24 January 2011

Hatchlings and Hotel Lobbys

I was driving East on I-10 into Houston. I noticed, for the first time in years, the abandoned mall that is partially underneath beltway 8 (there is not such mall). I decided that I was going to go take some pictures or something and pulled off the highway and into the covered parking lot. There were people working there, extremely focused on getting their project done quickly. They had all manner of machinery and were rigging up some ratchet straps to a crane-ish. I jumped in and started helping them (as I am fairly competent with basic rigging); they all seemed grateful that I was helping, but extremely nervous that I was even there at all. Nobody would tell me what the work was for. I jumped down a half-level to have an easier place to work from and from my new position, I could see into the abandoned buildings and broken down parts of the parking garage.

There were baby dragons everywhere.
And not the cute, raise-them-to-love-you kind. They were fierce, and they were NOT happy about where I was standing or the construction that was going on over the home. I didn't know if the team of workers were going to try to kill them, or capture them and I had no intention of finding out.

I had to get back up to where I had been before, lest I find out that these dragons- on top of... oh I don't know... existing, and being terrifying- were also territorial beasts.

I had to do some crazy parkour through the broken-down, abandoned parts of the mall to get out of the part of the parking garage in which we had been working. It was intense. I made it back to my car, and drove as quickly as possible back to the hotel in which I was staying. When I got there, I realized that this very hotel had featured dragons always and that I'd never been able to see them, because I had never seen a dragon hatchling before. Having seen them, I could now see that the lobby, where I previously had seen empty space and a huge multi-story vaulted ceiling, was home to a HUGE dragon. It had a bird-like perch in the vaulted ceiling and was chilling there, docile and terrifying. Yet nobody seemed to notice.

I remember wondering if they'd seen the hatchlings yet, or if they'd just grown accustomed to a dragon in the lobby. I remember thinking that it was time to go exploring the city, to see where other dragons might be, now that I could actually see them.

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