Drasbury the Dragon
From The Encyclopaedia Expurgatia
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
When people—which is to say homosapiens—think of time travel, the first coherent thought is invariably one of greed. This greed is often camouflaged to appear in the form of personal justification or even as proposed gifts to friends and neighbours. Sometimes time travel, as a concept, fires off the appropriate synapses to suggest that a complete and utter stranger might benefit from a change in the past.
But it's all a facade, really. When humans think of time travel, they think of altering the past at certain pivotal points during their lives. For instance, one might think of returning to the date on which he met the lovely young woman of his dreams who would eventually come to marry him, and eventually come to spend all his money, and eventually come to leave him for an inept mechanic from Queens. He might like to return to that date in history and talk himself out of going to the pub that night.
And one might do the same for a close friend: one might go back to a given date and clip the friend's phoneline just before he--the friend--was about to call his broker and sink every penny he--the friend--had into Braniff Airlines.
And even a complete stranger might get a new lease on life, retroactively, if overheard by a time traveller whilst complaining with no end in sight about the phone number which was left accidentally on a table at Pizza Hut six years earlier.
All of these fourthdimensional acts would be done out of different forms of greed: greed for one's extinct happiness; greed for one's friend's surplus of cash; greed for the stranger to just shut the hell up about the damned phone number.
Not that all humans would return to the past to alter the present due to camouflaged greed. There are those humans who would have nothing to hide. Yet. They would simply jump ahead to next Sunday, pick up a newspaper, return to the preceding Friday, wait until Saturday, memorise six two-digit numbers, and clean up with LottoAmerica.
For some reason, however, few humans ever consider slipping back into the late Triassic Period and grabbing, say, a small Coelophysis bauri out of the Norian Age, and absconding with it back to the present. One would think that the owner of the only provable deinosaur on the planet would stand to make a lot of money over it.
In any case, whether a given homosapien chose a logical vehicle by which to quench his greed in theory, the truth of the matter is that a very small percentage of humans would actually go through with it. Psychologically speaking, time travel and poverty are no different than the pit and the pendulum.
Humans tend to fear what they can't understand. More accurately: humans tend to kill what they can't understand, and go on to fear what they can't kill. For instance: it is almost impossible for an unarmed man to kill a Carcharodon carcharias, a great white shark, if swimming six miles off the coast of Oregon. The fact that a carcharias will only attack if provoked becomes irrelevant. To a human, a great white shark is six metres of swimming death--something which no human can fully understand. And the shark, inasmuch as the subclass Elasmobranchii is concerned, has existed for several hundred million years--a length of time which no homosapien can fully understand.
The homosapien will try to kill the shark. The shark will become irate and eat the homosapien. And the fear will live on for another human generation to possess.
The deinosaurs had no particular fear of Carcharodon carcharias [they'd invented the bloody things from the C.megalodon template, after all]; nor were these archosaurs especially frightened of the pit, of chronodiurnum, of time travel: the archosaurs of the orders Saurischia and Ornithischia had traversed one hundred sixty-six million years of the Mesozoic Era, and saw no reason to be intimidated by large spans of time.
So the deinosaurs, following the new plan against the cats, had inserted several species of neonanodeinosaurs here and there along the future side of the CretaceousTertiary Boundary.
Those species had been of various familes, including, but not limited to, the Carcharhinidae and Lamnidae, the sharks; the Boidae, Colubridae, and Elapidae, the snakes; the Alligatoridae and Crocodylidae, the crocodiles; the Chelonidae and Chelydridae, the turtles; the Testudinoidae, the tortoises; the Chamaeleonidae, the chamaeleons; the Bufonidea, the frogs; the Salamandridae, the salamanders; the Helodermatidae, the gila monsters; the Varanidae, the monitor lizards; and the Dracoidae, the dragons.
The Dracoidae, including Dracos europensis, D.mongoliensis, and D.nahuatlus, had gone extinct soon after being inserted into the Cenozoic Era of Earth's history in Universe 97E. The Dracos europensis and D.mongoliensis had been placed in England and in China, respectively, in the terran year AD932; the D.nahuatlus had been placed in Mexico thousands of years earlier. Though the Aztecs had worshipped the nahuatlus under the vernacular name of Quetzalcoatl for millennia, the English and Asians had feared their Dracos europensis and D.mongoliensis and had managed to wipe them all out by the seventeenth century.
Before the Dracoidae had been driven extinct, even the Eurasian cultures had begun to treat them as deities, providing for them in all possible manners. Though the dragons would eventually come to be hunted and slain by the homosapiens, the initial admiration had developed due to the actions of the one called Drasbury.
It was a warmish, somewhat sunny day in the middle of nowhere, which was somewhere in the middle of England. Specifically, the land was a small village known as Aspiria.
No one outside the village had ever heard of Aspiria; and it was a good bet that no one outside the village ever would. The village has a regional government which consisted of an orphaned princess named Elisabeth. Otherwise, the tiny land of Aspiria didn't have a whole hell of a lot at all.
Until that day in the year AD932.
It was a warmish, somewhat sunny day in Aspiria when it suddenly ceased to be especially warmish and somewhat sunny and became coolish and somewhat shadowy. The people of Aspiria, curious as to how the day might so quickly transform from warmish and somewhat sunny to coolish and somewhat shadowy, glanced up as one to see a largish and somewhat dragony form sailing effortlessly across the sky.
Not that the people of Aspiria recognised the form as either largish or somewhat dragony. They, in fact, recognised it as being absolutely enormous and somewhat immense-scary-flying-lizardy. That was because, though the dragon was realy only largish, and not really enormous, the people of Aspiria had never come into contact with any living animal of that magnitude, which was somewhere in the neighbourhood of thirty-five metres in length from the tip of its nose through the razorsharp arrowhead of its tail. Moreover, since the people of Aspiria had never come into contact with any living animal of that magnitude, and since dragons, exclusively, were living animals of that magnitude during the tenth century [at least, they were the only living animals which weren't whales--and whales weren't known to be large flying animals of that magnitude], the people of Aspiria had no reference by which to consider the large flying animal especially dragony.
Until that day in the year AD932, no Aspirian, Englishman, or Briton had ever seen a dragon.
The form ceased being a largish, dragony, enormous flying animal and became, instead, a largish, dragony, enormous running animal. Then the largish, dragony, enormous running animal slowed to a trot, and then to a casual stroll.
The enormous, casually-strolling animal casually strolled into the centre of the village of Aspiria.
'Hi there,' the enormous, casually-strolling animal genially greeted, metamorphosing into more of an enormous, standing-about-in-the-centre-of-a-village animal.
The people of Aspiria stared at the enormous, standing-about-in-the-centre-of-a-village animal.
'Why are you guys staring at me like that,' asked the enormous, standing-about-in-the-centre-of-a-village animal.
'What be thou, Enormous, standing-about-in-the-centre-of-a-village animal?' asked one of the Aspirians.
'What be what?' asked the enormous, standing-about-in-the-centre-of-a-village animal, 'Oh. Oh, I'm a dragon.'
'A what?'
'A dragon. Here, say it with me: drah-gon. Right? Drah-gon.'
The Aspirians regurgitated: 'Drah-gon.'
'Right, see?' The dragon nodded. 'Dragon.'
Again, the Aspirians echoed, 'Drah-gon.'
'Very good.' The dragon nodded again.
'Wherefore art thou called dragon, Dragon?'
'Huh? Oh, um...okay two things: first, well, I'm a dragon because, um...well, I just am, okay? Second, you don't have to call me "dragon"; my name is Drasbury.'
'Dras-bur-ee,' echoed the Aspirians.
'Right again. Okay. And you guys are...?'
'We are the citisens of the land of Aspiria,' one of them, evidently the leader, told Drasbury.
'Ah. Aspirians, then?'
'Yes, Drasbury the Dragon.'
'Yeah. Um, you can just call me "Drasbury", really. Okay?'
'It shalt be so.'
'Yeah, all right. Um, so...what are you guys up to today?'
'"Up to"?' asked the leader.
'Yeah, what are you guys doing; ah, what dost you guys.'
'Dost we not speaketh with thou?'
'Dost you not....' Drasbury hesitated, trying to work out what the homosapien was trying to say. 'Oh! Oh, yeah, sure, yeah; we're talking. I mean...oh nevermind. Just...hi there.'
'Hi there,' the Aspirians echoed.
'Right; okay. So, anyway, um...what, ah...hmmm.' Drasbury shrugged, thinking it through. The Aspirians were still staring, possibly regarding him as a threat. 'Um, so...what's to eat around here: anything?'
The Aspirians screamed as one and ran about the village in sporadic little circles.
'Oops.' Drasbury grimaced, catching on to the homosapiens' concerns regarding large, albeit conversational dragons. 'Look, I didn't mean you, you know. I just meant...what are you guys having for lunch.'
'Oh.' The leader stopped running about and approached Drasbury. 'Oh, um...what desireth thou?'
What desireth-eth-eth me-eth-eth [damn these sapiens have got a weird way of expressing themselveths]? thought Drasbury. 'Got any cats?'
'Cats, M'lord Drasbury?'
'We've discussed this. It's just plain "Drasbury", dig? And about the cats: yeah; why not. Got any extra ones?'
The homosapiens of Aspiria, England, Britain, Europe, Planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe 97E were, of course, of the version 6.66 of the CATSBANE virus. Therefore, they intrinsically hated cats, at least on a subconscious level; therefore also, the leader told Drasbury: 'Aye; 'tis just.'
So, within the hour, the Aspirians had set up rather a large table at which Drasbury the largish dragon could sit and eat; and they had arranged a light snack of tea and kittens for him so that he might munch. And they, like the Aztecs before them, had begun to discuss new religions by which they might worship the dragon. Not that it ever worked out.
The Aztecs had received a member of the species D.nahuatlus, which had been rather a pleasant species of Dracos and which had been rather a pleasant individual of the nahuatlus species named Herb. Herb had ben worshipped by the Aztecs, though, for some reason or other, they had named him Quetzalcoatl. Herb, of course, had never done much of anything to upset the Aztecs. In all fairness to Drasbury, he never did much of anything to upset the Aspirians, either; but the Aspirians had got upset nonetheless.
Just as Drasbury was finishing up his kitten d'oeuvres, an enormous dragony form partitioned the sun from the Earth. That is to say: this form was enormous, even as dragons went.
This time, the Aspirians, who now had reference to the size of a dragon, recognised the form as being enormous and dragony and not merely enormous and flying lizardy. By the same token, they now considered Drasbury to be largish and dragony, since he was clearly not so enormous as they had originally assumed.
The enormous dragon plummeted to the ground, shaking the Earth with an impact tremor. Then, this new dragon stomped through the village, crushing houses and Aspirians along the way, and sat beside Drasbury at the table. 'What the hell is this,' asked the larger dragon.
'Oh,' Drasbury told him, 'I was just having a spot of tea and kittens. Would you like some?'
'Bah! Who the hell are you!'
'Me? I'm Drasbury. Who--'
'Drasbury!' The larger dragon laughed. He was nearly seventy-five metres in length. 'What a pathetic little name for such a pathetic little dragon!'
'Um, yeah...okay.' Drasbury nodded. 'What's your--'
'I,' the larger dragon announced, 'am Espikentarl: the most fearsome dragon in the land!'
'There's only two of us, you know.'
'Silence! I am, ah, the more fearsome of we two dragons, then!'
'Yeah. It sounded more intimidating the other way.'
'Would you shut up!' Espikentarl roared, 'Now! I'm famished! What's to eat in this tiny village, anyway!'
'Kittens.'
'Why would I want to eat a kitten!'
'Oh, they're quite good, really. These are actually slow-roasted; the fur singes into a sort of shell...like a Baked Alaska.'
'You're serious, aren't you.'
'Well, yeah. Really: try one.'
Espikentarl tried one.
'Well, yef,' he agreed, mumbling around the kitten in his mouth, 'yef, dose are good. But.' He swallowed, 'But, isn't there anything more...filling?'
'Oh. Um, like what?'
'Like...!'
At that moment, an Aspirian led a cow up to Espikentarl, handing off the ropeleash to the dragon.
'Oh.' Espikentarl shrugged. 'Yes. Yes, that'll do.' He ate the cow in a bite, including the rope. The rope stuck in his teeth.
'There's a rope stuck in your teeth,' Drasbury told him.
Espikentarl shrugged, and slurped in the rope like a strand of spaghetti. 'Roughage.'
'So,' Drasbury asked, 'What are we doing today.'
'Doing? Oh, I don't know. What is there to do in this horrid little land.'
'We could go beat up a cat.'
'Bor-ing.'
'Aw, c'mon, Espikentarl: let's go beat up a cat! Huh? Huh? Can we, Spike? Huh? Can we go beat up a cat? Huh? Can we?'
Espikentarl stared at Drasbury in taxed sympathy. 'Oh what the hell; I can't think of any decent alternatives with you bitching and moaning anyway.'
The two dragons stomped off in search of some Siriuns.
