Flashes of Speculation

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  • Date: Thursday, August 03, 2006 Time: 11:51 am Category: Stories Discussion: 2 Comments

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‘Fuck!’

‘Baby.’ Paige tied the thread and bit off the end. ‘There, good as new.’

Robert inspected the wound, expertly closed by his wife’s neat little stitches. ‘Nice work, love. Thanks.’

‘How did it happen, anyway? You don’t usually return with wounds in your back.’

‘Bloody Baldwin. Tried to shoot over my shoulder and missed his target. He wanted to bag himself a dragon, he’s never managed one before.’

Paige chuckled as she tidied away her things. She would be needing them again, and soon. The war seemed never-ending, the forces of the Dark Prince poured forth without cease. ‘Tell him to shoot a little straighter next time.’

‘Don’t worry, he’s been told.’ Robert stood up and headed out of the tent. ‘I’m just going to settle Mabel for the night.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call her that!’

‘Fits her like a glove,’ he shouted back over his shoulder, then strode off over the field towards the enclosure where he stabled his dragon. Although steady in battle, she was a bad-tempered creature, mean and moody. Mabel was Paige’s mother’s name.

Robert was safe just so long as he followed the protocol: approach Mabel from behind and winch in her chain, so that she hadn’t room to turn her head and flame him; prepare her dinner and slide it into place; release the chain once she’d smelt the food. A hungry dragon will always eat rather than flame her handler, and, once fed, will sleep.

His thoughts full of the next day’s battle plan, Robert strolled into the enclosure and started tipping feed into Mabel’s oversized dinner plate. Too late, he realised he had forgotten to secure the dragon. She turned her head, a gleam in her eye, and flared her nostrils, ready to flame.

‘Bollocks!’ he muttered, as he was consumed by the infernal heat of the dragon’s breath.

Julie Wright has had fiction published in Bullet Magazine and on both Flashing in the Gutters and The Curve Ball Conspiracy. She lives in the North East of England.

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