Split 15

“We’re from the Straits Times,” the journalist at the front said, “My colleagues and I wanted to cover your stories, and hopefully publish an article sometime soon, like say, within the vicinity of the next... twenty-four hours.. We’d like to get some info from your side.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not.” I replied, sighing with a dismissive wave.

“Why not?” he said, eyeing me. I was pretty sure he was checking out the full extent of my changes so far, but I pretended not to notice.

“It’s... a long story. I’d rather not share it, hm?” I replied.

“Really?” the journalist said.

“I insist.” I replied, folding my arms.

“Fine, we’ll pester your buddy instead, hopefully he’ll give us better answers.”

I waited out the next-half hour or so in bored silence, waiting for the reporters to pass as they went about asking Teryx all sorts of weird, awkward questions, all of them directed at trying to guess where the ‘mutations’ had started.

It was quite funny for a while when they got on to the slightly more sensitive topics like whether Teryx was banging a dragon in-game, seeing how flustered and unprepared he was to receive such a question, but apart from that, the question and answer session seemed a little bit more bearable than I’d have expected, save the entrance of the journalists themselves.

I had the feeling of dread as I watched the reporters leave the room eventually, having had their questions answered by at least one of the two patients situated in ward 57-B , hoping that whatever they did with the information would be accurate. Too many a time had I read cases of British tabloid newspapers twisting up facts and rumours about people in order to make them a little juicier to read, and I wondered whether the local newspaper guys around my area did the same thing.

The ward was fairly quiet again afterwards and I decided to take a nap since there was nothing else to do. As I was fluffing up my fairly lumpy pillow for the umpteenth time, in order to hopefully smoothen out the odd lumps inside whatever filling it was, a doctor came in with papers, passing a set each to both Teryx and I.

“Checkout time, guys,” He said, directing us to sign in a few places, “You’re being discharged.”

“That fast?” Teryx said, “I thought you guys hadn’t found anything conclusive yet.”

“Exactly,” the doctor replied, we can’t find anything conclusive. As far as we’re concerned, your little mutations aren’t exactly life-threatening (yet), and neither does it seem that they’re contagious, so you’re free to go.”

“No strings attached?” I said, raising an eyeridge –no, eyebrow.

“Well, of course there’ll be strings attached...” the doctor replied, adjusting his tie, “We just want you guys to leave your address and take down this phone number, so that if anything else happens, you can give us a call and we can take you guys back in for observation.”

“Well then,” Teryx said, “What exactly counts as ‘something happening’? As far as I know, we’re constantly changing, so...”

“Ah, that’s where it might get a bit difficult,” the doctor said, “Just give us a call if anything really major happens, like if you guys turn a lot... less human. Apart from that, the only other time that might warrant a call is if you think you’ve stopped changing, and then we’ll want to just give you a few tests and check out what’s going on.”

“So, you’re sure you still have no idea what’s going on?” I said, sighing.

“Weeelll.... We may or may not have at least discovered one thing...” the doctor said, scratching the back of his head, “For one, the only thing we really know now is that for both of you,  your DNAs are rearranging themselves.”

Teryx and I gave the doctor a blank stare.

“What that means, is that basically, we can’t find anything that is changing you, you guys are just... well, changing on your own. Our best hope now is to just find out what caused it to start shifting before anything else happens to other people.”

-o.=.o-

Coming home was somewhat awkward, if you could put it that way. Well, not really awkward, but well... strange, in the least. I had hailed a taxi to bring me back home from the hospital when they gave me back my own personal belongings, and the moment I stepped through the front door, my parents were there, watching TV by the sofa.

When they heard the door open, obviously the first thing that they did was to look up, and I waved sheepishly, not quite sure of what to say to them, nor what to do. Instead, I just gave them hugs and handed them a letter from the doctor that summarised everything that they really needed to know, and as if nothing happened, they went back to watching TV after telling me they were glad to see me home.

It was odd, per say, at how nonchalant they were at all this. I had at least expected that there would be some crying, long talk or at least a little more response given what had just happened, but instead they treat it like I had just come back from a stayover at a friend’s place.

Shrugging that off and feeling at least somewhat thankful for the whole homecoming thing turning out better than expected, I went into the kitchen to grab something to eat while sticking the doctor and the hospital’s numbers to the fridge, in case we might need it. I munched on an apple as I headed back up to my room, opening the door only to sneeze. Dusty? I thought, I’ve been gone for a only what, a week?

I sighed and opened the windows and door to my room, turning on the fan and letting the whole room air out. I grabbed a wet cloth from the kitchen and started wiping up the surfaces of my room, hoping that nothing much had been touched in my absence.

Once that was done, I decided to let the room air out for a little bit more, and headed out into the back yard, where the cool evening breeze was just starting to blow.

Some shit you get yourself into, Ray. I thought, looking up to the pink sky. There was nothing much to look at, being frank, but I looked up anyway, feeling somewhat contemplative. Why had this happened to me? Was there a meaning to all this? Was someone out there trying to prove something, and did that mean that I was going to be a pawn in some sort of larger-scale plan? Would I ever go back to being normal? That last question really put it into perspective for me. I had to find a way to reverse it, there was no way that I was going put up with being half-dragon for the rest of my life, not with all the stares I’d get. No, I’d want to go back to being normal, melting back into the crowd where I could find myself unbothered by people.

Yeah, right. I thought, sighing to myself. I wasn’t kidding anyone. Even if I ever did go back to being normal, who was I to say that life would go back to being the way it was? I opened the sliding door and headed back in, closing it behind me.

Dinner, for the second time since it had gotten a lot worse was somewhat better than before. I was certainly more comfortable now, considering that I wasn’t spending the entire time worrying about whether my parents would want me to take of the extra clothes I was wearing since I wasn’t wearing them anymore. However, there to replace that worry was this undeniable sense of awkwardness (and silence at the table) that neither my parents nor I could really get around. By all means so far, they seemed to be taking all this a lot better than I anticipated, considering that their son was now turning into some sort of half-lizard... thing, best put.

I ended up retreating to my room for after bidding them a goodnight when they told me that they were going to take an early one tonight, and was left to do nothing more than stare at my computer afterwards. What was I left to do? Certainly, at the rate that I was going, it would serve me nothing if I were to abstain myself from playing Vernia, considering that it was happening on its own accord now, yet, searching for someone who might know what was going on seemed to have equally dubious outcomes as well. Who was I to know if this guy was going to turn out as a phony? I decided to take my chances anyway, and with a sense of assurance from myself that I was doing what was best, booted up the computer and put on the helmet, heading back into Vernia.

-o.=.o-

“Phwoar, you’ve been gone for a pretty long time, ay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” I said, rolling my eyes as I stepped around the makeshift campsite.

“Anyway, managed to get a few leads here and there from passing travellers while you’ve been out,” Harold said, “Turns out that we might not have to head so far out.”

“Hrm?” I said, cocking my head, “Why so?”

“Well, I managed to get word that the person we’re looking for is headed due North...”

“And we’re headed due South!” I said, my tail wagging in excitement.

“Exactly! Now we just need to catch him along the path up North, and since there’s only one well-used route connecting the southern and northern areas of Vernia, we can assume that we’ll meet him along the path if we hang around and keep our eyes open!”

“Perfect,” I said, “We could probably wait in the next closest village, assuming that he hasn’t already passed us by.”

“Unlikely,” Harold replied, “Last word I got was that he was still just about to leave, so that means that we should have plenty of time to make ourselves comfortable.”

“Right,” I said, “So then, where’s the next village?”

“Er... About two days from here...?” Harold said sheepishly.

“I’ll take it.” I replied, shrugging, “Let’s go.”

-o.=.o-

The next town that we reached reminded me strongly of Stervenstaug. It was a small little establishment, placed neatly in a basin that was surrounded by large mountains. Underground mountain passes linked the inside and the outside of the town together, and a small river ran in between the mountains and passed through the village.

The village itself was nothing to sneeze at. While small, it seemed to be a largely flourishing one, with streams of people trickling through the mountain passes and inevitably stopping by the tiny establishment, bringing in trade for the prospering village. The mountainsides themselves were also dotted with a few houses and farms here and there, with the most peculiar design of steps having been cut into the slopes of the mountains, allowing for a flat surface for the crops to grow upon. It looked like a comfortable place to wait out the arrival of a wizard, or at least, so I thought.

At first sight, we were really expecting the villagers to run helter-skelter at first sight of a dragon, but surprisingly for us, instead of raising sirens and alerts of a dragon, they waved.

“Huh.” was all Harold could say from my back as we passed them by.

I landed Harold off in the town square to let him search for supplies to buy for our stay here while I headed off towards to mountains to look for somewhere where we could camp out, searching the rocky cliffsides for a cave to settle in.

As I flew by lazily over the mountain ridge, a dark brown streak collided into me in a fit of growls and snarls, and upon instinct, I fought back, roaring in challenge. We tumbled through the air for a bit before whatever that attacked me backed off, and as fast as I could I tried to regain my bearings, levelling myself mid-air before turning to face my attacker, the back of my throat already bubbling with acid and ready to spray.

My defensive stance was quickly met with a pat on the head followed by a hand/pawshake, and there he was, hovering in front of me; Draco.

“Ohai.” He said, with a smirk.

“Draco!” I replied, “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” he said, “You know how I mentioned sometime ago that I was going to be a roamer?”

“Yeah...?” I said, nodding slowly in reply, “What about it?”

“I lied.” He replied.

I snorted, almost falling out of the sky whilst doing so as I did it so hard that my wing beats went off their usual rhythm. When he’d left Stervenstaug, he had seemed to bent on not settling down anywhere, and now, here he was, residing in a village not too different from the one I had decided to call home. “So then, where do you live?” I said,  clearing my throat as I tried to regain my composure, “I don’t see anything anywhere.”

“Well, the villagers made a house for me, if you could call it a house.”

“Would you care to show?” I said, gesturing for him to do the obvious.

“Huh..? –oh, yeah, follow me.” He said, motioning for me to do so with a hindpaw as he turned around and spread his wings, gliding off lazily towards the village.

I tucked my wings in and then gave them a good flap before extending them out to their full length, making for a slow glide behind Draco. Considering the small size of the whole basin itself, it was a relatively short flight in towards the village, and once we neared it, it wasn’t too hard to spot Draco’s residence amongst all the other buildings in the entire settlement. For one, his house had a fairly wide road next to it, for what I could imagine to be an area that would be wide enough for him to take off and land, and his house was also significantly larger than most other houses, its size somewhat reminiscent of the jail that I had been put in not too long ago, right before all... this started happening. Still, it was a nice, wooden establishment with a pair of large, handle-less doors, for what I assumed to be for a dragon that would simply push them open with its muzzle.

True enough, that proved to be its as Draco simply walked at the door and plowed right through it, the doors easily giving way to him as he walked through. I followed suit as well and noted how smoothly the door operated, either through a fair amount of regular use or a really careful amount of maintenance.

Inside the house was something else entirely. Compared to my cave, his place made mine look like a caveman banging rocks together. It was a beautifully furnished little establishment that he had, looking fit for a human to live in, save for the fact that everything was somewhat supersized for a dragon. That as well, the furniture in the house seemed slightly more adapted for dragons, most notably through the absence of chairs, which were replaced by some sort of shallow, cushioned ‘pits’, which seemed to be made for dragons to simply curl up upon. Following Draco through a room, we ended up in what I believed to be his kitchen, where he promptly dropped himself onto one of those pits and curled his tail around himself, resting his head on the dining table.

“So, what be your order of business, stopping by here?” he said.

“I’m looking for someone.” I said with a serious tone.

“Hitman ah?” he asked, cocking his head.

“Not quite,” I replied, “There’s been a few... problems, per say, and a friend of mine whom I came here with mentioned that he was likely to be passing this place by, so we were hoping to find him for some answers.”

“Ah,” He Draco replied, “Well good luck then.”

We stared at each other in a few minutes of awkward silence.

I frowned. “Usually, this is the part where you say, “Oh, let me help you, friend.”, maybe offer some accommodation; As a polite gesture, you know...?” I said.

Draco stared at me for a while, before realisation hit him. “Ah, oh, right. Yeah...” he stuttered, “Uhhh, I think I have a spare room, you can your friend could take that.” he replied, scratching the back of his head with an embarrassed forepaw.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, smirking, “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll just head on over to town to pick my friend up.”

To that, Draco acknowledged with a still-embarrassed nod as I left the house, shaking my head in amusement. I spread my wings and jumped, giving me altitude to glide back to where I had dropped Harold off.