Hi, my lovely homeskillets! It’s your friendly, cyber-neighbor Annie here.

We’re trying something a little different today. I’ve gotten several requests for some creative writing pieces and while I don’t want to share much of my prose and poetry here, I do think a little piece every once in a while wouldn’t hurt. Y’all are just the nicest people ever, really, so I wanted to let you know that I’m listening and I appreciate you.

This snippet of a piece was something I wrote for my fiction class while I was earning my MA. The challenge was to write down a list of things and pick five of them. Those five things are now in a bag. Write a story about the character who own’s these things (blah blah blah). So I don’t remember all of the things, but I definitely had dragon, a Rubik’s Cube and a book in mine, and this was my 500-word story I came up with.

If there’s interest in reading the full 2,000+ word story, I might post that on my Patreon.

Anyways, enjoy!

Watch on, Annieme-niac!

Annie

P.S. Anyone recognize the characters’ names????

 

A Dragon’s Diet

500 words

 

“Zera, I’m starving!” the whine came from Zera’s messenger bag, where a tiny dragon snout popped out the top.

“You just had breakfast,” Zera reasoned, and Levy insisted that a bowl of wood chippings could hardly sustain a growing firedragon. She needed something more filling, something with hardy nutritional value. Zera knew where this was going. “Look, I’ll come back on break with a copy of Moby Dick—”

“Seafood again?!” said Levy, but before she could begin another tirade about meal planning, Zera had shut the storage room door behind her, and proceeded with her bookstore duties. Few things could have brought Zera more joy than journeying through the maze of books, recommending titles to fellow literature-lovers and arranging displays of the latest bestsellers. However, her job became a bit more complicated with Levy’s arrival, as baby firedragons needed to consume, at minimum, 500 grams of flammable material, and Levy’s favourite meals included healthy leather-bound books.

Last week, Levy had managed to consume three Russian travel guides and spoke with an accent until the day’s end. Zera was left at a loss for words on how to explain the many novel-nappings to the shop’s owner, Mr. Runciman, and was forced to do some creative bookkeeping regarding inventories.

The day went on as it normally did: a flurry of cash register chimes and fluttering pages. A teen—for the third time this week—weighed whether to buy the Tortoro-themed pencil pouch. One boy pleaded with his mother for the newest galactic wonder-read while Zera restocked the shelves.

Finally, it was Zera’s lunchbreak, and she made her way to the storage room. Zera opened the door to find Levy with small flakes of a book dotting the dragon’s snout. Levy’s pupils were dilated to full moons and upon Zera’s entry, the she-dragon raised onto her haunches, hissed and leapt into the air. Levy flapped about, flying into bookshelves and lampposts and anything else in the small storage cupboard.

“You binged, didn’t you,” Zera said, eyes on the dragon’s full belly, which looked as if a watermelon rested beneath her scaled skin. She picked up the remnants of Steven King’s The Shining, which was now 200 pages lighter. “And I take it you didn’t stick to your classics-only diet,” she added. Levy skidded onto a table, knocking off a stack of leaflets as she did so, and Zera winced at the sound of grating claws.

“The classics are bland—”

“They’re well balanced. Now you’ll be up all night!” Zera’s hands were on her hips as she glared at the dragon, which sent Levy whimpering, hiding beneath her tail, still flicking with agitation. At each tremble, her scales gave an iridescent dance. A heavy sigh escaped Zera’s lungs as she reached for the barstool and fixed herself a chai latte using the kettle and microwave. At the spicy scents, the she-dragon’s head popped up and she climbed aboard her owner’s shoulder, convinced tea was just the thing to warm a firebreather’s belly.

END