I was following the river, which flowed into a bigger one. Bears were fishing and they ran away at the sight of me. It was fun to see black and red balls running when they saw me coming.

HAHAHA, that was my only distraction, to scare away the game. But it was also to see which direction they were running in.

That way, the next time I came by, I'd cut off their retreat and Catch! a prey to eat.

I was tough, though. Killing to eat...

Feeling the life going out of my mouth. I used to love animals and killing them made me sad.

What if I breed them??? No, I'll get attached and I'll be even harder.

No, hunting is fair play, they have a chance to run away and I have a chance to eat and then it keeps me busy.

I had a sudden desire for warmth and the beach and the sea. Maybe seafood, seaweed and big fish? Sushi? I once found seeds spicy like mustard and decided to make a skin satchel. After 2 days of hunting, preparation and failed do-it-yourself, I managed to make a Cro-Magnon bag, no, a cro-dragon bag!

I stuffed the seeds in it and I had the head of the sushi.

Tuna, and a big one. BLAM, I pulled one out of the sea and it had to be within 2 meters. MIAM MIAM I did. and I prepared it and dried some parts and some parts I folded the fillets together, put some seaweed and seeds in the middle and I had a kind of wasabi wave sushi. It was delicious but I started moaning in loneliness and remembered my human life, which I used to criticize all the time but in the end now that I think back I wasn't so bad.

I was dying to play... I couldn't have animal friends or tame anything. If there were wolves... or dogs...

I wanted to talk but only growls and squeaks came out and I wanted to whistle and a flute sound came out!

I immediately tried a musical tune and it worked!

I started to whistle and the best place was the ravines where I could hear the echoes and hear myself a little. How I missed the music.

Then I made a very big fire and around it was a lot of food to cook and smoke. I had settled on a small mountain with hot, steaming lakes at the base and a view of the sea. There the clouds were pushed back by the wind and you could see the stars and the 2 moons... I was not on earth...

My fire could be seen dozens of kilometres away, maybe stars?

I built an ocarina and started playing music at night. The fire protected me from reckless predators and comforted me. Its gentle warmth reminded me of the open fire at home and Christmas.

From time to time I would throw pine cones to make it crackle and watch the little flaming ashes spread.

I had an idea. I saw a piece of wood with a little bit of grease, especially from the birds, they burn well. And I went up to spend the time with the bladder lanterns and with the hot air, they flew away and I had fun watching them fly away with the wind.

It was my only hobby.

A small cave accumulated the heat from the fire and at the bottom of the hot springs. I loved to wallow in it and go from a mud bath to a hot spring. It relaxed me.

I built myself a smokehouse, and went to the pottery to store the spices and try to make a pot, but it failed every time. And when I put it on the fire, it would break or get soft. You can't improvise pottery.

A year went by and finally I had my technique for making a pot. I dreamed of French fries!

After a month, finally I had a shit oil with shit roots to make shit French fries.

It's disgusting without salt and sauce!

Ahh... how hard it is! When you start on one side, you haven't finished on the other and you have to start over and over again.

Then I start crying and cursing the sky!

Are there no other dragons here? Are there no men here?

I'm tired of eating raw blood or grilled fish.

CHOCOLATE FOR PITY'S SAKE!

I cry. Then I flew higher and higher and decided to make a map drawn on a skin.

It was harder than I thought and then the map would draw itself in my head. What an idiot I am.

Then I moved on to pterodactyls and there was a whole fauna of pseudo dinosaurs. A human in there would be eaten within minutes. Here, I was the one who was eating the dinosaurs.

There were like raptors hunting in groups, but they were afraid of me. I was too big but I was wary. I was nine meters long, but if they ambushed me, they could catch me by surprise. I could resist but I could also be wounded and here, no doctor... An injury can be fatal.

A T-Rex appeared one day and jumped on me by surprise while I was searching in the undergrowth after a turkey or a tender bird.

There was an animal track and I had sniffed the trail well and I could see into the meadow, on the opposite side of the undergrowth, my prey but I had not seen the large reptile behind me. It had been tracking me for a while and it was walking along with me so that I did not hear it. Suddenly I saw it with its mass behind me and it accelerated at an abnormal speed. A big acceleration and its front paw with clamps gripped my flank painfully, and if I didn't have dragon scales I would be disembowelled. His teeth couldn't pierce my armour and his teeth were tearing the gums on my back spikes.

He received a big blow from my tail that destabilized him and I rammed my horns into his neck.

He toppled over and started moaning, having lost the game. After that fight, I felt much more confident.

I left him alive in case I felt like it later... and I wanted to make a playmate or a hunting companion, but he ran away. As I turned around, some raptors were ready to share the feast, like scavengers or opportunists of a big feast. They looked angry at me like, "Why didn't you bleed him?"

I wanted to go in their direction, but they scattered.

I got it in my head to find their nest or their lair. Obviously, it wasn't a great idea.

So I went from tropical jungle to wooded steppes to tundra and desert. But I liked the wooded, mountainous terrain better. More comfortable in terms of resources.

And in the evening, I lay down on a rocky overhang, next to a huge pile of burning wood, as a signal!

Every night it was the same and by my fire, which kept out daring predators, I lay down and bits of my old life resurfaced.

But I felt that my human self was now being altered by my dragon self. I needed contact and I didn't need it all at once.

I wanted to sing a song, a lullaby to get to know mom, to know her name.

Then as I put my head on the ground I heard singing.

A lullaby. Didn't Mommy leave me?

"Mama? .... Mama? .... Mama? ... Is that you?

Voice in my head: "My poor little Nicholas ... I am ... Heater or Wistala ...

Your mommy was my little sister Syfia."

"Listen to my lullaby..."

And the ground started singing and crying...

So my mummy's name was Syfia?

I started to cry my mom. All my tears came out at once.

Was it due to a shock or to a truth?

At least I had someone to talk to.

I was no longer alone.

During the day I hunted and in the evening, by the fire, I sang with mother earth... a goddess?

She cried loneliness and Syfia.

How could my mother be the sister of the planet?

But every night I was happier.

But I felt that something was wrong. My dragon's intuition

So I was flying over the volcanoes and there I could feel what she was feeling.

Great love.

Then one night, I called her Mommy.

Joy was felt, but right away I felt that she didn't want to replace my mom.

She sent me images of the Earth in my dreams that I recognized immediately. I saw a baby sucking a horn. And a creature like me dying. Then the meeting here, a village, human grandmother and dragon grandmother Akulathraxas.

Remains... the dragon village and the underground network...

It was too much, I had to go and see.

Now I understood why mother was always looking at the valley... She was happy there.

After I had a little supply in a skin bag, I decided to go explore the ruins.

Mama (Heater) explained to me how to make torches and light a mana circuit.

The Tsunami had covered everything with soil, so you could not see anything and within 5 years the bushes and small trees had covered everything.

I found the beams of the shed by the lake and spent my time digging, looking for and straightening the ruins. Much had disappeared and repairing was impossible. The worm-eaten wood was beyond repair.

That's how I learned that there was a small town of dragons here.

Heater sent me pictures and I could see the valley differently.

A pleasant, fertile valley where baby dragons were born, but they all feared the volcano.

They feared Heater?

No, that is not possible.