Chapter Twenty One - Of Feelings - Excerpt

“Get away, you pest! Oh, just wait until I get my hands on you, you little ingrate!” Sarah screamed at the dragon who stared at her innocently with two of its heads as it continued munching on aloe vera with the other three. Half of the leaves on the gardenia shrubs were consumed to the bare branches and Solomon had found refuge all the way up one of the pear trees, hissing like a tea kettle with all its fur standing on end.

“Don’t you talk like that to my dragon! Come here, sweetie, did she hurt you?” sister Joseph came quickly to the lizard’s defense.

“You were concerned what it was going to eat? It eats everything in sight, it’s an unstoppable garden wrecking machine, and it’s not picky either! Check out the hot pepper patch, your beast has no taste buds! I replanted the aloe vera five times already!” Sarah protested, really flustered and trying to look menacing to the lizard. The dragon watched her innocently, attempted a gurgle and blinked its eyes in series. “I swear if you weren’t so cute!” Sarah thought. “Sister Joseph finally lost it! She wouldn’t dream of letting the goats have free reign of the vegetable patch but she has no problem allowing mini-Godzilla here to run havoc through the land!”

“It’s not like I can’t hear you! You stay away from my dragon, it’s infinitely more interesting than any one of you!” sister Joseph picked up the lizard who blinked at Sarah and then half-closed its yellow eyes feeling protected and content in its owner’s arms; the redhead could swear she saw one of the muzzles sketch a little smirk like a reptilian Cheshire cat.

“You may swindle sister Joseph who gave into her weakness, but you don’t fool me with that innocent stare, you evildoer! Stay away from my plants and leave Solomon alone!” Sarah frowned furiously at the dragon.

“Screech!” the dragon uttered cheerfully.

“You tell me if she bothers you and I’ll give her a piece of my mind! And I won’t be shy about it either!” Joseph coddled the creature as the rest of the sisters collectively burst in Homeric, albeit inner laughter.

Sister Joseph named the beast Josephine despite the fact they haven’t figured out yet if dragons had genders (if someone were able to ascertain that fact it would have been the sister herself). Joseph didn’t take this detail into consideration when she decided the dragon would be a ‘she’ and allowed ‘her’ to share her name. Nobody could argue with the sister about the behavior of her beloved pet, Josephine could do no wrong in her eyes and showed such devotion to her master that it was allowed to follow her everywhere with the exception of the Prayer Hall and that only because the sisters decided the line needed to be drawn somewhere.

A second mat was placed on the other side of the Prayer Hall door and Josephine lay there munching on veggie snacks for the duration of the service, eyeing Solomon with a couple of its heads and making the cat bristle its fur and push its ears back.

Josephine was loud, especially when discontented, and the sisters learned it was less unpleasant to accommodate her whims than to put up with the horrid noise, but otherwise she proved to be an adorable creature who gleamed through the Institute hallways in intense cobalt blue looking like she had just come down from the Gates of Ishtar.

The original idea was to keep her in one of the desert greenhouse environments but Josephine didn’t take well to being confined and screeched their ears off until they let her out to the absolute delight of the children, visitors and science delegations and the chagrin of Sarah for whom protecting the crops became a full time occupation.

She remembered her daydream about petting a peacefully resting dragon who was supposed to lie cooing at her feet but nobody other than sister Joseph ever managed to touch the scratchy lizard. It turned out that dragons were really fast runners when they didn’t fly and were not shy about using their five sets of teeth if annoyed. Josephine had the activity level and temper tantrums of a toddler and after putting up with the biting, clawing and deafening screeches Sarah resigned herself to admire the creature from a distance and breathed a little sigh of relief when it was quiet.