by Jada Fisher
“Humans tried to team up with the friendly dragons, but it was too little too late. The dragons had too much firepower—pun not intended—and they won after a single year.
“That was before I was born, of course. My parents remember what life was like beforehand, but most humans have passed, leaving all of us that were born into this.”
“So, the dragons rule here?” I asked, my stomach dropping. Was this what would happen to my reality?
“Yeah. With an iron claw, so to speak. They are the government, the wealth holders, everything. They distribute wealth to who they see fit, and food, and…” Her voice wavered. “Punishments.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a strict curfew in effect, and a whole ton of restricted areas that humans can’t go to. Almost all of us have tasks, either working in the mines, on the farms, or in their castles, with a few humans being trusted to find resources in the wilds.
“Technology that our parents had is pretty much done away with. The dragons like music, but never had a thing for television or the like. Phones don’t work anymore, or at least that’s what my parents tell me, but electricity and a lot of our waterworks do, so go figure with that.”
“That sounds…intense.”
“So, you wanna tell me why you don’t know any of this stuff? I’m at that point where I’ll pretty much believe anything. You time travelers? Actual aliens?”
“Not quite,” Mallory answered, essentially having a conversation with herself. “We’re from another dimension.”
“Another what?”
“Dimension. Don’t you read or watch any sci-fi?”
Mal’s one good eyebrow raised like my friend had said something ridiculous. “Humans aren’t allowed to read anything unless given permission by a dragon master. I don’t know what a sci-fi is, but unless it has to do with me surviving, I really don’t care.”
“Okay…right, so skip all the pop culture references.” She looked to me a bit pleadingly. “Davie, you wanna help me out here?”
I startled. I had been so deep in thought about the kind of world that Mal had been painting that I was only half paying attention. “Oh, um. Well, it’s basically like there are a whole bunch of copies of this world, all separated from each other yet existing together. Each one has tiny little differences, or big differences, all spawned from divergent paths. And all of these separate worlds are connected to one central reality, one that I think might have been the original but some catastrophic event caused the great fissure.”
“Huh… That really is something.” She kept walking, not turning to face me, but I heard the debate in her voice. As if she wanted to believe me but some of her struggled with the very idea.
“Alright, so we know the background of your world,” Mallory asked, ever curious. “But what’s your story specifically? I didn’t see any humans around where we were. Was that because of the curfew, or were we in a restricted area?”
“Both, actually. So, you’re real lucky I came by. The gardens are kept mostly in the park and only those assigned to work there can go in during permitted hours. That’s why the hounds were on you so quickly. You probably set off about a dozen alarms.”
“The hounds?” Bron asked, the first time since he had spoken. “Is that what you call the wargs?”
“I know nothing about wargs,” Mal countered, stiffening. “But I know that accent. You’re a dragon!”
I quickly inserted myself between the two, holding my arms out. “He is, but he’s one of the good ones from our dimension.”
“I…” Mal squinted and took a deep breath. “Any other day I’d call you insane, but considering that we’re all standing here alive, instead of roasted to a crisp, I guess I could extend the benefit of the doubt.”
“That would be very kind of you, Miss Mal.”
“Miss? How fancy.” She shrugged but then her eyes flicked to me before recognition crossed her face. “Wait… I think I know you. You look familiar.”
“Like that girl in your dreams, right? Just taller and fatter?”
“No… Hold on, lemme think.” She stared at me another minute before a light went off behind her eyes. “I know! Your dad was a high-level servant and did something he wasn’t supposed to. The whole family was executed. Burned at the stake. Him, his wife, and his two daughters. Everyone had to attend so they could be made an example of. Practically the whole city showed up.”
I stared at her a moment, eyes wide as my brain tried to wrap itself around that thought. In this world… I was dead? And still via fire, like the one that had tried to so voraciously kill both me and my sister when we were younger. Was there a link there, somewhere? Or did we just have notoriously bad luck?
“I…uh… Well, at least we don’t have to worry about running into ourselves, I guess.”
“There ya go, way to look on the bright side,” Mallory said encouragingly. “So, you gonna tell us more about yourself, Mal, my friend? Like what’s up with the whole one eye thing?”
She grimaced and kept walking. “Not every human wants to live subjugated to the dragons. So, we try our best to live under their radar. Living away from most population centers, scrounging for food. It isn’t easy, and we don’t live long, but at least we’re free.”
“So, what, you lost your eye in some sort of daring raid for supplies?”
“You seem awfully fixated on the whole one eye thing.”
“It’s a very specific look. Forgive me for being curious how it happened.”
She shrugged. “I said no to a dragon. You don’t say no to a dragon.”
“…oh.”
That pretty much soured the conversation, and we walked in silence until we reached another ladder that looked much more worn than the previous ones we were passing. Mal headed up, pushing aside the heavy lid.
“You know, those weigh quite a lot.” Mallory pointed out from the bottom.
“Yeah?” the girl said, grunting as she pushed it open.
“I’m just saying, you’re not exactly jacked with muscle.”
“The bottom of these have been filed down so they don’t weigh as much. They’re heavy, but not as much as they used to be.”
“Wow, that’s actually quite smart.”
“You do what you can to survive around here. That’s one of the easier things.” She finally finished pushing it aside and looked back to us. “Stay low and keep quiet. The last thing we need is to be spotted, cause y’all are slow as molasses and I don’t want the dream lady screeching at me that I messed this up.” She sighed and shook her head. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a full day’s sleep without any more of her nightmares screaming at me.”
“So, uh, Mickey is persistent then?”
“I don’t know about that. It’s more like she sends me a pre-recorded message that just plays over and over and over again, telling me what she wants me to do until I do it.”
“Wow, that really doesn’t sound fun.”
“Probably because it isn’t. Now, no talking until I say so, okay?”
I nodded, and then we were all climbing up the ladder.
I felt like we were all adapting to the situation pretty well. From Mallory meeting her counterpart, from me finding out I was dead, and Bron finding out that everyone that he had ever known or loved had probably been slaughtered in a great war and that most likely, he had never been born.
Or maybe we were just in shock. At lot had happened in a very short while, and there had been a whole lot of info dumped on us too. I had the feeling that a warm meal and rest would do us wonders.
Plus, there was the hope that I could connect with Mickey again with my dreams now that we were finally on the same planet.
I crawled out of the manhole and Mal allowed Bron to slide the cover back in place. I was sure she had to be tired too. She looked like she hadn’t had a full meal in a couple of days, and there were intense, dark circles underneath her eyes.
She held a single finger to her chapped
lips and crouched down, creeping along the wall of a building that was cloaked in shadow. We had emerged in some sort of alley between two buildings that had been nearly knocked over and had crashed against each other to make a triangular sort of tunnel.
We followed along after her and my heart was pounding in my chest. I felt like dragons were hovering right over us, waiting to swoop down at any moment. Although I had been to the psychiatrists for many issues, from hallucinations to dissociation, anxiety had never been on the list.
…that was certainly beginning to change now.
Then again, sneaking for my life through the territory of enemies who would most likely kill me on sight was a pretty good reason to be anxious.
Suddenly, Mal turned, sneaking through a barely-there doorway that looked like it was filled with rubble more than empty space. For a moment, I thought that my broader body wouldn’t get through, but I managed and so did Bron, until we were in the crumbled remains of what looked like it might have once been an apartment complex.
I looked around, a bit disconcerted by all of the rebar and broken wire and destroyed everything, but Mal didn’t seem troubled in the slightest.
We picked our way through the rubble until we reached a basement door, which Mal shouldered until it opened enough for her to squeeze by and motioned for the rest of us to keep following.
We did, and the moment we were through, she was shutting the door again behind us.
“Alright, you can talk now, but quietly. We’re almost there.”
We nodded, but none of us actually spoke. Instead, we just kept walking as she led us down a flight of haphazard stairs and through another set of doors.
I thought that perhaps we had finally reached our destination, but she kept going, until we were at a jagged hole in the ground. Lighting her torch, she jumped down and kept right on walking out of our sight.
“You know, I just had a thought,” Mallory said, hesitating for just a moment.
“What if this is a trap?”
I shrugged. “If it is, I don’t see much of what we can do about it. We’re in an entirely different reality. If this girl says she knows Mickey, then I’m inclined to believe her.”
“Fair enough. Both feet right in then,”
And just like that, she jumped after her doppelganger, leaving just Bron and I.
I shot him a meaningful look over my shoulder. I could tell that there was so much we needed to say to each other, but no time to say it. So our eyes said all they could, and then I jumped into the hole.
While it was tall enough for Mallory and Mal to walk uninhibited, Bron and I had to crouch down. It made my back hurt and my thighs ache, but I sucked it up and kept going.
Thankfully, the jaunt didn’t last more than a few minutes, and then we were stepping out into a small, bunker-like room. Normally, it would have been completely sealed off, but it was clear that the massive destruction above had partially broken down enough of one of the walls for us to crawl in.
“Welcome to home, sweet home,” Mal said, going over to a dingy mattress in the corner.
I looked around, uncertain where we were supposed to go. The space was only a few feet bigger than my bedroom at home, with the mattress in one corner, a broken-down plush chair in another, and a shelf with random cans and bags of food against one wall.
“I think I’ve got some blankets in the chest over by the chair,” Mal continued. “I don’t have much in supplies, but you can feed yourself if you’re hungry. I’ve got a hotplate on the lowest shelf.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, walking around the space. “So, nobody bothers you here?”
She shook her head, flopping back on the mattress. I could almost feel her tiredness from where I stood. How long has Mickey been harassing her? I thought she had said a couple of weeks. That seemed like an awfully long time of never being able to fully rest.
“No. I think whoever this belonged to before got rounded up on one of the raids they run every so often. I scouted it out for a couple weeks—the sewers can get kind of crowded and are usually the first place they’ll look when they feel like hunting, so that wasn’t really the best place to be—and when no one came back for it, I moved in.”
“It seems like a primo spot,” Mallory said, sinking to the floor and leaning against the wall. She looked exhausted too, and I felt my own fatigue starting to swamp me. “I’m surprised there’s not more competition for it.”
“Eh, it’s a little close to dragon territory. Most runners like to stick to the fringes between the human territories and the wilds.”
“By a little close, what do you mean?”
“I dunno, I’m not a tape measure.” She caught my look and sighed. “If we went above ground, we could probably throw a rock at a border guard.”
“Huh. Safety via danger. Sounds great,” I muttered.
“I don’t even know why I act surprised at this point,” Mallory added.
“Here.” I looked to Bron, surprised, as he handed me a blanket. A quick scan of the room showed that he had indeed gone to the chest and riffled around. “You should sit in the chair and try to rest up. We’ll need your abilities going forward if we want to find your sister and get home.”
“What about you?” I asked, looking to him uncertainly.
“I’m a dragon. I’ll be fine on the ground.”
“Why don’t we just take the cushions off the chair and arrange them on the ground. I’m sure that’d be more comfortable for the both of us.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about me,” Mallory called from where she sat. “I’ll just lay on the hard ground, no problem.”
Mal let out a groan. “Why don’t you come over here? I figure the least weird thing is having another copy of me in my own bed.”
“Really? You’re down for that?”
“Sure. I’m certainly not doing it for the executed-girl copy and the dragon boy.”
“Fair enough.”
We all went about making ourselves comfortable, Bron taking the back and seat cushion from the chair and arranging them next to each other on the floor. Once they were to his satisfaction, he settled down on one and gestured for me to take the one next to him.
But I had a better, more comfortable idea. Usually, I would be far too shy and in my own head to do something forward, but I was too sore and tired, and a little bit scared if I was being honest with myself.
So, I grabbed the cushion and scooted it away from the wall, placing it by his knees. Using one of the spare, rattier blankets, I folded it into a thinner square of padding and put that at the end of the cushion, right about where I guessed my hip would be.
Bron, to his credit, didn’t question me. Just watched curiously as I arranged the stuff. Once I was relatively satisfied, I laid on my side, my head resting against his thigh, my torso on the cushion and my hip did indeed land right on the blanket where I wanted it to.
Was it a four-star resort mattress with memory foam? No. But it still felt magical on my worn-out frame. I waited a moment for Bron to interject if the contact made him uncomfortable, but one of his large, warm hands came to rest on my shoulder and I took that as his approval.
“Good night, everyone,” I murmured, eyelids already becoming heavy.
“Good night,” Bron and Mallory answered.
There was a beat of silence before Mal chuckled. “Y’all are gonna have a time fitting in here.”
4
Worst Shopping Trip Ever
I woke up without any dreams of my sister, and I couldn’t help but be bitterly disappointed. I supposed it made sense, in a way. I had used whatever it was that made me a seer far more than I ever had in my entire life the day before, so all of those random visions and dreams probably wouldn’t recover until I got my energy back.
Although I did notice that the longer I went without the anti-psychotics in my system, the more my abilities seemed to grow. When this whole dragon thing had first happened, it took a dragon directly threatening the life of my friend fo
r me to be able to call up a tiny little shield. Now I was hopping across dimensional walls and shielding when I wanted to, instead of as an involuntary response. It made me wonder what I’d be able to do a month from now. Or a year.
Provided I lived that long, of course.
But then that line of thought inevitably lead me to Mickey. She hadn’t been on anti-psychotics like me. In fact, she had never had problems with hallucinations or all that like I did. So had she been hiding them our entire lives and never warned me, allowing me to suffer all the therapy and rigmarole that I had to go through? Or had something else set her off?
I supposed I’d have to ask her if I saw her.
No…when I saw her.
“Are you chasing your thoughts over there?” I heard Mallory groan from the mattress in the corner.
“What? No…” I automatically objected, wondering if she was starting to develop some sort of crazy, psychic power. Much like Mal, I was ready to believe pretty much anything at this point.
“Please, you grind your teeth when you’re really thinking hard and it’s possibly one of the grossest sounds in the world.”
I blushed at that and turned slightly to look up at Bron. He was slightly awake, his eyes half-lidded and a small smile on his face. Out of all of us, he looked the least like he had been through the ringer and back.
“Is that true?” I asked, a bit dubious that I was in my twenties and still learning things about my own strange body.
He nodded slightly. “But I have heard far worse sounds. It’s almost cute.”
“Yeah, tell that to her dentist,” Mallory shot back, grumbling as she fought her way off the mattress.
“You have dentists in your reality?” Mal asked, not sounding tired in the least. I guess she really had a good rest without my sister in her head. I was grateful for what Mickey had done because it obviously worked, but I felt kinda bad.
“You don’t?”
Mal shook her head, her jaggedly cut hair going this way and that. It obviously hadn’t seen a brush in quite a while, and I had to wonder what other mundane things were considered luxuries here. “That’s for dragons only. My parents told me there used to be all sorts of services for humans, but none of them really exist anymore.”