Getting closer to the station, Peter spotted a speeding silver carriage zip out of the tunnel and crisscross the different lines, heading for the platform that his transport was due to depart from. Breaking into a jog, much to the disdain of the other dragons around him, he arrived at the platform just as the silver monorail car he'd picked out docked. Electric doors opened with a WHOOOSH! Passengers exited from the opposite side to Peter, while the doors on his side remained closed for a couple of seconds longer. Without warning, and with the same accompanying WHOOOSH, the doors slid back inside the carriage, allowing all the passengers to board.
'Nice and orderly, or dragon-like,' thought Peter. 'Absolutely nothing like the chaos on the surface,' he laughed to himself.
Once inside, he plonked down on one of the long, garishly red, sofa-like seats that ran the length of the carriage on either side, and waited for the monorail to leave the station. The seating had been designed to accommodate dragons in both their human and natural forms, easily accomplished in carriages that were thirty feet tall and nearly four hundred feet long. Most dragons boarded in their human guises, but for those that stuck with their natural forms, nearly every other seat in the carriage had a rather large, adaptable hole in the back, for their tails to fit through. Occasionally, exclusive, first class carriages could be spotted on different lines, provided for privileged, private parties willing to part with a lot of money, rumoured to be staffed by dragons that would cater for your every whim. These exceptional carriages were easily spotted at a station or junction because, instead of sporting the usual bright shiny silver, they were instead decorated entirely in black, making them appear sought after, rare and unusual. Thirty seconds or so after boarding, the doors to Peter's carriage slid closed, allowing the monorail car to negotiate the intricate series of points, before accelerating into the gaping mouth of the dark tunnel on its way out of Purbeck Peninsula.
Through the windows of the carriage, Peter could see the dark rock face whiz by at speed on one side, while on the other, dragons of all shapes and sizes walked side by side along the trail that had been the main entrance to the Peninsula for hundreds of years. The pathway ran parallel to the monorail for some fifteen miles or so, before splitting up and winding off in several different directions. Dragons came from across the domain just to walk that path and witness the sheer beauty of staggering underground formations of rock, crystal and lava, as well as learn about its intriguing history. The path itself had been the base of the tunnel that dragons used to fly along, long before the monorail itself had been constructed.
From easily identifiable to a messy blur, in the blink of an eye, that's what had happened to the shapes of the landscape outside the window as the monorail had increased speed even more. Try as he might with his heightened senses, every time he came this way, he still couldn't make out any of the details. Eventually he gave up, just as the winding path branched off in a different direction.
Peter's destination was the beautiful city of Salisbridge, some fifty miles or so away in southern Wiltshire, England. Having worked and lived there since leaving the nursery ring and integrating fully into the human society he had sworn to help guide and protect, Peter couldn't think of a more beautiful place to call home. Had he been travelling between the two destinations above ground in a car, the journey would have taken well over an hour. On the monorail, it would take a little under eight minutes.
Only the occasional vein of molten lava illuminated the inside of the carriage now that they were away from the pedestrian walkways. The monorail designers had wasted little time in deciding that only the bigger underground caverns or areas would be illuminated, leaving the vast majority of travel through the solid rock cuttings in near total darkness, punctuated by the odd monorail car heading in the opposite direction, something even a dragon could miss if they blinked or sneezed at the wrong time. Peter let his head fall back onto the comforting fabric of the seat, and wondered just what it would be like for an ordinary human to experience a monorail journey. It could of course never happen; aside from the security implications, the incredibly high G forces would all but destroy their weakened charges from the surface. Dragons were built to withstand all but the highest G forces, experiencing them over and over again when flying, hence their ability to perform amazing aerial feats such as tight turns at speed, pulling out of death-defying drops, barrel rolls and just flying at around five hundred miles an hour. But he guessed that if a human were with him now, able to withstand the forces, it would feel as though they were riding the biggest and scariest rollercoaster, only with sooooo much more ooomph.
Dragons' physical characteristics were taken very much into account during the monorail's construction, meaning that routes through the rock strata could take the most direct route nearly all of the time, only changing direction for insurmountable obstacles like gigantic lava flows, large veins of problem metals or potentially explosive pockets of dangerous gas, thus meaning that the monorail would travel in a straight line for much of a journey, before suddenly veering off on all sorts of random twists and turns, drops and ascents, just to avoid a potentially problematic area. For the most part, dragon passengers barely noticed. Humans would never have been able to survive it intact.
Slowly the monorail car started to decelerate, Peter's cue that they were approaching Salisbridge station. Abruptly the dark tunnels were replaced by the soft orange glow of the platforms. As smooth as always, the carriage pulled up perfectly, just above the platform, and the doors whispered their usual whoosh, opening to allow departing passengers off. Making his way along the platform, and up some very worn marble stairs, the soft sound of the monorail departing whispered to him before he'd even reached the top.
In front of him, the station opened out into a vast courtyard, with various distinct walkways heading off in a dozen different directions. Although small compared with the likes of London, Glasgow and Purbeck stations, the painstaking detail with which the Salisbridge station had been decorated put all the others to shame. Surrounding the courtyard, twelve soaring, black and white marble pillars, matching the dazzling floor, supported the cavernous ceiling above. Carved intricately into each pillar was a legendary figure from history, with their natural dragon form on one side and their human guise on the other. A sparkling golden fleck, almost as if gold leaf had been mixed with the marble, allowed the characters to shine like stars in a black and white night. Eye-catching didn't begin to cover it. Each time Peter travelled through here, a sense of history and a thrill of excitement ran through him, almost as if he himself were a part of it. Stupid really. You couldn't get much further away from that, than him.
On reaching the top of these particular stairs, Peter always came face to face with a pillar on which a very familiar hero was etched... George, from the George and the Dragon tale that he'd once again heard recounted, less than an hour ago. Stopping for a few seconds to take in the magnificence of the carving, the same sense of familiarity that he always got washed over him, before he decided it was time to move on. As in previous times, he wondered if somehow he weren't linked to the story in some way, as at times, it appeared to be all around him. Ludicrous really, he knew. Dragons didn't believe in fate or destiny. They were a much more practical race, dealing with the present as it unfolded before them, much less concerned with the past or future.