Discoveries

MOTE Prompt Response

Xander scrubbed at what appeared to be blood, soaked into the wooden floor. He scrubbed until his arms ached. When he finally removed the hideous stain, he discovered underneath a glowing sigil, alight with runes. Entranced, Xander stared at the glowing runes. His finger moved of its own accord toward them. Before his brain could remind him that touching unknown (and glowing!) runes was probably a bad idea, his forefinger made contact.

The world gave a slight hiccup and settled back into something that felt familiar… but not quite.

Staring around the main room of the pub, peering up at the tables with chairs piled on them, Xander tried to figure out what, exactly, was different. He knew something was off, but what? The Dragon’s Tale Pub looked as it always had, exactly as he remembered it from growing up here, when his parents ran it.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. At first, nothing seemed out of place. But then he saw it. Where there had once been a forgettable landscape painting hanging behind the main bar, there was now a portrait of a… dragon? Yep. A dragon wearing wire-frame glasses and holding a book. What the hell? When the dragon winked at him, Xander fell over, landing next to the rune… which was no longer glowing.

Carefully climbing to his feet and avoiding the rune, Xander made his way over to the main bar, his eyes never leaving the portrait of the dragon.

“What the hell?” Even his whisper sounded loud in the strangely quiet pub.

“Very well done, lad. You’ve discovered the true secret of The Dragon’s Tale.” The voice sounded in his head the same way things did when he was wearing headphones or using his ear buds.

Spinning around in search of the source of the voice, Xander’s hands automatically reached up to pull out his ear buds before he remembered he wasn’t wearing them. This time he was staring straight at the painting of the dragon when it moved. Reaching up one hand… paw? claw?... the dragon pulled off the glasses and stared down at Xander.

“Calm down. You’re fine. You’ve just unlocked the true secret of this pub. Or I should say my pub. My essence is entwined in this pub, so I am the pub and it is me. Basically, this is my pub.” With a wink, the dragon replaced the glasses, continuing to gaze down at Xander.

“My parents…” Xander stammered, trying to get his brain to function.

“Knew about me, yes. They were supposed to tell you when you formally took over running the place, but, ah…”

“The accident. They never had a chance to tell me anything because they were both killed in the accident.” Xander felt his eyes filling with tears as he relived the phone call he’d received from the highway patrol just six months earlier. His parent’s car had somehow skidded off Highway 1 between Big Sur and Hidden Shores when they were returning from San Francisco. Based on the skid marks, the highway patrol assumed the car had gone over the cliff and into the Pacific Ocean. So far, they had not been able to recover the car or the bodies of Xander’s parents. After talking it over with his brother and sisters, Xander had decided to return to Hidden Shores, the small, northern California beach town they’d grown up in, to reopen and run The Dragon’s Tale. His siblings had prestigious jobs in Silicon Valley and had no desire to return to a small town and run a pub. Xander was not as enamored of Silicon Valley as his siblings. He’d done his time as a highly respected financial advisor for venture capitalists and, burned out from the fast-paced, high-stress environment, had welcomed the opportunity to return to a slower, more relaxed pace of life. After wrapping things up and closing out his previous life, Xander had moved back to Hidden Shores about a month ago.

And now, apparently, he was having a conversation with the pub itself.

Glancing around the pub once more, as if hoping to discover he was being pranked by someone, Xander finally returned his gaze to the portrait.

“Um, okay. Um, well… how does this work? I mean, can I just run this as a pub? Or is there something more going one?” He wasn’t sure how to ask the question… what was he supposed to do now? And if he walked outside, would he find the world he knew, or was this some weird parallel universe?

“Oh, the world is exactly as you left it, you haven’t fallen into a parallel universe, you’ve just discovered my special talents,” the dragon said, as if reading Xander’s mind.

“But what was the stain that was covering the rune?” Xander asked, waving a hand behind him to indicate the no-longer-glowing rune on the floor. When he turned to look at it, he couldn’t see the rune, or even the edges of the stain that had hidden it.

“The rune is still there, but since you’ve touched it, you no longer need access to it. Whenever you transfer ownership of this pub, the stain will appear again, and the rune will glow until the next person discovers the true secret of The Dragon’s Tale,” the dragon said.

“Okay, so I just keep going and reopen the pub like nothing happened?” Xander asked.

“Yes. But be aware, this is an active area for ah, shall we say unique types of activity, so you should expect some visitors who are aware of my existence and my powers,” the dragon told him.

“Your powers? Like what kind of power?”

“For one, I protect and defend this physical building and everyone living in it. I know you know about the apartment upstairs. You’ve been living there since you arrived back in town. As long as you live there, I will protect you.”

“Oh. But if that’s true, then why did Mom and Dad buy a house in town?” Xander asked. This whole situation was getting stranger by the minute.

“They felt they didn’t need my protection. But I think someone proved them wrong,” the dragon replied in a quiet voice.

“Wait. Are you saying someone killed them? That it wasn’t an accident their car went over the cliff?” Xander felt pressure in his chest as his anger rose.

“I am. And we will discuss things in time. There is nothing you can do right now, and if you tried, you would likely end up dead. In the meantime, I strongly advise you to continue living in the apartment upstairs. I promise we will discuss everything.”

Xander took a deep breath and released it slowly. The dragon was right; there wasn’t anything he could do right now and the best way to celebrate his parents was to reopen The Dragon’s Tale. Then he’d figure out what happened. Besides, something told him whatever happened to his parents, it wasn’t going to be “normal” in his sense of the word. For now, he’d follow the dragon’s lead.

******

This week I traded prompts with TA Leederman. She gave me: When he finally removed the hideous stain, he discovered underneath a glowing sigil, alight with runes. If you make your way over to More Odds Than Ends, you can briefly escape the world with all the other responses. Go on, give it a try! Trust me, you’ll like them!