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Posted by Jonah on May 23, 2009, 1:15 am, in reply to "Dragon Holiday, part 8"
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Dax looked at each one again, and then rolled his eyes and sighed like a martyr.
“Oh, very well. I was seven when the aliens came. One moment we were all going about our business on the homeworld, then the next we were in a state of torpor in a pitch black environment. A blinding flash, then some disembodied voice told us not to attack the two-legged creatures no matter what, that they were dangerous in the extreme. The torpor wore off almost as quickly it had come on us, and we were dumped out onto an alien world from these towering, terrifying metal monstrosities.
“The alien ships,” said Val.
Dax nodded.
“If this had happened to you humans with all your modern technology, you’d at least have had some idea of what was going on. But for us, it was like we were the playthings of insane gods. So I guess it’s not surprising that when the ships left, we did what any terrified predator does in unfamiliar surroundings: we lashed out, despite the aliens’ warning.”
Val huffed impatiently. “But what about your human family?”
Dax raised a hand, “The best place to begin is at the beginning; and you should listen, and you should learn, what happened to dragons when we arrived.”
“The first humans who reached us were some backwoods locals. I remember my mother saying that she couldn’t understand why the aliens didn’t want us to attack these stupid weak little two-legged things. Sure, one of us got a bullet in an arm, but that hardly seemed dangerous compared to the fierce multi-ton critters we’d hunted back on the homeworld, who could gore you with three-foot tusks. Ten minutes later we were passing out their body parts among the other dragons. I got a finger and a kidney, and wolfed it down.
“We foraged through the countryside, found some local farms, feasted on the cows and horses. The screechy monkey things either ran away or got eaten. The aliens’ warning seemed more and more laughable.
“But that was only because the humans were still in shock. But by the third day, they’d gotten organized. Well organized. We saw a hundred cars and trucks fill the roads leading to the farm we’d raided, each carrying at least a dozen humans armed to the teeth.”
Dax paused.
“I can guess what happened next,” Seth said grimly.
“Yeah,” said Goggles with a grim, low chuckle. “I guess you guys thought it was a big monkey buffet, huh?”
“We weren’t idiots,” Dax snapped at his companion. “Those of you who weren’t there can’t understand.”
“Can’t understand what?” Val asked.
“Hundreds of you humans, screeching and screaming, all bunched together and facing us. Some frightened, true, but many far more grim and angry. Protected by your metal vehicles, brandishing hundreds of gleaming metal weapons. On a field of strange plants, under a bizarre too-blue sky. It was just so ... alien … to us.”
He shook his head. “Dragons, who’ve I’d seen leap onto the back of Rotadons five times their size on the homeworld, unnerved. Some roared defiance and made displays, others grabbed up makeshift weapons. But all hesitantly, all feeling the same thing I had. That for the first time in our lives, we were the prey. Not just as individuals, but all our kind. To those of us who had always been at the top of the food chain, the masters of our world, it was supremely unnerving.
“The humans opened fire. The air filled with cracks of thunder hundreds strong, and dragons began dropping like cut trees. My mother was one of the first. A lucky shot had caught her in her open maw, and blew out the back of her head. She was dead by the time she hit the ground. Me being a youngling and not knowing any better, I just stood there and stared. I heard whizzing going by me left and right, not knowing at the time they were bullets. Some of the big males tried to rush the line of humans. One miraculously made it far enough to swipe at a car door and knock it off its hinges before he fell. He must have had at least a hundred rounds in him at that point.
“Nothing we did mattered. I was one of the few left standing when the human mob stopped their shooting. They threw ropes around me and dragged me to a caged cell where I stayed for almost a week before government workers found me.”
“Holy crap!” Goggles said. “I never knew any of that.”
“’Dragon Wars’ the media calls them,” said Dax.
Seth spat out vehemently. “It was dragon slaughter. A hundred dragons died for every human in those first few weeks.”
The saurians grunted and nodded in agreement. Val spoke up. “So what happened to you after that?”
“The military confined dragons across the country to camps. After that I spent about a year being ‘socialized’ into human society. Eventually, I was tame enough that they placed me with a foster family, who later officially adopted me. Roger and Julie Cartwright. My parents.”
Val stared in disbelief. “They have any kids?”
Dax nodded. “Yes, three children. Kathleen, Zachary and Clara.”
She smiled at the thought of a young Dax playing ball with his family.
“Roger and Julie only took me in for the government subsidy checks, and pretty much left parenting out of it. The twins — Kat and Zach — loved to bully me around, but in all fairness, as did most other dragons I knew.”
Val burst out laughing, and Seth grinned ear to ear. “I find it hard to believe you were ever bullied.”
“I was a ‘late-bloomer’, as you humans say. Most dragons my age were three to four times my size. But thankfully things changed pretty quickly in the following years and I grew like a tree through high school.”
“So this whole ‘thing’ of yours is really just you getting pay back for being bullied?”
Dax laughed. “No, I do what I do because I feel it’s important. My history just lets me enjoy it a little more than I might otherwise. But the past is the past. I don’t like dwelling on it.” He picked idly at his teeth with a claw, removing a piece of wool. “How about you, Seth? Your family have any harrowing tales of the Migration?”
Their host tilted his head to one side, then the other, thinking. “Not that I can remember. I was born on Earth about a year after the Migration, so I have no memories of it. My parents belonged to a group that obviously took the aliens’ warning more seriously than yours. They shunned any contact with the humans and hid out in the bayou for weeks. They lived there until they were approached by the First Contact Team that, by this time, had dragon volunteers among them. The humans smarted up by then I suppose. My family liked the climate so they ended up settling around here once they were released.”
“Oh? Val asked. “Are they still around?”
“Yeah. They live in a tenement building in Lake Charles, not too far away by bus.”
“That close? You never told me that!”
“There was no need to. We’re not the visiting type, and things between them were usually very strained. In my clan back on the homeworld, the mother would raise a child until they’re old enough to pass all the aging rituals, then raised by their fathers until they’re adults. A mated couple didn’t need to live together. But in those early years after the landings, the government wanted all the dragons in places where they could watch us, and that meant the ‘dragon towns.’”
“More like concentration camps,” Dax grumbled.
“Probably, but I don’t remember being treated badly, it’s just the living conditions were, well, I guess ‘simple’ would be the word. And to keep the humans’ bookkeeping just as simple, mated couples had to live together. My parents hated that. They were always arguing and fighting. The arrangement did produce a sibling, though....”
The screen door in the back groaned open and then slammed closed, and Susan and Shadow came back into the living room, laughing over something. “So what did we miss?” the female asked happily, definitely in far better spirits than when she had left.
“Not much,” Goggles quipped. “Just Seth and Dax blubbering on about their life stories.”
“You didn’t seem to complain.” Dax quipped.
“That’s because I’ve been playing Tesseract Invaders on my link since you got weepy-eyed over Mommy Dearest.” He tapped his eyepieces for emphasis.
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