He came back.
He carried things. Strange things.
One was long yet thin. It looked and smelled like skin when it's been burned. That strange burnt smell that I often smelled off the hatchling.
The other was large and round. It looked like it was made out of the same strange bramble that had knocked me out of the sky so many days ago.
He placed the bramble thing on the ground and, with a paw, knocked it over.
And out spilled so much watermeat.
My stomach growled. The single watermeat that the human gave me the day before only did so much for me. The human backed away as I approached the watermeat. It smelled so good, so oily, so...
BADMEAT!
I recoiled in horror. There was no mistaking it. It sat there, its horrible, slimy carcass so yellow and black, its pungent odour made me want to vomit. It smelled of dead things, it smelled of special death, the slow painful kind. The kind that drove dragons to vomiting and madness.
I growled. Did the human know? Did he know that badmeat killed dragons? Did he want me dead? Was this all a trap? A lie?!
I looked at the human, looking for any sign of malice on his face. I saw only confusion.
He reached down, and picked the badmeat up in his paw. How could he do that?! Could he not smell it? How can he not smell it? Was already sick? Did badmeat not kill humans?
"Get it away!" I screamed at him.
He seemed to understand me. He threw the badmeat, and wiped his paw on his fur, chattering in soothing tones.
I went back to the watermeat, smelling. I didn't smell any more badmeat, nothing tainting by its horrible death-smelly-slimy-ness, so I dug in.
Words could not describe it. They say that if you're hungry enough just about anything will taste good. At that moment, I agreed. Everything just tasted so... so... good.
My face was inside the bramble thing, licking it clean of any trace of watermeat when I felt the weight of something on my tail. It felt different. I wiggled my tail around a little experimentally when it hit me.
It felt right. It wasn't too heavy, it wasn't too light, it just felt right.
I spread my wings and took off.
It felt amazing to be in the sky again. But something immediately went wrong, I started to fall again, my body bout to painfully collide with the earth. The feeling in my tail came back, and I sharply pulled up, my body shooting into the sky, to the skysmokes and dayfire.
Something pulled my fin to the right, so I dived back towards the cove. I heard the excited noise of a human. It sounded strangely close.
I peered back at my tail. The human was clinging on to me. Needless to say, I didn't like it so I threw him off, his body landing harmlessly in the water.
That's when my tail went wrong again. My fin stopped working again, so I crashed into the water as well.
I crawled out of the water, soaked, very irritated. What had gone wrong?
I looked at my tail. I had my fin back so what was wrong? I tried to move it, but it didn't respond. My other fin moved, but this one didn't.
Then I realised. I hadn't grown a new fin, no that was stupid, the human had tied a fake fin onto my tail.
I had to admit, it was pretty good. For a moment I was convinced it was my own flesh and blood and skin. It was the same, apart from its browner colour.
I couldn't understand why a human would do this for me.
What did he want?
Author's Note
Sorry this one took so long guys. Hope you like it!
