Vyra

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. At least—not until I let them in.

As of this morning, I don’t think anyone suspects I did it. I’m watching the news from the kitchen counter and, though my name’s not being mentioned, I know what I did.

God, my parents are going to kill me.

My best friend, Charlie, thinks this is the coolest thing to ever happen in the history of mankind, and she’s probably right. If I weren’t the reason there were dragons in our town, I’d be pretty stoked, too.

She swears she’s known all along that our role playing games are some other realm’s reality. She claims that we make choices playing the game and someone, in some other world, lives out the results of those choices.

This then, what happened with the portal and the dragons and the necklace, is her proof. Someone is playing a game, and I’m their main character, because in what world, other than an alternate one, do dragons exist?

I’d like to believe her interpretation of events because that means it’s not my fault; it’s someone else’s fault. Someone who makes terrible life choices for their characters. Someone made their character steal the necklace from underneath the floorboard of their attic and carry it around for a week. Someone made their character bring that necklace to the playground to trade it for AirPods and a used MacBook. Someone didn’t bother to check the manual that said the necklace, on a waning summer moon, would open a portal and let dragons through. Someone was stupid, and if someone else did this, then I wasn’t stupid.

The portal was only open a few seconds. Thirty seconds—max. If the dragons didn’t know when and where that portal was going to open, they wouldn’t have had time to make it through. And that makes me think they knew it was going to open.

Now, I have to know how they knew so I can know how to get them back. Somehow, I’ve got to fix this before anyone finds out what I’ve done and fingers crossed, fix it before anybody gets hurt.

I push my now soggy corn puffs across their sea of milk. I can’t believe my thoughts are consumed by dragons. Real-life dragons, as in, they currently exist on planet Earth.

I hear someone knock on the front door, but keep my eyes on the puffs. My stomach’s so stressed out I haven’t even taken a bite, which is fine because there’s no rush to finish breakfast. School’s cancelled on account of seven dragons resting in the space between the football field and the pre-school’s playground.

The junior high-- or what was the junior high-- sits right in the middle. It’s probably flattened.

“Vyrah!” My mom calls from the front room, “Charlie is here!” Mom yells as if I’m not in the next room, able to look right at her from the counter where I sit.

“Thanks,” I practically whisper hoping to make my point without asking in vain to keep her voice down. Yelling is unnecessarily common in my house. Not a fighting kind of yelling, though; it’s more of just a loud kind of yelling. Like, someone-might-not-hear-what-you-have-to-say-which-would-be-the-end-of-the-world-as-you-know-it so you yell kind of yelling.

I keep my eyes on my puffs and hear the scurch of wooden stool legs on the yellow linoleum floor. Charlie plops beside me and begins fixing herself a bowl. She stinks, and I mean bad. I hate having to tell her these things, but when it’s ninety degrees outside at eight in the morning, deodorant is a must.

“Charlie, put your arms down.”

Her eyebrows come together and form a peak above her nose. She stopped being embarrassed about all this stuff back in the third grade. Her parents go through phases of things that sometimes lead to embarrassing situations for Charlie. Like six months ago, her parents got rid of all shampoo, conditioners, and “other harmful hair products” in the house. Charlies fine blonde hair stuck to the side of her head for weeks. The powders and organic, home made scent sprays only added to the grease. Charlie didn’t fight them on it, though. She adores her parents and their antics. She’d probably follow their instruction off a bridge. She’s number four of seven kids and they’re all perfect for each other.

“Deodorant's dangerous, apparently. Mom saw something on some show.” She shrugs, lifts her arm and sniffs. “And I guess the baking soda hack doesn’t work” she manages before loosing herself in laughter. I can’t help but laugh with her.

“It’s supposed to be powder. Baking POWDER.” I grab my side as our laughing fit subsides.

“Nah, mom said soda works just as well—or doesn’t, in this case.” She sniffed again before reaching for the milk and pouring some into her bowl. She keeps pouring until the puffs almost fall over the bowl’s edge. “Thank the dragons your parents don’t care about carcinogens. I love puffs.”

I pour more puffs into my bowl even though the originals have now mixed into my milk to form a batter. I continue to push them around.

“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have changed it.” Charlie says between bites. She’s always reading my mind.

“Yeah, I should have left the necklace in that box. Obviously there’s a reason it was hidden in the first place.” I dramatically gesture toward the tv. We’re whispering even though no one is in the kitchen or living room anymore.

“Someone higher up made you do it. Things like this, these unforeseen events—magical, if you dare to call it what it is—they happen because someone higher up made a choice for you.”

“Yea,” I mumbled. “The thing is, whether or not someone decided it for me—it’s happening to me.”

“Well it’s really happening to our whole town. DRAGONS!” I watch her eyes widen as the screen showed arial footage of the dragons, as if we haven’t seen the same images on repeat for hours how.

The news alternates between scenes. First, they show the cell phone video of them flying in and landing. When one lands just close enough to the person filming, the ground shakes and the camera falls to the ground. I wonder who shot the footage and where they were when the portal opened. I can only pray their focus was on the dragons and not on me, the wrong place wrong timer.

After the cell phone shot, the networks will show the view from the helicopter circling above them. We can see glimpses of intricate designs on their backs. One has plates all the way down its spine, stacked like you would dinner plates in a dishwasher. From what we can tell, each plate seems to have something written or drawn on it. No two plates look the same. Small letters. Small pictures. Reporters promise us that teams across the world are working to decipher what’s written.

And finally, the news crew will show their anchor, standing in the street, as surrounding neighborhoods are being evacuated by the National Guard. The dragons haven’t hurt anyone yet. But they’re dragons.

The words “BREAKING NEWS” have been running across the screens of the world for twenty-three hours now.

It’s all breaking because there are seven dragons in Arbor Valley, Tennessee.

“We’ve got to figure out how to get them back.”

“You and who?” Charlie raises an eyebrow and stuffs a too-big spoonful of cereal into her mouth.

I know my best friend. To her, this is a game, and she wants a formal invite for an expedition. I bet she even starts calling it a quest.

“You and me, we gotta get them back where they came from.”

“Whoever is choosing this quest, I appreciate it.” Charlie offers the words skyward, as a sort of prayer, before slurping a sip of milk from the side of her bowl. “We’ve gotta bring the necklace back to the school.”

“I’ve got to get that necklace back.”

“Back?”

I stand and grab both her bowl and mine and walk to the sink. “I saw these huge things flying around, so I had to get my phone out,” I offer the explanation as if it excuses my error. “I must have dropped it when I thought I was putting it in my pocket.”

“You dropped the necklace? Where the dragons are now napping?” She furrows her brows and scrunches her lips tight.

“It was an accident, Charlie.” I’m annoyed now. How much better would she have done to see these huge flying—for what I knew at the time they were jurassic sized bats—coming at her? I feel lucky I escaped with good footage and clean underwear. “You weren’t there, it was terrifying.”

She rolls her eyes and I can tell she’s equally as annoyed. Knowing Charlie, she might have tried to get closer to the animals than trying to get away. “Maybe with your video we can tell exactly where you were standing when you dropped it.” She might be annoyed, but she’s a positive spin on everything. From body odor to lost portal-opening jewelry, she’ll find the bright side.

I wonder where to start if we can’t find the necklace. I guess we can hope to find something online with what little I remember about how it looks. The black stone, Charlie thinks it was black diamond, was about the size of my thumb nail. Blood red stones, probably rubies were set all around the diamond, and what looked like tiny clear diamonds filled the space between the jewels like grout between tiles. The metal chain was heavy but not gold. It wasn’t yellowy—or even white or silver for that matter. It was opaque, dark, and shiny. I thought it was costume jewelry, but wonder what kind of costume jewelry has this kind of power. Those were real stones. What kind, I don’t know, but I’m certain real for sure.

If we could somehow sneak by the National Guard and into the playground—we could retrieve the necklace easily. If the dragons hadn’t stomped it into the earth, it’d stick out above the grass and it’d sparkle even in the dark of night. I knew because I saw it glow in my pocket the night I took it out. Maybe finding it would be easy.

Who am I kidding? Finding it would be impossible because getting to that playground would be impossible in the first place. I shake my head at myself and chuckle humorlessly. If we could sneak by the National Guard—yeah right.

We hurry to my bedroom, shut the door, and I quietly turn the lock.

Technically, I’m not allowed to lock my bedroom door when friends are over. Something about if I’m not doing anything I need to hide, there’s no need to lock the door.

Privacy means nothing to parents, apparently.

This video, though. This is something to hide. So I’m locking the door.

I hit play on my phone and and watch as my tv screen mirrors moments of darkness. Before anything shows on the screen, wind rushes through the speakers. Then, the first shadow passes across the screen, so quick it looks like it might have just been a bird. Within seconds, more shadows float across where the camera is aimed. They are huge and the closer they get, the gusts of wind pushed from their bodies scratch harder against the mic. I turn down the volume so that my speakers don’t burst.

Occasionally a part of a wing or what looks like a tail whips across a background barely lit by the moon behind it. The first dragon lands hard on its feet. The ground shakes. I knew what was happening because I was there, but even just watching on screen, the quake was obvious. The camera jumps around as I tried to keep my balance. Even with the tv volume turned down, Charlie and I can hear glass shatter and the building behind me moan. A second dragon lands, more gracefully but equally heavy. This dragon has dark lines around its body. “What’s that?” Charlie points.

“Pretty sure it’s a shadow from—“ I point to the tree lines and a few flickers of light from a power line breaking.

“No, Vyra go back. Go back a few seconds!” She rushed the television screen, and stood only inches from it.

“Shh, Charlie do you want my whole family in here?” As I hush her she looks at me just long enough to grab my phone. She rewinds. Then plays. Rewinds. Plays. Finally, she hits pause. I see it.

I walk closer to the screen and stand next to her. Charlie moves her finger slowly toward the stilled image. “Is that a—“ She traces the lines on the second dragon’s body. Two dark, thick, lines run parallel around the body and meet together right above a dark square. “That’s a bag, Vy.”

My stomach flips with nerves. Using two fingerson the screen, Charlie zooms in. The image becomes less detailed, but not completely blurry. The top of the bag flips up for a second, then back down. A delayed effect of the landing?

Charlie rewinds, slows down the video speed, and pushes play again. We both inhale sharply. Without needing instruction, Charlie rewinds, plays, and pauses again.

It’s too dark to see clearly, but something lifts the top of the bag. It looks left. Then right—and straight into the camera.

“That’s a human.” I whisper. There's a human in a bag on a dragon’s back. A human that stared right into my camera.