Jesse James and the Dragon's Egg

A New Language

"Hey, who was that?" Jesse casually swung on one of four swings, waiting for Brad, on the playground at Tekesta Park.

"Some friend of my dad's. He was asking about Claire." Brad said, stooping to check his shoelaces. He had been across the park when Jesse first saw him. He was talking to a man about whom Jesse could tell little due to the hazy, smokey air. Barely mid-morning and it was already sweltering outside. It was shaping up to be another very hot day.

"She okay?"

"Yeah. She's mostly been in bed for the last couple of days, but she just got shortlisted for some medical trial that mom's been trying for so..."

"That's awesome!"

"Yeah. I think so. I mean, she's not in yet. There's still some hoops we've got to jump through. But it's getting there." He gave the laces another tug. "She's a really tired of doing all this stuff, but this one's supposed to work." Brad peered around. "You got him?"

"Yeah." Jesse said, motioning to a canvas backpack lying in the shade next to the swings. A tiny little nose poked out of the top.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? After last week I mean?"

"Yeah, I think so. I've taught him some things."

"Like what?" Kate asked, as she biked to a dramatic sliding stop right at the boy's feet.

"Like how to sniff out a weasel." Brad said.

"Awesome!" Kate chirped . "Now we'll never lose you. Not even in the really tall grass."

Jesse laughed. Brad did not.

The three biked out to Lake Iamonia where they met up with John and Lamar. They secured a secluded spot where they believed they could let Al out to play without being discovered. The now bathing suit clad teens sat in a little semi-circle around Jesse as he prepared his little performance.

"See, after last weekend, I started trying to teach Al to come when I called him. Well, Tuesday, he got it!" Al had crawled from the bag and was curling catlike around Jesse's feet, cautiously sniffing the air. "Ever since then, he's been picking up tricks like crazy. Watch."

Jesse put the little dragon through a series of routines. Al would eagerly sit, stay, come, rollover and play dead, all on verbal command. At the sound of his name, the little dragon would come to immediate attention, waiting anxiously for Jesse to call to him. Jesse whispered a couple of words and made a couple of gestures, and Al disappeared into the woods. It wasn't until Jesse called out to him again that the little dragon reappeared.

"Pretty awesome, huh? I've been working to see if I can get him to fly, but so far, he doesn't seem to know how. His wings work pretty good. I don't know. Maybe he's just not strong enough yet."

No one spoke. The little group sat in stunned silence, staring quizzically and a little horrified at their friend.

"Uh, guys?"

"Jesse," Lamar said, "what was that?"

"What was what?" Jesse surveyed himself, checking his zipper, his armpits, and the back of his pants.

"That sound you were making."

"What are you talking about?"

"Jesse," Kate began gently, "you were talking to Al in, like, some other language."

"What? No, I wasn't."

"Yeah, you were ." John said.

"Will you stop messing around? All I did was tell Al to sit and stay and fetch. That's it."

"That's not what you said, man. What you said sounded more like you were burping or something."

"All I said was," and he turned to Al and again gave the little dragon commands to sit and stay and beg, just as he had done before.

"You just did it again, Jess." Lamar said with a grave look.

"You're starting to scare me a little bit."

Brad pulled his phone from his pocket and held it out to Jesse. "Do it again."

"What?"

"Do it again and I'll record it."

So Jesse spoke to Al again. He issued commands and Al executed them brilliantly. Brad recorded it and Jesse was dumbfounded. He played the recording back over and over again, frightened and confused by what he heard. It was clearly his voice. They were clearly his words. He could clearly hear the others in the background, but the sounds that he was making, the language that he was speaking, he just didn't understand.

But he did understand. He understood every word. Everything he said sounded to his ears, to his rational brain, like nothing he had ever heard before, and yet he understood every word of it. He couldn't figure out if that was because he remembered what he had just said, or could he actually understand this bizarre tongue? He quietly tried to replicate the sounds he heard on the recording. He mouthed the alien vowels and the overly sharp consonants, but it never came out exactly the same. It was only when he turned to Al and addressed the little dragon specifically that the strange language rolled easily off his tongue and he could barely hear the difference.

Lamar walked to his friend. "Jess, what's going on, man?"

"I don't know."

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