A new dimensional view

Chapter 7

I heard the stairs creaking as someone ran up, their steps filled with anticipation. I could tell it was Grant, he always seemed to skip every other step. It was like counting in twos, two, four, six, eight and so on. How I remembered this, I don't know. I didn't mean the simple two times table, it's just that I take in information about everyone. It's useful to know your enemies. Then he stopped at the door. Another interesting thing to note. He knocks at the door, not opening it straight away. Even if he knew.

"Rune, you in there?" He knocked at the door, he knew I was in the room, it was clear by the way he froze at the door before knocking. He was only asking to be polite.

"Yeah, yeah. Dinner is done then, I gather," I muttered, my voice still feeling hollow. No point not opening the door now that I had confirmed my existence. I opened the door to be greeted by Grant, who had a dragon. Wait. What? A dragon? He had a freaking dragon on his shoulders. Correction, mini dragon. Or maybe a baby dragon.

"Uh. What is... that?" I looked at the emerald dragon with dark obsidian eyes. The beautiful, calculating, terrifying eyes. They seemed like... my dimension. I could somehow relate to it on that scale. It draped its tail lazily on his shoulder, its mouth slightly open drooling all over Grant's shirt. It seemed real, and quite grumpy. It looked up at me and huffed. I thought that I saw the fire from its mouth. I was taken aback, what the hell did it mean? Where the hell did it come from?

Grant beamed, which was fairly terrifying. For him, that is. He didn't seem like a dragon loving person, especially after the dragon we met. He explained without me asking.

"Well, since you seemed to like dragons, here's a real-life one. Seeing as you weren't scared of that dragon in your little realm, uh, dimension thingy, I thought you might like him." I rolled my eyes. Okay, that was different. I created that dragon... It wasn't going to hurt me, I told myself. Yet, the glare in this dragon's eyes made my knees turn to jelly. It seemed like personal compliments or reassurances didn't work. It seemed to work the opposite effect because I was now thinking of how the hell was something so small so terrifying.

I straightened myself up and nodded. I tried to avoid looking at the dragon if I could, but my eyes kept being drawn to it. It might just have been my fear of reptiles that made me wary of the creature on Grant's shoulder. Or the connection I had thought I found when I first looked into its eyes. Ok, that was enough. I was changing the subject.

"Didn't Rowan say he was going to make food a while ago? Like, a few hours ago. After he dropped off the books or whatever," I murmured, shifting my gaze to the floor. Talking to shift his attention from the dragon. Huh, after all that I had hated about talking, I thought that talking was better than the dragon. So many things were changing.

"Oh! Sooooo... Basically, uh, I'm the reason that didn't happen. A new play was showing, so I dragged Rowan out so we could go watch it. He tried to get out of it, saying that he had to make dinner, then I said that you had probably started to study with Lorne already. Then he agreed and we only got back when you ran out on Lorne... Rowan doesn't know anything about that. He was in the car, so don't worry about that." He was talking so fast it made my thoughts jumble.  "So, are you coming?"

He grabbed my arm as I nodded along because I didn't know what else to do. Nodding had seemed like a good idea then... but not now. So, long story short, Grant dragged me out of the room before I was able to think twice.

"Grant, I'm not exactly hungry, I'll just sit at the table and wait for the meeting thing afterwards." I could feel the body shame coming back into my mind, I was still far too fat to be able to let myself eat. If I even tried everything would come back out later, most likely it would wake me up and I would have to try and avoid making a sound as I made my way to the bathroom. I stopped my train of thought as we made it to the living room.