A dragon in winter

A dragon in winter Chapter 1 An alien visitation

I thought I  heard a scaley leathery rattle at the end of my bed.I had left the cat asleep downstairs. It was cold. I snuggled down, my senses dulled by the evening's drink. Just a dream. My wife of thirty  years, Jessica, was on night duty.

But there it was again.

I struggled out of the cocooning bedclothes.

"What the hell?"

"Ah. You are awake," said the thing perched on the foot of the bed.

"I can't be," I replied, "I must be dreaming."

"Not you too. I had hoped for better from someone who says hello to the dead when passing a cemetery."

"How the hell do you know that?"

The creature glanced at me, and reached with delicate bird-like hands into a pouch on its rotund belly and withdrew a cheroot. From its horse-like nostrils issued a yellow stream of flame which glowed red on the end of the thin cigar. With evident satisfaction it inserted the unlit end between full sensuous lips and drew heavily, finally blowing a perfect smoke ring which drifted wraithlike across the room, orange tinted by sodium streetlight.

The acrid smell of strong tobacco hit my nostrils.

"I wish you wouldn't," I said.

The cigar vanished in a green flash of light that reflected on the TV screen.

The creature writhed a scaley tail in the air and chittered cunning laughter.

"One gone," it said.

"One what?" I asked.

"Wish. I came to bring you three. Now you have lost one."

"Oh? Why?"

"It amuses. Fun."

"Fun? Why?"

"It eases the boredom. Not enough to do here. We do not access your world so often nowadays."

"You're here now - well - even if you're part of some dream."

"Not again. I am as real as you, but you call me a dream, others call us hallucinations. We are being unimagined out of existence. You humans want to keep us in chips behind screens. And the final insult - hmph - computer games."

"Well if you are real, how did you get in?" I looked meaningfully at the closed door and sash window shut tight to exclude the November night's cold.

"Get in? We do not 'get in'. We materialise."

"So you aren't real. You're a creation of my mind - a figment of my imagination."

"Do not call me a figment," and it snorted a cloud of smoke still stinking of tobacco, in my face.

"I wish -," I stopped.

"Yes - yes - you wish?" spoke the creature excitedly, opening wide its glowing, green, cat-like eyes.

"Oh no, you won't catch me again. I wish I could have my first wish back."

"Done," said the thing, writhing its tail so vigorously that static electricity crackled in blue flashes at the edges of the scales, "but you lose your second. You still only have two."  

 "OK. Cheap trick. But even so why me, and what for?"

"Right - I will level with you. We are uncertain of our policy today. Business is bad. So the chief asked me to do some market research."

"Chief? Chief what?"

"Dragon of course."

I laughed, "Dragon? But you're only pint size. "