Blinking at the bloodied reptile between his wagon wheels, Erik cursed his luck. The horses he’d stolen in Mar Dell were champing at their bits, pulling erratically against the brake he’d set, and generally whinnying their distress to any creature who might be watching from the forest. He glanced to the colorful foliage drifting on the breeze, expecting to see this creature’s parent crashing toward him.

A disheveled ruffian peered over the side of the wagon instead, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What was that? D’you lose a wheel?”

Erik shrugged off his cloak, hoping the breeze would lift his muslin shirt suddenly sticking with sweat to unwashed skin. “I think it’s a dragon.”

His companion disagreed. “That’s not possible. The slayers hunted ’em all out a hundred winters ago. None left.”

Erik spread his arms wide to show the evidence before him. “What else would you call this?”

“By the gods, man! You ran over a dragon? How’d you not see—”

“It came out of nowhere.”

“You better drag its carcass to nowhere.”

Erik cringed against Jackore’s sarcasm and countered with, “You don’t think it’s good eatin’?”

Jackore pointed toward the cornfield behind Erik. “Hide it or the adult’s gonna find and eat you.”

Erik laid his cloak next to the fledgling. While he manuevered the child-sized creature onto it, he griped about Jackore’s culpability in this mess also making him a juicy meal for a dragon parent. “You could help me.”

“I’m not getting its blood on me. You think the mother won’t smell that when it comes to heal it?”

“Heal it? What are you on about?”

Jackore lowered the pitch of his voice almost an octave. “Bards in the pubs tell of the old wyrm mothers laying a hundred eggs and if even one went missing, they’d leave the ninety-nine to go find it. They could track and heal like nothing else in this world. Dragons were full of magic only the gods understand.” Returning his voice to his normal whine, he finished. “I want nothing to do with it.”

Erik paused to wipe his brow, wishing he’d stolen a sword while in Mar Dell’s marketplace. “Fine. You hide up there doing nothing.”

He grumbled some more while he pulled the makeshift gurney into the field. It took time and effort to drag the thing over felled stumps no farmer had removed and far enough into the vegetation that the crushed stalks left in his wake could be hidden from the roadway, too. The only good fortune in the whole situation was the unharvested crop rustled above his head as he hid his crime.

It should prove good cover.

The juvenile’s robust colors of orange and red mimicked the turning leaves of the forest, which Erik told himself was half the reason he didn’t see the thing dart in front of the horses in time to stop. The richness of the colors also made him worry about the efficacy of his lightweight cloak hiding the creature. He tucked its spiked tail under the fabric, cursing at a scale pricking his finger.

“This’ll have to do. There’s no time for diggin’ graves. I’ve gotta get further down the roadway before your momma comes ’round.”

He left the dragon — cloak and all — between rows of fresh-smelling corn and scurried back. The horses stood silently quivering under a lather of sweat with their nostrils flared and ears laid back, which he considered an improvement. Jackore’s lack of complaint was welcome, too.

He quickly kicked some of the roadway’s sand-and-pebble over the blood to conceal the accident and jumped to the driver’s board. “Good riddance,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The horses whinnied their unhappiness, but moved forward as directed. He drove them more quickly than before, keeping an eye on the forest to his left. If dragon’s fire were to accompany the breath of the wind, it would likely come from there.

One gnomon’s shadow later, his heart rate had returned to normal, the breeze was starting to bite, and he called to Jackore. “You can stop cowering under your blankets. We’re plenty far from the act and plenty safe.”

When Jackore didn’t respond, Erik grumbled under his breath and turned on the seat. The threadbare blankets Jackore had insisted on bringing instead of a cloak were missing. As was Jackore.

Erik yanked the reins to stop the horses. A twinge of lightning shot through him, searing his muscles. His heart rate began racing and he jumped from the wagon as a pair of winged reptiles dropped behind it—one the size of Erik’s favorite tavern.

When the dragons’ feet thudded on the ground, spraying sand and sound, the horses bolted.

The smaller of the two beasts had a mess of corn silks sticking to dried blood on its scales. It pointed at Erik, as if singling him out from among a host of men. The larger one lowered its head and bared its teeth.

With a shriek, Erik turned to run after the galloping horses and bouncing wagon. It was a useless reaction. Dragons are full of magic only the gods understand.

The End

(c)2024SandyLender

(This story takes place in the world of Onweald, which you can learn more about on The Choices Series page.)

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Six days before Christmas, Winston the Eclectus parrot let out his "I see someone on our front porch" shrieks of dismay while I was working in the office/Florida room at the back of the house. No one knocked on the front door (or the window, which, if you've been following along at home, you know is an option with one of my neighbors) and I was not expecting a delivery that day, so I didn't hurry myself away from work to deal with the porch. About an hour later, I mosied into the front room, looked out the front window, and stared at a large jack-o-lantern style pumpkin sitting on my patio table.

Before I go any further, lemme offer a touch of backstory.

A few years ago, but while I lived here in Citrus County, an enterprising ring of burglars had been going around placing white stones in front of houses to determine which houses had humans coming and going during holidays and popular vacation times. If the stones were moved away from doorsteps or high traffic areas, it meant people were home. If you didn't notice the white stone and move it...you in danger, girl.

This "white stone burglary" concept didn't immediately occur to me as I stood looking out the window at the squash that would be clearly visible from the street as an odd and orange decoration in the middle of nothing else on my porch. Instead, I was pleased that someone had gifted me a pumpkin for Christmas. I bebopped outside to see who it was from.

It was from no one.

There was no tag.

There was no label.

The only sticker on the pumpkin was from the nursery where it had originated, and that had no name or greeting or indication that the person leaving this on my porch knew me or that I knew him/her. I looked around the porch for a minute to see if maybe a note had blown away? No. That's when the "white stone burglary" concept tugged at my brain. Had some enterprising group of thieves upped their game and placed pricy pumpkins on porches instead of rocks? That seemed like quite a financial investment to me...but...

Obviously, I'd have to take this pumpkin inside to let the burglars know, "Yes, the homeowner is here. Don't try to rob the place."

Then my paranoid brain told me to put on the brakes.

What if this pumpkin was laced with fentanyl or some other stupid drug and as soon as I wrapped my arms around it (I'm telling you guys, this squash was large), I succumbed to an overdose? What if the enterprising thugs were waiting in the park across the street to see me collapse...

So my stupid butt went back in the house, put on a long pair of dishwashing gloves, collected the pumpkin without hugging it, put it in the bathtub to wash it down, and, when there were no drug-induced incidents, I hacked it up for my chickens. Clyde and the Bonnies approached it with about the same trepidation I did, but enjoyed it thoroughly once they realized I wasn't trying to burglarize or poison them.

In fantastic news, my neighbor who uses the ladder to peek over the privacy fence texted me the following day. She wanted to tell me she'd left a pumpkin on my porch for my chickens. Bless her heart. I took her some cookies. But I elected not to tell her of my paranoid insanity handling the gift with gloves and disinfectant.

I hope everyone's New Year is off to a great start!

Become a Supporter

While I'd heard anecdotally of an increase in athletes of different ages collapsing and being carted off fields of play or practice courts and so on, a statistic shared by One America News Network earlier this year startled me. The network reported 769 athletes had collapsed during games during a one-year period (from March 2021 to March 2022). A subsequent report by Good Sciencing found 890 incidents of athletes suffering cardiac arrest, another serious injury, or death after receiving a COVID-19 shot during that time period. The number who succumbed to death was 579.

In other words, physically fit persons who work out, exercise, and make sports a regular part of their lives were dropping dead after following guidelines (or mandates) to take a vaccine intended to further their good health. They were dropping dead at what I would consider an alarming rate. Dr. Joseph Mercola included a quote in his article, posted April 21, 2022, that "500% more soccer players in the EU are dropping dead from heart attacks than just one year ago."

I don't want to belabor easy-to-find stats regarding athletes who continue to drop during practices, Friday night high school home games, and nationally televised broadcasts. We all see this happening. What I want to point out is the mind-boggling hypocrisy and infuriating ability of actual science deniers to accept the reality taking place on the world stage.

I'm one of the people who was mocked by online trolls (and friends) for pointing out the propensity of the media, medical establishment, and fear-mongers for attributing most of the deaths in 2020 to COVID-19, no matter the underlying causes of a person's death. For example, if your uncle had a history of pericarditis and donut binges on days of the week ending in "y," his fatal heart attack during a bout with COVID-19 would be ruled a COVID-19 death, whether he was on the mend from the virus or not. If your sister was in the final battle of stage 4 breast cancer when the virus caught her, no doctor in his right mind would label her death from cancer. God no. It was obviously COVID-19 that took your sister from this world and the facility in which she died received a handsome kickback for the paperwork filed on your behalf.

Anyone caught questioning this online was crucified and canceled by those who worshiped Anthony Fauci.

Now we have a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) where humans can spend 45 minutes (or more) fighting to input basic data to alert "authorities" of adverse effects they've experienced from the COVID-19 shots. Look that up when you have an afternoon to drive yourself insane and an evening to sob into a pillow afterward. Fauci worshipers in elected positions have gone on record to fret about, wait for it, non-vaccine-related deaths being recorded as vaccine-related. Those same people who told us in 2020 that every death labeled a COVID-19 death would not have happened without the complication of virus, thus the virus needed its props, are now whining about how unfair it is to suggest the shots are part of the equation when a physically fit athlete drops in front of a camera live-feeding to a national audience. Those who once accepted the death-narrative of the media, medical establishment, and fear-mongers now blindly accept "unknown cause" is the trending cause of death.

COVID-19-shot-related deaths are real. They are not limited to athletes we see hitting the ground on live broadcasts a second before the feed is cut to commercial. They are not limited to college athletes we see collapsing on TikToks or Reels before the vids are suppressed by "the algorithm." They are not limited to a talented 17-year-old singer practicing his solo on a stage in Naperville, Illinois. They are not limited to my next door neighbor's friend or my boss's father. It frightens me when I think of the limitless death to come and the friends I am likely to lose too soon.

I suppose it's stupid to care what anyone writes on the death certificates of those we mourn. Will I care what culprit is blamed when I'm sobbing over the grave of a friend I've known for nearly four decades? I only wish we could've named the cause in time to stop those friends from putting poison in their bodies.