Author's Note: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!Chapter 6: Searching for ‘People’

  I think I might actually pick up cartography. It's a little difficult without paper and a pen but maybe if I ever find civilization, I'll figure something out. But being a dragon does have a lot of benefits. I always did have a pretty good sense of direction, well not direction but directions. Actually I wasn't very good at directions either. But I was good at knowing where I am and figuring out how to get to other pces. When you have a bird's-eye view, for a dragon's eye view at least, it becomes much easier to make a map.

  Fortunately my lizard brain is pretty good at remembering things. I still remember what those three mountains look like and I also remember the forest I passed over to reach this grassy pin. I've seen some wild horses and buffalo already. Makes me wonder if I'm in America, specifically the wild West or maybe the Midwest but like in the wild west era.

  Either way I've been pretty busy tely, mostly just fpping and eating, sleeping, pissing… You get the point.

  Do they?

  Okay don't be sarcastic. Where was I? Oh yes, I've basically mapped out this whole region in my mind. Three mountains, a big forest, and now I'm in a prairie of some sort. I'm currently riding a horse for the first time in my life. Both lives actually.

  Thankfully the horse does not seem to care or even really notice my existence. She's a cute bck mare. I haven't decided to name her because I probably won't see her again after I leave. But it is nice to take a break every now and then. The Buffalo also don't give a damn if you nd on them. And the reason why I don't just sleep on the dirt is because what if they trample over me while I'm sleeping?

  It's not like there aren't any trees though. There are still trees every now and then but it's mostly just grassnd. Still birds every now and then trying to murder me, but it turns out that if a bck dragon sleeps on the back of a bck horse it works out pretty well as camoufge.

  Keep feeling this increasingly powerful sense of dread though. Maybe it's because I stopped being constantly threatened by various woodnd creatures, but there's definitely something going on out there. I just really hope this isn't one of those worlds that I created only to be destroyed by some kind of nonsense. For example, some random world that has a moon crash into it, or crashes into another world, or flies into the sun, or maybe gets hit by a sor fre… you know, random bullshit that would happen as like a background setting for some pnet that nobody is ever meant to give a fuck about.

  I've written an insanely rge amount of those. Hell, there are pnets that get punched into pieces by some random dickheads fighting in space. Sometimes evil gods just casually blow up pnets for fun. Not to mention the whole evil purpose thing.

  Of course I'm probably being overdramatic and unreasonable as usual.

  We are safe.

  We might be safe, but maybe there's someone here that I care about that isn't safe. Maybe I'm not actually the only one that got reincarnated as a dragon? Maybe there's someone that I love and care about?

  The more I think about it, the more anxious and annoyed I get… And the harder it is to sleep on the back of this horse.

  “Neigh~!” The mare made a loud noise and so did the rest of the herd!

  “Oh for fuck’s sake.” I knew it was too good to be true. Some bullshit was bound to happen as soon as I was about to get some rest…

  “Holy shit!” I woke up real fucking quick when I saw the clouds in the sky! I thought it was a little windy but that’s a goddamn funnel cloud! They were swirling around and getting lower by the second!

  The horses obviously freaked out and started running away! It wasn’t raining though. No thunder. Just suddenly a big ass wind noodle reached down from the sky and started tearing apart the grassnd in the distance behind us! I could see a few buffalo and trees getting sucked up into the sky, a few of them being thrown off into the distance…

  “Neigh~!” A cute bck horse next to mine screamed as it kept running, a big branch pierced through its neck, spshing blood everywhere!

  “Motherfucker!” This is why I never wanted to move to the Midwest!

  We experienced tornadoes before.

  “Not real tornadoes like this shit!” I groaned and held on tight to the horse’s mane, on the verge of getting yanked off by the crazy winds! I looked up ahead and sighed dramatically, “This is some bullshit.”

  The one behind wasn’t bad enough, but I could see at least seven others up ahead! Of course, they weren’t directly ahead of us, but it was still terrifying and chaotically ridiculous!

  I was so tempted to let go and just go flying up into the sky… My intrusive thoughts were telling me to go take a ride around a twister!

  We will not.

  “Okay, fine. I’m not actually that crazy. At least not yet.” I breathed out a sigh and just kept holding onto the mane of that cute mare as she ran for her life, alongside the rest of her herd. I felt bad that there wasn’t much I could do for them. I wasn’t a storm dragon and I didn’t have any noticeable magical abilities… I was just a cute winged lizard for the most part.

  Some of the smaller tornadoes ended after a minute or so, while a couple big ones sted what felt like a fucking hour, but was actually… Probably only ten or fifteen minutes. The sky was still scary and it was windy as hell, but it was finally over after an hour or so.

  Amazingly enough, most of the horses managed to survive and avoid getting hit directly by any of the tornadoes for debris. Unfortunately some of the smaller ones weren't quite as fast as their parents…

  Unfortunate.

  Even the voice inside my head was a little upset, watching and listening to horses grieve their losses. I might have teared up a little myself. I couldn't help remembering my parents again. My cousins, uncles, aunts… Everyone I'll never see again. Not that I ever really saw them that much in person anyway.

  That's one thing I will do differently in this life for sure. Going to keep my family and friends close. No more splitting up. Good morning long distance retionships and friendships and family… of course I can fly now so close isn't exactly the same as it was back when I was a human.

  “This life is going to be different than the st. In a good way, hopefully. I'm done with being depressed and helpless. I'm tired of constantly feeling stressed out and afraid. Forced to do things that I hate, to just barely survive.”

  We will thrive and prosper.

  Exactly. To be fair though, this life has been pretty good so far. Sure, I might be alone and craving social validation to give meaning to my new life, but I don't need to do anything. I don't need to take care of anyone or anything. I can just do whatever the fuck I want and nobody is gonna stop me or judge me.

  We can judge ourselves.

  “Not exactly what I was gonna say, but good enough.” I rolled my sexy red eyes and managed to avoid crying over the unlucky foals that didn’t survive the storm. Blinking a few times, I suddenly noticed something weird on the ground nearby. I mean, it was just a rock, but the rock had markings on it!

  Gravestone?

  “What are you asking me for?” I snickered and hopped down off the back of the horse. My hands were kinda sore from gripping that poor girl’s hair for so long. My wings were actually pretty tired too since they were getting whipped around by the wind no matter how hard I tried to keep them closed. I flipped them a few times as I fell down, nding next to the giant rock. Okay, not giant, it was barely bigger than my body. Probably got sent here by the tornado actually, half of it was covered by mud and grass, but I could see enough of it to kinda-sorta read some words.

  “Wait, this isn’t a gravestone.” I looked at the pictures carved into the broken sb of gray stone. It looked like some stick figures riding shitty horses, but it was clear enough that I could at least tell what the fuck they were trying to draw. Basically some horse-riding people around some tents, with a flying saucer in the sky or maybe that was supposed to be the sun? There were also some… Buffalo, maybe? I don’t really know.

  Tents or mountains?

  “Oh wait. You’re right, maybe these horse riding people are actually…” Basically the people riding horses could be the locations of vilges or something, while the three ‘tents’ are actually the mountains I started at… While the flying saucer is probably the sun, or maybe something else.

  Aliens.

  “Okay, if this is one of my stories than the odds of there being an alien invasion or some shit are pretty damn high.” Well, either an alien invasion, or the people here were actually descended from aliens, or there’s just some big ass starship in the sky above me and I can’t see it?

  To be fair, it’s super cloudy at the moment. But even on a clear night, with my super awesome vision, I’ve never seen any spaceships or satellites… I don’t think the Moon counts.

  Really?

  “Okay, if this is one of my stories then the Moon is probably some kinda interdimensional world-seeding worldship.” I sighed dramatically and shook my head, “I'm probably being too narcissistic. Even if this world was simir to one I ‘created’, it doesn’t actually mean I’m the creator of this world. Or that things will actually be exactly the same as one of my stories.”

  For one thing, I’ve written a lot of porn… And all sorts of random, unhinged shit. In between a bunch of… Well, less unhinged things that are still pretty scary in a lot of ways. If this was ‘The Cursed Words’, then I might have a word tattooed on my scales somewhere I haven’t been able to find yet. Either that or I’m a ‘Wordless’ flying lizard that hasn’t been recognized as a dragon yet.

  I hope it’s not that world. I hope it’s not most of my stories to be honest. A lot of them are kinda fucked up and terrifying. Also, if the main characters ever think I had anything to do with their tragic backstories…

  Tired.

  Yeah, I am getting pretty tired. Or I was already tired before the fucking tornado bullshit. I do have an idea of where to sleep now though…

  Burrow.

  “Exactly.” I smirked and started digging out some of the dirt under the rock. I made a nice little burrow for myself to rest under the safety of a cracked stone sb. At the very least, I won’t get my ass run over by horses or buffalo, but I might still need to worry about various annoying critters that live underground.

  “It’ll probably be fine.” I shrugged my shoulders and tried to make myself comfy under the rock. I wiggled around to dig out more space and felt a little custrophobic for a moment, but then I calmed down. I’ve gotten used to this shit living in tree holes and it wasn’t the first time I burrowed underground either. Lived in logs before too. Hell, I’d live underwater if it wasn’t so stressful and annoying. Maybe when I’m older and don’t have to worry as much about predators.

  Acheron, Terror of the Depths… Okay, fuck that, the depths are scary as shit. I’ll settle for being a simple river monster.

  Anyway, time to get some sleep. One good thing about living underground is that you can hide from the sun. Though I’ve gotten pretty good at sleeping out in the sunlight too…

  “Tony!”

  “Fuck me!” I opened my eyes and looked around, my heart was pounding harder than the damn tornado earlier! Took me a moment to realize that it was just a normal pre-sleep auditory hallucination. Sounded a lot like my mother screaming my name. Used to get those all the time. Hasn’t really happened much since I was reborn though.

  Sleep.

  “Phew… Okay, I need to piss first though and I don’t wanna soil my… Soil, that I’m gonna sleep in… So yeah.”

  Very humorous.

  See, this is part of why I’m so mentally fucked. The parasite in my brain has no sense of humor at all.

  We are one.

  “Fuck off.”

  So anyway, I went a dozen meters away, pissed, came back and took a nap for a few hours…

  Had a weird dream. Not that weird, I guess. Just… I was a human again. I was actually just writing this while sitting in my old chair, feeling like i had to take a shit and holding it in… Then I spent the rest of the dream trying to find a pce to shit, because for some reason both the bathrooms were occupied or unavaible. I was about to go in a cup or on the floor, but then I woke up and realized I needed to shit in reality so… Yeah, had to go outside to do that, then I came back into the hole to keep sleeping.

  Not like I have anywhere to be or anything that really needs to be done in a hurry. At most, I was a little uncomfortable because I didn’t have anything to drink. Then I had this dream where I was drowning and when I woke up, my hole was flooded with muddy water… Yeah, I can breathe underwater, but not if the water is too muddy or not oxygenated properly. I still have to follow normal samander rules I guess.

  Okay, that’s a lie. I have no idea what normal samanders are like, I only barely remember a few trivia about them. But either way, I crawled out of my muddy hole and heard the loud roaring of the wind, along with getting pelted by rain that was actually pretty cold. Thankfully it wasn’t hail. Though if this was anything like the Midwest of America, then I wouldn’t have been surprised by hail in the slightest.

  I jumped up a few feet into the air and fpped my wings hard, spinning around in the air to clear the mud out of my gills! Then I caught some wind and lifted up even higher into the air. My body didn’t really get weighed down by water as easily as some birds, since I didn’t have feathers. Of course, a lot of birds like ducks didn’t have to worry about getting wet either.

  Freedom.

  “It does feel nice.” I muttered to myself as I soared through the storm, not really giving a fuck about where I was going or why. It’s funny because I was thirsty, but after getting drenched like this, I didn’t feel so dehydrated anymore. Sometimes I wondered if I had magical weather control powers or something.

  Unlikely.

  “Obviously, but still…” I breathed out a sigh as I thought about the tornadoes yesterday. That was awesome and terrifying. They say that dragons had the power to control the weather in a lot of myths. I just think the weather has been kinda shitty the past few months since I was hatched. Then again if it’s the Midwest of the US, then that’s par for the course. If it isn’t, then I have no idea what the normal weather conditions are like… No frame of reference at all.

  “Hmmm…” I was cruising along in the storm for a while and then noticed a river down below, which led to what looked like a big-ass ke… It was hard to tell because of the storm, but I seriously thought I saw a massive shadow under the water.

  Danger.

  “Maybe… It’s debatable though. Something that big probably wouldn’t even notice me.”

  Blue whales eat krill.

  “Good point.” I decided not to push my luck and didn’t go to investigate the colossal monstrosity that might be lurking in that ke, instead I followed one of the thicker parts of the river. If there were people living nearby, then they’d probably make their towns or vilges near the water. Though with how much the river was flooding, I started to have some doubts.

  “Holy shit!” Then I saw it. I knew it was just a matter of time, but still, I fucking found it! I found… Okay, it’s just one random cabin by the water that looked like it was falling apart, but still, it’s a house!

  I swooped down and nded on the left side of the ancient-looking roof, because the right side was full of big holes. Water was pouring down inside and the front door frame was also submerged from the river water that was flooding. I peeked down into the dark, creepy hole and made an educated guess that nobody was home.

  No humans at least.

  “True, true…” I didn’t know whether there was some other creepy creatures lurking inside. But I wasn’t too worried about it either. I was more concerned about whether there was some super dangerous fungi or deadly chemicals. The house didn’t look like it ever had electricity or even indoor plumbing, but who knows what they might have been keeping inside? Or what might have grown…

  Wait. Be patient.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll wait… I’ll wait, but I’m starting to get really hungry.” I hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. Even before the tornadoes yesterday, I hadn’t eaten in a few hours. Usually i’m eating constantly.

  “You’re a growing boy.”

  “Fuck.” Heard my father’s voice for a moment there. I shook my head and groaned, along with the creaking of the house below me. There was also the sound of the wind, the rain hitting it, the water flooding down and through the stinky, moldy mess of a house… Honestly, this pce was unlivable for humans.

  “But the fact that there’s a house probably means that humans also exist here. And retively recently.” At least compared to the rock with some shitty carvings on it, this looked like it was probably something a lot ‘newer’. Though it could also be twenty or fifty years old.

  A lot can happen in twenty years.

  “True.” I jumped off the side of the rickety roof and fpped my wings. I was hungry and if there’s one house, there are probably more. No point waiting around for the storm to end to investigate that piece of shit.

  Fish?

  “Maybe.” I looked down at the shoreline and then dove rapidly! Without much effort, I swallowed a minnow whole while it squirmed helplessly in my throat! Only a few seconds ter, I could feel it settle down after drowning in my stomach acid. Yeah, I know, fucked up, right? But that’s just how it goes sometimes. RIP Minnow.

  I shot up out of the water and fpped my wings, soaring into the air and catching some wind to lift myself higher, faster! I fucking love flying by the way!

  “People exist!” I shouted excitedly and heard that deep, raspy voice chuckling in the back of my mind. He or ‘she’ was probably just in my imagination. A way for me to keep from going completely insane from isotion, grief and loss. To be fair though, it’s not totally impossible for her to be real. It’s also possible that she’s actually some Devil or Demon God fucking with me this whole time.

  We are one.

  “Hahahaha~!” I ughed hysterically while twirling around and ‘dancing’ through the sky, “There are actually people in this world! Not just me! Fuck yes~!”

  I didn’t know whether I would come to regret it ter or not. But I definitely didn’t want to be alone forever. Sure, I could’ve adopted a puppy or something. Maybe fucked a horse and spawned a bunch of dragon-horse offspring. Who knows?

  Reproductive isotion exists.

  I know that. But anyway, the moral of the story is that I’m happy and excited. Now I just need to find some of these people and figure out what they’re like… Hopefully they’re something cool and not just boring humans.

  Crab people.

  Okay, maybe not that ‘cool’. I’ll settle for Elves or something… Maybe Orcs? Hot goat girl aliens and cow people?

  Copyright Infringement.

  “Oh please, there are so many different versions of Elves, Orcs, Satyrs and Minotaurs!” I snickered and swooped down along the surface of the raging river, rubbing my cws against the surface and spping my tail down at the water as I lifted up into the air again!

  I reached higher and higher, until the rain stopped falling and I could see the clouds parting up ahead! The sky was bright blue and the sun almost blinded me!

  I was fine though. I recovered from the gre pretty fast and was able to gaze down across the prairie again. There were lots of horses, buffalo and deer that were easier to see from above. But there were also some packs of coyotes. I could see snow capped mountains in the distance, not the ones I came from either. Some forests or just small patches of woods. Other rivers, even a big ass ke…

  “Hmmm…” I squinted to be sure, but when I got closer, I knew I wasn’t just imagining things!

  People.

  “Is that a caravan?” It wasn’t a vilge. More like a group of covered wagons being pulled by what looked like oxen rather than horses or bison/buffalo. Seven wagons. My lucky number. The fuckers seemed pretty lucky too, surviving that shitstorm without getting hit by a tornado or having any visible damage.

  Caution. Humans are dangerous.

  “I know that. But so are dragons.” I sneered and circled around above them for a while… From their perspective, I was probably just another random bird. Just like the big ass vulture that was also circling their wagons. It did smell a little… Rancid.

  Putrid stench? Not a great sign. Smells like several types of shit and piss too. There were some people riding horses and others just walking slowly along the muddy trail…

  “Phew~! Okay, no point dragging this out.” I circled another time and finally made up my mind, “Need to go down for a closer look… Time to investigate where the fuck I am and what kinda world I’ve been reborn into.”