Flow

15/05/23

This other city gleamed. Every building was clad in gold or silver or glass. White and black chrome shone here and there, and even the asphalt reflected the shining city above it. It had rained recently, and night-time storm clouds were still reflecting a blue glow, hanging low around the scrapers. Flow watched as hatchling snappers splashed their way along the road, followed by their laid-back parents.

They were the only dragons around at this hour, besides herself. Snappers didn’t sleep, so these hatchlings were likely being herded towards their cram school classes. The idea of 24-hour school had horrified Flow when she first heard about it, but these hatchlings didn’t look so concerned. And there were laws against over-working your snapper kids, anyway, her friend Radar had added.

Whatever. It was just one thing on the list of a thousand things that were new to Flow. She’d come here hoping for answers, mostly, besides a better job and money to send home to her hatchmates, and she’d known the city was ‘diverse’.

But she hadn’t really understood what that meant until she got here. Her better job (fixing up refrigerator units in people’s homes) had been… eye-opening, to say the least. People’s homes didn’t mean ridgeback homes anymore, okay, sure, it meant dragon homes, but, oh no, it also meant beastclan homes, and most beastfolk weren’t even aligned with any element!

She’d handled the Wind-aligned family of ridgebacks quite well, and had managed not to outright offend any of the faes she’d visited an hour later. The pair of longneck students though… Flow grimaced at the memory. And after all these weeks of constantly embarrassing herself, constantly stepping over cultural lines that no one had taught her… she still didn’t have any of the answers she’d come for in the first place.

She let her Lightning magic sizzle at the end of her tail, then doused it by calling Water from the asphalt. There was no one around to see, the snappers were long gone.

She called more water, from the ground and in the air, twirling it around her tail, then separating it into little shining globes. Lightning leapt through them, creating a momentary constellation in the humid air. Flow’s scales lifted slightly at this display, but then she let her tail drop back to the ground.

Even here, in a modern city in which every possible sentient species appeared to be making a living, no one had ever heard of a dragon aligned with two elements.

The heavens opened again. Flow spread her wings and let herself be drenched.


Something fizzed and spat as it sat on a flat, pipe-strewn roof, watching the young ridgeback far below. It glowed a bright blue and pink, and it steamed where the rain hit its fur. It was quite possibly the worst individual one could choose to use as a spy. Spying was only the preliminary phase, however.

The glowing blue thing was very much looking forward to phase two.