First of all, this story was supposed to be written awhile ago. Two hours at least. Eighteen years at most. I'd say that it could've been written before that even, but if it had then I wouldn't be the one writing it. Of course, I have to be the one to write this story, because I'm the only one who's heard enough to tell it properly.
Second of all, this is the story of my father. He is, to be quite Frank, an idiot. I say that for two reasons. The first is that his name is literally Frank. His parents thought that Frankfort was a good name for their child. Needless to say, we've taken care of that problem and they're in a good rest-home now, but that's not the point.
The second reason that I say my father was an idiot is that only an idiot would decide to record a dragon hatching.
My dad was walking home one day. He decided that he was gonna take the back road, because when there is an angry band of high schoolers who have decided that they're gonna be out for your blood the wise thing to do is take the back way, so, naturally, he did. Along the way he was kicking some rocks, as you do when you're being depressingly introspective about your life, and this caused him to find a dragon egg.
The first thing he noticed was the screaming. Well, he says it was more of a howl, or a screech, but I think screaming works for the context. one of the rocks, a smooth brown one, when he kicked it, let out a long, pained, squeaking noise as it flew off the path. My dad obviously stopped, being taken by complete surprise, having never encountered a screaming rock before.
This would be a good time to describe my dad. And by that I mean that I absolutely recognize this as one of the worst times to describe my father's physical appearance, but I don't care. You're just gonna have to deal with the story structure as I am the author and you are the reader, and so you have to submit to whatever I decide to write in whatever order I decide to write it in. Anyways...
My dad, a product of his era, was tall, skinny, and his chestnut-colored hair was styled horribly. Yes, this means he had a bowl cut. This alone was most of the reason that whenever he was vlogging for his social media he was always. Always. Wearing a hat. Eventually he decided to own it and coined his own nickname: The Heretical Jew. This was ironic because firstly, he wasn't a Jew, and secondly, knowing my father's sense of humor he probably chose the nickname because when read right it was a fancy way of calling himself Jesus Christ. But hey, at least no-one saw that horrid hair of his.
My dad had started vlogging at a very young age. Like, eight years old. He had picked it up when he got his first smartphone and had discovered the video-recording feature. Immediately he started recording his life and publishing it online. Why not? It wasn't like it could hurt anyone or anything. His parents weren't going to stop him. They weren't going to encourage him either. They kind-of ignored him after he reached age six and lost his baby-fat. So he turned to the internet for attention—as you do, obviously—hence, the vlogging.
This was when Frank pulled out his phone (the 'this' here refers to the narrative situation that was being described earlier, right after Frank kicked the rock that screamed). From here, you can just go watch his vlogs, you'll just have to scroll down far enough on his channel to find his earliest. In order to save you that pain though I have transcribed the important parts here:
"Yo dudes!" He said enthusiastically. one of the most irritating parts about vlogging is the fact that no matter what emotion you're feeling at the moment you must over-emphasize that emotion over the camera in order to keep the attention of your audience.
"You'll never guess what just happened to me!" Frank said to the camera, "I was just walking home from school, minding my own business, when I kicked a rock and it yelled!"
...
Okay, I'm rethinking this. I don't think I'll transcribe the vlogs exactly. Or even partially. Most of the time my dad is just repeating the things that I've already told you, so it's basically pointless. long story short, though, my dad dramatized himself looking through the grass in search of the rock, then there's a whole couple of minutes devoted entirely to him touching the rock for the first time. The rock screams at him again and so, naturally, he makes a big show of putting the rock in his backpack and then signs off until later. He promises a live stream later that day when he figures out what exactly the rock is.
After ending his recording my dad immediately started editing the video. He was an expert at navigating himself while looking at his phone, so his just plugged in his headphones and plugged away. It didn't take him long before he was at the public library. He couldn't wait until he got home to post the video, so he took a small detour to the nearest free-wifi-producer. He sat down for about three minutes and then the video was published. Now, before he even got home he should have a couple thousand views, which virtually guaranteed a decent-sized audience for his live-stream of the rock. Awesome.
From the library Frank headed directly home. It took him about half-of-an-hour taking the back way, but it was well worth it. When he got home he came in through eh back door, a big sliding glass one that was smooth enough that he had to purposely slam it in order to announce his presence. Just in case that didn't work he yelled too.
"I'm home!" He said, loudly.
There was a moment of silence before he heard a response: "pizza's in the fridge!" Yelled Frank's mother from her bedroom. Frank heard a faint grunting come from his father's office.
Frank slid past the fridge, slipping the box of pizza out as he went, and then thundered his way up stairs to his floor. When Frank's parents had bought their house they hadn't expected that Frank would end up having a whole floor to himself, but over the years Frank had slowly expanded. He had taken ownership of every room little by little, and his parents hardly went upstairs often enough to notice, so by the time Frank was thirteen both him and his parents considered the entire second floor to be Frank's property. Frank made good use of the space. His bedroom and remained his bedroom, but now one of the spare bedrooms was a studio, and the other was a green-screen-room. The guest bathroom was Frank's makeup bathroom, and the hallway closet was Frank's prop storage. Frank never had anyone over, so this wasn't much of a problem for guests, as long as they didn't intend to sleep while they were hosted.
Frank beelined for the first spare bedroom, where he fished the rock out of his drawstring backpack and placed it in the middle of the bed. He dropped into an office chair and with one push rolled all the way to the equipment desk he had set up in the closet. He picked out a good close-up camera, then grabbed a tripod. He rolled back and set up the tripod at the end of the bed. After fastening the camera to the tripod he fished a wire out of his backpack. He plugged the wire into the camera and then rolled the other end to the laptop in the closet. It didn't take long for him to set up the livestream. Now, all he had to do was press a button on his phone to start broadcasting from the camera at the end of the bed, then, within minutes he'd have half of the internet watching his rock. Perfect. Before he'd press the button though, he'd have to educate himself, so he pulled up google.
Now, I'm not going to go into detail about my dad's research process—because that would be boring. But I should probably explain that the way my dad makes videos he understands that if you're gonna talk about something you should at the very least know a little about what you're talking about. So he does slight research. For this particular live-stream he did basic research of the types of rocks in his region. He did research on the different small animals and rodents in his area. He even did research on large-animal droppings, just to cover all of his bases. Once he thought he was educated enough to hold a monologue about what kind of rocks the one he found definitely wasn't he decided to begin.
After posting a picture of the rock with the caption "Screaming rock livestream starting in five!" and waiting five minutes exactly Frank pressed the button.
"Whaddup dudes?" Frank asked loudly. He had no doubt that his parents could hear him from downstairs, but wasn't worried.
"Who's ready to find out why the heck this rock was screaming at me?" Frank asked. He made a face he hoped was interesting while following the live comments appearing on his phone screen. most of them said "Yes."
"Cool. Cool. Very nice. Alright, that looks conclusive. Let's get into it!" Frank swiveled the camera towards the bed, angling it towards the rock. At the same time he pressed a button that activated another camera on his desk, allowing his livestream audience to watch both him and the rock at once.
"So the first thing we need to do is observe," He said, "Legit, first-thing's-first we gotta look at this thing. It looks like a rock, right? Well yeah, but it doesn't look like any kind of rock that we have here in the valley. So that means it was moved here from somewhere else, obviously."
The comments flooded in through Frank's phone, all of them agreeing. "Obviously."
"So it was moved here from somewhere else. We got that, now we gotta look for some new data. What makes this rock stand out. That's easy enough, it's the noise." After saying this Frank reached in from the side and poked the rock with a spoon. The rock barely moved, but still let out a harsh yelp. "That," Frank said to the camera, "Is definitely the sound of an animal, do y'all agree?" He didn't look at the comments this time, knowing the answers would be unanimous. "The problem is," He continued, "that it isn't the sound of any animal from here in the valley either. Which means that no matter what, if it's an animal or a rock, it doesn't belong here. What are y'all saying?"
Frank glanced down at his phone. He was receiving comments faster than ever. But they weren't words of agreement. most of them said things along the lines of: "Look at it!"
Frank frowned, looking at the rock. It was shaking. Rolling back and forth on its own.
"Oh dear," Frank said, "It looks like there's an animal trapped in there that's trying to get out. What do you think? Should we try to help it?"
The answers came in as mostly "yes"'s, so Frank moved over to the bed. He spun the lens on the camera, zooming out so that the audience would be able to see him and the egg at the same time, then knelt closer to take a better look.
"Quite frankly, m'dudes, I don't know how to help here. It's a solid rock, and I don't know how I'd help without hurting the animal inside it. Oh wait! What's that?" Frank's eyes got wide. A crack had appeared on the surface of the rock. He glanced at his phone, most of the comments were claiming that the rock was an egg of some sort.
"Whoah," Frank said animatedly, "That makes sense. It's probably an egg. But what animal lays eggs that look like big brown rocks, I wonder? Do you guys know of any?"
Frank turned his attention back to the egg. the cracks were widening. A distinguished shard was beginning to form, ready to fall off. Suddenly Frank's phone vibrated. It was a text. Frank had time to look at it later. This was important.
Another shard formed, it appeared that whatever animal was in the egg was intending to break the whole shell at once instead of one piece at a time. Frank reached over to touch the egg, but before his finger got even close it started screaming at him so he pulled his hand back. He was ignoring his phone now. Comments were streaming in like crazy, but it was also vibrating with personal messages, too. Frank watched as one of the cracks slid down the smooth surface of the egg and joined with another one, completing yet another shard, ready to fall when the creature inside was ready to push.
Frank's phone started to go crazy. His flashlight on the front started blinking off and on again rapidly. His screen went entirely black then turned white, then repeated the process. It was vibrating so fast Frank was almost surprised it wasn't levitating. Finally, Frank grabbed his phone. As soon as he did it stopped. The screen went entirely black and green letters began typing themselves over and over all the way from the top of the screen to the bottom.
"Stop. Recording. Stop. Recording. Stop. Recording..."
Frank frowned at his phone. He smacked it against his bed. the words kept coming. None of the buttons responded to Frank's pressing them. What was going on?
CRACK.
What felt like a rock hit Frank in the face, then fell to the bed below him. It was a shard of the egg. He blinked a coupe of times, then realized that a small explosion had taken place in front of him. With one burst of energy the creature inside the egg had pushed in all directions at once and had sent the various pieces of its egg in all directions. For one solid second Frank's livestream caught a clear image of the animal, then everything went dark.
With a pop the bedroom light went out. At the same time the camera shut down and Frank's computer died. Everything electronic in Frank's studio turned off without warning, but Frank wasn't paying attention. He was too distracted by what had just revealed itself in front of him. There was no mistaking what it was. But it wasn't supposed to be.
Why was it here? How was it here? Frank had been told his whole life that this creature that was now stretching its newly discovered limbs in front of him was a myth. But why? Why hadn't Frank heard of this thing before? Why wasn't this species discovered already? How had Frank been the one to discover it? Why hadn't this happened yet?