Obsidian
They finally emerged from the tunnel several hours later.
Obsidian—or Sid, as he was now coming to think of himself thanks to Hollie’s constant reminders—was beyond impatient. The human could not put up with his speed, and had been forced to take numerous breaks to recover her strength. He was annoyed because he should have left her behind. There was no need to wait for her, and yet each time she’d found somewhere to sit or lie down, he’d come to a halt as well, unable to leave her.
The trek had been much longer than he remembered it, and they had emerged far nearer to ground level than he’d expected. Apparently during the course of his snooze the ground had shifted a lot, moving his cavern low into the heart of the mountain. He smiled lazily at the memory of the warm cocoon that had surrounded his home when the lava had last flowed. That had just been a wonderful sensation; no wonder he’d drifted into such a deep sleep.
Beside him Hollie had found yet another place to rest.
“Come,” he ordered, ready to continue the next stage of their journey.
“No,” she gasped. “I need to rest. I’m exhausted. I’d already worked most of a ten-hour day before I had to deal with your shenanigans. Then you made me walk all the way to the surface, and you expect me to keep going? I’m pretty sure I’m in shock, because I still haven’t had a chance to process the fact that you’re a dragon, and when that hits me, I’m going to probably go crazy permanently.”
He bit back his initial retort. “Of course we walked. I did not hear or see any horses. How else were we going to get out?”
Hollie rolled her eyes. “See those?” she asked, waving a finger at the ground near the entrance.
“Yes. The metal lines.”
“Those are called rails. There are metal carts that move along them, powered by something called electricity.”
“Electricity?” he asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.
“Yeah. Like lightning, but harnessed and used in smaller or larger doses as we need.” Hollie tilted her hand back and forth. “That’s a really, really crude way of explaining it. But it’s a form of power. Like the waterwheel, but far more advanced.”
“Interesting. I will have to learn more about it. So you are saying this cart would have carried us here without any effort on our part?”
She nodded. “We had to push a few things and flip a lever, but that’s about it. Oh, and it would have done so in about twenty minutes.”
“Oh.” He felt somewhat silly. Perhaps he should outline his objectives and let her describe the best way to achieve them using modern technology. That might allow him to move faster.
“Yeah.”
Obsidian was looking around, his attention distracted. The sun was gone, but there was still plenty of light from numerous sources nearby. Plenty of the odd structures that had to be buildings were emitting light through glass. There were no signs of life anywhere that would indicate people who had lit the candles.
“What is all this?” he asked at last, realizing he would have to confess his ignorance if he was to get caught up on things.
“Oh boy,” Hollie moaned. “Okay, let’s have a quick lesson on modern technology, shall we?”
But he was already staring out and down the slight incline to another cluster of light. “What is that? Is the land on fire?” Even as he asked the question he knew it wasn’t, but he had no other frame of reference. After much effort Hollie was able to get his attention back, and they spent several hours on a crash course of the past several hundred years. The concept of electricity and computers fascinated him the most. Especially after she showed him her cell phone.
Eventually though, he noticed her covering a yawn.
“Get some sleep,” he ordered. “You are no use to me exhausted.”
“Just let me tell everyone that I’m okay first, all right?”
He nodded and watched as she did something with her cellphone, hitting the top of it with her fingers in some sort of rapid-fire pattern. She’d told him it could communicate with people directly, but he still didn’t quite understand how.
“Okay, there. This is a website called Wikipedia. It’s basically an electronic version of all the world’s books. You can look up all sorts of things just by typing the letters into this box.” She proceeded to demonstrate, then had him demonstrate that he could replicate it. “Perfect. Now come on, I want some shuteye.”
He surmised that to mean sleep. “Is here not acceptable?” he asked, gesturing at the ground.
“What? No, you Neanderthal. I’m going to use a bed. Plus the phone will need to charge. The battery inside only contains a finite amount of power. It must be connected back to the rest of the grid to recharge.”
Sid frowned. He only understood about one in six of those words, but he vowed that by the time she woke up, he would have a much more thorough knowledge of modern technology. He could go several days without sleeping before it started to adversely affect him, and now seemed like a perfect time to do so.
After all, I think I’ve slept enough lately.
She opened up one of the buildings to reveal several beds stacked atop each other, and several stacks laid out in the interior. Hollie climbed into one, and showed him what the battery indicator on the phone was, and what to do if it turned red, showing him the cord she’d snagged from a bag at the side of her bed.
He thanked her and promptly lost himself in the phone. Some time later—he wasn’t sure how much—he became aware of the fact that she was still awake.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Going to sleep around you seems like a bad idea.”
“Why? I will stand watch. No one will harm you.”
She snorted, earning a frown from him. “Oh, nothing. You know, except for the part where you might be the one that harms me.”
Sid looked skyward. “Hollie, if I wanted to hurt you, I could have done so at any point. You wouldn’t have left my den alive if I wished you dead.”
“True. But you know, there was that whole part about ‘I will kill anyone who disturbs my slumber,’ right? I was present for it. Front-row seat, to be exact.”
He ignored the mocking tone of voice she used when trying to impersonate him. Sid knew he didn’t sound anything like that. What he found more curious than anything was that he’d been telling the truth about no one harming her. For some odd reason he was feeling protective toward this human.
It was an odd and uncomfortable feeling. Humans were good for nothing, except the occasional bedding of course. But as Hollie had made clear earlier, she was not that type of lady, her favors not for sale. Which was a shame; her curves were quite luscious and he had a desire to see them. She burned with a fire that he found extremely attractive, the heat pulling him in despite him trying to focus his willpower against it.
Who is she?
Hollie gave him a questioning glance. “You are safe,” he promised. “I will not kill you, nor will anyone else. You have my word on that.”
“And what about everyone that will be here in the morning?”
“What about them?”
“Do you promise not to kill them? There’s going to be a lot of fallout after everyone ran away today, and one of which is that they’ll be back in the morning to resume drilling. I’m not going to let you kill them.”
“You couldn’t stop me,” he stated.
She hung her head in dramatic fashion. “I’m not talking about physically, you thickheaded lizard-brain. I’m saying I want your word that you won’t harm anyone at all while I sleep.”
“What if they come for you?”
“Then sit on them,” she sighed. “But nobody is going to come to kill me. They might come looking for me, but they won’t want to harm me.”
Sid frowned. “You seem very sure of this. Are you not worried for your safety?”
“Obsidian,” she said sternly. “Get this through your head. The world has changed. A lot. One thing that you need to accept is that we don’t walk around just killing anyone anymore. There are laws against it. Most people can go about their daily lives without fearing for their safety. The police protect us.”
He made a mental note to look up what “police” meant after she slept. There was so much to learn.
“Very well,” he said reluctantly, swayed by her passion. “I promise not to kill anyone. I shall sit on anyone who comes to hurt you, until you awake. Now, will you please sleep?”
Hollie gave him one last nervous glance before closing her eyes. In seconds he heard her breathing steady out as she fell into a deep sleep. A few minutes later she began to snore softly. For some reason this brought a smile to his face while he tapped away on the top of her cell phone. No, she called it the screen. Learn the proper terms.
He read through the night, the only light the glow from the magical screen, absorbing much of the changes that had happened since he fell asleep.