Dragons in the water

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Nisha Ward
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Dragons in the water

Post by Nisha Ward »

The title is a lie but also not? There was supposed to be more, but I could not get past the end of this fragment.

There’s a lady with a sword, directing traffic down by the t-section where your sister used to live. You don’t know why she’s there or what she even wants, but you know it’s not normal, not at this time of day when the police are more likely to be lazing around somewhere far from Diego Martin and what it represents.

A driver gets out of his car. You can’t tell if he’s a private citizen or a PH driver, but he’s angry, his manicou companion twisting and scampering around his legs as he marches up to her and starts arguing with wild, uncoordinated movements of his arms.

You snicker a little, stopping when your companion glances at you for a moment. You can’t blush, but it feels like you can, if only for a second. Nothing really makes sense around him, but it’s not like you can voice that feeling when he’s right there, his wyvern flying overhead as your naga slithers along beside your car.

He’d laugh at you, probably, make you feel like something’s wrong with you the way he always does. You think he doesn’t mean it, but you don’t really know if that’s true either. You haven’t known in years if you could trust anyone and he’s too much the same, no matter how different you think or wish he is.

“Excited?”

“Huh?” The embarrassment gets worse as you realise he’d been speaking to you. “What you say?”

“If you’re excited? About the races?”

You breathe out, relieved. Who knows what else you might have missed, but at least this one is a harmless question.

“Y-yeah. It’s her first time, but she’s fast. Faster than me at any rate.”

“A naga’s faster than a lot of people. All of them probably dead too.”

You force yourself to laugh. The joke’s not that funny, but it’s okay, or it feels like it. It’s not mocking. It’s not much of anything, if you let yourself think about it too long. It just is, and there’s not much you can do about that, really.

There’s nothing you can do about the bile rising in the back of your throat either, the need to get out and run away even as attraction sinks lower in your gut. It just is, won’t ever cease to not be, and all you can do is ride the wave of it. You owe Jessinka that, owe her more than the freedom of the air on a boiling hot road.

She tastes the air beside you and you shudder, knowing that you’re so close to being her dinner that it hurts. You know that these creatures, these great beasts of obeah and malice, are held to you by the most tenuous of threads and it makes you shiver with the anticipation of the death that’s been befalling most of your class these days.

“Terry, play the radio nah,” you say, suddenly energised. There’s something about the danger that pushes you, makes you want to live, somehow. “It’s too quiet in the car.”

He laughs and obliges, picks up on a station playing the kind of soca you only usually hear when your father is taking you somewhere around Carnival season. You shake your head, slapping his shoulder. Terry does it just to annoy you, knowing how much you’re not a fan of this music.

He always did love to do that, and he hasn’t changed much in all the time you’ve known him.

As you stare out the window, listening to the music change to slow rock, you wonder if he’s capable of change, or if he’ll stay like that forever. You wonder if he’ll always be the little boy throwing sand at you on the beach while your parents drink and dance somewhere in the distance.

His wyvern swoops down and perches on top of the car, cooing down at Jessinka. She hisses at him, rising up and nipping at his feet before taking off along the road. You lose sight of her for a moment, but then Terry speeds up and you find yourself smiling as you catch up.

Jessinka glances at you and huffs, but she consents to the pets you offer as the car slows to a crawl alongside her. She slows down as well to keep pace, nuzzling the hand you leave hanging out of the window. Her scales are slick, the water on the road wetting them and making them shine. You’ve long since learnt that Jessinka likes it this way, even prefers it to the dryness of others like her.

You never did understand her, not the way you think you should.



Terry pulls into the parking lot and cuts the engine, staring at you. You’re not sure what to say to him now that you’ve stopped, not when the sound of the music and idling machinery isn’t there to distract you both. It’s awkward in a way it shouldn’t be, in a way it never has been, and you find yourself playing with your fingers more than you’d like, nervous for no reason you can think of.

“Ready?”

You shake your head, but you get out of the car anyway. You’re not sure what the rest of the day will hold, but you need to do this. You can’t back down now, not after all that you’ve both done to prepare. You wouldn’t be able to look at yourself if you did, and you know it.

You whistle and Jessinka comes to you, sliding between your feet and along your legs like a cat. You’re almost sure that she’s part feline, but you’ve never actually confirmed it. You’re not sure that you want to know, not when the appeal is in the mystery or something like that.

You don’t actually know if there’s a saying to that effect.

Shaking your head, you coo at her.

“Ready, girl? Ready to show them just what you’re made of?”

She blows hot air against your face, rancid as ever, but you don’t mind it like you used to. Some things just are and there’s nothing you can do about it, not now, not ever. It’s just the way it is and you don’t know how else to live.

You smile and pat her head again, pressing your face against her muzzle. She’s warm from the sun, the water starting to dry up a bit. Kissing her nose, you step back and gesture for her to move ahead of you.

Quietly, you both make your way down to the water, eyes hooded against the sun as you follow Jessinka. If Terry is bothered by the heat, he doesn’t say, just huffing and doing what he needs to do to keep it from burning him too much. The hospital stay had made his skin sensitive and it’s all you can do to keep yourself from ordering him back to the car.

“Riley!” He whistles after calling out to his wyvern, holding his hand out to the water. “Fish!”

The great winged beast gives a roar and dives, disappearing beneath the water before reappearing with something slippery and slimy grasped in his jaws. You watch as Riley brings the fish back to the shore, showing it off for you both.

You want to reach out for him, to touch him, stroke his scales, but you know that you can’t. You know that you’re not allowed to touch someone else’s familiar. You would do it if you could, but you can feel Terry’s eyes on you, feel the tension in the air as you both wait for what will happen next.

Your hand drops and you turn away, walk to the water’s edge. You wait until a familiar form winds between your legs and you smile, sitting in the sand.

“Jess, you dork,” you whisper, rubbing her scales. They’re wet again. “Did you see what Riley did? Can you do that?”

Jessinka stares at you balefully, almost as if she’s unimpressed with you. You huff out a laugh at that, pressing your nose against her flesh. You know how ridiculous it sounds, trying to compete with Terry, how stupid it must be.

Looking back at him, you know it is, but the words never leave your lips, not while he’s grinning and playing with Riley. It’s too soon, always too soon, to tell him that.

You shake your head and lay back, watching the endless sky, lost.
"...while a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well." - Terry Pratchett on The Last Continent and his writing.
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boardj
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Post by boardj »

I love the way you wrote this!
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Nisha Ward
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Post by Nisha Ward »

boardj wrote: 29 Mar 2019, 11:40 I love the way you wrote this!
Thank you!
"...while a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well." - Terry Pratchett on The Last Continent and his writing.
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Post by Artizi »

Keep up the good work! It was an interesting short story. I'm not usually too into using the second person point of view in literature, though, but it was interesting nonetheless!
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Nisha Ward
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Post by Nisha Ward »

Artizi wrote: 12 May 2019, 09:57 Keep up the good work! It was an interesting short story. I'm not usually too into using the second person point of view in literature, though, but it was interesting nonetheless!
Thank you! I've been experimenting with it lately but I much prefer the third person myself.
"...while a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well." - Terry Pratchett on The Last Continent and his writing.
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Gavin Mndawe
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Post by Gavin Mndawe »

so i just saw the word Naga and i wasn't ready..nagini..i skimmed through it and i like the tone so far, the POV is also engaging.
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