by Riley Storm
“What the heck is going on Braz?” she asked quietly. But she took a seat anyway.
“Brace yourself,” he replied in that same tone. “This is going to be very hard for you to believe. Nearly impossible, in fact. But it is, I swear, one-hundred percent true.”
“Uh huh. What is?” she challenged, not believing him.
“This.”
Braz opened himself up to his dragon, feeling the other half of him slither forward, sensing the freedom he was giving it in that moment. Its power filled his body, and continued to fill it, past the breaking point.
In response, Braz felt his body begin to change. It grew, working to contain the power he was feeding into it, releasing the hold. His limbs swelled and joints rearranged themselves. His skin armored itself against the power, sleek crimson-gold scales appearing across the surface, protecting him from all but the strongest external attacks.
A tail stretched and elongated away from his body, the bulbous knot on the end eventually sprouting a trio of wickedly barbed horns. All along his tail and spine, right up to the crown of his head more horns pushed their way to the surface.
On his back, twin masses on each shoulder blade eventually grew so large they burst forth. Ochre membranes, leathery and translucent, spread wide, blotting out the sun momentarily on the spot of long grass where Grace sat.
Braz flexed muscles he hadn’t possessed before and the wings fluttered only slightly as they folded in against his flanks, where they would stay unless he needed them.
“Hello Grace,” he said quietly, in a voice that was still very much himself, but also echoed with the melodic power of his dragon form.
“Hi,” she squeaked.
Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she flopped down into the grass.
Braz had had a bet going with himself on whether she would faint, and he’d had the odds at relatively even. Grace was a strong-willed person, but this was enough to shock just about anyone, no matter what.
He shuffled around her, putting his bulk between her and the pathway back to the cars. If she truly wanted nothing more and wished to go, he would let her leave of course, but he wasn’t going to do so until she’d calmed down once she awoke.
Letting her leave in a panic would be irresponsible of him. He had to wait until she came back around, and they could talk.
Just thinking of that moment sent a nervous flutter through his dragon sized heart. Though he’d done his best to convey a sense of calm and relaxation to her, the truth was, Braz was freaking the heck out on the inside.
He didn’t know how she was going to react to what he had just showed her, and he was scared that she would reject his other side completely. It was a calculated gamble, showing her his dragon now, but he was beginning to formulate an idea in his head about what the men were doing poking around her, and he didn’t like it. Braz was going to need her to trust him implicitly if he was right.
And if he was wrong, well, perhaps this would accelerate the feelings he’d kept to himself for over half a decade.
Was this the right call?
It was that question with which he’d been wrestling ever since they’d gotten out of the cars and he’d realized he would need to convince her of his trustworthiness. Was there another way? A way he could have—
It’s too late now. What’s done is done. Now you just have to deal with the fallout.
“And let’s not pretend there won’t be any for this dumb idea,” he muttered to himself.
“You can talk.”
His head whipped around. Grace was pushing herself back into a sitting position whilst simultaneously brushing off some grass and debris from the side of her face and body where she’d slumped to the ground.
“Uh, yes,” he said, carefully maintaining his distance. He didn’t want to spook her.
“You can talk. In English.”
“Of course I talk in English,” he said. “What else would I talk in?”
“I…” Grace rubbed her head. “Well, you’re a—a…”
“Dragon,” he supplied, knowing she was having a hard time accepting it.
“A dragon,” Grace whispered, mixed parts of shock and awe.
“Yup.”
“Why do you sound like Braz?”
He tried to hold back his laughter. Grace’s brain was obviously slowly coming around, but there were still a few short circuits left.
“Grace,” he said gently. “I am Braz.”
“Oh,” she said in that tone that indicated she should have known that because it was so obvious. “Right.”
He waited. It was better to let her ask questions instead of trying to explain it all. Any questions Grace would have would be random and all over the place. If he tried to give her a slow, measured explanation, it would probably just make things worse for her.
“What kind of magic trick is this?” she asked, looking around.
There it was. The onset of denial, the mind rebelling against the perceived reality, telling her that what she was seeing couldn’t possibly be real. Braz had been warned of it, he was ready for it, and so it didn’t faze him one bit.
“No magic,” he said softly. “I know it seems impossible, but I am one hundred percent real. You can come touch me if you’d like.”
That was the best suggestion Braz had been given on how to combat the ‘magic’ dismissal. By inviting her to come and touch him, he was throwing the ball back in Grace’s court. It was up to her, she would have to work up the courage to approach him. In doing so, that would help prove he was real.
“Right,” she said slowly, still looking around. “Okay Braz. I’ll play along. If this is real, then why the heck are you showing me?”
“I need you to believe that I’m being honest with you,” he said quietly, not wanting to get into full detail of that just yet.
It was better to take it one shock at a time.
Chapter Six
Grace
Watching the sleek crimson and gold creature warily, Grace tried to wrap her head around what she was seeing.
Was it real? Was it a magic trick? Had she actually crashed her car and died? Was this a dream? Had she lost her mind entirely? There were a lot of options. It didn’t feel like a dream, and it was way too wild to be some sort of afterlife. She ruled those options out.
Braz had always been a little, well, odd, but to set all this up and have it work perfectly as a magic trick would be…well, it just wasn’t him.
“Either this is real,” she said, ignoring him for now. “Or I’ve absolutely lost my marbles. One or the other.”
“What do you feel is the correct answer to that?” dragon-Braz asked.
“If I go by my sense? You look real. You sound like you, but different.”
Grace paused to analyze the situation some more. Logic was good. If she could still use logic, still properly parse her thoughts, then that leaned toward her not being insane. Right?
Except if that’s true, then that means dragons are real. Which is insane to think about.
She sighed. “You’ve been able to do this your entire life?” she asked, stalling for more time while she watched the reddish-gold flanks rise and fall, the scales capturing the sun’s light and reflecting it in a dazzling display.
“Usually the ability to shift starts during puberty,” the dragon said, its mouth moving to make the human words. It looked like it shouldn’t be able to, but she understood it perfectly. “However, I have known my entire life I would be able to, yes. We don’t hide it from our young.”
“We.” Grace latched on to that word. “There are more of you?”
Was that humor she spied in the yellow cat-like eye?
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.
Grace didn’t ask him to either. There would be time for that later. Maybe, if she talked to him again.
“This can’t be real,” she mumbled to herself, overcome by a wave of doubt. “It can’t. Dragons don’t exist. They just don’t.”
“We
do,” dragon-Braz countered gently. “I am standing in front of you as proof. Legends usually have their grounding in reality. Look back through history, Grace, there are stories of us all over in eastern and western culture.”
“You’re trying to tell me that you have been hiding among society for thousands of years?”
“Yes.”
The reply was so quick, so blunt, she was momentarily unprepared to say anything further.
“Where did you come from?” she asked. “How?”
The gold and red dragon shifted uncomfortably. Grace frowned. Had she hit a nerve there? Braz had been so open until now.
“We don’t really know,” he admitted softly. “Before about the 8th Century BCE, twenty-eight hundred or so years ago, things get a little murky.”
“Chinese myths about the dragon must be older than that,” she countered. “How do you explain that?”
“We don’t know,” Braz said tightly. “We do know around that time, the first group arrived in Pompeii.”
“Why Pompeii?” She froze. “Did you cause the volcanic eruption there? The one that killed a city?”
“No,” Braz answered immediately. “That was over seven centuries later. We were fighting to prevent it.”
“Fighting? Against who?” They must have lost, because the volcano did erupt. Everyone knew about that.
Braz shook his giant head. “That’s not important just now. I will explain in time.”
He was right. They were getting distracted. A course on dragon history wasn’t the most pertinent issue just then.
“A dragon,” she said, mostly to herself. “You know, this would explain a lot. About you, about your constant disappearances and mysteries. This is a heck of a secret to be hiding.”
“I’m not hiding it from you anymore,” Braz pointed out.
“Yeah. We’re going to get to why you thought now of all choices was a good time to reveal your ability to me. Don’t worry, that topic is coming. For now I’m still trying to believe it.”
“Touch me.”
“Pardon me?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Come over here and touch me,” dragon-Braz repeated. “Put your hands on my flanks. Feel my scales, the rise and fall. The air when I exhale. Give yourself a dose of reality with another one of your senses.”
“Touch you?” she squeaked, understanding what he meant now.
“If you don’t, you’ll never truly believe that this isn’t some sort of smoke and mirrors trick. Not deep down.” Braz shifted slightly as he spoke, the magnificent wings expanding slightly then retracting to his sides once more.
“Touch a dragon.” She licked her lips. It sounded like a great idea and a terrible idea all at once. “How do I know you won’t eat me?”
The dragon jaw dropped open in what she could only describe as shock. It was a very human emotion display on a very non-human head.
“Never!” the dragon spat. “I would never do that. Ever.”
Grace watched him carefully.
“Besides,” he added with a twinkle in his eye. “Humans taste terrible.”
“That was a joke,” she said, pointing at him. “Right? You were joking there?”
Slow rolls of thunder washed over her. It took a moment to realize she was hearing the dragon laugh.
“Yes, that was a joke. Sorry.” Another pause. “I guess it was probably in poor taste.”
Grace groaned at the play on words. “Are you done yet?” she asked, trying to remain serious despite the smile tugging her lips upward.
The dragon face remained blank. “Well-done.”
Rolling her eyes Grace waited as more laughter faded. “Can you be serious now please? I know this is easy for you, but I’m having a hard time over here.”
The change in the dragon was instant. The humor disappeared, and a very serious, intense look replaced it. Grace shivered at the change. What had she said wrong?
“Easy?” Braz asked, sounding…off. “You think this is easy for me?”
“Well you already know what you are…” she said, but even as the words came out her mind was churning, telling her it wasn’t the right answer.
“I do know what I am,” Braz answered. “I’m a dragon shifter. A freak of nature to the vast majority of the human population. A threat to some of the rest. An experiment to more. And to the few I truly despise? A weapon, if they were to ever get their hands on me. We live in constant fear that our secret will get out, Grace. It would destroy us, our people. The government would come after us, hunt us down. They would eliminate us like they did the witches.”
Witches were real too? Or had been, by the way he talked.
Grace filed that bit of information away for later to ask about.
“Now imagine living with that fear. That knowledge that you never really know who you can trust, who you can tell. No confidants, no friends that know your deepest secrets. The only ones you can tell, are other dragons. Not all of whom are nice. Or caring.” Braz broke off, looking away. “That’s why we interact with humans so little you know. Because we always have to lie to them. Even to those that we want to tell most.”
His eyes met hers, and Grace couldn’t help but wonder just whom he was referring to with that last sentence.
“I’m sorry,” she said, subdued. “I didn’t think about it that way.”
“It’s okay,” Braz—she was coming to think of the dragon as pure Braz now—said, the ultra-serious tone easing up. “You’re being asked to deal with a lot right now. I won’t hold it against you.”
She smiled tightly. “Thank you.”
Abruptly she got to her feet and started walking across the clearing.
“What are you doing?” Braz asked, obviously surprised by her sudden movement.
“Doing exactly what you suggested I do,” she said, mentally shoving aside her fear as it built the closer she got to the reddish-gold dragon. “I’m going to feel your scales, touch your sides. Activate another sense.”
She noted off to one side giant impressions in the ground where the dragon had walked around her while she had been passed out. Yet another convincing reality check.
“You put yourself between me and the cars,” she noted.
“I had to make sure you didn’t run off screaming. I didn’t want you driving in that condition,” Braz admitted uncomfortably.
“Ah.” She paused, less than an arm’s reach away from his side.
Her hands stayed at her side.
“Go on,” he urged. “It’s fine.”
Steeling herself, Grace closed her eyes and thrust a hand out. If he suddenly bit it off or something, she didn’t want to see.
Bite my hand off? He could take half my body in a bite. Maybe the entire thing.
“It’s so warm!” she yelped as her hand encountered the smooth, hard surface of one of his scales.
Her eyes popped open and she looked at the sight again, watching her hand as she ran it over the scales. They were each about the size of a truck tire, though they were shaped more like a medieval shield than anything. Swooping inverted arc across the top, curving down to a point at the bottom.
“I didn’t expect it to be warm,” she said quietly. “So smooth as well.”
Braz stayed perfectly still while she walked down the length of him to his tail, where she flicked one of the horns on its tip. Then Grace came back up to his bulk, pausing to rap her knuckles off one of the massive claws on his foot that were the size of her arm.
“This is crazy,” she said.
“But real,” he added.
“But real.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Braz, I have to know. Why did you reveal this to me?”
“I wanted to put myself out there for you,” he said. “I was tired of hiding from you.”
A frown tugged at her forehead. “Right. But why now Braz? Why not five years ago? You must have had a reason. You couldn’t have just wanted to show me this out of the blue? Chased me down, run me off the road, just to sho
w me your big secret? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Braz sighed.
Apparently dragons can sigh just like humans.
“I wish it was just that,” he said quietly, remorsefully. “Trust me, I really do Grace, but no, you’re right. I do have a reason behind it.”
“Why do I get the feeling that I’m not exactly going to like this reasoning either?”
The dragon head twisted so he could look at her squarely with one eye.
“I think you might be in trouble.”
Chapter Seven
Grace
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
Grace’s mind began to churn frantically as she thought back over all her actions the past few days. Then she expanded to a week, and more. How could she possibly be in trouble? You had to do things to be in trouble.
Her normal routine consisted of working, sleeping, and repeating. There wasn’t anything in there that could be considered illegal.
“Grace…”
“I haven’t broken any laws,” she said. “I just haven’t, Braz. There’s no reason for anybody to come after me. I’ve never been in trouble with the police in my life.”
The dragon shifted in front of her, turning to face her a little more directly.
“Grace.”
She paused in her rush of words, meeting the hard gaze of the Braz in dragon form. The yellow iris and black, cat-like pupil were focused on her.
“Yes?”
“It’s not the authorities that I’m talking about,” he said quietly.
“You’re not making any sense Braz. Start talking bluntly, and not in any sort of cryptic-speak. Who am I in trouble with? What for?”
“I didn’t skip our lunch date,” he told her.
“Meeting. It was a meeting,” she corrected.
The dragon’s wings ruffled slightly. Did that mean irritation, she wondered?
“Either way, I didn’t skip it. I didn’t miss it, nor was I late.”
“Thennnn, where were you?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“Tailing and then chasing the men that were following you,” Braz said bluntly.
Grace’s spine stiffened. “The men that were what?” she echoed in shock.
