Page 11 of Riding My Dragons

“He is,” she said dreamily.No question about it:Elliot must have been so good to her—and with her—that he seemed like a hero to her.

A voice welled up from the speakers in the pavement around the holoprojector.“Gentlepersons, the Pendrake Circle Prize Race is about to get under way.We take you now to the top of the Lacerta Building, where the competitors have assembled.”

At once, a pillar of light, several Scaler wingspans wide, rose from the projector and shone high up overhead.An image materialized and resolved inside the light column, showing the top of the tallest building in the city, and eight figures in tight gear with no sleeves and open backs lined up along one edge of the roof.This was all being recorded and transmitted by a series of drones that would follow the action from the Lacerta Building roof to the endpoint of the race which waited in Fafnir Park in the center of the city.

“Look,” I pointed to one figure in a black bodysuit, “there’s Elliot.”

I glanced at Jenna and saw a smile blossom and spread on her face.It was easy to tell that even if she had no wager on the race, Jenna had her own favorite competitor who had gotten her to a “finish line” of her own a few times overnight.

There were eight of them lined up and spaced well apart up on that rooftop, the best racers on the continent, dressed in bodysuits of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black, and white.They stood ready and waited for their cue.From a speaker on the nearest drone, probably the one from which this image was coming, came a voice that said, “The contestants will now morph shapes.”

At once, all eight of them went into stretching and flexing motions, making sure they were as loose and limber as they needed to be, and let go of their human bodies.As we watched, all human flesh turned to dragon scales, wings and tails came out, and body parts rendered themselves into dragon forms.The spaces between them allowed for the unfurling and stretching of wings and tails.Cade, Jenna, and I stayed focused on Elliot as he stretched his neck and reared back his dragon head, bathing in the sunshine.I glanced over at Jenna again; she scrunched and relaxed her shoulders as if warming up with him.

The voice from the drone called out, “Ready…steady…”Elliot and his seven competitors trained their dragon eyes ahead, leaning forward, putting one foot on the edge of the rooftop, and bracing wings and tails.“GO!”And like eight horned and scaly missiles, they leapt forth into the air, wings beating powerfully, dragon voices screeching with power and pride.The transmission switched to another view of the eight dragon figures soaring above the lower rooftops and starting the first leg of the race.Around us, other voices let out shouts and whoops along with them.I clenched my teeth; my heart sped up

Jenna let out a yelping sound with a big, enthusiastic grin on her face.She made a fist of one hand and put the fingertips of the other hand to her teeth and bounced a bit on her seat.

The initial sounds of excitement in the auditorium died down, everything turning anxiously quiet.The drones seamlessly showed different views of the race as the eight champions flew with wings outstretched and beating and tails whipping and slashing, propelling themselves over the city.Now there was an aerial view of them, shooting over the cityscape, veering skillfully around towers and spires.Then there was a shot of them from below the rooftops, silhouetted in the sunlight, some pulling ahead and others flapping furiously in an attempt to steal the lead.Next came a shot from the level of one taller building as the racing dragons came hurtling past, and I could almost imagine the sounds of them whooshing through the air.In this shot I looked carefully with my dragon-sharp vision and could just make out the black-suited form of Elliot blurring by, very close to the leading position.There were only a couple of others to overtake.I was confident that he’d get them.

From next to me I heard Jenna’s anxious murmurs of, “Oh, Elliot!Come on, Elliot, come on…!”And in a cornerof my mind I imagined her crying out something very similar to that, in a different situation.

But the main focus of my attention, and Cade’s and Jenna’s, was the race.With a quickened breath, I watched a shot from behind the eight rivals as they swooped over a stretch of buildings with the trees of Fafnir Park waiting at the horizon.And I heard Cade saying with growing anticipation, “Come on, Elliot, you’ve got this.You’ve got this…”

Finally the view cut to the finish line, a long line of white sprayed onto the grass of Fafnir Park in the biggest open meadow with trees standing in clusters at its edges.On one side of the line, the pole of the finishing flag was planted in the turf.The area was roped off, with crowds of in-person spectators huddled at the ropes, some in dragon shapes and some human, all eyes trained on one particular/ area over the distant trees with the tops of buildings peeking above them.Cade and I might have been in those crowds if we didn’t have a reason to be right where we were.At any second, the incoming shapes of the racers would appear over those buildings, aimed at the park, the line, and the flag.

In the audio of the display came a chorus of voices, and we could see people pointing at a spot at a certain angle overhead.The drone camera caught a collection of shapes coming over the rooftops at the edge of the park.Cade and I leaned forward with anticipation and Jenna sat with fists clenched.She almost squealed, “Ooohhh, Elliot…!Elliot…!”

A few seconds passed and the incoming shapes came into sharper view.We could make out the red racer, the blue one, the violet one…and in the lead, the dragon in black!

“Yes!” I almost hissed as if in my other shape.

“Come on, Elliot!” Cade shouted, one of several raised voices in the tiers of seats around us.Jenna bounced inher seat, now squealing wordlessly at the impending end of the race.

The four leading racers swooped in low over the street at the park’s edge and angled themselves down over the treetops.The four others hurtled behind them.And ahead of them all, there was Elliot, his neck straight, his wings at full spread, his tail twirling, looking like a missile with scales and horns.My teeth clenched, I murmured, “You’ve got this, Elliot!You’ve got this, you’ve got this…”

And yes, he had it.The people in the park screeched and wailed so that one could hardly tell humans from dragons.Elliot swooped in fast and low, with none of the others able to catch him.He stretched out one scaly arm and opened his taloned hand.And in a blur of motion, he shot over the white line in the grass and seized the flagpole, whipping the waving flag out of the turf.He pulled up into the air above the grass and shrieked and skirled in triumph, his tail thrashing, his wings beating hard, the flag whipping in the air.He hovered there, displaying the flag to the screaming and whooping crowd, while his seven competitors came in for landings in the grass beyond the line.The Pendrake Circle Prize Race had its winner!All of us at the University leapt to our feet, shouting, some of us—including Cade and me—pumping fists in the air.Jenna jumped up and down and clapped her hands.In the display before us, people in the crowd were doing similar things while Elliot settled onto the grass, flag and victory in hand.

In the midst of the excitement, Cade and I both took out our mirrors to check our winnings from the race, which were automatically recorded and transmitted to our accounts.We looked up at each other and traded very satisfied smiles.Jenna noticed and asked me, “How did you guys make out?”

I loved the way she phrased that, but answered only, “We did great.Elliot really came through.”

”Sure did,” said Cade.

Jenna looked as pleased for both of us as she was for Elliot.Very soon, perhaps, that would mean she’d be even more pleased by us.

The voices around us ebbed down to a hubbub.People began to disperse from the auditorium, walking up the tiers of seats as the holoprojection faded.Now it was time for our other, main purpose in being here on campus.I wondered how to segue into it, but Jenna set it up perfectly for us when she asked, “What’ll you guys be doing now?”

I replied, “Cade and I are headed back over to my place.Would you like to join us?”

Awkwardly, Jenna looked back and forth between us and said, “Oh, guys.Um, Elliot and I had plans for later.”

”We know,” I said.“Elliot’s welcome to join us.”

She actually blushed a bit, which made her that much more tantalizing.“Actually, what Elliot and I had planned was kind of…a date.”

I repeated, “We know.And Elliot is welcome.”

Jenna fidgeted a bit, unsurely, shifting on her feet.“Guys, Elliot and I had plans, you know…just for us.”

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