"Gilbert Ch 1 - Happy Hatchday" by Randall Owen Salau

A bright shaft of light appeared as the rays of the early morning sun pierced the smoky haze in Gilbert’s cave.  He had seen it many times before.  It was a signal to get off his bed and welcome the new day.  The beam would slowly make its way across the cave and eventually strike the pile of gold and jewels on which he had been slumbering on all night, lighting them up with brilliant bursts of color and radiance.

He hated his pile of gold, actually.   He couldn’t understand why he’d one day suddenly forgotten all about hunting tasty dwarves, and started instead to raid the strongholds of the local castles, or swoop on the hapless merchants who often took the road between the distant harbour and the markets to the south, and steal their riches.

You see, Gilbert was a dragon.  Just an ordinary, everyday dragon like any other.  But there was one difference.  Today was his 50^th hatch-day, which marked the end of his childhood and the start of adolescence.  His mother had flown off 10 years previously with another dragon, saying he was old enough to look after himself.   He could, after all, fly well, hunt for food, breath fire, and do all the other things that grown-up dragons could do.  He had a fearsome set of claws and teeth, and a thick armour of scales that could turn the sharpest of blades or those annoying arrows the dwarves shot at him when he made off with one of their family for dinner.

But lately he had noticed odd things happening to him.  His roar had become much deeper, and scales had started growing in places he’d never had them before.   He’d started collecting gold and jewels.   They were cold and uncomfortable, yet he slept on them in preference to the cosy bed he had in the next passage.  He couldn't even talk to Hasha, the young dragoness who had recently moved into a cave on the north side of his mountain.  Yesterday he’d flown over to show off his new collection of golden goblets, but when he opened his mouth to say “Hello”, he just sicked up the charred remains of the unfortunate traveller who had kindly donated them.  It was so embarrassing!

Gilbert found himself thinking about Hasha a lot.   She was drop-dead gorgeous, with glittering green scales, orange wings and deep red rubies for eyes. 

I wonder what she’s doing now?, thought Gilbert, as he began to daydream.

He imagined her lying in the steamy darkness of her cave, and suddenly he was lying there beside her.  He had given her his pile of gold and promised her more, and she was snorting sweet guttural words of love in his ear.  She moved closer to him, and he could feel the cold rasp of her scales against his, and her huge lumbering heart beating against his chest.  Her forked tongue flickered and hot breath warmed his neck as small spurts of flame shot forth, getting faster and faster as she began to pant.  She began to emit strange squeaks, interspersed with grunts which were becoming louder and louder.  

Suddenly he realized the grunts were real … he opened his eyes and there, staring at him incredulously and stifling giggles, were his friends Drakken, Dingbat and Schnorkel.  A momentary pause ensued as he and his friends surveyed his surroundings, before the silence was broken by a loud gasp.   Gold and jewels were strewn all about the floor, dented and broken, scattered in his dreamy writhings.  

“What the …?”  exclaimed Dingbat.  

“Oh, nothing, got a cramp in the middle of the night” lied Gilbert, trying desperately to hide the guilty expression on his jowls.

“Which limb?“ laughed Dingbat

Oh, I know what’s been going on”, said Drakken.   “Hasha, oh Hasha bay-beeee!” he teased, which made the scales on Gilbert’s cheeks turn a bright shade of crimson.   

“Come on, leave him alone”, said Schnorkel, “It’s his hatchday, and he can do whatever he likes, even if it is gross!”.  

Schnorkel was not his real name, but he’d been calling himself that since his early twenties.  It was such as silly name for a dragon.   His real name was Brownnose, which was much more dignified, and he had a long tan snout to match.  

Drakken was from somewhere in Scandinavia, or at least that’s what he told all the dragonesses.   His favorite pastime was to find a damp cave and breath fire until it was full of steam, and then soak in the broiling mist until his scales turned bright pink.   He would then rapidly soar to the top of a nearby white-capped peak and roll about in the snow until his scales turned blue with cold.  Gilbert thought Drakken’s behaviour totally weird.

Dingbat liked to drink a strange brown liquid called “Ale” that he’d discovered one day in some wooden barrels whilst raiding a village.  He’d become so addicted to the stuff that Drakken now called him an “Ale-o-holic”.   What he saw in it nobody could tell.   All Gilbert knew was that Dingbat would swallow a few barrels, then start talking gibberish and fall over a lot. Last week he couldn’t even remember where he lived, and flew recklessly about the sky until he crashed straight into a cliff face.  He claimed the cliff wasn’t there but it suddenly jumped out in front of him … some elves playing magic tricks he said.  

“Dragons don’t drink”, Gilbert’s mother had warned him when he was younger.  “It’ll put your fire out”.    His mother had always told him things like that, but now he was starting to wonder if she was being entirely truthful.  After all, he hadn’t gone blind yet. 

“Happy Hatchday!”, called his friends in unison.  “Hip Hip, Scorch Away”, and they let forth a triple blast that made Gilbert’s tail start to smoke.   He smiled.   It was great to have such wonderful friends, and he knew already that today was shaping up to be something special, a hatchday he would never forget.  

He also couldn’t help noticing an ominous collection of wooden barrels tucked under Dingbat’s left wing.