Chapter 9

  Realistically, if I stayed with the caravan, I might have gotten noticed by the guards or anyone really. It was dangerous. It was the smart move to fly away and leave them alone. Maybe I’ll see them again someday… Maybe not. Who knows?

  All I know is that if I had nipples, they’d be hard as fuck right now! Why did I decide to fly into the mountains again?! I mean, sure, I grew up in the mountains, but I never went up to the peaks for this very reason! It’s just too damn nippy for me!

  “I’m more of a Floridian Dragon to be honest.” I breathed out a frosty sigh as I nded on the edge of a cliff, only about halfway up a mountain, but there was already snow and ice all around me. It could also be a different season now. Three months is long enough for summer to turn into winter. These mountains might also be at a higher elevation, not to mention being much further north than where I was hatched.

  “Chirp~!” A loud noise startled me!

  Birds!

  “No shit!” I looked up and saw a massive gray hawk! It was so loud!

  *Fp-fp-fp~!* The wings must’ve been over three meters wide! I mean, sure, there are types of birds in my old world with crazy wingspans like that too, but this was a hawk! Not a damn Albatross or whatever! The good news is that it was too big to give a fuck about me. The bad news was that there were more than one and they weren’t all that big.

  I wasn’t really afraid of them, just… Annoyed. I didn’t feel like fighting a bunch of birds today. It was fun at first, but now it’s kinda exhausting. Plus, I could get seriously injured and it ain’t like there are dragon doctors… No, maybe there are, but they’ll probably kill me or sell me to some bck-market dragon dealer, assuming they could actually find me in time to save me anyway.

  “Phew~! I need friends.” I crawled down the wall like a spider, or a lizard, and then quickly found a big crack I noticed earlier. Crawling inside, I came face to face with a bunch of scared little bats. I saw all the shit on the floor and decided to pick a different crack in the wall.

  After looking around for a while though, I realized the gigantic birds were gone so… Well, what the fuck was the point?

  “Maybe I should go back to that city?” I looked over towards where I came from and sighed again. It’s probably a hundred miles away. About three hours, maybe two if I wasn’t so tired and cold. It’s starting to get dark out too…

  Humans.

  “Hmmm…” I sniffed the air and let go of the cliff, diving down lower. The smoke was a little irritating, but it gave away their position. I couldn’t see them past the canopy of trees, but once I was past those branches and leaves, I saw the singur hut. It wasn’t quite a log cabin. There were actually bricks and stones. The roof was covered in grass that a few goats were munching on. Some other goats were scattered around the area nearby. There was also a small outhouse that smelled absolutely disgusting.

  Bad smell versus warmth.

  “True…” I nded on the roof next to the startled goat. It was warm. At least compared to the air outside. Getting closer to the chimney, I felt the warmth more strongly. The smoky smell masked the stench of shit from the outhouse. Honestly though, the smoke wasn’t so bad when I was right next to the brick chimney.

  I leaned against the hot bricks and sat down, my wings spread wide. It was weird because the wind chilled the pink flesh on the underside of my wings, while the chimney kinda burnt the top of them. It wasn’t that bad though. Dragons should be slightly fire resistant at the very least, right?

  No animal is truly fire resistant.

  “I guess that’s true.” I murmured and closed my eyes, leaning my head back. My tail wiggled around between my lizard legs and I thought about a lot of things. For example, why am I freezing my ass off in the mountains when I could probably head south and enjoy myself in a much warmer climate?

  We can go south now. Nothing is keeping us here.

  “Something is keeping me here. I just don’t know what, yet.”

  If this was a story, then this random house would belong to some exiled princess or mystical wizard.

  *Prrrrrt-blglgllgglgh~!* Whoever or whatever they are, they just farted so loud that I can hear them through the chimney…

  “Jesus! Ugh~!” I gagged a bit, but thankfully my resistance to nasty stenches has improved dramatically since becoming a dragon. Not that being a dragon has anything to do with it though. It’s just that I’ve been exposed to a lot of disgusting shit tely.

  “Faaking ‘ell Randy!” A woman shouted in a raspy voice, then coughed a few times, “Ya shit yer-self?!”

  “Hahaha~! Nah, nat dis time! Hahaha~!” I heard a deep voice bellowing and ughing afterwards. Probably a dude, but who knows? Maybe an ogress?

  I crawled over to the edge of the roof and peeked down inside the window. Nope, not monsters or ogres, just two ugly and surprisingly fat humans. I mean, nothing ridiculous though. They could still walk around and didn’t need canes or wheelchairs.

  Strange.

  “It is a little suspicious…” I thought back to the city again, then the caravan, the people waiting to get into the city, the festival… How is it possible that these are the first fat and/or ugly people I’ve seen?

  Eugenics? Exiling the unattractive?

  “I wanna say that’s ridiculous, but it’s really not that far-fetched.” I doubt it’s that simple though. I mean, my standards of beauty aren’t too harsh, so I’m sure there were plenty of people that others might consider ugly or overweight. Also, how did these random people in the middle of nowhere get so fat in the first pce?

  Cannibalism?

  “Unless they’re gorging themselves on other fat people, I don’t really see that as a realistic method to become obese.” I watched them for a while, but they were basically just chatting and ughing, speaking with a weird accent.

  Both of them have brown hair and eyes, with olive skin. Their noses and ears were really… Large. And their eyes were a bit too far apart. Not really sure how else to say it. There was something off putting there. Plus their skin was really oily and dirty looking, but that was pretty normal even compared to the ‘pretty’ people in the cities.

  “Winter’s comin’ soon.” The woman waddled over to the chair and sat down with a loud creak.

  “Aye, it does that every year around this time, hahah~!” Randy, the dude, scratched his chins under that long, scraggly beard. He was taller and heavier, making the floorboards creak and groan under his weight even more. Walking over to the kitchen table, he pced down a bowl of sad that included tomatoes, cucumbers, probably some goat cheese of some sort, along with lots of lettuce.

  “Imperials are gonna be busy wit da savage fucks soon.” She started eating with a silver fork that looked like it might actually be made of real silver. That sad looked pretty fucking good, not gonna lie.

  “Uh-huh… Get ta da faakin’ point Betty!” The fat bastard shouted before starting to gorge himself on the giant bowl of sad.

  “Da faakin’ point is dat we gotta worry ‘bout dem cunts robbin’ us again!” She spat across the table as she screamed at her brother and/or husband, cousin, who the fuck knows?

  “Like ‘ell dey is!” The guy seemed to be getting really mad, but then he chuckled and continued gorging himself.

  “Empire’s gonna want dare faaking taxes en we ain’t got none ta give!” She grabbed a gss bottle of what looked like wine and started drinking it angrily. Spilling a bunch down her chins and across her tits… Did I mention that they were both naked? Yeah, they weren’t wearing clothes. Not sure if that’s normal though. Maybe just some random fat nudists in the mountains. Nothing particurly weird or wrong about that, right?

  “Da Imps can kiss my whole arse!” After shouting that, the dude farted really loud and cackled, “We ain’t got no money and we’re runnin’ outta food!”

  “No shite!” She retorted and smmed her fist on the table, shaking it to the point where I thought it might break. Eventually she stopped talking about that and just sighed, “Brenda’s birthday is next week, eh?”

  “Aye, bet she’ll want presents too.” Randy groaned and compined, “She’ll have ta settle for goat cheese again this year.”

  “Cheese is always a great gift.” Betty didn’t seem to think that giving someone a wheel of cheese was a bad idea for a present. Not sure whether that Brenda person is an adult or child though.

  “What the fuck am I doing?” I crawled back up onto the roof and looked over at the stupid goats grazing. Their big brown eyes looked at me curiously. The horizontal line-shaped pupils always look so weird, but they were just normal animals. Just like any normal goats from Earth.

  Overanalyzing. Searching for a ‘plot’ to follow. We feel the need too find something to ‘do’, even though we don’t really ‘need’ to do anything at all. Nothing but eat, sleep, BREED, drink water, exercise regurly, GROW, survive and THRIVE.

  “I know. I know… I don’t need to do anything. I don’t know why the fuck I keep… I just…” I closed my eyes and sighed dramatically. Why the fuck am I talking to myself? Again. Constantly. All day, everyday. Why am I alone right now?

  Why are we alone, when there are humans everywhere? Why were we always alone, even when we were surrounded by tens of thousands of humans all day, everyday? Why were we alone, when we had the internet and the ability to communicate with billions across the entire world?

  “Autism-”

  WE CAN’T BLAME AUTISM ON OUR FAILURES NOW!

  “Fuck off.” I wasn’t crying. Everything is fine. I died, I reincarnated as a goddamn dragon and I am not going to waste this life the way I wasted my st motherfucking life!

  That’s why I want to find some plot, some ‘reason’ to do shit! Because I want to be important! I want to be useful! I wanna be normal! I want to fit in with those stupid fucking humans and their weird ass shit that doesn’t make any sense or matter to me!

  “I need someone to love, and to love me. I need someone to leech off of, to feel happy for me, someone I can feel happy for… More than one, maybe… No, definitely. As many as I want, because that’s what I fucking want. I just wanna do whatever the fuck I want and be happy goddamn it!”

  I opened my eyes and took a deep breath! I looked up at the goat and felt like it was mocking me. Then it licked my face…

  “Fuck’s sake…” I groaned and felt the saliva get colder with the breeze that blew past. I spread my wings, kicked off the ground and flew up into the air! I’m a fucking dragon! I’m not some random autistic dude anymore!

  “I can make a friend or something! I’m…” I flew up so high that it felt like I might start hitting the clouds soon. Then I looked down at the world below. Those huge mountains, some of which were actually still taller than my current altitude. The east was that ‘Empire’ of which I barely knew anything about. And to the west were those ‘Savages’ that I also barely knew anything about. And in the mountains were a bunch of hillbillies that I also barely knew anything about!

  “Didn’t Tommy say there were rumors of Goblins in the mountains?” I was interested in monsters. Not saying that the Goblins were necessarily going to be hot, but it was definitely interesting. I’ve written plenty of Goblin smut over the years. Jerked off to tons of Goblin hentai and porn as well. Who hasn’t? Especially female Goblins. The male ones are usually depicted as hideous ‘ugly bastard’ type characters or just pure monsters. A creature to be hated and destroyed in most games and stories. Though in my stories they were usually just short Elves, with short lifespans, rapid maturation and breeding speeds, but also… Well, they were always pretty hot.

  Hell, if it was one of my stories, even Bigfoot would be hot. Everything was sexy if you made it sexy. As the author, you can describe things however you want. Warp the world to your whims with a few words and thoughts. Writers are basically Gods, while Readers are also Gods, it’s just that neither are omniscient or omnipotent. Not really. Even when I wrote stories, I couldn’t really ‘do whatever I wanted’, because I had to consider all sorts of random bullshit constantly. Half the time I was just writing down some of my dreams and visions or hallucinations into a form that makes more sense. Other times it felt like I was writing fanfiction for my own stories, because I already lost that initial ‘spark’ that I had when I started writing them. Either that or the original content or plot was just so far away from the end result that I wondered whether I even wrote either?

  Looking back at my work, I can’t even remember most of the stories I wrote. There were too many and most of them were pretty damn long. I also read tens of thousands of stories, so… And then… I died and reincarnated. I guess I’ll lose more and more memories from my past life as I get older, huh?

  “I’m hungry.” In the end, I stopped worrying so much about the future. About making friends or any other unimportant nonsense. I was hungry and I wanted to eat. That was the most important thing.

  Eating, sleeping and growing.

  I don’t need to force myself to do anything. I have no responsibilities other than my own wellbeing. I will probably, eventually, hopefully, find some friends and lovers. Do all the things I always wanted to do as a human. Or the things I wanted to do again.

  Offspring.

  “Yeah… Maybe. Let’s grow up first though. We can have kids when we’re adults.” I glided up and down as I headed towards the west. Smiling as I saw some farms and houses here and there. The mountainous region was mostly uninhabited, but there were still roads and they led towards the west.

  I dove down lower. So low that I almost crashed into the top of a tree. A startled little bird flew up in front of my face and I had to fight back the impulse to attack! Instead, I just twisted to the side and avoided a collision. Then I sniffed the air and smirked, looking forward to my goal. Another house in the middle of the woods, but this one had a thatched roof and looked a lot more rickety than the other one.

  It didn’t even have gss windows. The chimney was made from what looked like hardened cy or mud. I nded on the cracked window-sill and sniffed the amazing smell that was coming from inside. Peeking inside the wooden sts and saw a dimly lit little single-room house. There was a hunchbacked old woman in a clean bck robe who was stirring a pot of stew in the firepce. It smelled amazing.