by Paul Cude
* * *
Tank and Richie finished their drinks in the all but empty bar. Hundreds of people, young and old, packed the outside patio area and the lacrosse spectator zone, waiting in anticipation for the bonfire to be lit and for the fireworks to start. Grabbing their jackets from their respective bar stools, the two friends headed for the open doors that led outside.
As they did so, the reflection of dozens of different coloured sparklers twinkled off the adjoining windows. The children, Richie noted as she stepped outside just in front of Tank, were all having a whale of a time, creating different patterns with their mesmerising sticks of fire that cut finely through the air in front of them, each and every one of them laughing their little socks off. As she watched, a pang of sorrow swept over her, which came as something of a surprise once she recognised it for what it was. Slipping her coat over her shoulders to protect herself from the biting cold, something she and Tank were more aware of than most here, she tried to understand what had stirred such powerful feelings inside her.
They stood at the back of the crowd, gazing over people's heads, waiting for it all to start. Children on their parents’ shoulders rubbed their hands excitedly, each dressed in colourful attire. Richie, searching inside herself for some answers to the sudden onslaught of emotion, abruptly had a moment of clarity when it all became clear. Children! It was because of the children. It was so obvious now that she thought about it. Like a startling revelation, she realised that she envied all the humans, because of their... children. She wanted what they had.
'Oh my God,' she thought, 'as if it isn't bad enough that I play lacrosse, spend nearly all my time amongst them and engage in arm wrestling contests, but now like them, I want to have... children.' In her mind she pictured the entire dragon Council toppling over like dominoes when it was announced that a certain lacrosse playing female dragon wanted to have children just as the humans did, and raise them that way. A huge contented grin crossed her face as she cuddled up to Tank for some extra warmth.
They stood alongside everybody else, waiting patiently for proceedings to begin. From the look of things, the chairman of the sports club would be taking hold of the microphone on the hastily erected stage to kick things off, just after the music being piped through the PA system finished. Both friends continued to gaze out over the darkened lacrosse pitch to the barely visible bonfire beyond, that was about to be lit. On one side of the lacrosse pitch lay the churned up, muddy rugby pitch with its big floodlights, now of course turned off. If you looked carefully in the dark, the giant H shaped posts could just be seen. Over on the other side of the lacrosse pitch sat the now deserted Astroturf hockey pitch. Like the rugby pitch, the floodlights were switched off, to give everyone a better view of the fireworks. Although the hockey pitch was only fifty or so yards away, because of the absolute darkness that enveloped it, it might as well have been on a different planet.