MIR, the sentient Wyvern.

Life goal: To finally live life to the fullest!

It's dark and I've been floating like this since... I don't know... but I remember images, flashes when I let my mind go.

The dream happens when you think of pleasant things. But what was pleasant?

Ah. Yes... the cold cuts...

I was dreaming... but I didn't realise it. I was in a city and I entered attracted by the smell of smoked meat...

Yes... there were pies, hams that were smoked and hanging from the ceiling. They were everywhere...

Pies and necklaces of sausages and that smell that hit you right up to your tongue...

I was like being in a nest with giant chocolate eggs and in my paws, a pink squared paper, with the good smell of butchery.

These were pleasant memories but I knew that if I dug any deeper, an abyss of sadness would engulf me in the dark again. So I let myself be carried away by the pleasant smells.

I flew from shop to shop, from market stall to market stall.

Sometimes I had a hand. And they would say hello to me, Professor Brilliant. Will you try this new chocolate?

Then I was sitting at a round table in the little country town...And you could see an old Panzer tank on a concrete base.

The owner of the chip shop greeted us and told us that after the war people had filled it with chip cones. It was a war memorial now...

I can't remember the name of the town, but it started with "Ouf. Or Houff?"

In front of me, my best friend, Yves... He mostly avoided me staying at the farm to do concrete work. Egyptian work considering my size and age.

In this dream I went from animal to adult to child and it made no sense, but I bathed in these pleasant moments to finally enjoy a deep and restful sleep.

I could feel myself waking up and the cold, the birdsong and the dew were pushing me back to reality.

"A little longer... but then I remembered the bad memories of begging death to come and get me. I couldn't stand this shitty life anymore.

I was working at the university on fusion devices to vaporise materials like diamond and then recrystallise them on scalpels, precision tools and nano tools to cut macromolecules, but all this was far away. And I was no longer interested.

I no longer had the flame of the researcher wanting to discover new things. Indeed, I was in sentimental distress, divorced, my children only contacted me at Christmas or on their birthdays, and one of them had left for the USA and the other for Australia... and I... I stayed here.

Then we started a kind of reactor with a tube, like a big neon tube.

And the chemical reactions were happening inside.

I had a memento from my father, but in very bad taste. A silver ring in the shape of a dragon's claw holding an Opaline that looked like a fire iris.

My ex didn't want me to keep this ring but it was the last gift from my parents before they disappeared in a car accident.

I was alone in the world and I didn't want to part with this relic. It wasn't worth much but to me it was all that mattered.

The silver tip would blacken on contact with toxic substances and other poisons and it saved my life many times, especially when working with arsenic and other cyamides.

They were used as catalysts to reach higher temperatures.

I sighed after the umpteenth experience of the project, walking with leaden feet.