How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

Säure really is beginning to seem like everyone’s boogeyman. Like, his involvement doesn’t seem like it’s just some educated guess on Chapman’s part nor my own suspicion, but something everyone I know is taking for granted.

It makes me want to find him to see if I can confirm it.

People compare billionaires to dragons all the time, pointing out how they hoard wealth needlessly and to the detriment of the land around them. But so far, hoarding really hasn’t been a big part of my life. Now that I know that my personal belongings are safe in Nathan’s garage for the time being, I feel safe about them and capable of focusing on other things.

If anything, I might be hoarding social connections now. I’m certainly becoming emotionally attached to everyone I talk to. It’s different with humans than it is with dragons, but it’s still an emotional attachment all the same.

I don’t know how the other dragons are doing in regards to hoarding. It just keeps not coming up. We have more important things to talk about, like Säure’s company, Equisetum Wildlife, and Joel and I having been kidnapped.

Still, we spent six hours talking in the arboretum. Six dragons for six hours, just to air our feelings and suspicions about other dragons who might be allied with Säure, and no concrete evidence that it’s happening.

Except Joel.

When I pointed this discrepancy in proof out, Joel yawped and stepped forward, confirming my suspicions about the night of my interview with the Mayor.

Joel had been recruited and then betrayed.

Six hours, and even though we had articulate and well spoken Wentin there, and Astraia and Tannis who weren’t so far behind, we hadn’t gotten anything more concrete than that, unfortunately.

Watching Ian talk for Brenna had been fascinating. He’d even affected a somewhat feminine voice, and her body language seemed to match what he was saying. It was the best act of faking telepathy I can imagine, and at this point I’m sure it wasn’t actually faked.

But we all ended up calling it off, frustrated, slightly suspicious of each other, and agreeing to be careful and to meet again when one of us had something verifiable.

And then I had gone back home to my roof thinking that maybe I had been invited there to stop a five way fight.

I spent the evening growling and trying to talk to myself, pacing my roof. And then went to sleep as it got dark. I barely even noticed the clouds rolling in.

Then my mind had the audacity to continue that whole “discussion” as a dream. Every time I went back to sleep.

So, I’m lying here on my roof a couple hours after Morning Roll Call, extremely grumpy about all that, thinking it might be extremely nice to just stay up here and ignore my tablet all day, and just take the entire Sunday to myself.

The coffee shop is closed, afterall. And Queen Meg needs her fucking alone time. She needs to think. Or stop thinking.

I get up and stretch again.

I’ve found myself stretching more often this morning, as something feels tight. And I think that last night I was rolling around in my sleep. I’d slept longer than usual, but I feel way more worn out than any other morning.

Grumpy, tired, and restless.

A good rock to lean against sounds awfully nice right now, and I find I’m jealous of Joel and his stretch of shoreline.

And there’s an itch, right in the nape of my neck where I can’t bite at it. But fortunately, my wing claws are really good for that spot and…

I see flakes of stuff falling to the rooftop.

There’s a comic from the internet that runs through my head. A two panel affair drawn by someone named pocketss, of a dragon holding up her leg and saying, “OMG Becky feel my leg I just shed”.

And I’d laugh at myself, but I desperately need a big fucking rock. A boulder, or three.

I cast around the rooftop futilely looking for one for several laps before I realize that the brick building itself is basically just one big giant boulder. I just have to find a reasonable place to rub up against it.

The alleyway. There are no windows in there, and I’d be mostly out of everyone’s sight. And if anyone turns in there to take a shortcut or something, I can just say, “Hi.” Which I taught myself how to do last night, along with a couple other useful words I’ve needed lately.

In desperation I leap off the building and flutter down there to find myself strutting up and down the alley, rubbing myself against every open brick and stone surface available, even rolling on the pavement.

And as exhausting as it is, I spend the better part of the day doing that and not much else.

If I don’t get my regular shipment of meat tonight, a couple of seagulls are gonna die, and I might not actually feel remorseful about it this time.

Assuming I’m not preoccupied with actively shedding well into the next day.

When does this stop?

Do I get a break?

What the hell? My whole body is itching.

When I start noticing larger flakes of scale shaped hide lifting off of me here and there, I try to help them get off faster by biting them and pulling. And then I find myself eating them.

Is this like a monthly thing or something? How often am I going to have to do this?

King Gidorah’s Breath, this sucks.

But, I do get to say, “Hi,” a couple times, which is as delightful as I imagined, as distracted as I am.

Someone walks in, and I stop and look at them, and say, “Hi.”

The first person just turns around and walks right out of the alley without breaking stride or saying anything.

The other, a bit later, says, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry!” And backs out quickly, with hands up, looking flustered. Just like they’d walked into a bathroom to see a naked woman drying herself off after a shower. I feel weirdly affirmed by this, and briefly wonder if a cop would dare try to arrest me for indecent exposure.

It’s when this child stands there and watches me for a while without saying anything that I find I can’t do the whole, “Hi,” routine. I feel like I shouldn’t interact with them, and I just keep working at getting myself clean of dead skin.

I’m wondering to myself whether this really came on so quickly today, or if I just didn’t notice the initial signs of it for the past few days or so, when the child looks down the street briefly and then steps into the alleyway and asks, “Want some help?”

That’s when I stop and look at them, careful to use only one eye to do so.

I feel like I need to be honest, but also to turn their help down specifically, so I string together a couple of my new words with old ones in hopes it comes across that way.

“Yes. Thanks. Please. No,” I say. I wish I’d taught myself “but” now.

They blink up at me in confusion, but don’t move.

“Thanks. No,” I repeat.

“Really?” they say. “I bet I’d be good at getting the small bits you can’t see.”

And I'm about to say “no” again when it occurs to me that I really do need help with something, because it’s been getting in the way.

I pull my tablet out of my purse, lay it on the ground, turn it on, open up the app, and say, “Actually, purse, please.”

And then I sit up and compose myself to present my purse, which falls into place in front of my chest. Chapman gave me this purse, which looks flame orange to me, and was thoughtful about it. The strap has clasps holding it to the purse.

“Of course!” my new friend exclaims, and eagerly steps forward to assist, undoing the clasps and gingerly removing my purse. “My name is Molly. Want me to hold onto it for you?”

“Thanks. No,” I say. Then use the tablet to add, “Put this in purse. Take purse to coffee shop. Explain.”

“Oh! OK!” Molly agrees, and then does what I ask.

When they come back, I am already working on the spots the purse was preventing me from really getting at.

“How long does it take?” Molly asks.

I have no idea how to respond without my tablet, and I'm really busy. It feels too good to be doing this now. There’s a lot of relief in it at this point.

And I keep at it.

After a while, Molly says, “Oh. You can’t talk much without your screen. OK. Can you say your name?”

I stop enough to say, “Meg.”

“I’ll leave you alone, but I wanted to say. Um. My pronouns are she/her, because I’m a girl. Mostly,” she looks a little uncomfortable about having said this to me for some reason, and she looks a little more antsy and ready to go find her parents again. But then, just before she goes, she says, “That looks like it’s really awful, but I still wish I was like you.”

That brings me up short, and I lift my head to look at her with my left eye again. Then I lower my head down to about level with her midsection and close my eyes most of the way, by way of my usual smile.

I’m halfway down the alley and she’s at the mouth of it. I’m sure it looks like a bow to her, and it is.

Even if I had a larger vocabulary, I’m at a loss for words.

“Thank you for talking to me, Meg,” Molly says. “I have to go now. I hope your shedding feels really good when you’re done.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Goodbye.”

She brightens up, waves, and then skips down the street and out of sight. But I still see a sadness in her eye as she does that.

I get so worked up in my thoughts about Molly and who and what she might be that I forget about my shed for a while, and when Rhoda finds me in the alley I’m still staring up at the sky, my heart hurting.

Why didn’t Molly transform when I did? Was it not safe for her yet? Will there be other waves of dragons? Or was it arbitrary and a one time thing?

She didn’t really look like a girl to me until she said her name, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions even then. Ever since I’ve met Chapman and come out to myself, I’ve been working hard to be good about that.

I think Molly is around 12 years old. Maybe give or take a couple of years. It’s hard to say. Maybe she’s lucky and on hormone blockers. Maybe puberty is being kind to her. Or maybe it’s not, and I’m reading her wrong.

But I recognized that look on her face because I saw it in the mirror for the past fifty years.

And she wants to be like me.

She already is.

“Hey, Meghan,” Rhoda says, holding my purse against her with her right arm, cane steadying her in left hand. “Are you OK?”

“No,” I say. “No.”

“Want to come over to my place to talk?” she asks.

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Ooh, a new word! I like it.”

“Thanks.”

I still have shedding to do, but now that I’m not in the middle of it I can ignore the urge for a while. I’m probably going to be spending a lot of the night working on it, still, though.

Rhoda and I have been talking for a while, enjoying her tea. I’m not drinking it, though, because I don’t want to make a mess in her apartment. I’m just tasting the air occasionally to get a whiff of it, mixed in with the other odors and aromas of Rhoda and her home. If I aim my head right, I get mostly tea, and I do love it.

She gets fancy, loose leaf teas from a shop on the edge of my territory, and I decide I need to visit it someday. Just to stick my head in the door, lick the air, and smile at the owner. I’ll even pay for the privilege, if I can.

Anyway, mostly I’ve been filling Rhoda in on the events of the past two days, and she’s been listening and nodding, only occasionally interjecting or asking a question.

It’s such a comfortable relief to me to be able to think about what I want to say and actually say it, and not be rushed by a conversation. It still takes longer than I’d like, but I start to lose track of time and forget about it, falling into my routine of communication.

This.

This is what I want my life to be like. To be myself in a quiet place with someone who is also just there.

I do wonder a little if Rhoda is being herself, or if she’s going out of her way to accommodate me. But the few times I’ve tried to pay her back for all she does for me, or to find out how, she’s told me, “Let me worry about me. I’ll be OK.” There isn’t much good in pushing, then.

However, when I get to talking about Molly, she has a story to share, so I listen.

“Just before my son died, he once told me something,” Rhoda says to me. “His best friend was a trans boy. A teenager just like him. And Jacob just one day says to me out of the blue, like he always did about whatever he was thinking about. He says, ‘Toby told me the first couple years of transition are the hardest.’ And then he went back to doing his homework and didn’t say anything else that night.”

I watch her look up at the corner of the ceiling. I’m sure she’s composing more words, and even if she isn’t she’s not looking for a response from me, yet.

“I always wondered what was going through Jacob’s head when he shared that. The phrase sounded to me like a piece of wisdom passed around from trans person to trans person. Something they told each other to help get through what they need to do. And I don’t see how it couldn’t be,” she continues eventually. “You’re a special case, Meghan, but I imagine it’s going to be similar for you. Things will get easier for you. They have to. But they didn’t for Jacob, and I don’t know why he left. I know that being autistic in this world can be so hard. Especially for a Black boy like him. But after he said that to me, I’ve always got to wonder, you know?”

Then she looks at me. And I still don’t feel like I should say anything.

I don’t smile. I just make sure my eye is pointed at her.

I’m right eye dominant, I think. I keep an eye out for danger with it more often. But it always feels like my left eye is my friendly one, so that’s the one facing her.

“I think,” Rhoda says. “I think, for Molly’s sake, if you are the center of this thing you call the dracomorphosis, you should figure out why and how. I think you know that.”

“Yes,” I say. 

I remember when she first mentioned her son, it sounded like he had died. But I hadn’t asked, and she had offered no indication how or why. I let the thought enter my head, I cataloged it for later, and had focused on what she wanted to talk about after that. She hadn’t even said his name.

So, tonight, to learn his name and that – I’m pretty sure I heard right – that he may have died from suicide. And that she wonders if he was trans, too.

It’s a lot.

“Yes,” I say again.

“Even if you’re an Artist, Meg. I want you to do this. I don’t know how you can. I don’t know if it’s even wise. But if you can give Molly anything that my son Jacob might have missed out on, I want you to do it. Please.”

I look down at my tablet and knuckle out a couple words, “I’ve already vowed to.”

“Good.”

After a little bit more silence, I dare to ask, “Is this why you friend me?”

She just shrugs and shakes her head. Not a tear on her face. And I think she’s trying to will them to come from the looks of it.

I’m on my roof again, staring up at the moon.

It’s a noticeable sliver high in the sky. It’s just strong enough to illuminate the high wispy clouds that are coming in and covering the whole sky, creating a cathedral of light and vapor. But it’s not quite as spectacular as I’ve seen it when near full.

This is my favorite kind of nighttime sky. You hardly get to see any stars anymore, especially from the middle of a city. So, moon illuminated clouds will do.

I used to daydream about flying up into the clouds and maybe kissing the moon, as if it was that close.

Now I’m wondering what moon rocks would do for my skin and scales.

And I want to talk to the moon. But I’m doing it in my head.

I remember Kimberly saying something about the neo-pagan belief that on a new moon you should wish for things to come to you, so that the moon will bring them as it waxes to full. And I know I missed that by a few nights.

I wonder if she wished for the ability to be a were-poodle that night. Or if she was joking for some of that, or just trying something on to see if it fit.

Thinking about spirituality, I find myself struck with an idea, a visualization.

If the Earth were a giant dragon, I’d like to think of the moon and the sun as her eyes, put there, up in the sky, to watch over us.

It’s a silly little myth I’ve just made up, but it feels special to me.

So, I ask the Earth, through the moon that is smiling at me, if maybe she could help me figure this all out.

What should I prepare for, if Säure’s people come for us again?

What should I look for to unravel the puzzle of the dracomorphosis?

Why am I supposedly the center of it?

Does that give me some sort of responsibility?

And then my tablet buzzes.

Rhoda has sent me a personal SMS, not in our group. It’s way past her stated bedtime.

“Don’t root out the mole,” she says. “Focus on community. Make it so strong the mole won’t matter. If the mole slips up, don’t acknowledge it. Feed them bullshit instead. But until then, don’t worry at it. Don’t seek them out.”

That seems like counterintuitive advice, until I remember what was done with Alan Turing’s discoveries. So, after a moment's consideration, I reply with, “OK. Thank you.”

“I’ll give you a paper with advice for direct action on it,” Rhoda sends back. “Best practices. Security. That kind of shit.”

“I know tumblr post. Can find myself,” I reply.

“No. Take it from me,” she responds. “It will seem more legit to the others. Caleb will get it, and Tannis’ girlfriend, probably. Maybe a couple of the dragons. But the rest will need that extra push to calm the fuck down.”

“Yes. Got it. Thank you so much.”

“I wish I could help you shed. That looks awful.”

“Please sleep,” I send her, with three different colored heart emojis.

“Meh,” she shoots back. “I will when you do.”

“Going to sleep now,” I reply.

“Good.”

If somehow, by some miracle, I manage to grant Molly her wish, or if the Earth just does it because I asked nicely, what will her parents do?

Another thought occurs to me, because I’m thinking about trans stuff as much as anything.

If I was human and I’d reached out and taken my transition by the horns back in 2015 when it had first occurred to me that I could seriously do it, and gotten my hormones and surgery funded by Medicaid. Would it be like this, too?

Would I hurt so much for my peers who, for one reason or another, didn’t have that chance?

Would I even be able to help them?

How would they be feeling about it all?