Dragons and Fairies and Werewolves, Oh My!

“Humans!” A rumbling voice yelled as the townspeople made their way out of the town hall and into the street. The dragon in question was sitting not in the street, but on the buildings on the other side of the street. A closed grocery store was the only thing that was completely destroyed, with exception to a few parking meters, one car and a street lamp.

What the dragon had destroyed, however, was not in the minds of those standing before it. Instead, the woman dangling from its sharp, sparkling claws was the object of attention. And of course that there was a large, red and yellow scaled, fire breathing muscular reptilian winged dragon in the middle of their town square.

The dragon was magnificent, all things considered. Despite the very apparent threat at hand, at least half of the people standing below the mighty creature had made sounds in total awe. This was that thing which they had read and secretly dreamed about for most of their lives. Dragon!

“Yes?” The secretary of defense called out momentarily later. He had been in awe and almost completely forgotten about the fact that there was a woman – though not screaming, very pissed off – in the creature’s grip.

“We demand our freedom. One of you has freed us, and we know you seek to bring us back into the Nothing that we were.”

“Now then…what makes you think that?” Rich called up dryly. It was nothing less than he had expected, sort of. He had never really expected to meet a dragon when he had accepted his role of secretary of defense. But, shit happens to everyone in that role, regardless of luck or time or century.

“We may have been able to do nothing, but a few of us were able to escape. Holes, here and there. And we were watching, always. And what we saw was what we had feared: You have not changed!” The dragon rumbled, holding his captive a little higher. She yelped a tiniest noise, and Rich felt a stab of sympathy. He hoped she wouldn’t be up there, out of the realm of his control, for much longer than was necessary. “We refuse to be bound again. And we know there are others, in different parts of the world, bound also. You took from us our families, and we will not be separated once again.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.” Rich said. “But holding that woman up, like that, it’s not a very good show of grace, if you catch my drift.” He offered the first, tenuous step towards retrieving the hostage. He wondered, briefly, if the hostage recovery people at the FBI had any experience with the psychology of dragons.

“Sir,” Rich heard a voice behind him, anxious and quiet to avoid overhearing by the massive red beast in front of him. “The helicopters should be here within minutes.”

“Thank you, Johnny.” Rich acknowledged, never taking his eyes off of the dragon. He had read up on the mythology of the dragons, and he knew what it was going to take to get rid of all of them. To some, you couldn’t tell a lie around dragons. He hadn’t tried that yet – but he wasn’t quite sure if he should. The whole fire breathing thing could prove dangerous to the town.

“We demand our freedom. Promise us, ours, and we will promise you, yours.”

“Me?” Rich asked, struggling to hold back a laugh. They couldn’t hold the United States’ Secretary of Defense hostage. That would cause an all out war.

“You. And everyone in your little meeting that just walked out of the building. Centaurs!” The dragon rumbled. Rich realized that it was too late to compromise, but he was going to try anyway.

“Now, hold on three seconds!” Rich shouted, his voice getting slightly higher. “We haven’t done anything to you yet! You’ve only been out a few hours, and here you are taking hostages! I can see why they put you behind that veil in the first place!” Rich was angry, now, as the group of centaurs was approaching, fast, and none of them had any weapons. At least none of them were virgins.

“You’re wrong.” The dragon said, assuring the man who was about to get taken against his will by a pack of half men, half horse hybrids who were a lot bigger than he had ever imagined. “We took a count, and the faeries are missing two. The faeries love their families, and would never leave. They need each other to survive.”

“Well we made no intentional acts of cruelty!” Rich protested as a centaur finally reached him, pulling his hands behind his back like in a bad episode of Cops and leading him back towards the building.

“Will you blame the entire human race for one death?” He shouted, rapidly losing his sense of power and security. This was not good.

“I see not how this is different from when we were last here.” The dragon responded, a grim smile on his face. The dragon’s massive red arm lowered with his prey to the ground to the final centaur. “Do not kill her. But keep her separate from the others. And do not take her as you will – it is not time for that. Yet.”

“Yes, sir.” The centaur acknowledged, waiting patiently as the woman was laid down onto his back. “Give me your hands, woman.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if I don’t bind you to me, you’re going to fall off. You’re coming with us. Not them.”

“What makes me so damn special?” The woman grumbled as she held out her hands.

“You’re not afraid. Unlike the others. That’s why Jaer-al-loh chose you. We would never intentionally, unless absolutely necessary, cause harm and suffering to any living creature.”

“That’s not what the Catholics said so long ago.”

“How do you know about that?” The centaur inquired. “I thought only the people in that meeting knew the entire, human version of the history that has happened between those who inhabit the earth and those who were driven out?”

“I’m the wife of one of those.” Angela Johnson admitted to the centaur. “So don’t think about trying any of that funny stuff.”

“They always want it by the time we’re through with them.” The centaur, Dav-ki-bras turned as much as he could to wink at her. “But Jaer-al-loh said no fun stuff with you. This is a hostage situation.” Dav-ki-bras turned his smile into a pout. “Which means no fun for us.”

“I never imagined the centaurs of all creatures to have a sense of humor. But, I suppose it makes sense, all things considered. You were creatures of Dionysus, correct?”

“Yes ma’am, we were. What is your name, if you don’t mind me asking? I am Dav-ki-bras.” The centaur asked as he walked slowly through the outskirts of town, hoping that no one would come out and inquire, or he would have to take them, too. He was enjoying his first female contact in a while – all of the faeries and dryads had gotten tired of amusing the centaurs, eventually.

“Angela Johnson. I’m the wife of a Green Tech head of a division, in case you were wondering. You don’t have to send someone searching. He’s Charlie Johnson.” Angela paused. “How do you spell your name? Do all  of the names have three syllables? Or just yours and the dragon’s?”

Dav-ki-bras sighed and spelled out his name for the woman on his back. In any other situation, he might feel offended, but he could tell she was just curious and really meant no harm in her inquiry.

“It’s not the three syllables that are important.” Dav-ki-bras said to her. “There are dashes, and these separate our three names. Some of our peoples do have four and five syllable names – it all depends on their three names. The first name identifies us. To call me quickly, you would simply call me Dav. The ‘ki’ portion of my name is my species. We didn’t use to have that, but before we were banished, the humans gave it to us as a means of identifying all of us by species and geographic location. If we were the only ones released, then you will only find one mid-name per species.”

“So you are Dav. And ‘ki’ means Centaur?” Angela asked. She was actually comfortable with this creature.

“Yes.” Dav-ki-bras answered happily. He was not used to explaining his life, and realized that although he would most likely tire of it soon, he was enjoying it right now. When you could do nothing except speak to each other on the other side, it got boring quickly.

“So what’s the third name?” Angela asked, wishing she had a notebook to write stuff down. Not that she could – her hands were tied around the chest of a very well built upper half of a centaur.

“The third name is our family name. Kind of like, Johnson, for you. I believe.”

“So my name in your methodology would be Angela-…” Angela trailed off, waiting for the appropriate middle title to give herself.

“Hu, I suppose. We’re not too creative.”

“Angela-hu-Johnson.” Angela crinkled her face up. “That’s kind of boring. I thought it would be more exciting.”

“Sorry. You won’t need to worry about our naming system anyhow.” The centaur admitted. “I’m pretty sure that when we integrate, we won’t be giving you our full names.”

“Why not?”

“Your people imprisoned all of us for well over a millennia.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I’m sure you are.” Dav-ki-bras said dryly as he picked up the pace a little bit. The others would be expecting him soon enough, and his conversation would have to end by need, not by want.

“Dav?” Angela asked gently, moving up his spine a little bit. “You realize that you guys picked the wrong generation to come out on? Our town is a small safe haven, but the rest of the world…”

“We know. We’re going to try, anyway.”

“Are you immortal?”

“Some of us are. Others have given birth, lived, and died behind that veil.”

“No. Are you immortal?”

“Me personally? No. But I am very, very hard to kill.”

“We have machine guns.” Angela said to him, feeling her stomach drop. “Its not the beginning of the millennia anymore.”

“I know.” Dav-ki-bras said. “It would take an entire village back then to hurt me. I think I can handle your metal bullets, if you catch my drift.”

“Okay. Just thought you should know.” Angela supplied to her new friend. “Getting shot hurts.”

“Who would dare shoot you?” The centaur flipped his head back around to stare at her as much as he could. She blushed.

“My brothers. Don’t worry – it was all in play! We were young, and didn’t have anything lethal. Though I still have a few pellets stuck in various places around my body.”

“I will kill them if you would like.” The centaur growled, and Angela shook her head no, emphatically.

“I thought it was hell to take another’s life?” She asked. “They are my family.”

“So they have the Johnson family name, then?”

“No.” Angela admitted, and then hit him. “But you know that. Women have been taking their husbands’ family names for centuries. I’m sure the practice was there when you were here.”

“It is a rule in our society, that if you marry or commit to another, there are two things you can do, each with different outcomes. Dav-ki-bras explained. “You can keep your own name, and therefore, your own family. Your husband or wife will be your family, but their parents and brothers and sisters, you owe no loyalty to. This is usually frowned upon. Instead, either partner will take the other partner’s family name, and then owe allegiance to that family, and are separate from their own.”

“So you don’t…love your family, anymore, after you marry?”

“We love all. We are not loyal to our families if we leave them. You see, we – the centaurs – there are no female centaurs. We were made that way. To reproduce, we must copulate with one of you.”

“And I take it human females don’t take too kindly to being…copulated with?”

“Well, they love it.” Dav-ki-bras said. Angela could feel his chuckle throughout her body. “But their families, do not. And so, for my race, it became that you were either no longer loyal to us, and loyal to a human, or you were loyal to us, and your partner came to join us. It is how it has been since that time.”

“Was there any one particular incident that drove this…group, decision?”

“A king’s daughter. A king who wanted to capture and domesticate the centaurs.”

“Dumb.”

“Very.” The centaur’s rumbling laugh erupted again. “I doubt you heard of the place – our final captors kept that incident, among others, very quiet.”

“So if all of you are male…are you all in the same family?”

“No. There are a few different clans of us around. I am in the Bras family. There are others in the Toya, Kluio and Grish families – all of those were placed behind our veil. And then, there are parts of other families of centaurs as well who got stuck behind our veil. The humans weren’t too good at separating all of us equally.”

“Oops.” Angela said, rolling her eyes.

“Here we are!” Dav-ki-bras announced happily, fumbling briefly with the knot he had tied around Angela’s wrists. “I’ll be escorting you into our camp now. They don’t know that…you…are coming.”

“Me?”

“A woman. Damn Jaer-al-loh for that.”

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