Kerri Austin

Where Is Here?

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Actually, there weren't always dragons on Earth. It's only been a few years since the Incident, that's what the media calls it now, that brought them back into existence. Before the Incident, there had been a minor regen back in 2002. Only in China though. We watched it on the news. It seemed very far away. We saw the Chinese people donning their headlamps and jet pack fire throwers and metal suits and felt badly for them, but never, ever expected to deal with that here, in the good ole USA. It took them two years to get the regens rounded up and extinguished. Years later, Chinese scientists traced the regen point of origin to a cave in Yunnan. Some spelunkers stumbled, literally, over a pit filled with glowing rocks. Or so they thought. A minor earthquake caused an avulsion of the cave wall, uncovering the regen eggs. Now, I don't know about you, but there's no way in hell I would think that pulling rocks, pulsing with amber light, out of an obviously once buried pit, deep in a cave in China was a good idea. Then again, I would never BE in a cave in China just for the thrill of exploration. I wouldn't even be interested in watching that on TV. I'm more of a Ted Lasso, Hallmark Channel, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel kind of gal. Sci-Fi was never my thing. It even took me a while to come around to the Marvel Universe, but my kids finally broke me down by swearing that beyond all the theatrics, was an amazing story. We watched it back in the early days, when everyone was still in hiding. They weren't wrong. I was expecting something akin to an 80s miniseries about a werewolf outbreak, but now I'm hooked. Maybe, in some small way, it's also because the Marvel Universe, doesn't feel so far off from our own now.