Scales

Chapter Twenty-five

I bit my lip to stop the breathing and swiftly sucked in my chest. The fire in my throat and mouth subsided, and I spat out a few embers. With a few more relaxed, calm breaths, the embers were somehow put out.

My eyebrows shot up higher than the roof of the cave itself. I'd actually done it – I as a dragon had breathed fire! And in the process, I had started the fire needed for my food!

With the valve to my third lung firmly closed and my breathing under control, I used my claws to tear apart the hare from the neck down. While quite gruesome, the breast meat was plump and rich-looking. For personal taste, I pulled out the organs and piled them into a little sloppy heap. Holding them in one hand together with the hare's head, I threw the contents as far as I could, down to the rocks and trees below.

With the "disgusting stuff" gone, I turned my attention to the hare' body. Using my thumb claw as a gutting hook, I dug into the topmost layer of the flesh and carefully sheared off all of the furry skin, leaving the bright pink meat behind. After all the nasty dissection was complete, I used my middle finger to cut the chest meat into large chunks.

Setting the meat aside, I took the last oak branch and snapped it in two with my teeth. With my little finger's claw I whittled away at it until I had a smooth, bark-free stick with a sharp pointy tip, much like a giant pencil. I skewered three pieces of meat with it and held it over the fire, using the fire's warmth to remove all the fatty bacteria-filled slime off my hands.

I'd never tasted wild hare before, but it was delicious, even without any spices, flavoring, or vegetables whatsoever. It tasted quite dry though, and on top of the pulse of fire I'd shot out, my mouth might as well be a rock in a desert.

After chowing down on five large pieces, I tossed the bones down to the trees beyond the cave entrance, where the insects and fungi would eat them up – in the process of decomposition. Yes, my science knowledge from...

"School!" I exclaimed, shocked that such a word came out of my mouth. All of a sudden a few fragmented dots in my head started assembling and connecting themselves together, forming a now clear image of a place I recognized.

"Yes," I continued, even though no one could hear me but the birds and other animals in the forest below. "I attended school, and I gained knowledge by being taught, with something given to me to practice what I'd learned...homework! That's it. I also did that practice work at..."

My mind jammed up again like ten mice trying to run through a little hole all at the same time, and I sighed in disappointment. So close, and yet so far! At least some of my recent memories were coming back.

"I...remember..." I sang softly to myself, gazing up at the millions of stars in the bright black endless sky. "Oh, I remember when I would walk through those doors. The pesky students, the special place in the cafeteria where I sat with Melanie...and the playground. Oh, the playground where Jack would laugh every time I tried to play soccer but kept falling down and the other students tripped over me..."

As much as my new life in the forest was becoming more appealing, a part of me missed the fun and games of my previous life in the city. But if I returned, the human world wouldn't ever accept me in – I was a dragon. And everyone knows that dragons, like all mythical creatures, are made-up marvels of the fantasy world that exists within the scope of humanity's imaginative mind.

Having finished eating I used some of the few larger smooth stones in the cave to scrub my hands clean, though they still smelled of hare. Leaving the fire to burn off by itself, I trudged to the very back of the cave and curled up on my leafy bed to sleep, marking down a mental note to find better-tasting meat and a source of freshwater for drinking and cleaning the following morning.