Page 79 of Caveman Alien's Terror

“Is it bad?”

The worst.

“My love, we don’t have to do this.”

Agreed. But we are doing it.

Again we land at the top of a tree, and we slide down the trunk because there’s no clearing to land in, hitting many branches on the way down and making a good amount of noise.

I brush leaves off me and pick a twig out of my hair. “Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, they say on my planet.”

“I don’t disagree,” Praxigor growls, back in his humanoid form. “But there are exceptions. Come along.”

In the distance I hear the soft hiss of waves hitting a beach. We must be just at the edge of the continent.

He leads me past trees and bushes.

“When I first came to this continent,” Praxigor says darkly, “the dragons I told you about, the ones I was trying to get away from, wanted to have even more fun with me. They found me here. I had just crawled out of the ocean, and I was exhausted. They found it proper to mock me even more than they already had. And they could. They were full dragons. I would be no match for them in a fight. They gave me the ultimate insult.”

We’ve flown so far towards the sun that we’ve caught up with the sunset. The sun is still above the horizon here, and the jungle is in red daylight.

Praxigor pushes a heavy branch aside. “They gave methat.”

I stiffen, and my jaw drops. “That…”

“It’s the most horrific mockery,” he growls as he breaks off the branch and throws it away. “They wanted to degrade me in the worst way for not being a full dragon, the way they were.”

It’s shiny and metallic, the size of a house but round, perfectly curved.

“But…” I begin, but I have so many questions I can’t pick one to ask.

“Dragons fly through the Void alone,” he grunts. “With our wings, our dragon powers. We never need these things, these travesties, thesecontraptions. It would be a supreme humiliation to even go inside one, implying I’m not a real dragon, that I’m so feeble and weak that I need help. Help! To fly! Oh, it rankled me. Still it makes me furious. How dare they!” He punches the metal, setting the whole thing ringing, but not leaving a dent.

“You had this the wholetime?!” I splutter. “Withouttellingme?!”

He looks at me, puzzled. “You didn’t ask.”

I clutch at my head in exasperation. “I did ask! I’m sure I did!”

He gives a master class in the arching of eyebrows. “You asked how I would leave the planet. And I said that I would fly with my wings. Which is true.”

“But still! You had this!” I gesture with both hands. “You had aflying saucerthe whole time!”

He kicks at the saucer. “It’s an insult! It’s a mockery! It’s the greatest humiliation I’ve ever been subjected to! They gave me aspaceship, my love! Me! A dragon! As if I needed it! And Idid!Don’t you see how that would hurt andfester?!”

I can’t believe this. “You could have left the planet at anytime?!And still you stayed, preferring to die of a lack of gold to simplyflying away in a spaceship?!”

“Yes!”he roars so the leaves tremble in a mile-wide radius around us. “I would ratherdiethan use one of those to fly in! A thousand times!”

“You arecrazy.” I walk closer and inspect the saucer. It’s on an even keel, a little bit dug into the ground at the bottom. There’s a nest of something under one side of it, but it’s old and abandoned. “Does it work?”

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “They had a Plood to fly it here. They chased him into the woods, as an added insult to me. Because without a servant to fly it, I would have to learn how to use it myself. A dragon!Learningto use a spaceship! Oh, thosevermin!” He grinds his teeth.

I touch the side of the saucer. It’s not quite metal, and not quite plastic. “Is there a door?”

“There,” Praxigor says and points. “You said we need a place to stay, one that’s out of the rain and dry and not too drafty. Where the giant insects won’t come. This is the only place I know that’s like that.”

I stare at the saucer for a while. It opens some interesting possibilities. Even if it doesn’t work.

---