Journalism 101

It was my first big assignment, and I bounced out of my car with front-page-for-sure enthusiasm. Dragons! They’d sent me to write about dragons! This was going to make my career in journalism, I was sure of it. How could anyone go wrong with a topic this good?

I guess I was picturing the graceful animals of heraldry, with glistening scales and the necks of serpentine giraffes. I’d forgotten how rarely reality coincides with fantasy, even here. They were the ugliest – but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I guess that I should tell you where “here” is.

When I was little, I loved stories, and I always imagined that one day I’d find a way to another realm. I imagined a terrific glowing portal, or at the very least, an eldritch underground to our own society. Instead, I just woke up one day and I was here, with valkyries in the beauty pageants and gryphon eggs in the grocery store. I’ve been here too long for it to be a dream. I would guess that I’ve died and gone on to a better place, except for a few horrible details – like the dragons.

I smelled them first, right when I drove up. Putrid. Dead meat rotting in the sun with an inexplicable overlay of wax. My resolve to write a good article was hardly dimmed, but something of the smell must have been reflected on my face – the keeper laughed at me as he opened the gate.

The keeper was a good match for his charges: ugly. He was an overcooked man, wrinkled and brown, like an apple left in the oven too long. I wondered how a nose that large could stand the fumes, but the terrific hairs sprouting from his nostrils must have offered some protection.

“Well?” he asked, startling me out of my contemplation of his nasal foliage. (The longest hair had actually grown a quarter of an inch while I was watching it.)
“I’m here about the dragons,” I said, breathlessly, a condition that was resulting from my reluctance to breathe rather than excitement.

“Come and see them, then,” the keeper said, gesturing towards the stables with one gnarled hand. He laughed at me again; apparently he had never seen a reporter try to shield her nose with her hands and still have her pen and notebook ready to use.

The smell became even worse as we neared the stalls. The keeper continued to chuckle; his enjoyment of my olfactory distress was positively grotesque. What if I laid myself down and died from the horrible smell? Then who’d have the last laugh?

The keeper, probably, so I refused to grant him that satisfaction.

“ How long have you been keeping dragons?” I asked him.

“ Since I was a little mite,” he replied, “We had a whole mess of them down on my old Dad’s farm. I was carryin’ slop out to those dragons as soon as I could walk.”

“ And you always keep them inside?” I asked.

“ Indoors, or on a chain out here if I’m cleaning the place,” he said, pointing to some leather collars and a pile of thick metal links tossed against the side of the building.

“ What do you think about the new way of raising free-range dragons?” I continued. This was going to be the focus of my brilliant article: a condemnation of outdated dragon keepers who clung to their cruel ways, even in the face of new methods. I was still thinking about ebony eyes and glistening green scales; my naiveté was stunning, in retrospect. The smell should have told me everything I needed to know.

“ Always have kept ’em inside, and probably always will,” the keeper said, selecting the key for the door.

“ And what is your response to free-range advocates who call your method inhumane?” I asked.

“ You have to clip their wings if you keep ’em outside, and I think that’s more in-huh-mane,” the keeper said, swinging the door open.

Both his response and the visual from my panicked eyes reached my brain at the same time, so my first thought was that cutting anything off of these creatures would probably improve their appearance. The initial impression was of skin wrinkled like a pile of dung, ingrown claws, and a fermented color. The eyes peering back at me were of mismatched sizes.

“ Besides,” the keeper continued, “If you don’t keep ’em locked up, the critters head straight for the neighbors’ gardens. You get complaints, sometimes heart attacks when that happens.” The dragons crowded closer to their bars, making gurgling noises. “That means they want t’be fed,” the keeper said. “They always want to be fed.” He reached out to pet one of the hairless, scaly heads.

“ How do you keep them…” I began, before being momentarily overcome by the combination of nasal and visual stink. How do you keep the noble animals of legend caged instead of allowing them to roam free as myth intended, my mental script continued, lifted straight from one of the free-rangers’ brochures.

“ Oh, they don’t want much, just slop an’ the occasional raw pig,” the keeper said. “You have to watch their diet very close, or they like to eat things that give ’em gas. Something to do with how it used to be that they had to build up pressure to blow fire at things. Since I won’t feed ’em any fuel, that keeps ’em from flaming, and any of that gassy stuff their instincts tell ’em to eat just makes them develop horrible flatulence, even worse than natural…”

Something poked at my back, and I turned around. The snout was populated by crocodilian teeth, which had seemingly been dropped in without any planning and left to choose their own angle. Tendrils of drool reached for my shoulder like cold clammy fingers. One eye was the size of a fist, the other the size of a marble, and both regarded me with the dull interest of a lobotomized predator.
“ I think I’ll be going now,” I said.

“ So soon?” the keeper asked. “I was about to give ’em their afternoon meal. Fresh venison today,” he said, pointing to a decapitated deer hanging from a hook in the corner.

“ Thank you, it’s been fascinating, but I have plenty for my article now,” I said.

“ All right, then.” The keeper nodded at the door.

I bolted for the fresh air of freedom. “Traditional dragon keeping treats animals with respect,” my headline could read. “Fascinating field full of opportunity, where nose hairs are an asset…”

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