"So will you let me explain? I warn you now, it's going to take some time, and quite a lot of what you will hear will be beyond your wildest imagination. But given where you are, and what's happened to you, this is as important for you as it is for me. What do you say?"
Fighting for control of his immense head, Tim came to the only logical conclusion... to listen. He was in no condition to do anything else, particularly given he had no idea where he was, or who, or what else inhabited the building that he was currently receiving care in. If nothing else, he supposed that it might just fill in some of the missing gaps in his memory. Nodding his agreement, the king perched on the bottom of the very large bed and started from the beginning.
They sat and talked for hours... many hours. I say talked, Tim had of course mainly listened. To his credit, the king had let the newly discovered 'white dragon' interrupt whenever he felt the need to know something so obvious to the monarch that he wouldn't have thought to explain it to a dragon who'd only been one for a matter of days. To say it had blown Tim's mind was an understatement. But as he'd hoped, it had at least cleared up some of his missing memory. Sitting on the bed, feeling more than a little sorry for himself, his thoughts drifted off to the woman he loved... Richie! A smile crept across his face, in a much different way than he was used to. Before it could have been used to charm the wits off any woman, but now... it would probably terrify most of the human population. In anticipation of the food he'd been promised, his stomach gurgled ever so slightly. Normally a chicken and fish kind of guy, when they'd asked what he'd like to eat, just after the king left, he instantly told them he wanted rare steak and well cooked bacon. Oh how things had changed.
As the delightful aroma of the bacon, done to a turn, filtered through his super sensitive nose, wafting across from somewhere else in the building, he once again thought about the superstar lacrosse player, wondering just how she was adapting to her change in bodily circumstances. Although hers was a change as dramatic as his, the shock and realisation would be vastly different. On reflection, he should have realised she was something different, something special. Of course, he had thought of her as something unique, but would never have had her down as another species. All the bravado, showing off, taking on men twice her size and beating them at goodness knows what... It was all so obvious now, with hindsight and his new knowledge about dragons. A small part of him wondered why she hadn't visited. The king had said she'd been forbidden to do so, but that wouldn't stop the Richie he knew. Quite the opposite in fact. It would have spurred her on, wanting to put one over on authority, as she had so many times before. But had the reversion to a fully fledged human being changed her, or was it something else? Perhaps, like him, she had gaps in her memory too, and was even now unable to remember their time together. Feeling as though his heart was being squeezed, he hoped not. Just as he turned this over in his mind, a tall, rather attractive, red haired woman who he now knew to be a dragon, slipped through the door, carrying a gigantic tray with a cover on the top. It was so big and wide that her slender arms struggled to contain it as she headed his way. Once again he smiled, at least he hoped that's what he was doing, supposing there was every chance he was doing something else, what with all this being so new to him. Perhaps at some point he'd have to ask for a mirror, not only to see the new him, but also to practise getting his brand new face to work properly.
With a friendly, "There you go," the nurse plonked the tray down on his lap... well, more like his belly actually, before lifting off the lid. Watching her leave the room, he felt a brief pang of disappointment. Part of him wanted a conversation, in the hope that perhaps she could answer some of the many questions he had, or show him just the smallest hint of kindness. But she was gone, so he glanced down at the tray and his eyes nearly popped out. It looked as though the entire dragon kingdom's supply of bacon and steak had found its way onto a plate the size of a sofa. Starting to count the rashers, he stopped when he reached fifty, realising that he'd not even got halfway. There must have been over thirty of the finest steaks, not just any old things either, T-bones if he wasn't mistaken. And someone had taken the liberty of adding some fried eggs, at least three dozen by the look of things.
'It does look appealing,' he thought, pleased that someone had added the eggs, the human in him really appreciating the gesture.
'But hang on,' a sudden thought occurred to him, 'they've only gone and forgotten all the cutlery. How on earth am I supposed to eat all of this?' And then he remembered. He was a dragon, and cutlery was no longer an option. Chuckling came from nowhere, tears winding their way across the new landscape of his prehistoric face, with much further to travel now than before. Indiscriminate guffaws of laughter pierced the wolfing down of bacon rashers for the next thirty minutes or so.
4
A Touching Moment
Waiting for everything to come to fruition drove him mad. Constantly having to move about, avoiding built up areas, swapping cars, dodging CCTV cameras even at service stations... the monotony was just staggering, though part of him knew it would be worth it in the end.
Opening the fridge, he grabbed a beef salad sandwich sealed in a plastic carton, something they'd picked up the day before at a remote service station, his stomach turning at the thought of eating the ropey looking snack. It had most certainly seen better days, but there was little else. So, unwrapping it, he discarded the plastic on the floor and, walking through to the living area, sandwich in one hand, cane in the other, took a bite. Moments later, he wished he'd thrown away the sandwich and taken a bite of the plastic, sure it would have tasted better. Striding down the steps that led into the lounge, he glanced across at the television that his father was watching with the sound turned down. Some news channel was still harping on about the destruction caused by the laminium bombs. His laminium bombs. That made him smile. Slowly, he eased down into the plump arm chair opposite his father, the legendary dragon incarcerated for so many years for his crimes against the entire underground population, all those years ago... TROYDENN!
The wizened old man glared across at him. At the moment, there was little love lost between the two of them. Both loving and despising his father in equal measures, he loved him because he'd shown him his true potential, nurtured his new found abilities and, in the end, granted him the power to become the new super dragon that he was, eclipsing his father in ways the old dragon could only dream of. But he also hated him because of how he'd treated his mother. Of course he couldn't actually remember, but he'd been told what had happened, deep down in that frozen hellhole of an icy dungeon where the rogue dragons had been left to die, and where he'd been both conceived and born. How she was used and abused by everyone, including him. No respect, no rights, no say in anything because she was female, one of just a handful. She'd meant nothing to his father, that much he did know, just an experimented on shell, used for one purpose and one purpose alone: to give birth the human way, to continue the bloodlines of the dragons trapped there. Such a simple idea, and one to which their dragon captors had given little thought, because if they had, then they most certainly wouldn't have been imprisoned. To think, all it took was the tiniest sliver of power to turn their DNA fully human, and that was it. Reproduce the human way, and then just wait for the opportunity for freedom to come along, which of course it had, in the form of the very trusting and very gullible nagas. An added bonus to the whole thing presented itself in the guise of the very different powers those born there had been granted, as well as the fact that normal dragons (if there's even such a thing) are unable to detect even the tiniest hint of anything even remotely not human. All in all, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, some good had come from the forced captivity. And with these new found powers, the opportunity to change the fate of the world still very much existed.