The First Dragon
RUTH COX
Mum was fast asleep in the big double bed, cocooned under a white blanket with her face turned in against the pillow so that Ruth could only see the curly ends of her silver hair sticking up in all directions over the top of the duvet. On the wall that faced the bed there was a big air conditioner. It didn’t work very well, only spluttering out cool air half of the time and making strange clicking sounds the rest.
Ruth stepped lightly across the floor, a task made difficult by the old wood that creaked loudly no matter where she put her feet as she walked out of the bedroom onto the landing and around into the bathroom.
It was tiled in white all the way around, from the floor up to the ceiling. The shower stuck out of the wall and sprayed right onto the ground then down the big drain cut into the middle of it. Ruth hadn’t had a shower yet, but Mum said it ran tepid.
The girl reached up, turning the tap on and watching the water run down the cracked porcelain of the sink as she thought of what else there was to do in the house.
Yesterday had been better.
The sun had come back after the brief rainstorm, bright and warm where it moved slowly through the sky. She had looked up at it as she walked beside Mum, holding tight to her hand as they ambled down the road. Ruth kept quiet as they went, knowing Mum still felt unwell and seeing the heavy way her eyelids blinked open and shut.
They had gone to a cinema inside a mall. There were big posters hung up on the high walls and bits of popcorn trodden into the patterned carpet that Ruth had stared at as Dad bought them all tickets. The cinema was different to the ones in Australia. The seats were big and deep and soft with trays between them instead of armrests. The screen was enormous and, when the music came on, it was very loud. Ruth had looked at Mum, worried. Loud noises gave Mum migraines.
Then the movie began – and Ruth wasn’t worried about anything anymore. She thought her favourite movie was Kung Fu Panda, but five minutes into the new film, she had changed her mind.
How to Train Your Dragon was her favourite movie. Ever.
Afterwards they had dinner in a restaurant next to the cinema, Ruth gazed at the plastic food displayed behind the glass and talked to Mum about everything. About Hiccup, and Toothless, and the Island of Berk, and Astrid, and if they were going to make another movie and how long it might take them to make another movie.
She talked all through dinner, and all through dessert, only taking a short break when she had to go to the toilet, then kept chatting while she washed her hands. After that they went to a bookshop. Mum browsed around, and Ruth trailed behind her, talking about Toothless and how he reminded her of a cat.
Mum had nodded along, stopping at a tall bookshelf in the children’s section and smiling to herself as she picked up a book. “What do you think of this, Ruthie? Might be interesting.”
In her hand was a book with a bright cover that she passed to Ruth.
It took two tries, but eventually, after passing her eyes over the title a third time, Ruth understood what was written there.
How to Train Your Dragon
by Cressida Cowell
Bugs were fluttering around the lamplights when they got back to the house, with Ruth hanging onto Mum with one hand and holding her new book with the other.
It had begun to rain again when she slipped into her pyjamas and got Charlie Dog from where she had left him sitting on the itchy couch downstairs. Ruth got into bed first, pulling the covers up and holding the new book eagerly, ready for Mum to come and read it to her.
The bed dipped a bit when Mum settled in and took the book, reading the first lines quietly. “There were dragons when I was a boy…”
But today the excitement was gone.
She had already searched for slaters and geckos in the courtyard around the toilet shed. She had played with Charlie Dog. She had sung all the nursery rhyme songs she could remember. She had played a guessing game – but then realized that guessing games didn’t work when she played them by herself, because she already knew all the answers to her own questions.
Rocking back on her heels, she peeked at her reflection in the streaky bathroom mirror, pushing her fringe back out of her face as she puffed out her cheeks and scrunched up her nose.
She dropped the expression she was pulling in the mirror and dipped her head backwards, groaning in frustration because she was so bored. The sound of thunder rumbling outside gave Ruth an idea. Slipping on her pink flip flops where they sat by the bathroom door, she padded back through the hall to the bedroom.
She crept over to the balcony, gently sliding the closed panel back over its runner until there was just enough room for her to sit and stick her feet between the banisters.
The air was thick, sky overcast and tropical, warmth on the wind surrendering to a cool change that rolled through the narrow streets.
Ruth’s legs stuck out from between the firm wooden bars of the terrace that hung out over cobble paved road below, pink flip flops wagglingly back and forth off muddy toes. The house was old. It smelled like floor polish and damp. There wasn’t a TV, or any toys to play with. All the furniture was carved out of wood with woven reed panels and scratchy, thin foam cushions. There was no dinner table or chairs.
The toilet was in the middle of the courtyard out the back of the house. It was an odd place, but Ruth liked it.
Dad said the house was very expensive – that it cost the people who owned it three million dollars. Ruth didn’t know what a million was, but she could tell from the mumbled way Dad said it to Mum that it must have been a lot.
A bird swooped through the street, her feathers an ashy colour like a pigeon, but her shape and the way her wings moved were different. She didn’t whirr through the air, instead, she glided smoothly, a long tail fanning out as she swooped up to a wire of red cloth lanterns strung across the road.
When she landed, the wire dipped under her weight making the long row of lanterns sway quickly back and forth. The bird kept her wings splayed as she balanced, waiting patiently for the swaying to stop. When the heavy decorations lost their momentum, the bird relaxed her wings down to her sides, tilting her head down to thoroughly fluff and preen the soft feathers under her belly. It was silent inside the house and on the street. The world had slipped into mid-afternoon drowsiness, suspended in the warm silence of the tropical air, breathing gently as it slept.
The bird turned her head, tiny, dark eyes darting to Ruth’s legs where they swung lightly back and forth. A ray of sunlight broke through the dense bank of clouds and caught on her feathers, making the brown plumage shine sleek and dark like a gecko’s scales. Mum told Ruth that birds were descended from dinosaurs and that their ancestors had used their wings to flee to safety before the asteroid hit. Ruth thought dinosaurs were like dragons, big and scaly and fierce. Once upon a time somebody must have met a dinosaur and not known what it was, so they made up a new creature called dragon.
Ruth watched the bird, smiling at the way she shone in the glint of light before it was gone, the shine on her feathers fading back to brown. Plain, but still as beautiful.
Maybe that person so long ago hadn’t met a dinosaur. Maybe they had just taken the time to look carefully at a little brown bird.
A drop of rain hit the cobblestones on the road far below.
Warm shocks of wet dotted on Ruth’s knees and the tops of her feet when the swelling, grey clouds above broke open and poured down a torrent. Dark stones dyed to black as the thousands of droplets poured over them, water rolling off the hard surfaces and gathering into little streams between the grout and funnelling down into the clean gutters.
Ruth pressed her face up against the wooden bars to watch the water fall and drain away as her knees were soaked, rain running off the backs of her heels. The little bird ducked off her perch of lanterns and back down the street, swooping past the house. The powerful beats of her wings and noble poise of her head made Ruth sure.
The first dragon had been a bird.
Thunder rumbled somewhere above the dense banks of clouds.
The warm feeling in the air was swept away suddenly on a strong, blustering gust of cold wind that made goosebumps rise on Ruth’s skin. She jolted back from the balcony, pulling her legs through the balustrades and rubbing at the tops of her arms to chase away the chill.
Dad was still at his meeting and was taking forever to get back. Ruth huffed, fogging the surface of the hallway mirror with her breath and then using her finger to quickly draw patterns in the condensation before it evaporated, taking the image of a love heart with it.
Breathing close to the glass of the mirror a second time, Ruth began to draw a loopy, round flower. She wished Mum could read more How to Train Your Dragon to her. She wished she could read to herself. She wished she knew where Mum had put the book.
The stairs creaked as she walked down them, leaving her flip flops on the landing. Ruth hung off the last banister for a while, looking out into the sparsely decorated lounge room with its one uncomfortable couch and round glass topped coffee table.
Her gaze drifted to the loose papers and scatter of coloured pencils left on the table.
It took Ruth half an hour to draw the bird as best she could. She was good at drawing, she practiced lots and Mum kept all the pictures she made – but this time, Ruth decided to do something different.
Putting her picture of the bird carefully to the side, she took another blank sheet of paper and set it down, looking at it for a long time before picking up the black coloured pencil.
At the top of the page in clumsy block letters she wrote.
Once, there was a girl who saw the very first dragon.
That was how it began; with her first dragon.
Her first story.
*
Ruth Cox is an emerging, provocative voice in literature. She pens long form narratives that deal with the horrors of girlhood and revels in challenging societal taboos and cultural expectations. Disturbingly vivid, her works always leave an impression of wonder and revulsion upon the palates of readers in equal measures.
