//------------------------------// // 5. Village // Story: The Celtic Dragon // by JumpingShinyFrogs //------------------------------// Fun fact. Sleeping on a mountain summit? Best idea I ever had. The wake up call for the morning came in the form of gentle light striking my scales and warming them slowly. I got up and stretched at a very leisurely pace. The view from the peak was just as glorious in the morning as it had been in the evening. A rising mist was hanging over the lake, blowing along gently in the wind. It was actually a nice day for once, with only a few high clouds to be seen in an otherwise blue sky. It was fairly warm too, which was nice. My wings seemed to be acting like natural solar panels, catching some of that heat and using it to warm me up. I basked for quite a while like a massive lizard, almost falling asleep again, but alas, all good things must come to an end. I had to move from my perch, because today, I wanted to something I'd never do voluntarily. I wanted to go to school. It sounds stupid, but I just wanted to see if any of my friends were there. If there was even a chance of knowing for sure, of getting to meet with someone I knew...well I wanted to find out. To not be alone anymore. Making my way down the mountain, eating another can of beef along the way, I found a few more sheep. They ran, as before. The frogs were back out, still shining in the sunlight. I paused momentarily at the base of the mountain to drink from the river, and then I was moving on once more. The biggest issue with my plan, I'd realised, was the distance. I was one of those weird people who wanted to be fluent in Irish even though it's seldom used nowadays, so I attended a Gaelcholáiste. The problem was, the nearest Gaelcholáiste was in Ballyvourney, so that's where I went to school. It's a twenty-five minute drive, but on foot? Well, I had no idea how long it would take. Which meant I'd best start now. Once I got back to the riverbank where the things I'd collected were, I dumped everything out of one of the rucksacks, and then shoved a few cans into it. There's absolutely no shortage of water in Ireland, so I didn't really see too much of a need to bring any. I know for a fact that there's a bunch of little streams and mini-waterfalls around Glenflesk that I could drink from. I used to see them every day from the bus before everything went wrong. I had no idea how long my little trek was going to take me, but I figured that there'd be stuff worth looting in Glenflesk and Ballyvourney, even if there wasn't anyone else there. So I emptied the other two bags and hung them off my tail as well so I could put stuff in them later. I walked out in the direction of Ballyvourney, careful to skirt around the Royal. I did get a brief glimpse inside, but I didn't see Tina. I didn't want to meet her, but I guess some part of me just wanted to know that she had actually been real. Which was a ridiculous notion, considering my snout was still a little tender from where she'd punched me. In order to reach Ballyvourney, I had to pass my old house. I was having conflicting feelings about going back. I wanted to, just to check and see if someone else had randomly appeared, but at the same time, if I don't check then there's still a chance, right? I ended up using the argument of needing to stay focused on heading over to Ballyvourney in order to avoid having to go to my house. As I walked up the main road, I was half expecting to see a horrifying amount of crashed cars along the way, seeing as everyone had just up and disappeared, so surely the cars had just kept driving and eventually crashed, right? Strangely enough, there weren't any cars at all, crashed or otherwise. It was like they vanished along with their drivers. Which now begs the question, if people are just going to randomly appear like I did, would their cars also randomly appear? Yikes, maybe I shouldn't walk on the road then, if there's a chance of a car with a very confused and possibly transformed driver suddenly appearing on the road. I decided to take my chances. I kind of feel like if I got hit by a car now, the car would have more damage done to it than me. So, with that in mind I walked down the main road. There isn't too much of an interesting story to tell about it, really. A lot of animals had colonised the road, mostly sheep and cows. Like before, the sheep took off when they saw me, but the cows held their ground. These ones seemed more aggressive than the ones in the park, so I steered clear of them. The road from Killarney to Ballyvourney is a very straight and simple one. Just one small roundabout and that's about it. No need to make any turns or anything. After a solid two hours of walking, I finally reached the pitiful little village of Glenflesk. A journey that would have taken me ten minutes by car, took two hours on foot. You don't actually realise how much of a difference cars make until you're without them. Seriously. I called Glenflesk a 'pitiful' village because that exactly what it is. It has a small church, a petrol station, and some houses that are halfway up the hills that are all around it. There's one pub, but it's back up the road towards Killarney, and it's more of a halfway house than an actual pub in Glenflesk. Back in the days when Irish towns were classified by the amount of pubs they had, Glenflesk probably wouldn't have even qualified as a cluster of houses, never mind a town. Still, that petrol station? Intact, meaning there's food in there. After smashing myself through the glass and seeing how everything but the fresh food was exactly the way it had been, I figured I'd help myself to a bag of crisps. Crisps were always my guilty pleasure, I could just eat them for hours and not get sick of them. The Glenflesk petrol station had always had a variety of them, including my absolute favourite, 'Thai Rings'. Sweet and spicy and delicious...mmm. There were a couple of bags on the shelf, and after shoving all of them into one of my rucksacks, I nosed around some more looking for other stuff to bring. The petrol station only had canned soup and things like that, which I found myself opposed to for some reason. It seems that dragons favour meat over vegetables, but as tearing into one of my bags of crisps demonstrated, grains and artificial flavouring were a-ok. I tried to open a bottle of Coke but ended up cutting it with my claws, so Coke just spilled everywhere, including onto me. Still, when I licked it off of myself like a cat, it tasted fine. I tried again, being much more careful this time, and I managed to get my prize, which was awesome, even if it was a little warm. I know my mom used to say that Coke isn't natural so it never goes off, but I'm pretty sure that isn't true. Might as well drink it while it's still fresh, yes? I tried to use that as my rationale for literally putting all of the Coke in the shop into one of my bags, and the same with the crisps. And I managed to find the storeroom, where crates of Coke and crisps were hiding. I took as much as I could, i.e. all of it. And now I realised that I had just taken enough luxuries to fill up two entire bags with nothing that was useful in the long run. And yet, when I thought about putting it back, I got that same feeling of 'I don't want to even though I don't need it'. The exact same thing happened in the outdoor store. I took more than I needed, on the basis of 'I want it'. I'd never been so greedy before, but now? Maybe it was a dragon thing, because dragons are usually shown as hoarders in traditional depictions. Though they usually hoard gold and jewels rather than Coke and crisps. I tore myself away from the petrol station and continued on my journey to Ballyvourney. The rest of the trip took me another solid four hours. I was nearly dying by the end of it, my legs burning and chest heaving for breath. How I miss cars. My long and now forked tongue was hanging out of my mouth as I finally turned the corner into my school. The doors were locked but an extremely clumsy body slam was enough to fix that problem. I was a little too tired to pay attention to the fact that locked doors equals no people inside. The smell of the school was odd. It was partially that familiar smell of books and too many sweaty teens in one place, but there was also a slight scent of rot from where students had left their lunch in the school by accident over the weekend. I found myself instinctively headed towards my locker, banging on the door with a clawed fist to open it. My books were all exactly as I'd left them, complete with a timetable on the inside of the door. My books smelled and looked as secondhand books do, shabby and overused. Most of them were falling out of their spines, pages threatening to go everywhere. I'm not entirely sure why, but I put one of my 'leisure books' that I would bring to free classes into one of my rucksacks, a book called The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures. It was a vague and ridiculous notion to hope that a book written to tell myths and legends about various creatures would have some actual reliable information on dragons, but I took it along anyway, for entertainment purposes if nothing else. The school didn't have much to offer me other than a little warmth and familiarity, so I left and went out into Ballyvourney once I'd caught my breath. I'd probably come back and sleep in the school later, but for now I was on a mission. Search for evidence of another person around, and then gather supplies if I can't find find anyone. Ballyvourney was a lot bigger than Glenflesk but a lot smaller than Killarney. It was one of those little places where everyone knew everyone and everyone was related to everyone else. The sort of place where a typical conversation would go like something along the lines of 'I was with Pat Reedy over the weekend', 'Oh, were you now? Sure he's my brother-in-law'. The sort of place where everyone has really thick West Cork accents with a little bit of Kerry mixed in, and almost everyone is a farmer or knows about farming. There weren't very many chain stores in Ballyvourney, in fact there weren't any at all aside from a Centra. Most of the shops and pubs were owned by families. It was normally full of life, despite its small size, and seeing it so barren like this was just...sad. It didn't feel like Ballyvourney without all the people milling around chatting with their thick accents and strange slang. It just felt like a ghost town populated with broken hearts. I poked my way through all of the little shops and pubs, not finding too much of use aside from a few cans of beef and lamb stew, as well as some tuna. It was very difficult to resist the temptation to grab everything and leave anyone else who might be around with nothing, but if there was someone else here then they weren't being as obvious about it as Tina had been considering that none of the doors or windows were broken. I sat in the middle of the basketball court at my school. I had a decent haul, but I hadn't found any evidence of someone else being around. No broken doors or windows, no strange markings. Nothing. I curled up and put my head on my claws. Maybe Tina really had been my only shot at making a friend and not being alone. And I tried to murder her. As I lay in the court feeling sorry for myself, I felt those ear frill things on the side of my head perk up at a strange sound. It sounded like the static crackle from a TV that wasn't working, or from a radio. I followed my ears to the source of the sound, and found, put under a plastic cover to protect it from rain, a small handheld radio. The radio was spitting out static, but I could just about make out words amidst the crackling. "...Anyone...there?....farm....up...road...from...Bally...ney. Find...I'll be...ting...you."