...And I Feel Fine

He didn't mean to go into another universe. He was a good dragon; grownups had warned him to stay away from the edges of the universe, and he had always done so. But he was still very young, and no one had told him that if you go far enough into the center of the universe, it could be a shortcut to the edge. So when he found himself nostril to nostril with a strange, glimmering curtain, he was curious rather than afraid. He poked and drew little pictures with each of his claws in turn. Finally he found the claw designed to open such a fabric, a crooked claw on his sixth leg. He scratched a peephole and saw stars and stars and stars. It was too fascinating to resist. He renewed his shielding for space flight, enlarged the hole just enough, and slid through.

At first there wasn't that much to see. He kept his distance from the gravitational pull of the stars, and played around with little swooshes of dark matter. Then he saw a planet that looked like it had a fun atmosphere. Tired of holding his breath, he decided to stop there for a few minutes before heading home.

The oxygen-rich atmosphere was pleasant to breathe and nicely flammable, the temperature a comfortable 105 degrees. The smooth, hard road cast up heat reflections and scratched his tummy as he walked. No one was about, though there were plenty of small houses. He wondered if pixies or salamanders lived here, the kind of little creatures he read about in his story books. There might even be knights and princesses and horses. The thought of actually seeing such creatures fired his imagination.

At last he saw someone, a tiny human-like creature standing behind a table, with cups and a container of some kind of drink. And it did look like a princess! It wasn't a very tidy looking one -- its sparkly dress hung lopsided on its shoulders and dragged in the grass, its tiara was on crooked, and it had tossed off shoes that were obviously too big. It looked smudgy. But it was real.

He approached it, and seeing him it called out, "Doggie!"

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She knew it wasn't really a dog. Dogs had four legs, and this thing had way more than that. Besides, it looked long and slithery. It had shiny green and blue scales instead of fur, and its eyes looked all deep. It had wings too, which dogs never did. She narrowed her eyes, making Mommy's borrowed mascara stick in the hot sun. It looked like a dragon to her.

She remembered her plan to tell everybody she met about her upcoming birthday. "I'm almost four."

"Imalmosefor?"

"Almost--" and she held up four fingers.

That must be the way dragons like to talk, because he repeated it perfectly. "Almost4."

She smiled and jumped up, snatching her empty ice bucket. "Need more ice. Here, drink this. Be right back." She shoved a cup full of warm lemonade toward him and trotted into the house, pink skirt dragging behind.

Her mommy and some others were in the air-conditioned house planning next week's party, with lots of loud talk and laughing. The girl wrinkled up her nose; the house smelled like hot perfume and grownup drinks. It took Mommy a minute to notice her.

"Need something, Babydoll?"

"More ice." She held out the bucket and rushed on. "But Mommy I wanted to tell you that there's a doggy I don't know in the front yard and it gots too much legs."

"Oh yeah?" Mommy glanced out at the lemonade stand. "Don't see anything out there now. Doggie must have gone bye-bye. Did it scare you?"

"No. I told him it was my birthday." They all laughed. She realized her mistake and corrected herself. "I mean my almost birthday."

"Good for you!" Mommy said, and went to get the ice. Everybody was still laughing at her, so she was happy to smear on a little more lipstick and go outside, where the dragon was just coming down from some flying.

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"Hi, Doggie!" the princess greeted him. It poured ice into the drink and said some more things he didn't understand, but he thought he could guess what those first words meant.

He pointed to himself and said, "Hidoggie?" Maybe that was its word for him.

"Just Doggie." It poked his scales and repeated several times, "Doggie. Dog-gie."

He poked himself and said "Dog-gie," then held up four claws to say its name. "Almost4." This was fun.

Then it started chattering in a way he couldn't understand at all. Finally he understood that it wanted to fly around on his back. At first the princess kept slipping off, but then it found a way to hang on to the sides of his body with its legs, and put each hand around one of his scales. Then flying together was fun. He decided to take Almost4 home to show his clan. He hoped he wouldn't get in trouble. It was hard to think straight, because that drink had made his head feel funny. It smelled a lot like the sugar water grownup dragons used for relaxing when they got home from working.

Even though Almost4 was small it was hard to put the protective spaceflight field around both of them, but he managed. He showed it how to hold its breath, then hurried back to his own universe with the princess on his back.

********************************************

Most of the adults of the clan were at home. They came over to greet him when he landed, telling him how worried they'd been. His Amma helped the princess as she tumbled down, coughing and clutching her stomach.

"Amma, Abba, clannies, look what I found! It's a princess from another universe and its name is Almost4 and it calls me Doggie."

Amma looked at it aghast. "Wherever did you find a prey animal?"

"It's a magic prey animal," he answered. "It can talk, and it has a fancy covering like the princesses in my books"

"Ha! Too many fairy tales," grumbled a clannie, and squeezed the princess's arm. "Looks tasty. Can we have it for supper?"

"Oh stop!" said Amma. "It's just a little hatchling. It doesn't even have hair on its face yet."

"Prey animals come in two kinds," put in Doggie's annoying older brother. "They can't choose if they want to be Ammas or Abbas like dragons can, they're just born one way or the other. And only the Abbas grow hair on their faces." He snickered. "But for sure none of them can talk."

What a stupid know-it-all. Doggie gave him an invisible whap with his tail, but his brother just grinned.

"If it can talk, why don't you show us," said Abba.

"It really can! Listen, Amma and Abba." He turned to the princess. "Hi, Almost4!"

The coughing fit was starting to die down. "Hi, Doggie!" it said, along with some other things no one could understand.

His Abba looked at the animal thoughtfully. "It doesn't speak as we do, but it does appear to have some kind of language. Where did you say you found it?"

Doggie told them the story of his adventure.

When he finished, Amma said, "You can't possibly keep it as a pet. Someone will eat it. You've got to take it back."

Abba disagreed. "I'm afraid that won't be possible at this point. When he tore the spacetime fabric, it probably initiated a singularity. By now I'm sure the creature's home star and planets have collapsed into a black hole."

"Oops," said Doggie.

"That's okay," said Amma, "it's not your fault. You didn't mean to do it. And we can patch the hole, can't we?"

"I'll call someone," offered a clannie, initiating a long wave transmission.

Abba drew Doggie close. "Don't worry, its home planet may be gone, but we won't let anybody eat it. You may keep it as a pet for the time being."

"Abba, do you think maybe it could teach the other prey animals to talk?"

"Perhaps. It's possible that they've begun to evolve intelligence."

"If they did that, we wouldn't eat them any more, would we?"

"Of course not! It would be an ethical violation to kill a sentient being, no matter how primitive."

The little dragon's brow wrinkled with concentration as he worked over the grownup words. "'If it talks, don't eat it,' right?"

"Exactly." Abba hugged his son. "I have another idea as well."

"What?"

"If you want, you can to try to train your animal here, so that she can try to train other prey animals. Then if you study hard when you're old enough, maybe you can help find and prepare a place in our universe for your princess and her friends to live. Would you like that?"

"Yeah!" Doggie took the princess by its hand, and they ran off together. He wanted to show it his toys.




Note: Title taken from the REM song, "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)