Rhyolite
“Where are we going?” he asked for the tenth time as they walked through town, his head craning left and right trying to take everything in.
He was starting to get his bearings, enough to realize that as they walked, the buildings grew smaller and farther apart.
“To get some exercise. It’s about ten minutes up the road from here by foot,” she said, her hand still latched onto his.
He’d thought about dropping it after it had no longer been necessary for dragging him along, but he was enjoying the closeness with her, and suspected she was as well. At several points during their walk he’d contemplated stopping and pulling her around and into him so that he could kiss her.
The urge to do so was getting stronger as they walked. Her hand fit perfectly into his, and he continued to marvel at her height. For once he wouldn’t have to bend in half to kiss someone. She would but have to tilt her head backward a little. He glanced over at her now, the high ponytail of golden-blonde hair cascading down her back, the last foot or so swishing back and forth in time with her steps, giving it a life of its own.
Twin stud earrings twinkled back at him in the daylight from her left ear, and he knew it matched the other side. The diamonds were small. Too small for someone of her beauty, he decided. An idea formed in his head. Aimee had never said that this shopping spree had to be only clothing.
“What’s that smile for?” she asked. “You look entirely too confident of yourself.”
“I am a dragon. I have no reason to be anything but confident in myself. I am my own master.”
Although he believed the words, part of his delivery had been monotone, to ensure that Aimee knew he was just having fun, aware of what he was saying.
“We’ll see.”
He frowned, wondering just what she was taking him to see that had her so positive it would have an effect on him. For just a split second the confidence in his own invulnerability wavered.
“We’re here.”
He looked up, reading the sign tacked onto the front of the single-story building set fifty feet or so back from the road.
Crossroads & Crosshairs.
“What is this place?” He didn’t recognize the little symbol on the sign either. It was a black object that looked like an L turned on its side, but with a lot more detail.
“A range,” she told him. “You need to obey the rules here, okay? None of the normal ‘your rules don’t apply to me, ho ho ho’ stuff, got it? If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”
He frowned. “Okay.”
From out behind the building came a series of sharp bangs, the noise coming rapidly, causing him to flinch as he looked around for the source.
“That’s the outdoor range out back. It’s okay, it’s safe.”
“If you say so.” Now he was positive he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see.
Aimee dragged him inside, waving to the man behind the counter at the back of the store. “Hey Tom, how are ya?”
“Hey Aimee, good to see you!” he boomed back.
Tom was a middle-aged man with a large expanding gut and a mustache that impressed. Rhys walked up to him and took the proffered hand. “Rhys,” he said in return as Tom introduced himself.
“She dragged you here?” Tom asked, his voice making it sound like they were talking secrets even though Aimee was standing next to him.
“Indeed. I’ve never been to a range before. She thinks it will be a good learning experience for me, though I doubt it.”
Behind him Aimee snorted and he saw Tom smile. Turning abruptly, he caught just a glimpse of the face she’d been making behind his back before she put on her best innocent look.
“So adult of you,” he said dryly.
Aimee laughed and rubbed his shoulder, her touch sending sparks of excitement through his chest. “You’ll get over it big guy, I promise.”
He busied himself looking around as she organized whatever it was she intended to do with Tom. There was a wide variety of the objects. Judging by the signs everywhere he assumed they were called guns. He also saw signs for something called pistols, which seemed to be the smaller versions, and rifles, which were longer objects. His eyes spied a sign called “Ammo Rack,” and the various shelves filled with boxes and brass objects. His brain started putting things together, just as a moving picture flashed up on one of the large versions of her cell phone mounted to the wall.
It showed someone putting some ammunition into one of the pistols, and then aiming it at a piece of paper twenty feet away. His eyes rose slightly as the objected rocked and the paper shredded as objects impacted it.
“Come on,” Aimee said, coming up behind him. Put these over your ears like this, and wear these over your eyes.” She showed him how, and then tugged him along through a set of doors, and then another one. Almost immediately he was assaulted with noise, his acute hearing picking up everything despite the muffled effect of the ear protection she’d given him.
There were ten separate stalls on the right, five of which had people. A number of bangs would come from each one, before the occupant set down a pistol on a tray. Aimee took him to one, and then had him stand and watch as she used the pistol on the target in her stall. When she brought it back, he noted that all the holes were in the red circle at the center.
After that she took him outside where others were using larger guns, the rifles. The booms were slower, but much louder out here. There were more stalls, but the targets were much, much farther away this time. Some of them ranged out hundreds of feet into the distance. Once again Aimee took him to a stall where Tom supplied a gun. Aimee did something to it, pulled it up to her shoulder and the gun rocked her back a step as it went off.
She did that several more times before setting it back down, careful to keep the end of it pointed at the targets at all times.
They went and thanked Tom and left. During the entire thing he hadn’t said an entire word.
“Those guns fire bullets made out of metal. The pistol I was using fires them with a speed of around twelve hundred feet per second.”
He tried to process the fact, but she kept speaking.
“The rifle, the bigger one. It’s closer to three thousand feet. Per second. The rifle I fired is a single shot. The military, the fighters, they have weapons that can reach four thousand feet per second, and do seven hundred or more bullets per minute. Those are just the ones that are handheld. You can get into bigger versions that fire much faster. Thousands of rounds a minute.”
“What is the point you are trying to make?” he asked sulkily, knowing the answer and not appreciating the way she’d driven it home with such a fierce hammer.
“That you aren’t invulnerable to humans anymore. Our technology has caught up and surpassed you. In a normal situation? Yes, of course your strength and speed allow you to overwhelm us.”
He turned away, but she grabbed his shoulder and spun him back, forcing him to look and listen to her.
“I’m not doing this to be some sort of bitch, Rhys. You need to trust me on that.”
“Then why are you doing it?” he snapped, his bruised ego getting the better of him.
“Because I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. If you cause a scene, or do something that otherwise reveals your true nature, then people are going to come after you. They will have weapons like that, and they will do whatever it takes to capture you, or even kill you.” She looked away suddenly. “I don’t want that to happen.”
“This is why you wanted me to, as you put it, stay low?”
“Yes. If they find you, they’ll want to experiment on you, to try and figure out a way to gain access to your abilities for themselves.”
He expelled air from between his lips.
“What?”
“It would appear that we’ve found something else that doesn’t change.”
Aimee stared at him for a moment before she wilted. “Oh Rhys. I’m sorry.”
He waved her off. “It has nothing to do with you, Aimee. You have been nothing but kind and patient with me. I guess I had just hoped that after all this time, maybe I wouldn’t be regarded as a freak or an oddity.”
She pulled him in to a hug.
“I wasn’t trying to make you feel unwelcome,” she said, her voice partially muffled as she spoke into his shoulder. “I just didn’t want them to take you away.”
He heard the hesitation in her voice, wondering if she meant to add “from me” to the end of it, but stopped short of actually saying it.
“It’s okay,” he rumbled, striving to find his confidence and stoke it once more. “Kings and shamans and others have been trying to capture me for centuries. They haven’t succeeded yet. In the past I was able to outmuscle them because their weapons were weak. Now it would appear that I shall have to use another part of me if I hope to succeed.”
She stepped away from him and looked him up and down, pausing just below his waist.
“Not what I meant,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I meant my brain.”
“I know. But I thought you wanted to succeed.”
He clapped a hand over his heart. “You have wounded my pride m’lady.”
Aimee giggled. “I doubt it. It would take a lot more than that to damage something so large.”
“You aren’t going to let it go, are you?”
She shook her head. “Nope, not until I get my promised shopping spree.”
He glanced at her, then patted his pockets skeptically.
“Is there a problem?”
“Yes. I seem to have forgotten my gold back in my cave…”
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed, snorting with laughter. “Tell me you never actually used that line on a woman?”
He looked away and her laughs doubled in strength. “That’s priceless. I wish I could have been there to witness such a monumental failure.”
“It was not pretty,” he admitted. “The king…I forget what his name was now, was quite unimpressed with me.”
“I bet. Good thing I can tell when you’re telling the truth or not.” She took his hand again, something he was beginning to enjoy immensely, far more than he’d expected. “Let’s go, we’ve got to cash some of that in before the banks close.”
Banks. Another term he wasn’t aware of.
“Is there a way for me to get up to date with all of the things I’ve missed?” he asked as they started walking back toward town.
“Oh, of course. You’re going to love the internet. Especially once you find all the porn.”
He frowned. “What is porn?”
Aimee just laughed gaily, pulling him along even harder.