Drakkon ✓

1

LUCKY

I hate the smell of fire. Not many good things are associated with it anymore. In the Old Times, my family used to go camping a lot. I remember roasting marshmallows and bits of meat over the open flame, but those sweet memories hardly cross me anymore. During my most recent encounters with fire, friends got scorched alive by sixty-foot dragons. If there's one thing I've learned since the apocalypse started, it's that trauma smells like burnt flesh.

"Hey, Lucky. Do you want to go mud fishing with the boys later?"

I look away from the firepit and smile at Ron. He's a nice guy, and he has been crushing on me since I joined this Colony. I guess I should feel lucky. Ron is one of the strongest young men around— thin and tall; standing at a proud one-hundred and thirty pounds, which is a lot for men nowadays. He's a good hunter; an excellent bachelor, but I'm not searching for a husband like most of the twenty-something year old girls left on Earth.

Honestly? I'm not sure what I'm searching for. The only thing I know is that it's not warming a man's bed so he can protect me from the dragons that want to warm me to a crisp.

I do my own hunting; my own surviving. Mom used to joke that I'm practically a boy since I keep my hair cropped short, use precious beauty magazines from the Old Times to wipe my ass, and no longer get my menstrual cycles due to malnutrition.

"No, thanks. I'm taking Daisy to collect plants."

My sister is undoubtedly a girl. She dresses like one and hell; she smells like one too. I'm often running so much that I smell like a pig's sty.

Daisy has always stuck to more passive hobbies, like collecting plants. Lately she's been checking out mushrooms, but since they're far from the Colony, she asks me to escort her. My sister is a big baby, but she's my big baby. Daisy is a wingless angel in a world full of flying demons.

I walk between the rails, passing families gathered together inside trains and on corners of train stations. It's cold and dirty down here, but it's less gloomy than usual it's Christmas time. Us humans always celebrate traditions and holidays . They're a trace of who we used to be.

I step over rotten cardboards and hop onto the platform. Kids are spraying graffiti on the brick wall ahead of me, but no one cares. No adult has enough energy to scold them. We're a missed meal away from starvation.

Commotion up ahead makes me pick up my pace. Bursts of sunlight illuminate my way to a group of adults that are bickering and becoming louder with every insult.

"Hey," I nudge Tink, my close friend. "What's going on?"

She sighs, and I worry. Tink lost too much weight this winter. She's skin and bones.

"They took one down," she answers.

I lead her away from the angry crowd to hear her better.

"Took what down?"

"A dragon, Lucky. They hunted one!"

Impossible. Dragons can't be hunted. In the twenty-eight years since they swarmed our planet, the only thing we've learned is that they can shift two-and-from a human form. Although they look like us, we are water and vinegar; completely different in nature.

The dragons are evil, just like humans were when they were alone. It's like there's a curse that falls on whoever rules the planet.

"But... where is it?"

"Fifteen stops down. The problem is that they're not sure what to do with it. Some want to... to eat it."

I cringe. Eat a dragon? That's disgusting, specially since they look so human in their weaker forms.