“Come on you, how many times do I have to tell you idiots?” I snarled through the bars of my cage. “I’m not a damn kid! I’m twenty-five damn years old!!!”
Likely just a few thousand more short of making the stout, bored-looking drake at the counter to care any more beyond the twelve an hour he was making just sitting there, making sure nobody split with any free ‘profits.’ Then again, if the draconian bureaucracy couldn’t recognize a young adult from a kindergartener upon hearing you try and argue by spewing words such as ‘obfuscate,’ ‘scintillating’ or ‘sycophant,’ than any hope by now was just toxic.
...and yet the dragons were still smart enough to only supply you with a drinking fountain, bed and feeding pen, bare-bone essentials that you wouldn’t risk kicking over in fury; the one thing you wanted more than anything in the world right now. Sure, being a pet was a cloud short of silver linings, but at least you knew had to read; even at an early age, you had the means to know the dragons’ government enough to parry your way by the time you were of legal age. Any other adult would’ve likely been subjected to living a reptilian’s foot so often that they’d accept it in life and move on, but you? You had resources. Intel to at least have a chance to reason your way into some semblance of a normal life, or as much as a life living at the heels of fire-breathing titans could be.
All of which you wouldn’t even be able to use till you were thirty, likely by some moron getting their gum stuck in a filing machines, and even bigger ones who knew your age only from a typing error.
With your head cradled in your knees, the clerk grunting in satisfaction as your pesky ranting was finished your only hope...no, don’t say that anymore. Wacky miracle was to be bought on the cheap, that the next potential buyer would see you for your strong build and smarts for what they were, and realize they could have a decent enough pet at the fraction of a price for half the actual cost. Every tinkle of the bell you’d hear from the door, you’d seize up, tense at the thought of whether the next customer’s footfalls would be the lumbering of a massive adult’s or the pitter-patter of some lazy parent’s snot-nosed kids searching for a new playmate to dress-up, or force you to live in a dollhouse, probably even flush you down the toilet for fun...
[i]Ting-a-ling![/i]
Poor timing to picture that last thought, the air calcifying in your lungs, but it escapes in relief as the entire human store rattles at who, so immense that it’s almost a [i}what[/i], enters. A few humans go silent, hiding in their cages to keep from being seen, but a select few clamor for attention, some desperate to see the world outside their cages, or legitimately excited to have a host to attend to them.
“I still can’t believe mother doesn’t trust us for the adults we are.” One of them argues. “I’ve had classmates back in school with adult humans, and she forces us to get a child!”
Hearing their banter, you’re up and amongst the latter.
“HEY, I’M LEGALLY A CHILD!!!” You holler, throwing an arm out and waving frantically towards the massive overabundance of green that rolls into store and, with the gods finally settling in their laughter and giving you some slack for once, enters the children’s section. “I’M AN ADULT FOR CHEAP!!! I...”
Then the sound of a claw full of cheese-puffs rips through the child’s section, and any of the minority begging for attention is halved again. Coming down the aisle, coming down to you, is the all-known gluttony and enormity of the royal daughter herself, Marian, likely accompanied by her pompous fatty of a sister by the sound of the other voice, as the prior’s mouth is too occupied glutting her impossibly fat frame to even more monstrous proportions. The aisle, as sparsely placed as it is to accommodate the decadent populace of its customers, is compromised by the great plateau that is Marian’s behind as her bulging flanks are snugly wedged by the deceptively wide passage, her stomach bouncing atop her legs in a pronounced cascade of scale-armored rolls and blubber, rubbing against the floor with no cover to protect it from the dirty linoleum.
The mere presence of the quasi-mountain of a dragon girl extinguishes every voice screaming to be taken, and as Marian’s vaguely lucid eyes narrow in on the partitions near where yours is, you hastily take off your shoes and kneel down into their soles, putting on a mediocre impression of a child, or at best, a dwarfish man. Marian’s quaking movements continue, the cage rattling louder as you sit in sweaty hope that the moving landmass of green just passes you without a second thought, but when her scales swipe their way into your visibility, it’s the tip of her snout, her eyes observing you with mere bristles of intelligence that sparks occasionally, a burning lightbulb that only twitches on and off with dying light, but with scrutiny that’s drilling through the bones of your skull, studying your person by outward impressions.
“Hey...” She speaks. Even her voice sounds sluggish, to heavy for her to get out. “This kid here looks like a grown up!”
“NOOOOOOOO!!!” You squeal in your best child voice, but with such little practice, you just screech in a high register. “ME A CHILD!ME MAKE POOPIES IN MY PANTS, MOMMY!!!”
“A grown up?” Roal climbs onto her sister’s shoulder to see for herself, pushing her sister’s head aside. “Hey, you’re right!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” You wail even louder. “ME A WITTLE BABY!!! ME NOT A VICTIM OF BEAUWACWACY, ME A WITTLE BITTY BABY!!! WAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”
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