Dragons in Lockdown

The scales on my reptilian body shone in all the colours of the rainbow, as the sunlight caught the sharp tips. I was a chameleon dragon living on Toronto Island Park. This meant that I had a special ability to change the colour and pattern on my scales at will. I used mind control to write messages to other dragons on my scales when I felt like having some fun with my special skills.

However, today was not a day for fun because I was being hunted. The hunters were after dragons and those who could magically shift between being a human and a magical creature. Since I had grown up amongst a diverse range of creatures, I tolerated them all and embraced diversity. The hunters were human and preferred not to have magical beings in their midst. They wanted to track them down, kill them and skin dragons due to the value of their scales on the trading market. Some of the hunters even caught live dragons and imprisoned them or sold them to wandering circuses.

I felt afraid as I flew through the warm air with my arrow shaped tail moving gently up and down in the wind. Usually, I loved to somersault through the clouds with my fellow dragons. I kept turning my head from side to side, searching for the glint of light off the rifles of the hunters. The hunters would wait until I got tired and had to land, then they would hastily move towards my landing position to capture or kill me.

I saw my best friend, Kylie, flying ahead of me and I flew a little faster to catch up with her.

“Kylie, yoohoo!” I shouted in my slightly gruff dragon voice.

She glanced around, smiled, and slowed down.

“How are you doing, Beth?” she asked, slightly breathless.

“I’m frightened of those nasty hunters down there,” I conveyed to her.

“Let us go the secluded cabin in the hills, to get as far away from them as possible. Did you know that there is a lockdown about to start? I saw it on the news. Even dragons aren’t meant to be flying around in the skies over Toronto.”

“Isn’t that going to make us easy targets for the hunters? We cannot even fly away from them?”

“The hunters have to stay in lockdown as well, so we should be relatively safe,” she countered, in a quivering voice.

I glanced up at the brilliant azure sky and the puffy clouds moved in unison across the sky. A beautiful sight that seemed somehow separate from the danger that we were in.

Kylie and I landed in the hills, transformed, and walked as humans to the secluded cabin.

Two of our dragon friends were waiting there for us, Jason and Peter. They sat by the fireplace and the light from the flames danced over their features. They stood up to welcome us in and made each of us a delicious mug of hot chocolate.

We spoke about the hunters and whether we were at risk, but Jason and Peter seemed to think that we were safe. After a delicious meal, we went to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

I was awakened by the sound of a gunshot and realised that the hunters were nearing our cabin. It wasn’t that safe after all. I quickly woke the others and whispered that they should follow me. We quietly went up onto the roof of the cabin, ready to transform into dragons and fly away. We had all transformed except for Jason when a net was shot towards him, spanning out. To avoid him getting captured, I breathed fire upon the net, incinerating it and the hunters around it. They screamed and ran away from us.

Finally, Jason and I took off and flew away with the other couple. We would not obey the lockdown laws if it meant we could get captured by dangerous hunters. Although we wanted to obey the rules, sometimes rules are made to be broken …