by Laura Wylde
We had no sooner touched down than we were ready to celebrate. We didn’t find much, just a six pack of beer, but Reuben had an idea. “We don’t need to go into town, and we don’t need the beer. All we need is the orange juice. When was the last time we had a round table?”
That put a damper on my mood. I shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. “I don’t know, Reuben. In some countries, it’s illegal.”
“Bah.” He dropped his cigar into the one and only ashtray, brought the pitcher of orange juice from the refrigerator, and a single, tall glass. “That’s because of young’uns practicing that don’t know what they’re doing. We’ve got it down.”
Still, I hesitated. “But Macy?”
He filled the tall glass. “What about it, Macy? Are you up to a round table?”
She had been laughing and bouncing between Kazan and Kauris. She stopped jumping to ask uncertainly, “what’s that?”
He swirled the glass around and grinned evilly. “Each one of us puts a few drops of saliva in the glass. Only the good stuff, you know. No poisons or paralytics. We mix it all up and we all take a drink.”
She made a face. “That sounds disgusting. What’s it like?”
He scratched at his beard. “Well, it’s like taking a hallucinogenic along with a tranquilizer and an aphrodisiac. You spin a lot.”
“And get horny?”
“That can happen.”
“I’m in.”
She sat with her hands on the table and looked around expectantly. We sat in a circle around her. Reuben started the ceremony, but first, he retrieved his cigar. He rolled it around in his mouth a few times, then lit it, letting the smoke roll out in fat, lazy clouds. He scratched his stomach contently. Slowly, his tongue rolled out of his mouth and uncurled. Three drops of saliva dripped into the glass. “Mother of Maestra!” Exclaimed Macy. “Are we supposed to drink that?”
“We’re not finished yet,” said Rueben.
He pushed the glass in front of Kauris. Kauris scowled at the glass a moment, then widened his mouth into an unnatural smile. His tongue flickered out, long and slender, dripping two drops of saliva into the orange juice. When Macy giggled, his face snapped back into shape. “That was a very special ingredient,” he said, almost stiffly. “Quite popular with the water world.”
It was my turn. I hoped Macy wouldn’t find the face I made as funny as she had Kauris’. My chin stretched out and my upper lip expanded to allow twelve inches of tongue to test the air. My tongue is so sensitive, it could tell by the vapor slowly rising from the juice the ingredients they added to our communal cocktail. I thought about orange blossoms and dark red grapes. The saliva welled up in the back of my throat. I let it trickle through until two sparkling drops fell from my tongue.
I slammed the glass down in front of Kazan. “Your turn, buddy.”
“But I haven’t made a cocktail before,” he protested.
I slapped him on the back. “First time for everything. C’mon. You can do it. Your balls dropped. You’re not a juvenile anymore.”
Always sensitive about his anatomy, he blushed, but he also took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, his mouth twitching formlessly until he seemed to find a comfortable shape. His mouth tubed and his tongue wriggled out carrying a single drop of saliva. It fell into the glass, sparkled pink for a moment, then blended with the juice. “A virgin cocktail,” grinned Reuben.
I was feeling the mood. Kazan was Reuben’s protégé, which made him like a little brother. I rubbed my hands together eagerly, reaching for the drink. “OH baby, baby, baby, it’s been so long.”
Reuben got to it first. “Ah! Ah! The bonnie lassie goes first.” He pushed it in front of Macy.
Macy had fallen into hysterical laughter. I suppose none of us had looked very dignified working our magic. “You want me to take a drink of this? You spit in it. Every one of you spit in it.”
“That wasn’t spit. That was saliva,” I objected.
“Okay, you drooled in it. I’m supposed to drink your drool?”
I don’t know how it could be put more plainly. I nodded my head. “Sure. Just leave some for the rest of us. It was our best drool.”
She decided to quit arguing. She held up the glass and saluted us. “To dragon drool”. She tossed off one-fifth of the drink and handed it to me.
It seemed saluting was in order. “To our team!” I said, taking a large swallow.
After that, it got fuzzy. A round table is a potent dragon cocktail, especially when you have a virgin cocktail maker. We don’t get high on our own juices but when we mix them with others, it’s like trying to escape an avalanche while suffering vertigo. In a voice wrapped in cotton swabs, I heard Reuben say, “to beautiful women”. I could agree. Beautiful women were wonderful, especially when they had curling auburn hair and sun-ripened skin. I sang to beautiful women.
“To honor,” said Kauris. Strange Kauris. You never cease to surprise me. I would never have guessed what was most important to you. Fine things, racy lives, wrestling with gods – those were what I thought motivated you. Yet, it was honor. I adored him. I wrapped an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek.
There was only Kazan left. He stared at his fifth measurement, then stood up on his chair so he towered over us. He held the glass so high it seemed to soar out of the ceiling. “To victory!” He cried and finished the glass off.
My little brother, standing so proud. Reuben picked him up in a big bear hug and spun him around. “What do you think now, mates, eh? We’re ruddy good. We’re vanquishers.”
We danced and war whooped. If we had lived in town, we would have disturbed the entire neighborhood. We were solitary enough. AMP knew quite a bit about dragons. Not that I cared. Not tonight. Nothing could stop us. We had Macy. We had the best of two worlds.
When we collapsed on the living room floor, laughing, and rolling against each other, we began to morph. That’s what dragons do when they drink a round table. They slide in and out sporadically between dragon and human in a kaleidoscopic world. “You’re changing,” said Macy in a slurred, distant voice. “I think I’m changing too.” She held up her hand. “Am I changing?”
She looked like she was changing but so did everything else. We were slipping somewhere along those timeless edges when shape didn’t matter. We were all just form and feelings. Her form seemed ethereal. It appeared boneless. It slid between my hands. “I feel like rubber,” she drowsed.
“So do I.” She was giving herself to me. Her body thrust upward in an arch. Her blouse was unbuttoned, showing the stretchy fabric of the sports bra underneath. Who had unbuttoned her? As I bent to kiss the flesh pressed together in a “v” above the bra, I looked up. There was a fuzzy view of Kazan peeling back her blouse, his face nuzzled against her neck. I pulled at her bra, bringing it up over her sun-kissed breasts. I held the swelling titties in both hands, with my head buried between them. The tits swelled and stiffened under my fingers. I sucked them, the soft, tender flesh growing warm with passion.
Her hips thrust upward as I slid lower. The button of her pants waved in front of my face, begging for release. Her arms were raised, with two mouths sliding down them, two pairs of hands reaching for her breasts and rolling the nipples between their fingers. Her waist stretched, her stomach sucked in, creating a hollow for my head. I rested my head there while I fumbled with the button and slowly unzipped her shorts to reveal the pleasure fountain. The silky lace of a pair of white panties stared at me. The lace was a delicate cover for an exotic treasure that peeked out in shy, red curls. I moaned. I didn’t feel quite so rubbery anymore.
I buried my face in a worshipful heap around that silk-covered fountain, drinking in the scent of her desire. Hands that weren’t mine, pushed the clothing down, swept it away, revealing her squirming and naked. We were formless. Our shapes blended with her shape. Her shape was a wafting spirit leading us to nirvana. Her legs parted and the helping hands slid along her thighs, opening them wider. The little red clit
emerged, swollen and ready. I nuzzled it with my tongue and sucked the juices around it. She cried out and thrust forward. Her legs wrapped around my head. I opened them- we opened them, sliding our tongues along her thighs, drinking the sweet cum as we parted the lips of her vagina, finding a hundred places to stoke her desire and carry us all higher.
I buried my shaft into that beautiful strawberry mound and pulled it up again, the folds of flesh sucking around it, messaging my cock. It felt like a burst of warm, liquid lightening. I thrust again and again in an explosion of ecstasy.
We had no form, no distinction of who we were. We were sensation, each touch bringing greater pleasure. The hands that were not mine were still a part of me. I felt with them and they felt what I felt. I swelled and burst a hundred times, each inch of flesh alive and open. We were a mound of curved and twisted flesh, but it took the early hours of daylight to discover that. By then, we had ridden the same waves of sensation, shared the same psychedelic vision and had tangled in each other’s dreams. We were connected.
Disentangling myself from the pile, I plodded over to the bathroom to shower and shave. I had no idea what to do next. Poseidon’s trident could be anywhere. For all I knew, it was buried in the Baltic Sea. The shaver whined at a stubborn bit of thickly sprouting stubble. Cripe. I was going to look like Reuben before long. I scrunched one eye closed while I ran over the patch.
“Are you thinking about strategies?” I glanced in the mirror. Macy was behind me, her arms folded.
“I’m thinking of buying a straight razor.”
“You would slaughter yourself with it.” She took the shaver away from me and glided it up over my throat. “There. The shaver is not your enemy. You don’t need to fight with it. It’s like mowing the lawn. You just go with it.”
“Now I’m a lawn?” I inspected her handiwork. My face wasn’t as smooth as baby’s skin, but it didn’t feel like a porcupine hide, either.
“You’re a gorgeous hunk of man,” she said, putting my hands down so I could see myself in the mirror. “I get it. You’ve been hurt before. Women were drawn to the man but not the dragon. It happens to everyone, David. What’s on the outside isn’t always the same as on the inside. Do you know, kids made fun of me when I was in school? It’s true! I was the only girl in class who collected bugs and kept a snake in a glass cage. They called me Snake Girl. It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to meet people with common interests. The more unique you are, the more difficult it is to find someone who understands you. You are unique, David.”
How did she do that to me? I was the one who was supposed to take charge. I was 254 years old, for Apollo’s sake! Here I was, as ineffective as a bowl of pudding. “Have you been rejected for being yourself?” I mumbled.
“Of course, I have!” She said gaily. “When men look at me, they see a woman. They rarely see a marine biologist. They rarely think about what a relationship would mean beyond getting in the sack with me. Two weeks of living in a tent, studying a red tide off the coast of Alaska? No thanks. Plant mangroves to filter floodwaters and to help the coral reefs? Someone else can do it. The longest lasting relationship I ever had was six weeks with an art major.”
“What happened?”
“He was doing a series of landscape sketches for our company when I met him. He was a fantastic visionary. He even added detailed wildlife species to the projected landscapes. He was too good. Another company bought him out. He now does sketches for wildlife sanctuaries with headquarters in New York. New York is a comfortable life for an artist, but not a marine biologist.”
My voice sounded weak, but I said the words. “I’m glad we don’t have to go our separate ways.”
She gave me a bear hug. “Me too.”
The most practical place to start our search was at the cove where we first found her. There was still some refuse from the storm, but much had already been carted away or eaten. The water level had returned to normal, swallowing whatever else had been left. Macy walked down to the cove’s edge and planted her feet in the water. “It’s quiet. I don’t hear any animals at all.”
“Are we scaring the animals?” Asked Kazan.
She listened hard but shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe if you turned into dragons, they would feel more comfortable.”
Kazan changed willingly, but I hesitated. “First, get your feet out of the water. There might be spies.”
“Spies?” She asked, laughing a bit and splashing.
“Jelly fish, sea snakes, leaches. They spy on anyone for a price.”
She got out reluctantly. “I’ll just sit on this piece of driftwood and wait. Wild animals are shy, but they’ll come around. Just do your dragon thing so they will think you are lizards.”
A crude way of putting it, but it was more comfortable out here in the rushes close to the sea, to change into dragons. Basking on the beach with the sun pouring down was almost as blissful as holding Macy in my arms. I could relax. I could drowse. Any suspicious sound would snap me awake in a second.
When you are motionless long enough, nature settles in around you. Soon, I heard the birds twittering and squirrels scolding. I heard rodents scurrying and ducks squawking. When I opened my eyes, Macy was talking with a goat. It was one of those feral goats that so often escape the clutches of the farmers. The muscles in its hind legs quivered and its eyes rolled nervously while it talked. After ten minutes or so, it clattered away.
“What did it say?” I asked, sliding through the sand to squat next to Macy.
She picked at the peeling edges of the driftwood bench, trying to suppress a smile. “He wanted to know if you eat frogs.”
I spat. “No, we don’t eat frogs! Why would he ask such a thing?”
She shrugged. “He was just curious. He said the locals think dragons are eating all the frogs.”
“Did he say anything useful?”
“No, except he doesn’t believe you will find the trident on this island. If it were here, the animals would know about it. A mouse said the same thing.”
I shifted back to my human shape and propped my back against the driftwood log dejectedly. “Then what do we do?”
“The geese suggested I talk to the whales.”
“The whales are in the middle of the war. They aren’t going to take time to talk with us.”
“The dolphins aren’t involved. I believe the dolphins will talk to me.”
I weighed out what she said. “Poseidon was very fond of dolphins. It’s possible they know something. They like humans. They confuse them with mer people. They never cared for amphibious dragons, though. I guess we look too much like sea monsters to them.”
“I think you are beautiful dragons,” she said, squeezing my hand.
I gave a dry chuckle. “You haven’t seen the water dragons yet. They’ll steal your heart away.”
“No, they won’t,” she promised.
The others had also shape shifted by now. Lethargic at first from their long sun bath, they began to feel the energy that returns after digesting a good meal. Kazan was eager to start the trip right away. “There’s plenty of sunlight left. We could hop in the boat and go.”
Reuben batted the boy alongside his head for his silliness. “No, we can’t. We’ve got to resupply the Dragon Queen. There ain’t no food and the oxygen tanks are running low.”
Kazan rubbed his head and looked at Rueben defiantly. “We’re just meeting up with some dolphins. Hell, we could use a rowboat. They’ll probably go right up to Macy if she starts talking to them.”
I used the log to push myself to a standing position and brushed the sand from my slacks. “Reuben’s right. We need to load up. We aren’t going on a Sunday outing. We’re going wherever the dolphins say we should go. I want clothing changes, extra bedding, all the reserve tanks filled and a week’s worth of food on board. Kazan, you go shopping with Reuben. Kauris will help me with the tanks.”
We went our separate ways. After some hesitation, Macy followed Reuben, c
hattering that she wanted to make sure to have a little comfort food of her own. “What do women eat for comfort?” I asked Kauris as we walked down the beach toward the boat.
“Chocolate, mainly,” he answered. “I saw it on television. And strawberries. Sometimes, they eat pickles.”
“They only eat pickles when they are pregnant,” I reminded him. “I watch television, too.”
“Ice cream. Whether they are pregnant or not, they eat ice cream.”
“Is our freezer working?” I asked.
He kicked at a stone that plopped twice then snuggled back into the sand. “I think so. I’ll look at it. What if the trident isn’t anywhere on the Mediterranean?”
“Then, we’ll have to fly, won’t we?”
I would never tell Reuben – hell, I didn’t even let Kauris know, but at the end of the day, I relied more on our silent member’s feedback than I did anyone else. Kauris thought things out. He was slow in putting together an opinion, but his opinions were always good. “Do you think we’re going on a wild dolphin chase?”
He was in the shelter, his head buried deep in the freezer. “Eh? It isn’t even turned on. Reuben is such a miser.” He plugged in the cord and listened. “It works.”
It was my duty to defend Reuben. “It costs gas to run the freezer, which reminds me. We should probably carry extra gas as well.”
“We should take the umbilical cord,” grunted Kauris. It’s what we called the expandable breathing hose attached to two huge oxygen tanks. Since we didn’t need it for ourselves, we only added it to our itinerary when we brought a human along on a serious deep-sea diving expedition. These humans were usually members of AMP or the Greek government.
He wrapped the hose into place before answering my question. “I think we’ve got a fifty-fifty chance. The dolphins are on the side of the mer people, but we don’t know which faction. They may not wish to cooperate unless you return the trident to their favorite demi-god.”
I dropped one of the cylinders and swore under my breath. I caught it before it hit the floor but bashed a finger in the process. “Careful, Pan, it’s no time to wreck the boat,” Kauris cracked with rare humor. He was referring to the god of pandemonium. I’ve been butter-fingered since the day Macy came into our lives. Leave it up to Kauris to notice and find it funny.
