A few blocks away from Stormland, Max pulled his ugly orange pizza delivery car into the dreaded driveway of a notoriously finicky customer.
“Mr. Odair, snob extraordinaire,” he muttered while unloading a stack of party-sized pizzas from the backseat. “Last time he complained that the crust was too light, so this time he’s bound to say the crust is too dark. He said there wasn’t enough cheese last time, which means this time he’ll grumble about there being too much cheese. And by the time he’s done chewing me out for not warning him how hot the last pizza was, this pizza will be too cold.”
He kicked the car door closed behind him with a huff. “I’ve been doing this for way too long. I have every customer on this route memorized like an irritating song stuck in my head. I can even predict how the the unpredictable ones will be predictably unpredictable. This job is exasperatingly boring!”
The moment he paused from ranting to himself and reached the first step leading to the spacious front deck, a roar echoed across the stately rooftops of the upscale neighborhood like a crash of thunder. He nearly jumped out of his skin and the pizza at the top of the stack he was carrying slid to the ground with a resounding splat.
His first fear was Mr. Odair’s reaction to the ruined pizza, but the source of the ominous roar came in as a close second. He looked from the saucy splatter on the ground to the purplish light rising over the housetop, and his eyes bulged to nearly the same diameter as his glasses.
The trees shuddered in the wind of enormous, rapidly beating wings. It sounded like at least two dragons flying very close together, but all Max could see was a strange glowing mist flecked with white fire drifting through the branches. The mist ignited every twig and leaf it touched before the wind from the invisible wings blew the small flames out.
He was about to drop the pizzas on the deck and make a mad dash for his car when a huge shadow landed heavily on the peak of the Odairs’ three-story house. The creature’s hulking frame would have been practically invisible if it weren’t for the luminous spikes crowning its thick neck and long, sweeping tail.
The roof creaked and cracked under its weight as its gleaming claws dug into the shingles. A deep, grumbling moan escaped it and its camouflage faltered briefly, giving him a glimpse just long enough to realize it was a single StormBreather, but with four wings!
Unbeknownst to Max, it was some confusion between those four new wings that caused the dragon’s sudden descent. And, being unplanned, the landing wasn’t particularly smooth. The dragon wobbled on the peak of the roof for a second, trying to get her wings beating in proper synchronization again. Then she slipped down the steep side, tearing up a hundred shingles on her way to the driveway below...where she landed directly on top of the bright orange delivery car with a resounding CRUNCH!
Before the dizzied dragon could even lift her head from the deep imprint it had made in the car’s roof, Max’s remarkably shrill scream startled her enough to trigger the unintentional eruption of a gaseous fireball from her mouth. The conflagrant sphere hit the crumpled hood dead-center and most of the car exploded out from under her with a deafening BANG! followed by a shower of shattered glass and torched seat cushion fluff raining down on Mr. Odair’s manicured yard.
When the smoke cleared, Max was still standing in front of the deck with a single pizza box left in his shaking hands. The rest of the pizzas were splattered across the deck, the walls, the marble pillars on either side of the glamorous entryway, and his face.
The StormBreather sat awkwardly on the charred remains of the car, staring at the stunned pizza guy as blankly as he stared at her. Somewhere under their mutual shock and terror, both felt a faint flicker of recognition.
Before anything could sink in though, Mr. Odair threw open the front door with a face so red it looked like he might spontaneously combust at any second. At the sight of him the mysterious StormBreather instantly leapt back into the air and vanished like a ghost against the dark sky.
“What in the...how did...why are...what happened?!” Mr. Odair sputtered furiously.
Max’s knees were shaking so hard they banged against each other as he turned to face the burly man. For once an irate three-hundred-pound customer seemed like the least of his problems. “I...uh...well...um...it...it was the dragon’s fault, Sir. I think it burned the pizza a little.”
He plopped the last semi-intact box in Mr. Odair’s hands with a gulp and looked back at the twisted chunks of molten metal that had been a car a moment before. “Maybe...maybe boring is not altogether bad.”
Meanwhile Polaris flew on across the city, leaving a zigzagging trail of burn marks in her wake. There were fried telephone poles here, toasted traffic lights there, and smoking lawns in at least a dozen yards.
The very last mark of her ‘heavenly fire’ was a cluster of charred trees at the edge of the woods. Beyond that point, soothed by the familiar forest surroundings and camouflaged among the comforting trees, the fury of her wild new fire gradually cooled.
After hours of wandering flight she finally landed, exhausted, in a small glade near the base of the mountains. Far from the wave of buzz and panic she had started in Paikka, the burning sensation in her chest mellowed into a warm stirring and the fierce gleam in her eyes softened to a gentle glow.
With the glimmer of starlight and the beady eyes of a curious squirrel peering down at her through the thick branches overhead, she curled her body around the base of a towering pine, rested her head on her paws, and draped her tail over her snout. As she fell asleep, her camouflage deepened until she was completely invisible among the mossy rocks, knotted roots and coiled ferns surrounding her.
To be continued…