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“What is it, boy? Is Timmy stuck down a well?”
He snorts foul puffs of air through his dinner-plate-sized nostrils. He is not amused with my mocking tone. Oops.
I move toward him a few steps until I can catch his eye with the gold bar again. His eyes begin to trace its movement as I wave it around in front of his nose.
He snorts again, happily this time, and droplets of dragon snot hit my face and chest. You would think I’d be used to being covered in snot after raising four kids. And you’d be wrong. It takes every bit of my self-control to not throw up right here.
“Lovely. Okay, Buddy, time for you to go home.” When I am sure I have him focused on the bar, I turn, keeping it behind me, and run as fast as I can for the piers.
He plods along behind me, because that’s all he has to do to keep up at this point, as I pant and hold my side. I bring myself to a skidding stop at the edge of the water and throw the golden brick into the bay, before turning to check on his progress. Unfortunately, I had completely misjudged our distance, both from the water and each other, and he’s too close for me to effectively dodge his charge after the gold.
Not being known for their jumping abilities, the dragon turtle knocks into me on his way after his quarry, and we fall into the water together. I’m grateful the fall isn’t too far because he lands on top of me and immediately swims away, with unbelievable speed. He grabs the bar of gold in his wide mouth and turns his head to wink his thanks at me before swimming off, past the boats docked in the basin and out to the bay.
I’m happy to have fallen in far enough from the boats that we didn’t land on any, until I realize that my only exit from this heavily polluted, likely toxic waterway is one of the ladders on the docks, the closest of which is about twenty feet away. Not an Olympic swimmer on my best day and already not at my freshest, I flip onto my back and do a lazy backstroke.
I heft myself out of the water with the ladder. Feeling like an express train slammed into me instead of another living being, I start toward my car. I wish I could ignore the stares of the few people working on the docks, but I probably should address their concerns over the beast they just saw dive into the Morris Canal.
“Uh, nothing to see here. He was just, um, an animatronic. From the science center. He got a little out of control so we had to put him down over here. All this new AI is going to be the end of the world, am I right?” I end with a forced snorty laugh.
Their eyebrows scrunch down, and they stare at me a bit longer, but soon they break off into their own conversations, some with a shake of their heads, as they return to work. Just a typical Friday morning for them.
I shrug. It’s New Jersey. I guess there are far stranger sights than a dragon turtle knocking a middle-aged woman into the Hudson.
I resume trudging to my car, my sodden feet smacking against the pavement with every sloppy step, and daydream of the hot shower I will take when I get to my docent’s house. My husband should be heading there right about now, also.
We’re supposed to train together today. But as I collapse into the driver’s seat and feel the watered-down dragon mucus drying all over my front side, it occurs to me that I might need a nap first. Well, shower first, then nap,thenmaybe I’ll be up for training.
It’s rush hour now, but thankfully George lives in the opposite direction of morning traffic from the science museum. I’m barely through the door when he sits me down in his living room so he can question me about the panic attack I had the day before, at the mere discussion of training outside, in the unpredictable wild, instead of safely in the dojo.
“Do you have any idea what freaked you out yesterday?” His blue eyes penetrate mine, looking for an answer, for hope.
“Nope. I already left Maria a message though. Hopefully, she can see me sooner than later, and I can figure out why I was triggered and get over it.” I’m staring at my thumbnail and bouncing my leg impatiently. Maria is the therapist the League of Docents assigned to me–tous. She is technically the marriage counselor for Jake and me, but since I’m not exactly at liberty to share most of what I encounter on this job, if I want a therapist to talk with about other issues, issues not relating to Jake, she covers that too. “This conversation is making me uncomfortable,” I look down at myself. “You know what? That may just be all the dragon boogers I’m coated in. Can I go shower now?”
He stares into my eyes a second longer before nodding and walking back toward the dojo. “Jake and I are in here when you get out.”
I climb the stairs to the guest wing of the house, slowly, walking more than a touch like Frankenstein’s monster to the room where I have a small dresser with emergency clothes in the bathroom. This bathroom serves as my own little headquarters inside George’s house at this point.
It’s been six months since I found out I am The Guardian. While nothing has so far compared to my first big battle, having to rescue my own husband from a handful of horny muse goddesses, I have had to keep up with my training. And fighting slimy, mucous-ejecting beasties is part of the job. Add in not wanting my kids to see me come home covered in all those lovely bodily fluids, and it made sense for me to keep some clothes here so I can get cleaned up before going back to being Mom.
I’ve peeled off the clothes, which I’m not sure I’ll ever want to wear again, and have just turned the water to scalding when my phone rings. It’s Maria.
I look at the hot water spraying into the shower stall that is already filling with steam, but I shut it off so I can hear my therapist. “Hi, Maria. Thank you for calling me back.”
“Hey, Miranda. What’s going on?” Her voice is peaceful and patient on the other end of the line.
“So, um, I’ve been having these panic attacks lately. I had one yesterday, after our session, and I was hoping we could try to unearth why I was triggered?”
“I’m sorry to hear that happened to you. Do you know what the trigger was? Was it from the exercise I assigned to you and Jake, where you’re supposed to look into each other’s eyes? That would not be unheard of, if it was that.”
I flinch at her words. That sounds so bad. Also, we completely forgot we were supposed to be doing that. “No, not at all. George told me he wants to start training outside. As far as I can tell, I believe the idea of training outside kicked it off.”
For a moment, I hear nothing but her breath. Then she starts to speak again. “Okay, that’s a little strange. I think we should discuss this in person. As luck would have it, I have the rest of the afternoon free today. Can you come in now?”
Again, I look at the shower. “Sure? Not right now though. I’m about to wash some creature goo off myself. We should be able to be there in about an hour though, if that’s okay.” I hope Jake accepts the olive branch I’m extending when I invite him along.
“Eww. More blood?”
“No, wow, you know me so well already. This time it’s monster mucus,” I answer unaffectedly, which makes a nice contrast when I think I hear her gag over the phone.
