Once upon a time, when someone heard the word dragon, they imagined a charred field.
They imagined a virgin taken before her time.
Or at least a very sleepy lizard who was going to level their village to the ground if they just so happened to wake them.
But these days, when one said dragon, another already asked if the sausage came with buns.
He was the last one.
A dragon shifter, whose father was a dragon and whose mother was a former virgin.
He would never turn into a mountain. He would never burn down an entire village, or even a single hut, without resorting to gasoline.
But he knew one thing with certainty.
He could crook like a rooster, and he was small enough to get in and out of the sleepy town of Big Capybara without being sausagefied.
The dragon Maximilian Shadowkin took his loudspeaker. He had the fury of someone whose birthdays were ignored because his aunts and uncles were red peppered.
He had the unshed tears of someone who was raised by his human mother, who never forgave the fact that her wealthy and gifted husband had been turned into a meatloaf.
The dragon opened his maw. He began to crow like a rooster. Then caw like a raven. Then he even added some donkey sounds, just to make sure that everyone was going to wake up at precisely 3 in the morning.
As the first window was opened, the dragon flew away. Being small enough that his wings beating could be mistaken for the wings of a very big bird.
He clutched his loudspeaker in his clawed hand.
Ready to come back the next day in his human form to see the damage the sleep the deprivation was going to wreck on the Big Capybarians.
****
On the first night, people just told the local farmers to keep their roosters, donkeys, and crows at home during the night, and that had been that.
But as the rooster came back to the town's square and began to crow near the fountain of the big capybara, the townsfolk realized that this was no farm animal just managing to get out of its cage at night.
This was a declaration of war!
The guards in the watchtower were abuzz. The head guard, General Pavlov, was looking at the young recruits with narrow eyes.
"I haven't slept in two days," the general said. He had tried to just keep his windows closed, but the rooster had started to crow so loudly these days that they simply broke. "And I guess none of you have as well?"
The guards all nodded, hugging their coffee mugs.
"I am telling you; I saw something big and green near Stella's statue!" One of the guards, a young recruit by the name of Alex, said. "It was almost like one of those things on the sausage stickers!"
"You mean…" General Pavlov narrowed his eyes. "A dragon?"
"If it's a dragon," Arabella from HR said as she took out a clipboard and a pencil. "Then we can't do much. The dragons who still live in Mount Doom are now considered a part of our cultural heritage! They are not allowed to burn and pillage; we are not allowed to let Nikola red pepper them!"
A hush filled the room.
"So, what?" The general said, as he mulled over the injustice of it all. "We are not supposed to make them pay for the fact they wake us at 3 in the bloody morning?"
"A dragon who can speak foreign languages," Arabela said, as she let out a sigh. "Is even more precious for the conservation of its species."
"What foreign languages?" The general snapped. "When the dragon manages to convince a rooster to leave a hen be and go be a responsible father to the chicks, I will say that he really can speak foreign languages! Every toddler can croak like a rooster!"
"True," Arable said, who didn't like the injustice of it all any more than the rest of the guards. "But until it is proven that the dragon has not been communicating with the local hens, we just have to bow our heads."
The general looked at Alex. The young guard straightened up.
"You have seen the dragon, have you not?" The old man snapped. "Go and tell it tonight to stop, or I will break international peace and red pepper it myself!"
"Maybe that is the problem with it all, sir," Alex said, as he tried to think of what he could tell the general without ending up on community stable mucking duty. "We killed off his relatives, and now he's mad?"
"We didn't kill them off!" The general roared. "It was all the World Traveler, Nikola!"
Alex nodded.
"But we all ate from the sausages when the harvest failed," Alex insisted. "We all did so with a yogurt in one hand and a fork in the other!"
The General huffed.
"Might is right!" He didn't feel even a bit of pity towards the dragons. They were either going to become a thing of the past, or they were going to learn that mortals were not to be messed with!
"And the sausage is holy, I know," Alex chimed in as he bowed his head. "But if your entire species got hunted by a maniac who has not washed his shopping bag since he got it but had dumped tons of creatures in it that were bleeding, postmortem relieving themselves, and had even poison dripping from their fangs… would you have not wanted to wake the people who ate your family up, sir? To watch as carts collided and as people lost themselves to the chaos?"
The general had no comment to that.
"Tell it to stop," he said, as he narrowed his eyes. "Or I will red pepper it myself."
Alex nodded. He really should have known that the general was not going to forgive or forget.
The young guard stood up, drinking the last of his coffee in one gulp, and then leaving the mug in the overflowing sink by the exit.
Ready to make history.
Or at least get his eyebrows burned off. He wasn't really sure what was going to happen, if he had to be honest.