Becoming the Dragon by Alex Sapegin

Author:Alex Sapegin [Sapegin, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2017-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

Raston, the Royal Menagerie. Andy. One day prior…

The stream of visitors dried up. The supervisor locked the gates. The street sweepers came out onto the square in front of the cage and the enclosure. There were huge piles of rotten food everywhere.

Andy straightened his back and stretched out as much as the shackles allowed. Everything hurt. Those accursed boys. I’d like to wring their chicken necks…

He fumbled about around him until he found a whole apple among the corks and rotten fruit, almost untouched by the bad stuff. He rubbed it on the fur on his stomach and bit into it. He was hungry. The daily battle with muteness and the bruises and scrapes from fruit and rocks thrown at him took its toll.

The dragon’s chains clinked in his cage. How long had they been living next to one another already? It seemed like an eternity, and there had never been any other life—only the enclosure and the cage, and the dragon next door, who turned out to be his friend. Sadly, Andy wasn’t able to talk to him; no one removed the chains from his snout. Andy did the talking, and the dragon blinked, shook his head, wiggled his fettered wings or beat his tail.

His neighbor was larger than the skeleton in the bald hill. He was the size of two African elephants stuffed inside a black scaly covering. The scales were of various sizes—the size of a large dinner plate on his chest and stomach; the size of the palm of Andy’s hand, on his sides, back, and neck. Occasional smallish spikes protruded along his spine in a single row, which split into two rows by the time it got to his powerful tail. They were about 6 or 8 inches apart there. His mouth, with its protruding tips of his teeth, commanded respect, as did the size of the retractable claws on his front and hind paws. And he had horns—quite formidable horns. However, his frightening appearance masked a kind soul.

As soon as Andy saw the black silhouette in the cage, vague doubts began to cloud his mind. He had seen this life form before somewhere, he was sure. Three days later, when the phony half-wolf learned to counter the muteness spell, they had their first conversation, most of which took place in gestures, signs, and various types of question-and-answer techniques. The rest of it was more fruitful; it confirmed the doubts that were tormenting Andy. The black dragon was the one from the bald hill. At the question, “Why didn’t you fly away?” his neighbor shook his wing, and Andy saw a scar that was scabbing over on the membrane. That’s how it went with them—questions and silent answers, although sometimes the dragon growled.

The time Andy didn’t spend on one-sided conversations, he used to study his magical potential and abilities. A few methods remained in his mind that had been transferred to him from the now deceased Alo Troi. The despised shackles of notrium would not

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