I climbed the nearest hill because that's what you do when you're lost. Get high. Look around. Figure out where you are.
It wasn't much of a hill — more of a grassy rise, maybe fifty feet above the mushroom circle. My legs were shaking from exhaustion and adrenaline and something else I didn't have a name for yet. The air was so clean it almost hurt. Every breath felt like the first glass of water after a long run.
I reached the top and looked out.
And sat down. Hard. Just — dropped, like someone had cut the strings holding me up.
(Birds. Those are birds. Those are just birds up there. Big birds. Weird birds. Birds with long tails and — )
I rubbed my eyes. Blinked. Rubbed them again.
They weren't birds.
Dragons.
Small ones, mostly — some no bigger than hawks, others the size of large dogs, gliding in lazy circles against that impossible violet-blue sky. Different species, different shapes. Some had feathered wings. Some had bat-like membranes. One had four wings instead of two and moved through the air like a dragonfly, darting and hovering. They came in colors I didn't know scales could be — deep reds, silvers, a green so bright it looked electric.
(If this place has dragons, what else does this world have?)
The wonder lasted about three seconds before the survival instinct kicked in.
I was sitting on top of a hill. In the open. With no weapon, no shelter, and no idea what ate what in this ecosystem. I might as well have been a neon sign that said FREE LUNCH.
I got up. My knees were still jelly, but fear is a decent motivator. I needed to get back down, find my backpack — I'd dropped it near the mushroom circle when I'd sat down in shock — and find something sharp. Even a rock with an edge. Anything.
I made it three steps before the migraine hit.
Not a headache. Not the dull throb I'd been getting back home that I took pills for. This was a spike — white-hot, driven straight through my left temple like someone had taken an ice pick to my skull. I dropped to one knee, one hand pressed against the side of my head, teeth clenched so hard I thought they'd crack.
(What — what is this — )
The pain was so bad my vision blurred. The sky smeared. The dragons smeared. Everything went sideways for a second, and I thought I was going to pass out right there on top of that hill like an offering.
Then it stopped.
Just — gone. Like someone had flipped a switch. One second I was drowning in it, the next I was kneeling on the grass, breathing hard, with nothing but the ghost of the pain fading behind my eyes.
I felt wind behind me. A big gust, close, the kind that pushes your hair forward and presses your jacket against your back. I didn't think much of it. I was too busy being grateful that my brain had decided not to explode.
I turned around.
And went face-first down the hill.
Not gracefully. Not a tumble or a roll. A full, undignified, arms-flailing, dirt-eating fall down a grassy slope because my body had decided that the appropriate response to what I was seeing was to stop working entirely.
I heard a sound from behind me. Small. Quiet.
A laugh.
I looked up from the ground, grass in my hair, dirt on my chin, and saw it.
A dragon. A real one. Not the little ones circling in the sky — this was something else entirely. Black scales, dark as obsidian, catching the light in a way that made them look almost liquid. Sky-blue eyes with a depth to them that didn't belong on an animal. A hint of blue running along the edges of its wings and down the ridge of its spine, like someone had traced the outline of it with a painter's brush.
A wyvern. The word surfaced from somewhere — biology class, maybe, or one of the fantasy novels I'd read in high school. Two legs instead of four. Wings that doubled as forelimbs. Built for speed and altitude.
It was sitting at the top of the hill, right where I'd been standing, watching me with its head tilted slightly to one side. The way a cat watches a bug it hasn't decided to eat yet.
(I can't show fear. I am scared to death right now but I cannot show it. Stand your ground, Heather. Stand your ground.)
I got up. Slowly. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to run, but I'd seen enough nature documentaries to know that running from a predator is the fastest way to become prey. So I stood. Dirt on my face, grass in my hair, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.
The wyvern watched me.
I watched it back.
It was big. Not the biggest thing I'd seen in the sky, but big enough that its head alone was the size of my torso. Its tail curled behind it, thick and muscled, with a row of sharp spikes near the tip that looked like they could punch through steel.
(Okay. Think. My backpack is by the tree near the mushroom circle. My Swiss army knife is in the front pocket. If I can get to it — )
Then I stopped myself.
(A Swiss army knife. Against that. That's like bringing a toothpick to a sword fight. That's like — no. That's like a splinter to him. I'd be giving him a splinter.)
(Either this migraine is going to kill me or that dragon.)
(I have to think of something.)
Before I could think of anything, the wyvern moved.
Not toward me. Past me. Down the hill, toward the mushroom circle, toward my backpack sitting against the tree where I'd left it. He moved fast — faster than something that big should move — and before I could even shout, he had my backpack in his jaws.
He didn't rip it open. That's the part that got me.
He picked it up carefully, like he was carrying an egg, and turned it upside down. Everything tumbled out onto the grass — my jacket, the canteen, the fishing line, the bell, the medication bottle, my lunch bag. He set the backpack down and started sniffing each item, one by one, his massive head lowering to the ground with a delicacy that didn't match his size.
He looked back at me.
Then he picked up my insulated lunch bag and sat down with it, turning it over in his claws, trying to figure out how to open it. He was being gentle. Careful. Like he didn't want to break it.
(What the hell.)
(What is happening right now.)
I stood there, watching a dragon the size of a small car try to unzip a lunch bag with claws designed for killing, and something in my brain just — shifted. The fear didn't go away. But something else moved in next to it. Curiosity, maybe. Or the particular kind of insanity that comes from being so far past your limit that nothing feels real anymore.
(I'm dead either way. Might as well ask.)
"He — hey," I said. My voice cracked on the first word. I swallowed and tried again. "Hey. Dragon. Would you — would you like me to help you open that?"
He stopped.
He looked at me. Those sky-blue eyes, steady and bright, with an intelligence behind them that made the hair on my arms stand up. This wasn't an animal looking at me. This was something that understood what I'd just said.
He lifted one wing, then picked up the lunch bag and held it out toward me.
I walked over. My legs were shaking so badly I thought I'd fall again, but I made it. I took the bag from him — his claws were warm, the scales smooth and dry — and unzipped it.
He grunted. A low, disappointed sound, like he'd been expecting something more impressive inside.
I pulled out what I had. A turkey sandwich in plastic wrap. Two rice balls with tuna filling. A chocolate pudding cup. A water bottle.
Not exactly a feast.
The dragon stood up from where he'd been sitting and walked — walked, not flew — about thirty or fifty feet away. As he moved, I got a clear look at his underside, and I realized I could tell what he was. Male. Like sexing a lizard, but on a scale that made the comparison almost funny.
He stopped, turned in a circle, and looked at me. Then he pressed one claw into the dirt and drew an X.
I stared at it.
He looked at me. Then at the X. Then back at me.
(Is he — does he want me to put the food there?)
I walked over and placed the sandwich, the rice balls, and the pudding on the X. He reached over, picked up the water bottle with surprising precision, and set it back in my hands.
Then he walked to another spot, maybe ten feet away, and drew another X. He patted the ground next to it with his tail and looked at me.
(I'm starting to feel like a pet.)
I walked over and sat down. My knees gave out the second I bent them — I didn't so much sit as collapse into a controlled fall. He settled a couple of feet away from me, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off his body.
Then something happened that I felt before I understood.
A vibration. Deep, resonant, starting in my chest and spreading outward. Not the migraine — this was different. This was like standing next to a speaker at a concert, feeling the bass in your bones. I looked at him. I could see something — a shimmer in the air around him, like heat rising off asphalt, but with a color to it. A faint, pulsing energy that gathered around his chest and throat.
He roared.
Not a threatening roar. Not the kind you hear in movies. It was more like a deep, sustained note — a sound that had weight and texture and direction. It rolled across the clearing and hit the food I'd placed on the X.
I watched the turkey sandwich grow to ten times its size.
The rice balls swelled like they were inflating. The pudding cup became a pudding bucket. The plastic wrap stretched and held, somehow, like it had grown with everything else.
(We could feed a whole town with this. We could feed an army.)
The dragon walked over to the food and started eating. Calmly. Methodically. Like he hadn't just performed a miracle.
I sat there, trying to process what I'd just seen, and failing completely.
Time passed. The sky shifted from that deep violet-blue to something warmer — afternoon light, golden and heavy. I pulled out my phone without him seeing it. The screen was still glitchy, but the clock worked.
2:30 PM.
(I've been up for almost thirty hours.)
I heard him coming back. Heavy footsteps, but measured. Careful. He stopped in front of me and lowered his head, and in his jaws — held gently, impossibly gently — were pieces of the giant sandwich and a couple of the enormous rice balls, torn into human-sized portions.
He set them down in front of me and went back to his spot.
(Did he just — did he feed me first?)
I looked over at the mountain of food. He was already back at it, chowing down with the focused intensity of someone who takes eating seriously.
(Or he's trying to fatten me up for the kill.)
He glanced back at me, still chewing, and something about the look — casual, unbothered, almost companionable — made the paranoia feel stupid.
I picked up a rice ball and took a bite.
It tasted exactly like it had when I'd made it this morning. Same temperature. Same texture. Same tuna filling. Like the magic had scaled it up without changing a single thing about it.
I ate. He ate. The afternoon stretched out around us, quiet and golden, and for a few minutes I almost forgot that I was in a world that wasn't mine, sitting next to a creature that could kill me with a flick of his tail.
Almost.