A few hours had already passed, and my hunger was beginning to make me see things. Mirages formed along the horizon, my imagination conjured tantalizing images of roasted meat, juicy apples, and moist chocolate cream cakes. My tongue hung along the side as I was mesmerized, and I thought about that one strawberry shortcake yogurt cup I had sitting in my fridge door. I had my own mini fridge with a padlock on it to keep vultures like Captain Reginald away. He loved to sneak into the kitchen in the dead of night and munch on my guilty pleasures after his nightly escapades.

Except here, there was no mini fridge, and there definitely weren’t any strawberry shortcake yogurt cups.

My stomach growled, and just like that, my deceptive cuisine vanished, leaving behind it a smelly pond of algae. Nolan looked down at me with an eyebrow up and asked, “Hungry?”

‘I feel like I haven’t eaten in days. I had breakfast before I dropped ship, though.’

“New body, new belly. Maybe you shouldn’t have charred those goblins completely.”

I winced. ‘Are you implying I eat goblin meat?’

He looked at me funny. “I think you’re forgetting that you’re an actual dragon.”

I nearly gagged at the thought.

“I had it once. It’s pretty tough meat, but it grows on you.” He turned his head west and guided the reins. “I see an abandoned campsite a few meters out. We’ll sleep there for the night.”

When we reached the site, it was more obvious that people hadn’t been here for a while. The pit was overflowing with charred wood and ash from an ongoing fire, and the surrounding grass had been beaten down by many boot prints. There was an eerie feeling of abandonment, like we’d stumbled upon a ghost town. The area had long tall trees, providing some type of closure.

Abandoned tents flapped in the chilly wind. Whoever had been here last had left little equipment, and no food. The remains of what they were chewing on were on tin plates alongside the campfire. If I had to guess, they had rabbit for dinner, and the scavengers came over to finish what was left on their bones.

Still, I wasn’t so sure that whomever set shop here wouldn’t return. Besides the lack of food, the area was still warm, and the embers in the pit were still glowing. We had to consider that this camp wasn’t actually abandoned, but temporarily vacated.

‘What if they come back?’ I asked, clawing at my new dragon belly.

Nolan shrugged. “Then we’ll deal with them.”

I groaned internally at his nonchalance. He had this brutish, foolish courage that either bordered on crazy or actual bravery, but right now, I couldn’t tell which. As I watched him stake his horse to a nearby tree, I began circling the possibility of being lucky for a change.

Okay, no, scratch that.

‘We might want to pick another location,’ I suggested. ‘Or, I don’t know, take shifts playing lookout.’

He smiled at me as he picked up the spear that was laying tall against the tree. “I like your second idea.” He then picked up a stone and began sharpening the blade to the spear.

‘What are you doing?’

“Gonna’ hunt.”

‘Oh? For me?’

“No short fry. I have a stomach, too.”

I rolled my eyes inwardly.

My stubby legs dashed toward him, and when I reached the heel to his shoes, I glossed over the field. ‘It’s called a barren wasteland for a reason, hot shot. What are you planning to catch here?’

“Clearly there’s something to be caught around these parts. Otherwise, those plates wouldn’t have had food on them.”

‘There’s no telling where they got it from. They could have brought it over.’

“Have you always been so pessimistic?” he said, the question making me quiet for a second.

I didn’t know why I thought about the day I lost my parents, but I did. The memory wrapped around me like a bad dream I wanted to forget. I could still feel the heartache, the helplessness, and the anger that brought me to the worst place I’d been in in my entire life. I was young at the time, but sharp enough to realize that the world didn’t always have happy endings and that bad things sometimes happened to good people. That’s when I realized that life could be cruel, and no matter what you did, BS would find a way to take you under.

My extended silence brought a different look across Nolan’s face. It was somewhere between hesitation and empathy. I was about to dismiss the entire thing, until he opened his mouth and said, “You don’t need to answer that.” His voice was gentle, and it caught me off guard. “My only advice to you is, seize the moment. Don’t let fear bolt you down. There’s nothing you can’t do when you put your mind to it. Soon, you’ll learn to grow into your race. Everything is still fresh. It’ll take time, but you’ll get there.”

Awww, he was such a sweet and considerate vagabond!

I clung onto his leg and fake alligator tears began to stream down my cheeks. Nolan, wide-eyed, fumbled with his spear, and poked his knee up to raise me several inches off the ground disbelievingly.

“Hey, what in the bloodmoon are you doing?!” He tried to shake me off but I only held on tighter. I could see the confusion scribbled on his face when I let out a theatrical sniffle for good measure.

‘Aw, Nolan, you’ve touched my little dragon heart! You truly are the beacon of wisdom in my turbulent infant life!’

He grunted. “Egh, what have I gotten myself into?”

I decided to join him on the hunt. Nolan was right, I was battling with my old mindset. I was a nineteen-year-old human girl in a baby dragon’s body. The mental shift was going to take some time, but nothing rushed the process better than embracing the mold to fill early on. And that meant acting like the ferocious beast evolution had intended for me to be.

For a long while, the outlook seemed grim. The more my stomach growled, the more anxious I got to spot something hip-hopping or tip-tapping under the moonlight. We searched high and low for something to munch on, the trekking beating down what was left of my stamina. Until I noticed something round and glassy flicker for a second by the stone a few steps ahead of me, and suddenly, I became a bobcat in the wild.

Nolan allowed me to hunt on my own so I could get accustomed to the practice. No help didn’t mean no food. I was determined to snag something. The downward posture I fixed myself in came naturally to me, as well as a primal instinct triggered by raw hunger. Keep low to the ground, sharpen your senses, and feel the current of the earth flow through your feet. My body tensed, ready to pounce. As I crept closer to the creature, I locked my keen eyes on him and realized what he actually was: a plump, long-tailed, kangaroo rat, ripe for the snatching!

At first, the thought of eating an actual rat grossed me out, until the hunger pains came-a-knockin’. Out in the wild, it was do or die, and I wasn’t going to let my fear of munchin’ on a rodent deter me. It was oblivious to my presence, continuing to forage in the sparse vegetation. I steadied myself. The world around me became slow as the path to my strike became clear. Then, without another thought, I lunged forward in a flurry of motion.

It tried to run away, but I got a good grip on its tail. My claws dug deep and the rat gave me a quick fight, but his death was met swiftly when I sunk my sharp teeth into his neck. The taste was foreign and strange to me, but my dragon instincts kicked in, and I devoured it ravenously.

I looked up from my meal to see Nolan watching me with an amused expression on his face. “Look at you, short fry. A natural already.”

He also scored a kill, a pierced rabbit corpse hanging at the top of his spear.