Peter's fanciful thoughts seemed to be blown away as his highly attuned senses started to come under attack in a variety of different ways. The sickly scent emanating from some of the Mediterranean plants dotted around the courtyard made his nose tingle and itch. Most underground areas used plants from warmer climates, which he supposed were better suited to the humid conditions. A loud WHIRRING noise from one of the five or six vendors that plied their wares around the edge of the courtyard, nearly day and night, caused Peter to jump slightly. Peeking to his right, he could see that the vendor in question had just primed his machine to start making fresh charcoal doughnuts, in time to attract the attention of the passengers just reaching the top of the staircase. As the dough whizzed around and around in the noisy mixer, Peter watched mesmerised as different coloured tiny chunks of charcoal dripped from above into the gooey mixture, before it slinked its way into a funnel, and then plopped out into the hot fat as a doughnut shape at the other end. It continued to wind its way through the river of bubbling, hot fat, until it was suddenly flipped over, allowing the other side to cook, while Peter's mouth watered in anticipation. All the time the dragon vendor eyed him with a knowing gleam in his eye that almost said, “Gotcha!”
Concentrating so hard on the doughnut, Peter had only just begun to realise that the sickly sweet scent of pollen had all but been replaced by a much more pleasant smell. His highly sensitive nose had detected the delightful aroma of lemon, cinnamon and slightly burnt charcoal. Leaving the doughnut maker, much to his disappointment, Peter inquisitively headed over to the next vendor, just in time to see a spindly-framed dragon toss a giant pancake into the air, before expertly bringing it down on to the sizzling hot plate in front of him, all with more than a hint of showmanship.
His nostrils now felt overwhelmed as the courtyard filled up with passengers, and every vendor did their very best to entice them into buying some of their wares. Gorgeous aromas wafted over from the vendors cooking on the other side of the courtyard. Through the crowd, Peter could just make out magnificent multicoloured bread coming out of an oven, which he assumed was the fresh candy floss and toffee apple smell he was currently inhaling. Spying the adjacent vendor frying mouth-watering strips of dark brown meat in a skillet with all sorts of wonderful fruit and vegetables, creating a silky sweet, barbecue smell, made his stomach rumble loudly, having not eaten all day. Taking an age to try and choose between the tasty treats, he finally settled on the pancake over everything else. Once the experienced vendor had cooked him a fresh one, and with it firmly wrapped in a cardboard cone, ignoring all the delicious foodie smells he cut his way through the throng of passengers to the narrowest of the walkways and started following its incline. After two or three minutes of swift walking, he found himself in near total darkness, the path's twists and turns cancelling out any of the remaining light from the station. Not bothered in the slightest by all of this, because of his superb dragon vision that he could change at will, enhancing it to see in the dark as clearly as if it were a sunny day, Peter arrived at the secret underground entrance to the house he owned. Sliding through a small gap in a wall, while wolfing down the last remnants of his pancake, he made his way up a set of very narrow, stone steps. Having done this journey many thousands of times in his relatively short life, he slipped through an even narrower gap at the top of the stairs, glad that he didn't have to do this in his dragon form. Not even his tiny dragon frame would have been able to negotiate this.
Facing a solid block of impenetrable stone, in total darkness, he raised his left hand up along the wall beside him. With his thumb and forefinger he found two indentations, and at exactly the same time, he forced his digits into both, squeezing down as he did so. A soft 'click', only noticeable because of his enhanced senses, followed by the turning of tiny gears further back down the passage, echoed in the darkness. As if by magic, but more likely awesome engineering, a huge chunk of the wall silently slid upwards and out of sight. Ducking his head ever so slightly, Peter moved on through into a dusty old cellar, where cobwebs hung down from wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling, while clouds of fluff adorned light coloured dust sheets littering the room, underneath which all sorts of different shaped belongings sat. Off in the far corner, a black, ornate, metal staircase, wound tightly up to the ceiling, where it just... STOPPED! The ceiling itself was totally intact, and if anyone had bothered to climb the Victorian staircase, they would have had nowhere to go. It didn't perturb Peter though. He dodged past all the dusty objects and squeezed onto the first rung of the staircase, just as the solid, outside rock wall slipped back into place. Circling around three times on the staircase, he stopped just before his head touched the ceiling. Reaching down to a rust-covered black flower that was part of the intricate Victorian design, he twisted the petals anti-clockwise, before craning his neck up to look at the ceiling. He was rewarded with a small hole getting gradually bigger from above. Poking his head through, he climbed the remainder of the rungs, emerging into a very ordinary, very small, modern day sitting room. Stepping out from the corner of the room, he skirted around the light brown piano, before reaching past its keys, and yanking hard on a tall glass Galileo thermometer that sat atop it. The brightly coloured glass balls inside crashed violently together as the thermometer went from vertical to horizontal in an instant, the result of which would surely see them break. Surprisingly, they didn't. As the glass vessel sprang back to an upright position, the whole piano slid around ninety degrees on the wooden floor, to sit snugly in the corner of the room on top of the concealed opening. Anyone entering the room the conventional way would be none the wiser.
Peter's small terraced house comprised a sitting room, a small kitchen, a bathroom on the ground floor, a sixty foot long, narrow garden, and three bedrooms, one of which was a study (up in the roof). A former railway cottage built around the early nineteen hundreds, it was situated close to the modern day station, and was only a ten minute walk from the centre of town. It had always been owned by one dragon or another, hence the concealed passage to the secret world below. As long as intelligent humans have roamed the earth, dragons have sought to live side by side with them, blending in with them in an effort to help fulfil their sworn pledge to guide and protect them. Throughout history, homes bought by dragons have often had access to the domain below, nearly always hidden, more often than not in a completely obscure fashion that nobody would ever stumble across by accident: from revolving wardrobes, to hollow bottomed washing machines, fridges to climb inside, to showers that drop you into a slide so sheer, you wouldn't stop screaming for days, to clandestine garden entrances guarded by all manner of unusual animals.
With their natural affinity for all things mechanical and armed with a variety of mantras, virtually nothing is beyond a dragon when they set their mind to it. Putting an updated spin on things has become the main challenge over the years, so that things blend into their contemporary surroundings. The piano, for example, had been in Peter's house for many decades, not really unusual at all, whereas the lever that had originally started off atop it had been an old fashioned candelabrum, that most certainly would have looked out of place now, so replacing it with something more modern (the Galileo thermometer) allowed it to blend in and go virtually unnoticed should any unexpected visitors decide to take a closer look. Specially crafted by an expert in modern mantra mechanics, based in Purbeck Peninsula, it was fitted by one of the designers that routinely update dragon abodes across the country.
Glancing at the rocket shaped clock on the opposite wall, it told him he was close to running late.