by Andrea Tillmanns
Miss Miller had been working at the employment office in Brunstown for more than twenty years. She had seen and experienced a lot, and she was famous among her colleagues for not letting anything or anyone upset her. Not even difficult cases like the one sitting in front of her this Friday morning.
“Name?” she began, without looking up from her computer monitor.
“Feraskljfkwetoigdazgdsa.”
“How do you spell that?”
“F-E-R … Oh, just write Ferdinand.”
“Last name?”
“Golddragon.”
She looked up. “You’re not from around here?”
“Oh yes, my family has always lived here.”
“Marital status?”
“Alone. The rest of my family has probably moved away. Or died. I’ve always been a deep sleeper, so unfortunately, I didn’t notice.”
“Address?”
“The last few millennia, where the southern edge of the open-cast mine is now. But after the giant mechanical dragons dug me up and woke me up, I’m looking for a new cave.”
“Homeless,” muttered Miss Miller, typing the word into her computer form. “No wonder you look so bad – your skin color is really very unhealthy. You need to see a doctor urgently.”
“That’s because I’m a dragon,” explained the stranger. “We often have green and gold skin. Sometimes red or dark green.”
“Nonsense,” replied Miss Miller angrily. “Every child knows that dragons don’t exist. But you obviously do, otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here in front of me. So you can’t be a dragon.”
“But …” began the dragon who wasn’t allowed to be one.
“If you continue to give false information, we will cut your pay!” Miss Miller interrupted him, raising her voice. “It’s best if you only answer my questions if you don’t want to get yourself into more trouble.”
The dragon remained silent, just to be on the safe side. Even though he couldn’t imagine what “pay” meant, he understood the threat.
“Who was your last employer?”
The dragon hesitated and thought for a moment about the meaning of the words. “My mother,” he said. “She was in charge of the clan.”
“So your mother was self-employed,” murmured Miss Miller, making a note. “And what was your profession?”
“I was responsible for sheep and goats,” replied the dragon. “The older members of the family took care of the larger animals.”
“Shepherd,” Miss Miller grumbled, typing furiously on her keyboard. “Then we’ll have to retrain you, of course. What are you particularly good at?”
“Well …” the dragon thought for a moment, “the usual stuff – flying, fighting, making fire …”
“You’re too big to be a pilot, fighting isn’t a profession you can learn, and anyone can make fire. That’s what lighters are for.”
“But my fire is especially hot,” replied the dragon, sitting up indignantly. He was proud of his fire. Like all dragons.
“And what good is that? You’re not a walking waste incinerator,” snapped Miss Miller.
The dragon thought for a moment about the phrase “walking waste incinerator.” He liked the idea. “My fire is so hot that nothing remains of what I burn,” he explained. “Even the ashes burn if I want them to. Would you like to see?”
“Not in here!” Miss Miller objected in horror. “The fire alarm will go off and all my documents will get wet!”
However, she was mistaken. The dragon was prudent enough to first melt the fire alarm with a well-aimed blast of flame before demonstrating to Miss Miller that his fire really left nothing behind. Only her chair was a little black where she had been sitting.
“Not real leather,” he said regretfully. Nowadays, nothing was really what it seemed. Even at the employment office, there was no work, only questions.
Then the dragon, now called Ferdinand, went back out onto the street, had a girl playing hopscotch draw a cardboard sign with chalk saying “Mobile Waste Incineration,” sat down comfortably on a bench in downtown Brunstown, and waited for his first customer.
* * *
Originally published in Drachen
About the Author
Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash, SciFanSat, The Fairie Cat, WATG – The Mag, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.