making him look like a cabinet minister on TV with the sound muted.
Then the world went dark all around him, and his curved and bloated vision was filled with the huge, monstrous face of a human - the human, his jailer. An enormous eye, as big as he was, twinkled at him though the glass, making him flinch involuntarily and launch himself across the bowl with a ferocious tail-flick. Of course, he ended up exactly where heâd started.
The human was saying something, to him or at him, but the water mangled the sound and he couldnât make out a word of it or even interpret the tone of voice. There was, of course, nowhere to hide in a circular glass bowl containing only water and himself. All he could do wasâNothing.
The human made a few noises, then moved. A moment or so later the goldfish felt small disturbances in the water around him, suggesting that something was showering down on the meniscus way above his head. Rain? Indoor rain? Improbable; it was unlikely that the secret of indoor rain, which had eluded generations of frustrated dragon alchemists, should have chosen to reveal itself to a scraggy little mortal during the time heâd spent trapped in the bowl. He looked up, and noticed that the water was full of slowly downwards-drifting brown things about the size of one of his eyes - antsâ eggs, falling like rain . . .
The human went away again, and the goldfish resumed his perpetual curved swimming. The worst part about his captivity, he told himself as he absent-mindedly gulped down an antâs egg, was the goldfish brain he was having to use to process every thought that crossed his mind. Quite a lot of them, mainly the ones full of anger, were too big, and had to be cut and shaped, so that by the time theyâd been digested and rebroadcast, his draconian wrath had been pruned down to pique, which in turn was somehow water-soluble, like aspirin.
No; belay that . The worst thing was remembering how heâd ended up here, because that really had been dumb . . .
On the very first day of his search for his errant daughter (and if ever he laid eyes on her again, heâd have something to say to her; no question about that whatsoever) heâd been walking through the streets of the city which, as far as he knew, sheâd run off to, when he began to get the impression that someone was following him. A human - so, no big deal; even now that he was in human shape, humans didnât frighten him in the least. He knew that stronger humans preyed on the weaker sort, beating them up and stealing their money and trinkets. If he hadnât been busy with other things, he could easily have amused himself for a day or so by strolling about looking weak and helpless so as to provoke just such an attack and thereby rid the place of a few of its two-legged predators.
This specimen, though, didnât look like the sort (he could, of course, see him quite plainly with his third eye); any humans weak enough to be preyed on by something this small and scrawny wouldnât be out and about on their own, theyâd be in an oxygen tent in a hospital. The dragon found the thought mildly disturbing. If he was being stalked by something small and weedy, it wasnât just a case of picking up fleas in the flea market. This individual was far more likely to be following him, specifically, for a reason, and the only reason he could think of was because he knew . . .
But the creature was human, whatever its motives might be, and all a dragon needed to do in order to clear the streets and send the humans scampering off in all directions was to rain a little. Not too much, of course; unscheduled raining was unfortunate if unavoidable, and criminally irresponsible in all other circumstances. He started off, therefore, with a light sprinkle of fine, soft drizzle, the sort that sits on top of a humanâs hair like a spider in its web, rather than plastering it to the scalp. That sent a fair number of
Then the world went dark all around him, and his curved and bloated vision was filled with the huge, monstrous face of a human - the human, his jailer. An enormous eye, as big as he was, twinkled at him though the glass, making him flinch involuntarily and launch himself across the bowl with a ferocious tail-flick. Of course, he ended up exactly where heâd started.
The human was saying something, to him or at him, but the water mangled the sound and he couldnât make out a word of it or even interpret the tone of voice. There was, of course, nowhere to hide in a circular glass bowl containing only water and himself. All he could do wasâNothing.
The human made a few noises, then moved. A moment or so later the goldfish felt small disturbances in the water around him, suggesting that something was showering down on the meniscus way above his head. Rain? Indoor rain? Improbable; it was unlikely that the secret of indoor rain, which had eluded generations of frustrated dragon alchemists, should have chosen to reveal itself to a scraggy little mortal during the time heâd spent trapped in the bowl. He looked up, and noticed that the water was full of slowly downwards-drifting brown things about the size of one of his eyes - antsâ eggs, falling like rain . . .
The human went away again, and the goldfish resumed his perpetual curved swimming. The worst part about his captivity, he told himself as he absent-mindedly gulped down an antâs egg, was the goldfish brain he was having to use to process every thought that crossed his mind. Quite a lot of them, mainly the ones full of anger, were too big, and had to be cut and shaped, so that by the time theyâd been digested and rebroadcast, his draconian wrath had been pruned down to pique, which in turn was somehow water-soluble, like aspirin.
No; belay that . The worst thing was remembering how heâd ended up here, because that really had been dumb . . .
On the very first day of his search for his errant daughter (and if ever he laid eyes on her again, heâd have something to say to her; no question about that whatsoever) heâd been walking through the streets of the city which, as far as he knew, sheâd run off to, when he began to get the impression that someone was following him. A human - so, no big deal; even now that he was in human shape, humans didnât frighten him in the least. He knew that stronger humans preyed on the weaker sort, beating them up and stealing their money and trinkets. If he hadnât been busy with other things, he could easily have amused himself for a day or so by strolling about looking weak and helpless so as to provoke just such an attack and thereby rid the place of a few of its two-legged predators.
This specimen, though, didnât look like the sort (he could, of course, see him quite plainly with his third eye); any humans weak enough to be preyed on by something this small and scrawny wouldnât be out and about on their own, theyâd be in an oxygen tent in a hospital. The dragon found the thought mildly disturbing. If he was being stalked by something small and weedy, it wasnât just a case of picking up fleas in the flea market. This individual was far more likely to be following him, specifically, for a reason, and the only reason he could think of was because he knew . . .
But the creature was human, whatever its motives might be, and all a dragon needed to do in order to clear the streets and send the humans scampering off in all directions was to rain a little. Not too much, of course; unscheduled raining was unfortunate if unavoidable, and criminally irresponsible in all other circumstances. He started off, therefore, with a light sprinkle of fine, soft drizzle, the sort that sits on top of a humanâs hair like a spider in its web, rather than plastering it to the scalp. That sent a fair number of
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