Read Online Modern Serpents Talk Things Through by Jamie Brindle - Free Book Online Page A

want you to stop being so hard on yourself. I am telling you as someone outside of the situation, I think you are being neurotic. I'm sure they were dwarves. Human children wouldn't have been out terrorising ordinary, innocent dragons like you. And even if they were, even if it was some strange tribe that sends their children out as robbers and thieves—well, is that your fault?"
    "No," muttered Tina.
    "No, of course it isn't! And anyway, did they smell like dwarves?"
    "Yes."
    "Well then, there you go."
    There was silence again. Tina shifted slightly, and a small shower of gold coins made a pleasant tinkling noise as they cascaded down the sparkling couch.
    "When they came into the great chamber," said Tina, "I don't know who was more scared, them or me." And it was true. She remembered their faces as she towered over them, so tiny, so impossibly small. She remembered the fear-scent that washed off their little bodies. How was it possible that creatures so tiny, so insignificant, could have their own ideas, their own brief lives, their own primitive cultures, even? Of course, the law was quite clear:  humans and dwarves and all the other small, bipedal creatures were simply another class of animal, nothing more. What did it matter if they had their own languages, if they built crude little caves to call their homes? Birds sang to each other, and made houses, too.
    But seeing those intruders there, with their finely drawn expressions, with the chatter of their little voices, with the crude clothes they wore and weapons they bore, it had brought the old feelings crashing back. They rose like a wave, instant and immediately overwhelming. It was the same feelings that had been stirred in her when she visited the zoo, the same sharp curiosity, the same wonder at something that had the trappings, at least, of rudimentary intelligence, but at the same time was so completely other...
    "And what happened next?" asked the voice, interrupting her musings.
    Tina shrugged her shoulders, stirring her wings.
    "At first we just stared at each other," she said. "You know, it's funny how things come into your head at times like this. I was staring at these intruders, these strange creatures that had broken into my home and were there to rob, to steal ... and I should have been furious! I knew I should have been. Or scared. Maybe I should have been scared. But all I could think was ..."
    "Yes?"
    "All I could think about was this article I'd read in some magazine. It was about humans. Just a silly little article in a magazine, I've forgotten which one. I've forgotten when. But it talked about how short their lives were. How amazingly, terribly short. And I just felt so sad."
    I'm going to tell her soon, Tina thought. It was working. She really did feel relaxed. She felt like she could almost talk about anything. Even ...
    "Anyway," she went on, "I was just staring at them, and for a moment, I swear, I was almost ready to just ... just look the other way. Just walk back into one of the lesser chambers, and let them take what they want. It was like I felt they deserved it. After all, their lives were so ... so small. What did it matter to me if they took ... oh, a gold cup or something. I wouldn't miss it, not really miss it. But then ..."
    Tina sighed. A sad little tendril of smoke curled out from between her teeth and drifted away.
    "Then one of them pulled out a crossbow and shot me in the paw," Tina snorted, somewhere between a laugh and a wince. "You know, it really hurt! More than I was expecting, far more. And before I knew what I was doing..."
    The scene flashed before her mind again:  the snapping open of her wings, the flickering of her muscles, moving so fast that it almost seemed to happen before she willed it. The smoke, the heat. The soft trembling of the small mound of flesh suddenly buried under one of her talons. The screams—deeper than she had expected, much deeper than she would have thought from such tiny animals. And after