Even Dragons have bullies.

“Next stop: 57th street and Fifth Avenue!” Greg Clawscar bellowed to nobody. The doors on the saddle-car slowly closed before he took off from Madison Avenue. With just a few strokes from his twin wings, he was able to lift himself, twelve tons of dragon, and the empty saddle-car strapped on his back up and over the quaint forest called Central Park.

Greg was a Mark 2 Calico-colored Dragon who, coincidentally, worked the M2 line that, for over a hundred years, was covered by buses. But a flying dragon can cover the southern segment of Central Park in half the time.

Just a few years after his hatchling features began to disappear, Greg signed on to New York City’s famous Dragon Jobs Program. A ten-year veteran, Greg had slowly climbed the ranks up to one of New York City’s most important public transportation lines. Which is all the more reason for his unusual glumness on this hot summer night. The advent of auto-taxis has diverted the public into private transportation en masse.

See, as a civil servant of ten-plus years, Greg had committed himself to the ethos and role of an essential worker meant to serve the over ten million humans and a few thousand dragons that called New York City their home. Flying an empty saddle-car, helping nobody, and doing nothing but expending his life force made him feel small which is a very perplexing feeling for a Mark 2 Dragon to sit with.

As he glided across the cloudless sky, the humid air caused dew to collect and drip off his under-scales, which sometimes dropped on parkgoers. Some considered “dragon sweat” lucky, like when a pigeon’s stool ruins your Mets hat or an acorn blessed you with a sudden rap on your head. Others more inclined to hate dragonkind, “Knights”, they called themselves, used this odd slice of city life to draw up a hateful petition. They aimed to collect enough signatures to introduce an anti-dragon bill in the city council. The last thing his shop steward told him right before he started his shift was that the petition had some legs under it.

After several years as a city worker did he arrive at his current thinking on the matter of Draco-ape relations; humans were well accustomed to him and seemed willing to tolerate the presence of dragons. There were undercurrents of fear and various prejudices and jealousies but these existed on both sides. Greg saw that problem as a product of sentient beings, not just humans.

This was on the back of Greg’s mind when out of the corner of his yellow eye he spotted a little smidge of white crawling through a dense forest section of the park. He turned his massive right wing sideways to catch the air and turn his body towards the small figure.

“A little boy,” whispered Greg. A toddler or a slightly older youngling in a large white gown frantically thrashed through the mud and thick brush before collapsing on his back. His face was wet and red from what Greg imagined were welts from the branches smacking his face.

Greg hovered above. The child was clearly distressed and in need of help. But in these moments of strangeness, civil servants were all the more expected to follow protocol.

The protocol here was for Greg to arrive at his next stop, on schedule, pick up new passengers, and request that one of them use the pay phone at the very back of the saddle-car. They would have to pay 50 cents, two quarters or it wouldn’t work, to place a call to the City’s Department of Child Welfare. Greg was more inclined to believe the boy had a better chance to find his way into a coyote’s stomach before a police officer found them. Greg smiled for he thought dragons would do a better job as police officers than humans ever could.

With no passengers on board and the distressed child pulling at Greg’s heartstrings like a kite, he still wavered. He knew he should pull his massive grey-and-blue conductor's hat over his muzzle and dive down landing as gently as a freight train with wings could but he was nervous nonetheless. Little human children were erratic around dragons.

Most had been conditioned and exposed to dragonkind. Children could see his kind in the city, working stiffs just like Greg, carrying humans around as public transportation for a few decades now. And there were other dragon city workers.

Mark 2 dragons that worked the city trash incinerators by Jersey. Dragons that pulled cruiseliners out of the Hudson River. Mark 1 dragons that helped build skyscrapers. Mark 3 dragons that demolished buildings to make way for condominiums, mostly. And Mark 4 dragons that bore new tunnels for the city’s infrastructure projects. Dragons were everywhere you looked in the Big Apple.

The “Knights” didn’t help but still. Most adult humans took no issue with dragons stepping into what once belonged exclusively to human labor. Children were a different matter.

They took a while to shake loose that primal fear of dragons. Greg was nervous the lost child would howl in fear, refuse to be helped, and likely be traumatized by his appearance. The last thing Greg wanted was to whip up more anti-dragon sentiments or get subpoenaed by Human Child Services. But he took the civil service oath. His duty to the public far outweighed his fear of hateful humans.

He flapped his giant wings one last time to center his massive body before he descended. The youngling was in a part of the forest thick with trees, he would have to land several feet away so as to not crash trees over the child's head. He found a small clearing in the trees a few feet away.

As he landed, Greg frantically thought over what he would say first. He had to be considerate of tone, and pose. "Empathy, empathy," he whispered to himself. Anything less than these considerations might turn the child into a blubbering terror-stricken mess. He sauntered softly towards where his nose took him, crushing trees and leaving behind footprints that sunk nearly a foot into the soft earth. Finally, he arrived at the boy.

Greg dropped his shoulders and tucked his wings in by the saddle-car, his knees were bent to make himself smaller, less imposing. He raised his voice and said;

“Hello, little one. Are you lost?”

The boy was wide-eyed but still. Greg was already regretting his decision. He lowered himself flat to the ground soiling his underside with mud, the massive leather straps of the saddle-car creaked and yawned as his stomach stretched out on the floor.

The boy wiped his face with his dirty hands before he covered it again and cried. With his face covered, he stepped toward Greg’s face and leaned against his snout.

“I was chased by bullies, from school. They stripped me and left me with a hospital gown.”

“Why do they bully you, youngling?” Greg kept his head on the floor, allowing the boy to lean his head against him.

“They think I’m crazy because I’m different.” Greg let loose a small snort that startled the boy for a moment.

“Nonsense. You are both human children. How different could you be?” The boy shook his head.

“I want to go home,” he whispered. Greg slowly raised his head without moving his body off the ground.

“I can do that for you little one. I must inform my supervisor. Say, would you happen to have any quarters on you?”

“Gowns don’t have pockets.” The boy shrugged at Greg.

“Nevermind. The union shall have to deal with management. Jump on little one. Make yourself comfortable. Where’s home?” The boy made his way to the shaped leather steps at the entrance to the saddle-car and climbed them one careful step at a time.

“Jackson Heights.” The boy said before he walked past the saddle-car doors.

“Queens?! Oy vey.”

“What’s the problem with Queens?” the boy asked as he popped his head back out for Greg to hear.

“You’ll see, little one, you'll see. Now strap in. I got some pointers on how to deal with bullies, maybe they’ll help you out.”

Greg carefully lifted himself off the ground and waited until most of the thick mud slipped off his under-scales. He took his time with his movements and didn’t mind it one bit now that he finally had a passenger.