Meghanology – book 1 of girldragongizzard

We’d both slept on the roof of my building after Chapman was done suturing and dressing my wound. Sie didn’t feel up to walking home, and just lay down on the spot, using hir purse as a pillow, and telling me I should rest, too.

It got up to 80 degrees that day according to the weather app on my tablet, which isn’t all that hot to me anymore, but I shaded Chapman with my wing anyway. I was stretching them out to soak up the sun and boost my metabolism, and keeping things cool and dark for Chapman seemed like a good secondary purpose.

Not a lot has happened between then and now.

After waking, Chapman spoke with me further about what to expect for my meeting with the Mayor. Rhoda stopped by, and joined the conversation. I slept some more through the night. And then I had my morning calls done again without interruption.

I’d feel a lot more on edge, waiting for something really bad to happen, if Rhoda hadn’t reported that the Mayor had explicitly told the chief of police to lay off, to not stir up any more trouble between us dragons until after she had a chance to talk to me.

I do still worry that this interview could be a trap, though.

The one thing that helps me cling to the idea that it isn’t is that the Mayor’s daughter is a dragon, too. And, the park we’re meeting at is one of mine, and open, and I can fly if I need to.

And someone on my team has thought of that, as well.

The park has a long pier that is used mostly as a sight seeing walkway for visitors. And we’re meeting right at the base of the pier, so that if I need room to take off in an emergency I can use the pier as a runway. I’m told that wasn’t mentioned to the Mayor or even Seagull, or anyone else. It was sold as being picturesque, and Seagull’s photographer loved it.

We’re also meeting in the mid afternoon, which means the thermals will be strongest if I need them.

All I have to do to get there is glide from my building to the park.

So, I’ve been told to conserve my energy and rest most of the day until then, to soak up the sun and keep healing. That way, I’ll have as much energy as possible to focus on socializing and talking, and to flee or fight if I really have to.

Besides, even though Nathan will be supplying the interview with coffee and pastries, the shop is closed today, so my urge to visit with people down there will not be answered.

On the other hand, my wound is feeling so much better. It makes me feel like I already have the energy I need.

But I do as doctor Chapman and nurse Rhoda recommend and wait and rest, because the sun does feel really good on my wings and back, and I know it is excellent advice.

However, instead of waiting on my building, I move to the next building closer to the park, which is just a smidge taller than mine. It takes a bit of wing work to get up there, and some circling, but it’s worth it.

Partly because the taller building is owned by a biblical software company, and now I’m a dragon on their roof, and I find that amusing.

It’s a really good view of the park and surrounding area, too.

I can watch as the police sweep the area every hour or so, occasionally talking to people but not seeming to do much of anything.

A couple of them will arrive in a car, walk through the park, and then leave.

When the appointed time begins to arrive, a couple of police SUVs park in the parking lot, but the officers don’t get out of their vehicles. That makes me nervous, but I can’t exactly say why besides that they’re the police.

And then a white van with the weekly’s logo on the side pulls in to the lot as far away from the police as possible, and Seagull and the photographer and probably an intern all get out and start unpacking chairs and a small table and other equipment, including a laptop and what appears to be a supplemental keyboard for it. And they set that up at the land end of the pier, just as planned.

A few minutes later, a shiny new Nissan Leaf pulls into the lot and parks a space away from the newspaper's van. A woman gets out of the driver's side, and she's dressed in a pale lavender suit, despite the weather. She seems very comfortable in it and very confident in her movements as she reaches back in her car to fetch a fairly large purple purse.

That, I think, is Mayor Lynn Chisholm. Like Rhoda, she's Black, and I remember being fairly impressed with her background and politics. I wasn’t paying that much attention during her election, but I caught enough from conversations around the coffee shop to decide to vote for her.

Especially with a dragon for a daughter, I wonder if she has a fraught relationship with the police.

Normally, I'd leave that entirely alone, and assume that that's her battle to deal with. But the police were after me specifically and she called them off. So, at least guessing at that dynamic is a matter of my own survival.

The cops that are there are still staying in their own vehicles.

This is a small city, still. Mayors have been known to have lunch at local dives or hang out at coffee shops and talk about local art.

Well. Some of them have. Others have been snobby and reclusive and only hobnobbed with the business establishment. Or, that's what the Order of Bearded Men say when talking loudly about politics wherever they congregate. You know the type of guys I'm talking about. I imagine every small town and city has a few. Men, with beards, who talk loudly in coffee shops. The Order of Bearded Men.

Anyway, it's about time for me to join the Mayor for coffee on the pier.

I wait to see her talk to Seagull and his crew, and then for Rhoda, Chapman, and Nathan to arrive with the coffee and other goodies.

When it looks like everyone is relaxed and looking around at the sky for me, I dive off the building to join them.

The flight down there is uneventful and exhilarating. I'm leaping off a seven story building and headed downhill toward a group of people who have coffee for me. And I have to say, swooping never gets old. It's a rush!

There's plenty of sidewalk space for me to land on, and they see me coming long before I get there, but they all back up a step or two as I set down.

Standing and looking at Chapman, I feel like maybe I grew a little over the night. It's just a quick, puzzling impression, because sie and Rhoda and Nathan all seem a little smaller.

Maybe it's just their act of giving me space that creates that illusion, but I decide then to figure out a way to measure and track my length.

The Mayor steps forward and holds out her right hand to offer and shake and says, “Hi. I'm Mayor Chisholm. It's a pleasure and honor to meet you. I understand your name is Meghan.”

I gingerly lift my right foreclaw and place it on her hand in the best even grip I can manage and press down lightly and briefly, saying, “Yes. Meg.”

The Mayor blinks and smiles, saying, “If you don’t mind me saying, I was told you could say a few words, and it is a delight to hear some of them!” Then we release each other’s hands, and she takes a step toward the chairs and table, and says, “Shall we sit down at your computer and get to know each other over a cuppa?”

I bow my head and say, “Yes.” I can’t make it more polite than that without my AAC.

So we all move over there and settle down.

I, of course, do not use a chair. I’m very comfortable on my haunches anyway.

“I’d like to use what you type into the computer as your transcript, on the record, if you don’t mind,” Seagull says to me. “If you say something you regret, just treat it like any friendly conversation and correct yourself, as you’d want to do with the Mayor anyway, and I’ll go with the correction. Does that sound good?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“Fantastic! I’ll be sitting on the other side,” he says. Then he addresses us both. “Mayor Chisholm. Meghan the Dragon. It’s going to be a little bit of a three way conversation, with me moderating. But I’m mostly going to leave it up to you two. I just might have a question or two for the paper, mostly.”

“That sounds wonderful, Mr. Phil,” Mayor Chisholm says. “I might play it even and hit you with a couple questions myself, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all!”

“Shall we, then?”

And we all scoot in and get comfortable.

The computer is all set up. The supplemental accessible keyboard is actually kind of bland looking and dirty, like it’s been used a lot. But it is bigger, with bigger keys that I think I can use with little trouble.

“I got that from the Senior Center,” Nathan says from where he’s seated. “They’re lending it to us for the day, but also gave me a lead on where to get a new one, if you like it.”

I experiment with it by using it to say, “Sweet! Thank you.” 

The program once again ignores the exclamation point, of course.

“So, Meghan,” Mayor Chisholm says. “I’d really like to get to know you as a person, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you know that my own daughter has experienced the same transformation as you have, and I won’t lie and say that it hasn’t been a bit of a challenge. But I love her, and I want to do what I can to understand her better and make sure that her future is safe and secure. And you’ve got quite a small community supporting you, and I’d like to learn more about that from your perspective.”

“Okay. Thank you Mayor Chisholm,” I say. “I would like that.” 

Wow this is easy. I still feel rushed to speak anywhere as fast as anyone else, but after knuckling that tablet with one claw for so long, this keyboard is a dream.

“I don’t extend this to many people, Meghan, but today you can call me Lynn, OK?” the Mayor says. “We’re just a couple people of the city here enjoying the coffee and talking about life. And I don’t want you to have to type more than is necessary.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Then you can call me Meg.”

“Wonderful!” Then she turns to our journalist and says, “But not you, Mr. Phil. I’m sorry, but I do need to remind people I earned the position.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” he says in his immaculate tenor inflections. “But you can still call me Seagull, if you like. I prefer it, personally.”

The Mayor smirks, and says, “Very well, Mr. Seagull.”

“OK,” Seagull says, and laughs as he leans back and gestures to us.

Weirdly, all this polite talk makes me feel like I’m in my element, and I do relax considerably.

I turn my attention to Mayor Chisholm, and wait patiently for her next prompt.

She points a finger and bounces it up and down as she says, “Now, Meg, I’m told that you have an idea, a plan, for helping our dragons communicate with each other, settle their differences, and represent themselves reasonably well to the rest of us. And I’d like to hear about that, but later. What I’m really interested in is, what’s it like? What is it like to suddenly wake up as a dragon and just… go about your life? For you.”

I huff and smile to give myself time to think about that, then turn to the computer.

“Mayor Lynn,” I say, hitting enter.

“Just Lynn, please.”

“Thank you. Lynn,” I correct myself. “I have always been a dragon. Even before the change. I knew it. I didn’t fit in before. Now, I fit in. Socially. People understand me now. But,” I pause and look back up the hill at what I can see of my building, and ponder how to compose the rest of my thoughts. Then I get back to it, “I don’t fit economically or legally. And that is a problem.”

“Thank you, Meg,” the Mayor says. “I’ve heard similar things from my daughter. That’s reassuring, in a way. It means that the things that are wrong can be fixed.” And she tilts her head, “I don’t want to promise anything I can’t guarantee, of course. But. Another question. Have you met any regular citizens who harbor an anti-dragon sentiment, yet?”

“I don’t think so,” I reply. “If so, they did not show it. I think I’m lucky.”

“I feel like we might be going too fast for you, Meg,” the Mayor says. “I’d love it if you could elaborate on all of this. Please, take your time to write whatever you need to. I have my coffee. It would be my pleasure to just sit and listen for a bit. Hardly anyone gets a chance to do this, you know. And that should change.”

At the mention of coffee, I look at my bowl and decide I’m fine without it for the time being. I’ll drink it cold as a reward for getting through this. So I turn back to the computer and really get into it.

“Thank you, Lynn. Obviously, I am the daughter of two human beings, and I was raised by them, and by human schools. I played at being human until the 24th. I don’t know what was special about that day, but that’s when it happened. I knew I wasn’t human right from the start, though. A lot of people feel this way. For people like me, I like the word therian. But they may use otherkin or alterhuman, too. I figured out I was a dragon at 9 years old, after watching a movie about them. I just knew it, looking at these talking cartoon dragons, that that’s what I was. And a lot of things about humans don’t make sense to me. Never did…”

And I talk for a long time about this.

I speculate about why only a handful of dragon therians, and nobody else, underwent metamorphosis. I talk a little about investigating that. But I don’t mention anything about Chapman’s art.

I also go light on that, and try to focus more on what my daily life has been like.

Mayor Chisholm prompts me about that on occasion, to keep me on track.

A lot of what I tell her is what I’ve written in this book.

The part that I’m really careful about are my feelings and interactions regarding other dragons, because I don’t think I was understanding all that correctly from the beginning. And I don’t think they were, either.

I point out that my human upbringing led me, and probably everyone, to interpret my own instincts badly, and didn’t prepare me for the challenge of working with them.

I talk about how the morning songs we do, just like the birds, actually seem like a community building exercise. We use the same calls when challenging each other, but it’s almost more like we’re just shouting our names. And the context matters. In the morning, it now very much feels like a roll call to make sure everyone is where they should be and doing fine. I feel better and happier about my neighbors every time we do it, and less like I need to fight them over anything.

I don’t have proof, just the growing online interactions with Astraia. But I suspect that once we get to know each other better, fights will just happen less and less often.

I then pull out my tablet and open discord to show the Mayor what I’ve started there, and what Astraia and I have written.

“I remember the letter you sent me,” Mayor Chisholm says. “It’s honestly what inspired me to do this with you. Even if you never were human, it is so clear to me that you’re still people. Or beings who deserve to be treated as people. Of course, my own daughter is teaching me that as well. But seeing another dragon reach out to take the initiative and start a dialogue as they used to call it. That’s genuinely heartening. Thank you for that.”

“Lynn, may I ask?” I inquire.

“Yes, please, Meg.”

“What is it like to be mother of a dragon?”

“Well,” she says. “I can’t say it’s not hard. But I think the weirdest thing for me is how it affects my own sense of self and place in the world. Because I have to wonder what is it in me that made this possible when I gave birth to her. Or is it something from the outside? Like the hand of God reaching down and anointing worthy individuals to challenge us, or maybe to help protect us? To change the world, that’s for sure! I just don’t know, though. I’m trying to figure that out. I think we all are.”

As I’m watching her, I can see Seagull nodding and smiling. And he does not look like he’s on the verge of asking any questions at all.

This feels like a major win. It feels like progress, and like maybe we’re actually going to build something good. I know that City Council makes the laws and there are other people in government that need to be brought around. And also that local government can be superseded by the state and the national governments as well. There’s a long way to go. But, here, now, I’m involved in doing something that might work with someone of authority who seems to support me.

It feels good.

It also feels really, really lucky, because if the other guy had won that election and was in office instead, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be going this way at all.

Her mention of God startles me a little, though. I’m not used to being around people who so freely reference their religion like that anymore. Or, maybe, specifically God. I’m usually surrounded by atheists and neo-pagans. And pretty much all I want to believe in are dragons, humans, and whatever Chapman is.

But it’s a little thing. She’s being an ally, so far.

I look at the police, who are parked so far away from us, but so visibly so.

“Now, Meg, I do have to warn you,” Mayor Chisholm says. “I’m just the Mayor. I’m not the law.” My breath stills as I hear this, but I do nothing as she continues. “I can tell the police how to enforce those laws, to a degree. But certain laws are being brought against you, unfortunately. And you may well have to defend yourself in court. I want you to know, I’m on your side in this. You’re safe here and now, and when you go home. But it might be better if you can find a more suitable home for the time being.”

I look back at her.

“I spoke to the chief of police about this, and he asked me to remind you of this, and to tell you that, as a deal,” she says. “He’ll make sure you’re safe, if you find a better place to live than the rooftop of yours.”

I do not like that.

Especially after all I’ve conveyed to her and started to set up, I want to talk more about her daughter. I want to pointedly bring her up and use her as leverage to get her to understand that I won’t be leaving my building. And that it would be better to do everything possible to restrain the police and whoever else they’re working with.

I decide to change the subject and bring it back to positive networking, and start to type out a request for her daughter’s contact information.

I’m very pleased that I can think this clearly and this cogently when talking to humans that stress me out. It makes it so much easier to deal with them fairly.

But I’m halfway through typing up my request when I hear a big splash and a familiar galumphing noise, the creaking of the pier under an immense weight, and the world’s angriest, croakiest, most charred, “YAWP!”

My head snaps up and my eyes lock on the source of the noise, but I'm hyper alert and notice policemen scrambling out of their trucks, and friends diving for cover.

Whitman is at the far end of the pier, pulling themself up onto it and shaking water from their wings and tail.

I had a plan for something like this.

I'd prepared.

But several disparate things happen at once in my body.

I notice a shotgun and a rifle pointed in my direction, and my lower half makes to jump away to the right. My forelegs move to clear the path for charging Whitman and grab the table and shove it left. My wings flap. My tail twists to make me turn to the left. And I open my mouth to try to speak a phrase I'd practiced.

And what comes out instead is, “Mayor! Shit. Shit. Mayor!”

I think the base of my tail knocks into Mayor Chisholm and pushes her toward Nathan, who moves to catch and steady her.

The table, laptop, coffee, and keyboard clatter into Seagull, who’s leaping to his feet. He intercepts the objects with both forearms and windmills, adding to the chaos of their flight, incidentally providing me cover.

Everything is momentarily moving so slow, including my body, but I get a chance to formulate a new plan before there's a crack and something hits my left horn.

Another crack, and a dart appears with its needle right through Whitman’s right ear, spraying something out the other side of it.

This is a mess!

Here's what I have to work with.

This park used to be an old paper plant. It went out of business in the late oughts, and the city spent the next decade arguing about what to do with it, and then the decade after that cleaning it up and turning half of it into a park, leaving some of the liquid storage tanks and the pier as historic landmarks.

It's mostly a field with a playground in the corner of it, and some paved paths winding through it, with a gravel parking lot of the same size as the field to the East. Everyone here is parked in the smaller, daily use paved lot.

There are other people in the park, their cars in the lot, but they've retreated to watch from behind the preserved storage tanks.

There's a lot of open space and very little cover, but if I hop over Seagull and the table, I can dash to the right of the playground and try to take off across the field and gravel lot, running across the cops’ field of vision.

Not a super great idea, but I'm already doing it.

I can't believe they shot at me with Mayor Chisholm right there.

“Mayor!” I shout as I scramble over Seagull, gripping his leather jacket as I pull myself over him.

So much for a graceful leap.

I hear a couple more gunshots and a complaint from Whitman as I go.

Then I'm dodging around the playground and starting to flap my wings. I'm gonna make a big target.

I want to remember the words I meant to say. Why aren’t they coming to my mind? Where did they go?

Shift! Shift shift shift!

Chapman’s at work.

I’m expecting to get hit. I’m expecting to get hit by bullets, or shot, or tranq darts, or even a gun thrown in frustration, and I’m not.

And I successfully take to the air unharmed, unless my horn is damaged from whatever hit it. And my head is far less rattled from that impact than I think it should have been. And now I can see all four cops struggling with their guns.

One of them pulls out a pistol just about the same time I hear the distant whine and chop of a helicopter.

This was a trap.

And did someone somehow coax Whitman into springing it?

I’m not running away. I’m not going to leave my friends in the middle of this. Not with Whitman bearing down on them. I’m sure the police and that helicopter are only after us dragons, but I don’t trust Whitman to do anything rational at this point.

I don’t even know Whitman, other than that they’ve attacked me twice already.

As I’m wheeling about to gain altitude, I feel four more shifts. And then, as I watch, the officers test their pistols, abandon them, and then start using their radios. And Whitman advances on my people, though they’re casting glances at the police who’ve shot them.

In fact, Whitman may be going for the cops but, unless they can get in the air, they have to run down the pier anyway to do it.

I’m not sure everyone’s going to get out of the way in time.

And if I dive fast enough to intercept, I’m not going to be able to safely land. But I don’t have to land.

Oh, Whitman’s watching me, too. I am, after all, their original target, most likely.

It looks like the big, weird monster is trying to pick up their pace as they watch me plummet toward a spot between them and the base of the pier, where Rhoda is helping the Mayor stumble to the side, and Chapman’s tugging at Seagull.

The photographer – Greg, I think – has backed up the walkway, still in Whitman’s path but further away, and is kneeling with camera trained on the charging dragon.

Well, this is about to get dramatic, Greg.

A word comes to me and wants to be spoken. It’s not perfect, but it will do.

I squawk it out as loudly as I can to make up for lack of inflection, “OKAY.” And then my body takes a big intake of air.

And just as I pull up, just before I ram into the pier before Whitman, I belch out as much of my napalm as I can. And start flapping to gain altitude again.

I just manage to clear the waterfront pub where a serial killer used to hang out back in the ‘80s. I’m pretty happy I don’t slam into the side of it. Then I start to bank and head back toward the park, turning my head to take in the action there.

I have no idea about the political optics of any of this, and that helicopter is getting here fast.

But Whitman has dodged to the right, to avoid the flames, and leap over the last bit of water and land on the shore, using their wings to extend their distance. And once landed, they veer more toward the cops.

This presents a really obnoxious dilemma for me.

I find that I just don’t care about those officers. They’re not my people. They are, in fact, my enemies, as far as my body is concerned. And ethically, philosophically, I’m pretty seriously against the police to begin with. And, on top of that, I think they’ve just grossly endangered the Mayor and shown themselves to be operating on an agenda that is different from hers.

On the other hand, I want to prove to the Mayor, the press, and the city, that we dragons don’t have to be a threat. That we can be an asset to the community, and a force for collaboration and better communication. Or, really, just good friends. And letting Whitman flatten or eat four cops is not really conducive to that.

There isn’t a lot I can do, though. I’m out of fire, and I’m having trouble with my words.

This is right about the time, especially with that helicopter almost here, that it would be awesome for Astraia to come charging in with the rest of the city’s dragons, a surprise coalition including her staunchest rival Loreena, to intervene and make everyone listen to me.

There are so many reasons that’s not going to happen.

What is going to happen is that I’m going to overtake Whitman just a second or two before they reach the panicking cops.

There’s a word I could call out that would be perfect for this. I know it. I learned it. I want it.

It’s not there.

I’m still verbally stymied by something.

What I do end up singing as I buzz Whitman and the fleeing police is, “Shit. Shit. Mayor! Mayor! Mayor! Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

And as I pull up, I glance over my shoulder in time to see Whitman slam into the first of the SUVs and cause it to slide into the second, just as one of the cops leaps out from between them into the parking lot behind them. The other officers had fled around both cars.

There’s so much to keep track of and think about.

As I’m spiraling up over the gravel lot to gain altitude, I watch the helicopter come over the marina just a couple hundred yards or so away. I’m hoping that Chapman can sabotage it again, but I’m not feeling any shifting. And when I look hir direction, I see my friends busy huddling behind cover, yelling at each other and the Mayor.

I don’t know if I can climb faster than the chopper. But I’m trying, because if it flies over me, it can ground me violently with the downwash. 

I see that it is a civilian vehicle with a company logo I can’t read yet on it. Contractors. Maybe wildlife management of some sort. Probably why two of the police officers were armed with tranqs.

Something is keeping Chapman from dealing with it, and Whitman is getting violent with the cops that shot at them. And I really can’t blame Whitman for doing that.

I feel at a complete loss and totally out of tricks.

So.

 A trick is not in order, since it doesn’t exist.

I don’t know what to do about the chopper, but I can handle Whitman.

Can I?

Whitman, for whatever reason, found out about this meeting and snuck up on us by swimming to the pier. Not only that, they chose to leap up onto the pier instead of crawling up on shore anywhere else, blocking my easiest runway for escape. I don’t know if they knew about that, or it was just a coincidence of choice. But there’s something about this attack that seems premeditated and planned.

But, if the trap had been set by the police and the contractors, and they’re shooting at Whitman, you’d think they’d have a lot more backup than just the helicopter.

What I’m hoping for is that the facts that I’ve defeated Whiman twice, and grievously injured them (I think), and that Whitman is now at (possibly unexpected) odds with the police, will play in my favor psychologically when I do this.

The four cops are now running Eastward down the paved parking lot, toward where I’d been having the meeting with Mayor Chisholm, and Whitman is jumping down from the top of an SUV to turn and chase them.

Whitman runs faster than a human.

I fly faster than Whitman runs, and I’m already coming in at speed.

I fly over Whitman and the heads of the officers, and then immediately start breaking with flapping wings.

I’m going to turn faster on the ground than in the air, so I land with my back to the cops, several yards ahead of them. And by the time I leap back up and spin around to face them, they’re dodging between cars back toward the walkway of the park.

Whitman sees me and snaps their badly burned jaws in a manner that makes it really easy for me to imagine my head being completely crushed by them.

So I rear up, beat my wings at full stretch as furiously as I can, slamming my tail against the ground, and let out the longest and loudest challenging cry I’ve managed yet.

My signature.

A long, low subaudial rumble like a tiny Earthquake that, when it hits the right harmonic, causes parts of the cars next to me to rattle and hum. I raise that steadily in pitch until it’s a screaming squawk and follow it with five sharp wood block knocks. And then land on all fours again and brace myself for impact.

If they’d wanted to, Whitman could have charged me while I was doing that, I’m sure.

Instead, Whitman has pulled up short, and jerks their chin up sharply before letting out a thunderous, “Yawp!”

Then I hear the rumbling behind me and the squelching noise of tires turning on pavement, and the squeak and hiss of the breaks of a large truck.

A quick glance back with my left eye, keeping my right on Whitman, reveals to me a huge white armored personnel carrier with a battering ram on the front of it looming over me.

Oh. The Sheriff’s “tank”.

Yeah, that can be a tank right now.

Before I can stop it, my body leaps toward Whitman, just slightly to the side, and my tail windmills to help me turn to face the machine as the wildlife management chopper pulls in and above us, circling in to come from behind us. Whitman dodges away from me a half step.

I do a super short version of my challenge cry, with one knock, and glance at Whitman.

I feel like I’ve got my words back. Maybe making my challenge cry somehow centered me, and brought me back to myself. I can remember the the word I wanted to say to Whitman. I’ve been wanting to say it since I taught it to myself. It comes forth without much effort.

“Peace,” I say, with as much volume as I can to be heard over the chopper, as deputy officers of the county start leaping out of the APC. Then I jerk my head in the direction of those assholes, and say, “Stop.”

I hope Whitman understands my intent.

The helicopter is so deafening I can’t actually hear my own voice, and Whitman must be in agony. And through that cacophony and wind, I can see numerous firearms being leveled at both Whitman and myself from in front of us.

We are so cooked now, though. I’m expecting to be hit by tranq darts from above any instant. Or a net. Or something.

There’re a lot of people here to try to transfix. I could maybe make the appearance of eye contact with three. In desperation, I rear up and lock gazes with the nearest deputy. Just to be defending myself somehow. One less gun that will fire.

But then, there is a shift, and then a series of shifts so rapid and so numerous that the sensation of them reverberating through my nervous system paralyzes me briefly and I nearly collapse.

I stagger. I blink. I shake vertigo out of my head, stomping and flapping wings to increase circulation and reassert my balance.

And then there are terrifying pops and cracks from the helicopter, but nothing hits me.

The heavily armored deputies are all becoming frustrated with their weapons, and I hear and feel the chopper start to pull away.

Glancing at Whitman, I see them recovering from the series of shifts as well. Or so I assume.

“Now,” I say. And then give the Sheriff and his people my full challenge demonstration.

I feel good when Whitman joins in half way through.

When I’m done, I drop to all fours again and say, “Peace,” as loudly as I can.

I check Whitman again to make sure they get it. Right now, I do kind of really want to body check them while I can. But, I also want to restrain myself, and the humans are a much bigger problem.

Then, the Mayor runs into the space between us, waving her arms high in the air and followed quickly by Chapman and Rhoda, and she shouts, “Stand down! Stand! Down!”

There’s a tenuous pause of action within all the noise.

Are we done?

I think maybe this is done.

I glance at Whitman.

They growl and yawp again, but quieter, just loud enough to be faintly heard over the sound of the helicopter’s engine winding down.

The chopper has landed in the gravel lot and I’m maybe going to finally learn who they are.