If You Asked Me To (UWOC)

Two

Once we were all free, we flew out into the jungles of South America that had hidden the lab from most human eyes. The lab people never spoke openly about where we were, but I knew from their thoughts.

I felt the minds of the scientists just drop off as the yellow light beam killed them. The dragonets screamed when they saw it and what it was doing. It was about to cover us, no matter how fast we flew. I didn't miss the irony of finally getting free after five years, only to die right away; however, the light passed harmlessly over us. It seemed to kill only humans, and we were no longer human.

I went to the trees and watched as the alien ships destroyed everything standing. Every building and every human-made monument collapsed, reduced to dust. 

Over the next few months, we learned to avoid the newly built alien cities. We settled in the forest about 20 miles from the original lab, making burrows in live trees far from the ground. It shocked me to learn that we could breathe fire like the dragons of myth and legend, but that helped keep us alive because those white aliens were mean, and they brought animals to the planet that had no fear of us or the other Earth animals.

Our diet was the same as many other animals—some fish, mainly fruit—and food eventually became a problem, making us go further into the jungle. But the main thing that sustained us was the Morning Song. Every day, when the sun came up, it called to something profound in our new DNA. Joy and the need to dance and sing to the sun and the new day overwhelmed us. We never felt that in the lab. There had been no windows there to show us the sunrise. The Morning Song seemed to cleanse us of all negative thoughts every day, like the ultimate antidepressant, and it didn't take long for us to acclimate to our new life.

I kept an ear, so to speak, on the alien race, the Votaks, so I knew what was going on as it happened. Another race, the Kymari, was angry at the white aliens for taking over this planet and killing off the intelligent race that inhabited it just so the Votaks could have a hold over this end of the galaxy. It didn't take long for the Kymari to remove the Votaks from Earth and take over the planet.

The Kymari mind was so different from the Votaks. Their temperament was always calm, and they were the ultimate overthinkers. They did not allow other races to settle on the planets they inhabited because they could not get along well with others, and they had no tolerance for lies or hurting others unnecessarily. The respect they gave each other was mind-blowing, and they would do anything to protect their young and each other. They amazed me.

The animals in the forest became very troublesome to the dragonets. We lost a little over a quarter of our number because of other animals or accidents. We all saw how the Kymari had built high walls around their cities to protect them from the animals, and the nearest city had a park right on the other side of the wall from us. I decided to take a closer look at that park one day after a nest raid killed two of our hatchlings.

I flew around the walls until I reached a high peak, where I could see the entire city and the huge park right in its center. It took a little time to talk the other dragonets into moving there once I returned, but the safety of being in the city outweighed their fear of the Kymari. That was the best decision we made as a group. We were safer there than we had ever been before.

So much changed over the next ten years.

The Kymari didn't take long to discover our presence, and they loved to watch us sing and dance when the Morning Song called to us, like bird watchers from our previous human lives. They never bothered us, though, and we stayed away from them, ensuring they never saw us breathe fire. The park had a few ponds with fish and fruit trees of every type that would grow in that area, plus some trees the aliens had brought from other planets.

Some dragonets had already paired off while we were in the wild, but more started pairing off once we were safer. More children were born, and our numbers grew slowly. 

We discovered another genetic trait besides the Morning Song when a horrifying animal known as a Sicora entered the park. When we smelled it, our instincts forced us to go after it, and we found that our bite could kill it and its babies, known as Crawlers. A Kymari took in a dragonet injured during a fight with a Sicora in the park, and it turned out a Crawler bite would put a Kymari into the hospital, while a full-grown Sicora bite would kill them within a few minutes. They'd had to abandon other worlds due to those animals sneaking aboard their spaceships and then populating the planets where they landed. The Sicora attacked anything, and energy weapons could not hurt them.

This was also when the Kymari learned about the one ability we had hidden. We were no longer called 'singing lizards'; we were now known as 'fire lizards'. Thankfully, because we had never flamed a Kymari, they did not feel threatened by us.

Since then, quite a few of our flock bonded with Kymari handlers. Those dragonets were responsible for the deaths of thousands of the Sicora. We have not only wiped out those creatures from this planet, but other planets have begun requiring all ships to stop here for inspection by a fire lizard before they allow the trade ships into their atmosphere.

The Kymari didn't know that we were sentient. Only the handlers knew, as their dragonets would speak with them once a full bond was complete—when the dragonet became less like a pet and more like a child to the handler. At that point, the handlers would die or kill for their dragonet. But although they kept our sentience a secret, we never told them we were once human, or what the humans had done. They believed other races scared us just because we hatched in cages and all our friends and family died at the hands of the Votaks. They weren't aware that the friends and family we lost were the humans.

I never paired off with a female, as my ability to see into minds was too much to handle sometimes. I never shared that knowledge with another dragonet, and I had no interest in hunting Sicora. So, I spent my days lounging around with the others in what was called 'the wild flock' in the park or going to my den to be by myself when the minds of others became too much for me to handle.

It was one of those days when everything changed.