xp_logs | Lockheed learns a new trick

Most people were not aware that dragons could pout. Admitedly, most people were not aware that there were dragons to begin with, so it was fairly redundant to say that they didn't know that dragons could pout, but most people who thought about dragons would tend to think that they could not pout. After all, a snout is not really the optimal oral-cavity design for pouting.

Anyone who happened to see Lockheed on this evening, however, would have known that he could pout with the best of them.

Not that there was anyone around to see him pout. That was actually one of the things he was pouting about. He was out in the middle of nowhere with Kitty and The Boy, and they were off doing things without him and he was stuck here without even anything to eat, just staring into the remnants of the campfire.

Camping was boring.

Lockheed had spent quite a while just flying around, and that had been nice, because there were new places to investigate and he was never allowed off the school grounds, so being able to explore when there weren't any people around was neat.

But camping was still boring.

And while he was out flying he'd spotted a pair of fluffy, fuzzy, tasty looking things which made little squeaky sounds and ran away very quickly but not quick enough and had made an excellent afternoon snack.

But Lockheed still didn't like camping.

And he'd found a lot of shiny rocks which would make excellent additions to his hoard, and had even give one of them to Kitty and she said it was very pretty and she liked it.

But then she'd shown it to Jamie, and they'd gotten distracted, and Lockheed hated camping.

So now Lockheed was pouting and sulking about the camp and staring at the fire.

It was a good sort of fire, he thought idly. Very warm and crackly, and he'd noticed that when he huffed out his little "I'm so tortured" sighs (that NO ONE was paying any attention to, AT ALL!) it flickered about in funny ways. Which had led him to think about the incident with the firefood and the crazy metalstickman and the fire breathing.

Which had led, eventually, to experimenting.

The burning twig was clutched carefully in one paw as Lockheed examined it. Fire was interesting stuff. It was all hot and warm and burny, and it made tasty food when the Greenhaired Queen harnassed it in the Great Kitchen, but he had a feeling there was something more to it. Something that danced at the edge of his mind, kind of like how the idea of flying had done, back in the time when he used to fall off Kitty's bed and have to be carried about, not that he really remembered that time much at all. Something that was related to the firefoodstick, and the funny, rumbly feeling it had made in his stomach.

Lockheed briefly considered trying to eat the stick - after all, that had been how he got the fire before... But, on the other claw, he remembered the hothothot, which had been bad, and he was not keen to feel that again, so maybe firestick eating was not a good idea. Instead he just blew at the twig, seeing if maybe he could figure out where the fire came from and blow it bigger.

He blew, and he blew, and it did seem like everytime he blew the fire got a little bigger, although it never stayed bigger. Of course, each time he fed the fire more oxygen it consumed more of the twig, until he had to drop it back into the fire or burn his fingers.

Clearly, a bigger stick was needed.

Lockheed pulled a short, thin branch off of the pile of kindling Jamie had collected and held it in the fire until it caught. Holding it before him, it seemed perfectly natural that a bigger stick, and a bigger fire, was going to require a bigger breath from him. Lockheed held the stick in front of him and sucked in the largest breath he could, then stopped, staring.

The fire on the stick had seemed to leap off the stick and follow his breath into his mouth, and now Lockheed could feel the curious sensation of the fire dancing around in his stomach.

It was wierd. It was sort of rumbly and sort of bumbly and altogether strange.

And it was slowly dawning on Lockheed that he was still holding his breath. This posed a couple of very interesting questions about what to do and how to do it that Lockheed would really have liked to think about, except he really needed to breathe in again and he couldn't do that until he breathed out.

Lockheed turned his head so he was facing directly into the fire, knowing Kitty would not be happy if he set something on fire, and breathed out carefully...

... and nothing happened.

Lockheed tried again, breathing in and out, but the fire he could feel in his stomache quite firmly refused to come out.

Well, that was no good.

"Humph!" Lockheed snorted, and OOOOoooohhh, so that was how the fire thing worked. Neat!

He opened his mouth to call out for Kitty and show her what he'd learned, but stopped. She was here with The Boy and they were doing No Lockheed, You Can't Come things, which were BORING and he had figured out something that was neat and intersting, and Kitty would just have to find about it Some Other Time when she was NOT spending all her time with The Boy Who Doesn't Deserve Her.

For now, Lockheed would just hold onto his little secret, and maybe practice some more. That would show them.