? I don’t know.”

Shit.

I like my coffee, and I like my coffee shop, and I don’t want to not be able to go in there anymore.

The idea of being able to step on a twerp of a dragon who’s that much smaller than me, if I have to, is appealing. More appealing than being the twerp who gets stepped on. But I have my domain, and I don’t want to lose it to my natural state of growth, dammit.

I open my mouth to say one of my thirteen words, but then my whole esophagus convulses.

Oh, no.

I just felt lumps in my gizzard move to my crop.

There’s another convulsion, and it causes me to whip my neck downward and aim my head at the rooftop, mouth wide open. Nothing comes out yet, but it’s going to. And everyone watches in mild horror and curiosity. And I don’t like it.

I feel embarrassed.

This feels like something I should be doing in a bathroom.

I drag myself away from the group, closing my mouth forcefully and trying not to let my throat convulse anymore. And I scramble over to the farthest corner of the building just in time to hork up an owl pellet and two small river rocks that look all polished and kinda slimy.

Then I sit up straight and look over my shoulder at everyone with my left eye.

“What if,” Kimberly says to Chapman while everyone else is still staring at me, “you refine that disguise you made for her to do something cool, like, allow me to be a dog?”

Chapman looks at her in disbelief that she’d just come out of left field with that question at a time like this, but then says, “I never told you I made that disguise.”

“Oh, come on,” Kimberly says. “Can you do it?”

“Of course.”

Kimberly points at me, and says, “Then you could also make a disguise for her that just makes her this smaller version of herself, right? So she can keep coming into the shop?”

“How did you know I was worried about that?” Kim asks.

Kimberly looks at her with friendly incredulity, and says, “We’re the Kims.”

“Right!”

There’s just. There’s something really special about knowing a couple of people who sometimes worry about the same things you do, and who end up asking the questions you wanted to ask when you can’t.

“That would be much easier than disguising you as a dog or Meg as a human,” Chapman says, after a pause of worried consideration.

“Well, I think we should get on that, then,” Kimberly says. “It could come in handy.”

I’m not growing that fast, but I’m not going to argue, either.

“Why did you ask about being a dog first?” Kim looks up at Kimberly.

Kimberly looks down at her and smirks and says, “Woof.”

Kim rolls her eyes and says, “You’d be such a mutt, too.”

“Already am, sweetheart!”

“I can’t,” Chapman starts to say, but then, hands halfway gestured toward the rooftop, turns to look at Ptarmigan.

“Are you gonna ask me a question?” Ptarmigan asks.

“What’s the ‘collaborative piece’ you want to work on?” Chapman asks back.

“What do you think would help best to bring an equilibrium of peace between humans and dragons?”

“I really don’t know.”

“OK. Then what do you think would help best to let us Artists live openly and freely as ourselves?” Ptarmigan asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Wanna find out?”

“Are you saying you have an idea?” Chapman questions her.

“I could. I suppose. But what I’m suggesting is that we work together to discover the best idea,” Ptarmigan says. “And maybe ask your friends here to help, too.”

“I might think better as a dog,” Kimberly says, and Kim punches her in the arm.

Ptarmigan points at Kimberly and says, “That might be a start, actually.”

To which Chapman folds hir arms again and scowls, “Are you sure you’re not Raven?”

“Nah. I’m from back East and a bit North, most of the time.”

“It took me the better part of five years to make that pendant that I gave Meghan,” Chapman says. “It was a prototype, and I can definitely make the next one more easily, but it’ll probably take another couple of years if it’s significantly different. It’s just on the edge of my Art, not really part of it. I maybe shouldn’t have been able to do it at all. But I did have big plans for it. Is that why you’re here, Ptarmigan?”

Ptarmigan sighs and puts her hands in her pockets, “I’m going to have to say, ‘yes’.”

“Is it in your Art to be able to do these disguises any easier?” Chapman asks.

“No,” Ptarmigan replies.

Chapman spreads hir arms out and juts hir head forward in a circular motion, eyes wide, lips scrunched up.

And then Ptarmigan turns to look at me and says, “She, on the other hand….”

What?

What?

Everyone is sitting in a semicircle around me, right on the black rooftop, though Rhoda is still on her stool. It’s getting to be mid afternoon. Our conversation is long and involved, and the Kims both have mentioned offhand that they need to go home or do something else, but this is too important.

Rhoda, Chapman, and Ptarmigan all have nothing better to do than to focus on me. I appreciate it with Rhoda and Chapman, but with Ptarmigan my feelings remain so mixed.

But, now I’ve got my tablet in front of me, and everyone waits for me to communicate to the best of my ability. And I’m taking the time to ask my questions as precisely as possible, because it’s that important.

“Am I an Artist?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Ptarmigan says.

“Neither do I,” Chapman adds.

“Should I know?” I ask.

“There have definitely been cases where Artists have forgotten who and what they are,” Chapman says. “And, we don’t always recognize each other. Our memories are fluid and sometimes very elusive. It gets that way when you exist for long enough.”

“That,” Ptarmigan points at Chapman.

“Why do you think I can do disguises?” I look at Ptarmigan.

“Well,” she says, looking down at her crossed ankles and working her thumbnails under each other. “My own divinations have shown that the dragon awakening was centered on you. It rippled outward from you. And, you do tend to notice it when someone uses their Art on you in some way.”

Chapman scowls at her, “You really have been stalking us.”

“How could I not?” Ptarmigan asks.

“I don’t know. By just not stalking us?”

“I was lurking. Like in a forum.”

“Rude.”

“It’s not considered rude when it’s online.”

“There’s a users list!”

“Not on every site.”

“Children!” Rhoda interjects. “Let Meghan ask her questions.”

They both fall silent and turn to me again.

“What if I’m not an Artist and can’t do disguises?” I ask next.

“Then we’ll have to try working on something else,” Ptarmigan says.

“Why disguises? Why will those help?” I follow up.

“Well,” Ptarmigan says. “Before this, you identified as a therian, correct?”

“Yes.”

“But there were a bunch of therians who did not change into dragons.”

“Yes.”

“Or whatever else they are.”

“Yes.”

“What if we had a mass awakening, or mass metamorphosis of the rest of the therians, otherkin, alterhumans, and other non-humans, whatever they call themselves?” Ptarmigan asks. “One like the one we just had, where initially it just fits, and everyone close to the subjects understands them better and doesn’t outright reject them? Wouldn’t that be neat?”

I know it would make a lot of people really happy. And I think I can kind of see the reasoning behind the idea, but it also sounds like so much more chaos in the long run. I wonder.

I make to type something out, but Ptarmigan interrupts to elaborate.

“What I’m suggesting is that we make the problem that people like Säure are trying to ‘fix’ just so much bigger than they can address,” she says. “Force the issue. Make it undeniably the new reality.”

“You mean, I’d have to be a real dog?” Kimberly asks. “All the time?”

“Do you want to be?” Ptarmigan asks.

“I actually don’t know,” Kimberly responds. “I actually kind of like being a doggirl instead of a girldog. But I’d love to see what being a girldog is like for at least a little bit. Maybe… Yeah. A werepoodle.”

“Poodle?!” Kim nearly shouts at her.

“You’ve seen Cody,” Kimberly says. “That dude’s so chill.”

“Children,” Rhoda says, more quietly this time.

Everyone looks at me again.

“Is this really a good idea?” I ask. And then I look at each of my friends after looking at Ptarmigan, inviting them to speak up as well.

Rhoda clears her throat and takes a moment to make sure everyone is looking at her, then says, “It’s the just idea. Allowing everyone to live authentically as their true selves is just. It’s right. It’s the way the universe should be. But how we go about it? That’s the Thing. Isn’t it?” She looks at me, and asks, “Can you make it so that every new baby that’s born doesn’t have the dysphoria? That they are born the way they’re supposed to be?”

I go to type on my tablet in response, but she asks more questions.

“Can you make it so that all the world’s laws are changed gracefully to accept how these newly out people will exist, and make accommodations for them? Can you guarantee that there won’t be more violence?”

“No,” I say, and I huff. This is the first time I’ve heard her be this stern and demanding of me, and it feels really jarring and uncomfortable. But it would also be nice if she let me fully talk in response.

She’s scowling at me silently, waiting, but glancing alternatively at Chapman and Ptarmigan as well.

I take a deep breath and angrily knuckled out a sentence, feeling rushed, “I not Artist or god, no idea, don’t know.” Then I add, “I Meghan.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rhoda concludes. Then she turns to Chapman and Ptarmigan and says, “I also think you two, and the rest of your kind, should learn to let mortals handle their own affairs.”

Oh. Huh. Shit. I feel like this is changing the dynamic of my whole social group, and my potential partnerships with Rhoda and Chapman. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. And it already feels too late.

But also, I see a problem.

“No,” I say.

“What?” Rhoda asks, snapping her attention back to me.

I stomp a foot and then type out my response, “Other Artists won’t stop because you ask. We need these two.”

Rhoda sighs and says, “I understand that, Meghan. I really do. But I’m saying what I’m saying for a reason. It needs to be said.”

I tilt my head. I’d frown, but my face doesn’t actually do that.

“It’s what we need to be working for,” Rhoda explains to me, focusing so intently on me that I feel like her words aren’t meant for the others to acknowledge in any way. “If we don’t state that clearly from the beginning and don’t all agree to it, then I can’t be part of this. And I don’t think you should be, either.”

“Amen,” Kimberly says.

Rhoda glances at her, but turns back to me.

“Okay,” I say. Then use my tablet to say, “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Rhoda says. “But thank you.”

The conversation wound down pretty quick after that, and everyone finally left when Nathan showed up at the shop with three pounds of ground chuck for me as a welcome home gift.

Nobody wanted to see me eat that, but I am so grateful for it.

I’m pretty sure that there’s an office window to the East of me where, if you were to sit in that office and look out that window toward the sunset, you’d see me silhouetted against the sun, head up and back, jaws open and working, choking down some locally grown, grass fed, ethically sourced ground beef.

No river rocks needed.

The thing is, I enjoy eating like this. It looks uncomfortable, but my body is made for it and while I don’t really get flavors I enjoy, the sensations of eating this way feel good. I’m satisfied in a way that no human will ever experience.

If I want flavors, I just stick my tongue out and taste the air. But when I’m in the city I try not to do that too much.