Yard Sale of Thoughts

250 words or less beginning with the sentence…Everything was going great, and then the dragons appeared. What could go wrong?

Happy Sunday!

---

Dragonets

Everything was going great…and then the dragons appeared. Granted, they were only knee-high, miniature versions of their former selves. Dragonets, we called them, but they had the same medieval mindsets.

They refused to use crosswalks or cover their scales to comply with local nudity laws. They caught their neighbors on fire—usually by accident—and forgot to pay their fire insurance premiums.

None of them obeyed air traffic controllers or used designated runways, so civilians, like me, started wearing chain mail for protection and brandishing a sword to signal when it was safe to land (all the medieval livery finally made sense). 

As a reporter, I interviewed one of the newest quadruped mothers on the block.

“Do you enjoy living in the nation’s capital?” I asked, keeping the flame-retardant sound equipment at a reasonable distance.

“Well, we’re not as revered here as we’d like to be, but we’re getting a fire going under some politicians, that’s for sure.” Her chuckle released a puff of steam.

“What do you say to the skeptics that claim dragonets don’t have a place in modern society?”

“We’re not dropping out of trees onto peoples’ heads, are we? We could, you know.” I instinctively looked up.

“So, no more caves? No more treasures?” I scanned the neighboring mountainside.

“You know what really burns me up?”

I dropped my visor.

“Stereotypes,” she said as flame met metal. “Our hoarding days are behind us. But fire drills, those need to become more frequent.”

©2023 | K.F. Hartless