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He came to with a sudden awareness that he must have dozed off, which was happening more often these days. Still, no harm done… He stretched and yawned, choosing to ignore the patter of dirt falling from his crusted scales. Only as he started to curl up, ready to turn the nap into a proper mid-morning snooze, did he recall he was supposed to be babysitting his pesky grandchildren. Where’d they got to? Once he located the youngsters huddled in the corner, he decided Billy Bob and Sammy Jo were up to something, so he tip-taloned across the cavern, before whispering, “What are you doing?” in Billy Bob’s ear. The small dragon shot straight into the air with a shrill squeal, while his sister crouched lower over whatever-it-was in the gloom, gobbling it up in a couple of hurried gulps. An irritated wisp of smoke leaked from his nostrils. “And why are you eating between meals?” “’Um unngree…” she mumbled, still chewing. The delicious whiff of a meaty something didn’t improve his temper. “If you’d eaten all your breakfast, you wouldn’t be wanting something, now!” “Sorry, Granddad,” Billy Bob whimpered, his wings drooping submissively. But young Sammy Jo was made of sterner stuff. Her wings remained neatly folded across her back as she announced, “Didn’t like breakfast.” Impudent little piece! Why, when he was a dragonet, if he’d spoken to a lord so insolently, he’d have been walking around with singed scales for a month. Smoke now was trickling steadily from his nostrils, as he growled, “And what does like have to do with anything? Answer that one, miss! There’s sub-Saharan dragons who’d give their wings for a tasty morsel like the one I picked out for you.” “They can have it, then,” Sammy Jo said sulkily. “It tasted funny.” The rank ingratitude! His temper flared, and a gout of flame belched out of his mouth with his roar, “Ahh!” She dodged his fiery blast with ease. “You can’t singe us, Granddad. It’s not allowed.” Sammy Jo stretched her neck in an unmistakeably female way. “If we’ve been bad, we have to sit on the naughty crag and think about what we’ve done wrong and how to make a-mends.” He regarded her with smouldering annoyance. “You sound just like your grandmother.” “I w-want Mummee!” wailed Billy Bob, an acrid smell of damp charcoal settling around the dragonet. Sammy Jo wrapped a foreleg around the howling infant. “Shh, Bills. Mummy’ll be here, soon.” Flashing a baleful glare at him, she added, “She won’t like it that you made Billy Bob cry. And she said we didn’t have to eat any of your tinned food if we didn’t want to. So there.” “Want Mummee. Want nice din-dins…” He raised his voice over Billy Bob’s piercing squeals, “Your precious mother didn’t think to bring anything with her, I notice.” Sammy Jo’s answer was on the insufferable side of smug, “Mummy didn’t have to. Billy Bob and me hunt for ourselves.” “S’right,” snivelled Billy Bob, starting to cheer up. He snorted, all set to be contemptuously amused. “Oh yes? And when did you go off hunting, then?” “When you fell asleep. After you ate up all the breakfast.” “I did not fall asleep – as you put it, miss.” He was uncomfortably aware that if Sammy Jo presented his teeny power-nap in such terms to his daughter, she would probably have far too much to say, in that bossy trumpeting bugle of hers, “I merely closed my eyes to meditate. It’s what dragon lords do, once they reach a certain age.” “Tinned food is yucky.” He almost preferred Billy Bob’s howling to his perky cheekiness. Almost. Meanwhile Sammy Jo was in full flow, “Mummy says it isn’t natural to shut the food up in a can. It should be fresh and free range. That’s what Mummy tells us. Then we’ll grow up big and healthy.” “Well, that just goes to show how much your mother knows, then,” he snapped, “because my tinned food is so fresh and free range, it climbs right to the top of my mountain.” Sammy Jo put her head to one side. “Why?” He knew exactly why those tin-suited would-be murderers regularly struggled up to his lair and attacked him, forcing him to eventually flame them. But he wasn’t prepared to share the whole grim story with little missy, here. “Because they want to be eaten.” The lie sounded unconvincing, even to him. “Ours don’t,” Billy Bob boasted. “Our food runned away. And we knock them – boff! Over they goed – wriggly, wiggly on the ground. And they squealed… Like this.” The dragonet squirmed around on the floor, making bleating yells. Sammy Jo giggled as she watched her small brother making those wailing noises, which sounded like… A dreadful thought occurred to him. “This food of yours – where did you get it?” “The food we caught lives in those boxes sprouting in the valley. We don’t have food growing like that at Wyvern Crag. Up there, it’s mostly birds and mountain goats. But here, your food moves slowly and stays near the boxes. Mostly it was too big for us, so we chose the two littlest ones.” His granddaughter half closed her eyes in remembered bliss. “Mm. So juicy.” He hadn’t felt so afraid since the day his mate deserted him, two centuries earlier. Rushing to the entrance of his lair, he looked down the mountainside. The food was upset, alright. They’d bunched together in a large crowd and were funnelling up the road towards the mountain. His mountain.
