I lay, not moving, in a blackberry bush, trying to ignore the thorns poking into my sides. My heart pounds heavily in my chest as the strange fleshy bipedal draws closer to my hiding spot. As it closes in I feel a mixture of panic and exhilaration- a human. Here! As this thought goes through my head I feel something inside me stir, as if the human’s presence had awoken something deep in my soul. It’s so near now I can hear it’s labored breathing, blocking out all of the other forest noises. I normally would wonder why it’s panting so hard, but for now I’m too terrified to think clearly.
Suddenly something in a nearby tree moves, startling the human. It glances around nervously, before sprinting off, into the thick foliage. I realise the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.
Next to me I hear something move, I nearly jump out of my scales, but then remember Terrla had hidden next to me. The beautiful green dragoness looks at me, with a crazy grin, “A human!” She says excitedly, “We just saw a real flesh and blood human!”
I feel a grin start to creep onto my face as well, the crippling fear I had felt, only moments before fading. As long as I can remember Terrla and I had been told stories of Hybrids -creatures that are half dragon and half a strange being called a human- and as long as I can remember I had wished to one day meet one. I guess today was my lucky day. I knew the human had to be a Hybrid, humans didn’t live in our world, the only way for a human to possibly cross over from their strange homeland- a place called Earth- they had to be a Hybrid.
After we’re sure the human is gone for good we climb out of the thorn bush, I search myself for thorns, gladly my thick dragon scales have stopped any from sticking in. “A real human.” I say my smile growing even larger, “not ten feet away, and we’re alive!”
“No one’s going to believe us.” Terrla laughs, before throwing her wings around me in a massive hug. I feel the blood rush to my face, I hope to all the gods my crimson scales hide the blush. She pulls away after a few moments, still laughing and thankfully oblivious to my embarrassment.
The two of us sit there on the forest floor, laughing about the human encounter for a few more minutes, before remembering why we were here in the first place; Terrla had discovered a small cave yesterday and we had “forgotten” school so we could go and explore it today.
We walk for about a half hour before finding the cave again. We spend about a half hour poking around, but the cave isn’t all that large and we soon lose interest. We finally decide that it’s probably time to return to the village.
We live in a small oceanside frontier village called Sea-Claw. I’ve lived here my whole life. Before I was hatched my mother and father lived in the country Werahenua. When my grandfather was killed in the civil war that had been raging for years, they joined the band of refugees who flew across the sea founded the Sea-Claw colony. I was hatched about a year later.
After about a half hour flight we arrive back at the village, we part ways and as I walk home I realise that I had forgotten to tell the school master I was “sick” today. Crud.
I walk into the small wood cabin my dad and I live in. My mother is no longer with us, she passed away after a hunting accident when I was only three years old, I don’t remember her very well, but dad has never been the same since she left.
Speaking of dad the red scaled dragon was waiting for me, clearly angered that I had skipped school, “How were your lessons today?” He asks as I walk in.
“Good!” I lie, even if I was a good liar he would have seen though it in a second, the schoolmaster had come to see him recently, I can tell by the scent in the cabin, that horrible smell that only our schoolmaster had.
“Is that so?”
“Yeaaaaaaaaaah.” I say, unconvincingly. I’m so dead.