Living Fossils

By Christopher Blake

No good ever came from a call after midnight.

Dr. Larissa Garibaldi swiped at the phone on her bedside table, knocked the lamp to the floor, swore at the lamp as well as the phone, looked at the call display, and swore at the phone again, even more creatively.

Basecamp.

God, she was too old for this. Should have done like Dr. Peters and retired last year. But what would she do instead? Take up gardening and needlepoint? No, they’d have to cart her off in a coffin. She was stuck with them. And they with her.

She swiped her phone and answered.

“Did you check the schedule? I’m not first call. Phone that intern, whatshisname.”

She was about to hang up when a voice cut through the line.

“Dr. Garibaldi! It’s me. The intern. Dr. James Bishop. I mean, Dr. Bishop.” He paused. “James.”

Dr. Garibaldi sighed.

“Yes, Dr. Bishop.”

Static rushed across the line, dull echoes of the waves breaking on the shore a few hundred meters upwind from her outpost. Dr. Garibaldi wondered if the lousy line had gone from bad to worse or if Bishop had simply suffered an acute failure of courage. A moment later, she had her answer.

“There’s been an accident,” he said. “With one of the dragons.”

Bishop never heard Dr. Garibaldi’s reply.

Outside his basecamp call-room, an engine howled to life, obliterating the weak static of the call. Lights strobed through the slat blinds of his windows, illuminating a stack of dog-eared textbooks, a pile of mismatched scrubs. Bishop groped towards the window and peeked through the blinds. Outside, a crew hastily prepped a helicopter for takeoff.

Bishop shouted into the phone but could scarcely make out his own voice. Then he looked at the screen and realized it didn’t matter. Garibaldi had cut the line. Oh bravo, Bishop. Some first impression.

He pulled up the blinds and lights shone in his eyes, forcing him back and out of the glare. He reached for the door and slid the deadbolt in time for a man in coveralls to barge through and grab him by the shoulder. The man pushed Bishop out the door, pointing at the chopper, the same one that’d flown Bishop to the island that morning.

Bishop stumbled in the mud, stutter-stepped, and caught himself. He looked up, and then, all at once, he froze. It wasn’t adrenalin, not anxiety. It wasn’t even the cold air, damp with the salt smell of breaking waves.

It was the stars.

My god he’d never seen stars like these. The Southern Cross and a thousand other pinpricks of unfamiliar light. There was hardly a glimmer of light pollution here. He could see, could see everything .

Bishop was practically levitating, his heart following his eyes, but then he felt a firm hand on his shoulder, a hand that pushed him into a helicopter seat, that strapped him in, that threw the door shut, and pounded readiness on the fuselage.

And only as the chopper rose, and the Rata trees, and Jeeps, and buildings all shrank to the size of toys, only then did Bishop remember the medicine bottle, as yet unpacked, in the bottom of his rucksack.

And only then did the smile slip from his face.

Dr. Garibaldi slept in her scrubs. She kept the comfortable work shoes at the foot of the bed and the trauma-kit fanny-pack on her dresser. By the time the copter touched down outside, she’d downed a double shot of espresso and was checking her Casio wristwatch with displeasure.

When the chopper door opened, she tossed her medical bag inside and jumped in after it. The intern in the opposite seat passed her a pair of headphones and she strapped them on and buckled in.

“You’re slow,” she said, twirling a finger above her head. “Get this bird in the air.”

The pilot threw a thumbs up and in a moment, they were airborne, the freshly risen full moon’s light throwing their retreating shadow over billowing waves of grass.

“Dr. Garibaldi, I’m—”

“Dr. Bishop, I presume. Let’s take the pleasantries as read, if that’s all the same to you. What do you know so far?”

“One of the dragons was hit mid-flight by a small plane—”

Dr. Garibaldi turned back from the window, her eyes blazing.

“Plane? This airspace is closed to everyone but SOAP.”

“SOAP?”

“Southern Ocean Animal Protectorate. You know, the people writing my checks, and yours for that matter. Someone is writing you checks, right?”

“I’m sure they will, Dr. Garibaldi. Only, today’s my first day.”

First day. No sense listening to him present the case until she’d sized up just how green he was. A good intern could make her life a little easier. A bad one would make it miserable.

Dr. Garibaldi turned her Casio to face him.

“Look,” she said. “It’s past midnight. Which means it’s your second day. See one, do one, teach one, right? Did they teach you anything about dragons at...?”

“The Royal Veterinary College.”

“Did they teach you anything about dragons at the Royal Veterinary College, Dr. Bishop?”

“I spent two summers working with wyverns in the Hebrides.”

Garibaldi laughed.

“Wyverns,” she said. “Then you must have worked with the inimitable Professor Ross, presuming the old bastard’s still kicking.”

“Very much living,” said the intern. “Last I checked.”

Dr. Garibaldi chuckled.

“Gallows humor. Good. Maybe we’ll make a vet of you, yet. First things first: forget everything Professor Mossy Ross ever told you. Next, kiss goodbye any notion that summering with Hebridean wyverns is worth jack when it comes to Auckland Islands dragons.”

Outside, the pearly darkness was broken by a gout of orange light. The helicopter shuddered with turbulence and Garibaldi watched the intern’s already white knuckles clamp tighter on the armrests.

“Shit!” he said. “What was that?”

Dr. Garibaldi checked her nails and smiled.

“You tell me.”

Bishop looked back at her. His face could have been a study for a statue of rapture. He stared out the window, but there was nothing to see, not even a shadow against the stars.

“A dragon...” he said.

“Are you a grade schooler? Linnaean name, please.”

“ Draccus maris ,” he murmured.

Dr. Garibaldi watched as he craned his neck to get a better view out the window, noting a scar, not long healed, poking out by his left ear.

“You’ve never seen one before.”

It wasn’t a question, but it was enough to break the spell. Bishop turned to her. He didn’t need to say a thing.

There was another burst of light, and a roar she could feel more than hear. The chopper shook and banked left as another plume of fire lit the air they’d been flying into.

“Nice flying, Ralph” said Garibaldi, patting the pilot on the shoulder. “Think you might put us down before the cremation?”

“Working on it, doc,” the pilot said. “SOAP hates to waste good equipment. The ultrasonics should hold them back while I find a place to land.”

“Why are they being so aggressive?” asked Bishop. “I thought they were supposed to be calm this time of year.”

“You tell me, Doctor.”

Bishop looked up, as if reading a half-forgotten page in memory.

“Circling the wagons, I guess. One of the weyr is injured and they’re trying to protect her.”

“Very good,” said Garibaldi. “Now, which one is it?”

“Oh.” He pulled a notepad out of his scrub top. “The rangers who called it in said it was Muirdris. Am I saying that right?”

“Excuse me?”

Bishop double-checked his notebook.

“Yes, that’s right. Muirdris. That’s what they said.”

Garibaldi swore in no fewer than three languages. Her fingers clenched and unchlenched.

“What happened to the people in that plane?” she asked.

“Apparently they were a bunch of tech-bro billionaires,” said Bishop, "who wouldn’t take no-fly-zone for an answer.”

“Yes, but what happened to them?”

The pilot looked back over his shoulder.

“Search and Rescue just radioed,” he said. “The plane crashed. Apparently, the site’s a disaster. I believe the word they used was unsurvivable .”

“Good. That’s good.” Garibaldi stared out the window, scanning the night. “Because if they weren’t dead, I’d have to kill them.”

She could feel Bishop’s eyes on her but didn’t look back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Garibaldi turned from the window as the copter began its approach, and the earth and all its realities loomed up below them.

“Do you know why the dragons are typically calm this time of year?”

Bishop nodded and then his mouth opened wide. “You mean—”

“That’s right. It’s whelping season. And Muirdris is one half of the last 14 breeding pairs in the world.” Garibaldi clenched a fist. “And she’s pregnant.”

The pilot did his job. The landing was textbook. Bishop wasn’t even nauseous as the copter touched down. After that, it was chaos.

Bishop fought with his seatbelt as Dr. Garibaldi threw the door open. He watched, struggling against the straps, as her figure faded into the dark. That was Dr. Garibaldi, the Dr. Garibaldi, Chief Veterinarian, discoverer of dragons, and his Program Director for however much of the year he made it through. She was racing towards an injured dragon and his anxious fingers couldn’t even unbuckle a lousy seatbelt. Bishop stilled his trembling hands, took a breath, and got himself free, then jumped out of the copter. He chased Garibaldi’s receding shadow up a hill, then watched her moonlit silhouette disappear over the crest.

Bishop picked up speed, tripped on a rock, managed to right himself, then staggered to the top of the hill, panting. Below him, beneath harsh floodlights, amidst thudding generators and frantic techs, surrounded by machinery he didn’t recognize, lay a dragon. She was the size of a school bus, a mass of gold and copper scales, and she wasn’t moving.

Bishop would have stopped and stared if there’d been time, but there wasn’t. Garibaldi was running flat out towards the creature and Bishop sped after her.

Bishop was halfway down the hill when a shadow emerged above a hillock beyond the site. It was small at first, but flapped forward and grew, as if swallowing the stars. Bishop froze, imagining the wind of its wings, the heat of its fetid breath, the smell of skin sizzling under its flame.

The shadow ballooned, obliterating even the moon, and Bishop fell to his knees, hands raised in supplication as much as defense. But the shadow roared, and a gout of flame lit the sky, illuminating a dragon banking up and away from the site. Bishop covered his ears as the creature loosed a roar like waves crashing.

Once the sound ebbed, Bishop lowered his hands and stared after the dragon’s retreating form. He giggled, then burst into laughter. Oh, he was such a fool. He’d already forgotten orientation. So long as the generators held, the sonic cannons would dome the site in ultrasonic frequency, nothing the humans would notice, but enough to force the dragons back. The pilot had said it himself. SOAP hated to waste good equipment.

Bishop got up and barreled down the hill, dodging harried techs tending their equipment. He followed Garibaldi’s contralto as she demanded updates and snapped orders. And then he was there, face to face with a living, breathing, dragon.

Except—

Shit!

Was she breathing?

After a second, Bishop managed to take a breath of his own. He only had to remember his training. Every trauma’s different, but every trauma’s the same. Easy as ABC: airway, breathing, circulation.

Bishop looked from Muirdris' saber-bright teeth to the copper scales of her neck and, oh god, oh god her neck was shredded. There was no airway. Bishop’s heart stuttered. His muscles thrummed. He could practically feel his adrenals dumping epinephrine into his veins. With an effort, he stopped his hands from shaking.

Think!

He scanned the site for a trauma cart. If there was an endo-tracheal tube, he could intubate what was left of her larynx, but oh god, the blood. Her common carotid was spilling burgundy over the lacerated pulp of her neck; he couldn’t even reckon the anatomy—

He was hyperventilating. He could feel it happening but couldn’t stop it. His ears thundered with the staccato pulse of his blood, but everything else was deafened, as if he were sinking deep underwater, gasping for air, flailing. He wasn’t aware he was holding his breath, that his right hand was trembling, that—

“Bishop!”

Garibaldi grabbed his shoulder and hauled him after her.

“Get over here. I need you to retract.”

Bishop gave his head a shake and staggered after her.

“But her airway.”

“Muirdris is dead , Bishop. Now stop thinking and do what I tell you. There isn’t time.”

Bishop followed Garibaldi down the length of the dragon, tracing his fingers along the pale scales of Muirdris’ abdomen, the leathery skin of her wings. Garibaldi stopped at the dragon’s vent, at the junction of the hind legs and tail. She handed Bishop the largest retractors he’d ever seen, then shoved him into position. Bishop looked at the anatomy. The vent led into the cloaca, the cloaca led to the digestive and reproductive tracts, and Muirdris was—

Bishop swallowed.

“You’re trying to save the egg.”

“Diamond edge,” Garibaldi barked.

A tech handed her a rotating blade and she sliced a longitudinal incision forward from the vent. Blood poured, and the gamey tang of iron filled the air.

“I’m trying to save the species , Doctor. Now, retract!”

Bishop jammed a self-retaining retractor into the cranial edge of the incision, then did the same at the caudal end. As soon his hands were empty, a scub-tech handed him two manual retractors.

“Today, Bishop! You do understand each second counts?”

Bishop inserted the instruments in the middle of the incision, one on either side, and yanked out, revealing the pale-yellow subcutaneous tissue.

“The egg—”

Garibaldi made another quick incision, exposing fascia.

“The dragon , Bishop! How are dragons born?”

“Oviv,” he sputtered. “Oviv—”

“Ovi-viviparity, yes! Thank you! But—”

“But they’re matrotrophic,” said Bishop. “The whelps deplete the yolk sac early, then depend on maternal gas exchange across the eggshell, and if Muirdris is dead...”

“The whelp’s dying too. Now retract like you give a damn!”

Bishop repositioned the retractors, hauled, and, with a little blunt dissection from Garibaldi, the fibrous muscle of the rectus abdominis came into view.

But, god, there was so much blood. Bishop could hardly make out the anatomical planes.

“Suction!”

The tech handed him a suction catheter that looked more like a shop vac than any surgical instrument Bishop had ever seen. After a moment, the blood drained and the anatomy resolved itself. Bishop could see the thin white streak of the linea alba running between the two muscle groups. He repositioned so that Garibaldi could get a better view.

All through the procedure, Bishop had tried to map the anatomy before him against the images from the textbooks, the textbooks Garibaldi had written and illustrated. He’d been so engrossed in the now that he hadn’t thought of the next step. But now he did.

“Are you religious?” asked Garibaldi. “Do you pray?”

Bishop shook his head and tried to shrug a bead of sweat from his brow.

“No.”

“Shame. Would have been nice if one of us did. What am I about to cut into?”

“Peritoneum, then uterus”

“And what am I absolutely not about to cut into?”

That bead of sweat ran into Bishop’s eye and he blinked the sting away.

“Methane bladder.”

Garibaldi nodded.

“This late in gestation, hormonal shifts promote bacterial methanogen proliferation. The methane’s lighter than air, which she needs to help offset the weight of the egg in flight. Doesn’t hurt to have a little extra fire in the tank to protect her and the whelp, either. If she’d made it to natural birth, she would have vented the methane to ease the path for the egg. But now...”

Garibaldi blew a lock of silver hair out of her eyes, and took a deep breath, staring down into the abdomen. Bishop looked at her. Her face was lined, tired, but her eyes had the same flinty determination that’d stared out at him from the back of her textbooks.

“You’re Doctor Larissa Garibaldi,” Bishop said. “You quite literally wrote the book on this.”

She looked up at him, appraising, then grinned with half her mouth.

“And may that be enough. Entering peritoneum.”

Her scalpel slipped through the linea alba and Bishop repositioned the retractors yet again. Below, they could see the gravid uterus, but only just. It was concealed almost entirely by the symmetrical methane bladders running to either side.

Garibaldi lowered her scalpel to make the incision. Her blade slid neatly along the muscular uterine wall like scissors through wrapping paper. She was nearly done the cut when the uterine wall shot out at her, jostling the scalpel from her hand.

“Shit,” she said.

“Was that a kick?”

Garibaldi turned and yelled.

“Code Brown! Everything off, now! We have methane leak.”

“But doc,” said a tech.

“Now!” Garibaldi bellowed.

The tech ran off, and after a moment the steady pounding of the diesel generators thudded to a stop. Bishop looked around at a newly silver scene lit only by the full moon’s light.

“Bishop!”

He turned back to the incision, struggling to landmark in the gloom as Garibaldi shoved her hand in to continue cutting. The air reeked of sulfur. Bishop’s head pounded. His right hand tingled.

“Well, the whelp’s alive,” said Garibaldi. “For now at least. And with any luck, we’ll have her out before we’re barbequed. Just one... last... there!”

Garibaldi’s scalpel flicked to the end of the incision and the uterine wall parted neatly. Beneath it, the glistening shell of an egg shone palely in the moonlight. Garibaldi surveyed the scene.

“Push, Bishop. I can’t dissect anymore with that second methane bladder so distended.”

Bishop held the retractors, but he didn’t move.

“Push, damn it. The ultrasonics are down. We don’t have all night.”

Garibaldi yanked the retractors from his hands and shoved him to the forward end of the incision. Bishop stumbled, then braced himself. That was weird. His right foot had fallen asleep. Come to think of it, his right hand was trembling too. That much traction on the retractors could do that, but—

Oh no.

Oh no, not now.

Not now!

“Bishop!”

There wasn’t time. Oh god, there wasn’t time.

Bishop shook his head. Breathe, damnit! Get ahold of yourself. There was just as much time as ever. All anyone got to inhabit was an instant, the standing wave of the present. But in that standing wave the pyramids were built, the oceans were crossed, every song that ever played was sung. Bishop knew that better now than ever.

So, in the present, he pushed.

The uterus was tense, like knotted rope, but he pushed against it anyway, pushed and pushed though it didn’t seem to make any difference. His hand was weakening. It tingled now, too. His right leg could scarcely support him. Oh, it was coming. It was coming soon.

A roar pierced the sky. The hulking shadow reappeared beyond the crest of the hill, great wings shrouding the stars. Garibaldi’s eyes darted towards the hill, then back to Bishop. The dragon would cover that distance in moments, and with the ultrasonics down...

“Push, damn you!” she shouted. “Push, push, push!”

Bright lights swam in his vision. A curtain of darkness was closing in. His whole right side felt dead. The standing wave of the present was collapsing, breaking on a spiteful shore. Bishop still had that present, but precious little of it now.

Bishop forced himself back with his good left foot. He nearly toppled over on his bad leg, but caught himself at the last second, and wobbled for a moment, suspended in unsteady equilibrium. Then he clenched his left hand, flexed his left calf, and threw himself bodily at the forward end of the incision.

He couldn’t feel anything. Not anymore. Couldn’t see anymore either. But he heard a pop, and then a crack, and then a wave of oblivion crashed down upon him, and his mind was swept away into darkness.

The egg was out. Out and intact. My god, the intern had done it! Bishop had done it. Had—

Garibaldi looked for Bishop, but he wasn’t there. He was on the ground. He was—

“Shit!”

He was seizing .

Garibaldi dropped to the ground and cradled his head in her hands.

“Medic!” she called. “Get me a medic!”

She looked down into his empty, staring eyes.

“You picked a terrible time for a seizure, kid.”

A tear slid from his eye, and Garibaldi wiped it gently away.

“Just hang in there, will you? Just hang in there, kid.”

The smell of sulfur was thick in the air, the methane still leaking from the first bladder. And who knows what kind of damage they’d done to the second when they’d forced out the egg.

Garibaldi looked up at another roar from the sky and watched as a shadow descended towards them.

“Where’s that medic ?” she bellowed, but no one answered. She swore as scattered shadows ducked and ran amidst the equipment, fleeing to the treeline.

She looked down at Bishop. His tremors were easing already, but he was no closer to regaining consciousness. There was no way she could move him, and even if she could, she simply didn’t have the time.

“Paging Doctor Bishop,” she whispered. “Now would be a great time to wake up.”

Garibaldi repositioned, huddling over Bishop, cradling him between herself and the mangled corpse of Muirdris. A moment later, the earth shook as the shadow landed before them, resolving itself into a dragon.

“Fafnir,” she whispered.

Muirdris’ life-mate.

She couldn’t see the color of his scales, not in this light, but she could feel the emerald intensity of his eyes as the nictitating membranes passed across them. The males were smaller than the females, but not enough to matter. He could eviscerate them both with his little toe, if he chose.

Fafnir took a step forward and the earth trembled. He shook his head from side to side, scenting the air. No doubt he could smell his life-mate, could smell the death on her. And then he howled, and his desperate keening pierced the night. He paused, and looked at Garibaldi, looked her directly in the eyes. Garibaldi met his gaze and held it. After all these years, she’d never proved that animals could think , but she’d never doubted that they could suffer, that they could grieve .

Garibaldi chanced a look at Bishop. He had stopped shaking, but his eyes were still glazed and distant. She doubted he could see anything. After a moment, she figured, neither of them would be seeing anything ever again.

Fafnir howled and took a step forward, then another. He bared his teeth and reared back.

And then Garibaldi heard a sound, and it was as if time froze. The sound was quiet at first but grew steadily louder. One crack, and then another, and then a cry. She looked out and saw the whelp bursting from its shell.

Fafnir paused, then planted his forelegs. He looked down at the newborn. His child, there in the ruined shell that had sheltered it amidst his life-mate’s death.

The small creature coughed a phlegmy breath, then looked up at the elder dragon. Fafnir cocked his head and extended a tentative claw towards it. The newborn gripped it with its whole foretalon and his father chuffed a breath.

Fafnir drew his claw back, but the little one held tight, and so the big dragon jerked the whelp from its shell, and flipped it into his talon, cradling it. Fafnir looked down at the small creature, at Garibaldi, Bishop, and Muirdris. And then, soundless but for the wind of his wings, he took off towards the full moon, into the depths of a long, bitter night.

His feet crunched over the wave worn rocks as he approached her. She must have heard him coming.

“What the hell was that?” she asked without turning.

Bishop sat down and began to speak, but Garibaldi cut him off.

“You didn’t tell me you were impaired.”

Bishop cleared his throat.

“I’m not impaired.”

Garibdaldi stubbed the cigarette out on a rock, smashing sparks into nothing.

“You had a generalized tonic-clonic seizure in my surgical field. You don’t call that impaired?”

“The College of Veterinarians doesn’t.”

“Screw the College of Veterinarians. You weren’t fit to be there tonight. You’re a danger to your team, you’re a danger to yourself, and worst of all, you’re a danger to your patients.”

Garibaldi picked up a stone and hurled it into the ocean. It plopped into the water and Bishop watched its ripples propagate until they were lost amidst the waves. After a moment, Garibaldi lit another cigarette, nearly put the pack away, then offered one to Bishop. He shook his head. They sat in silence for a while, the only sound the breaking of waves on the shore. Garibaldi smoked her cigarette and Bishop took off his shoes, flexing his toes on the salt-rimed rocks. After some time, he spoke.

“I have a malignant brain tumour,” he said.

Garibaldi looked at him sidelong and stubbed out her cigarette.

“GBM?” she asked.

“Glioblastoma multiforme,” he said. “That’s the one.”

“Your scar...”

“That’s right.”

“Chemo?”

“The best pills modern medicine can offer, which means—”

Garibaldi swore under her breath.

“Which means maybe you’ll live two years instead of one.”

“If I’m lucky.” He threw a stone into the ocean. “GBM’s a bitch.”

Garibaldi spat into the rocks, then crossed herself. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Bishop looked at her, then back behind them and all around in a great circle encompassing the island, the dragons, maybe the world. Garibaldi looked back at him, incredulous.

“You know you’ll never finish this internship. You’ll never graduate.”

Bishop nodded.

“Then I’ll ask again. What the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you on some island sipping cocktails?”

Bishop met her eyes, then smiled.

“What?” asked Garibaldi.

“I’m sitting on a beach in the Auckland Islands with Dr. Larissa Garibaldi.”

He laughed, and Garibadi looked at him with an odd expression. Bishop smiled and flicked a stone into the sea.

“When I was a kid, you know what dragons were? Fossils. Like dinosaurs. In kindergarten, they told us the last dragon was killed in Iceland, in 1344. And then—”

“And then I came along,” she said.

“Then you came along, came here to this barren, isolated, speck on a map, and found not fossils, but living fossils. A whole roost of dragons hibernating in their hidden caves. I remember watching the first grainy video online—”

Bishop looked away, trying to hide the mist forming in his eyes. He swallowed.

“I’ve spent the rest of my life getting here. To this place. To this moment. So, I never finish the internship? So what? I just touched a dragon. You can shoot me dead now and I’ll die happy.”

Garibaldi took another drag of her cigarette.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, kid. When I got here, there were over thirty breeding pairs. Now it’s half that. Less than half, after tonight. I’ve dedicated my life to these animals and in a hundred years they’ll be gone, just another megafaunal extinction. And none of this, nothing that I’ve done, will have made one bit of difference. If anything, I’ve made things worse.”

Garibaldi threw down her cigarette and jerked up abruptly, hugging her arms to her chest and walking towards the waves. Bishop watched as a gentle breeze tossed the moonlit silver of her hair, then he walked to her and stared out at an ocean of water, a sea of stars.

“I remember when I was a kid,” Bishop said. “I felt invincible . The idea of dying, of no longer existing? That just didn’t compute. But I’ve seen plenty of death. And now it’s not so hypothetical. It just is.

“I’ll be dead inside two years. You, excuse my bluntness, will certainly be dead in 40, likely sooner at the rate you’re going through those cigarettes. Of course, everyone now living will be dead in 120 years, tops. Hell, humanity itself will go extinct sooner or later. Eventually every species does.

“So, I’m going to die.

“So, you’re going to die.

“So, everyone we know or love’s going to die.

“So, Muirdris died.

“You think because we die that what we did tonight doesn’t matter ?”

In the distance, a dragon howled, and then another. After a moment a whole chorus erupted, distinct voices singing a song that rattled the world. Their voices dropped to silence and then, amidst the quiet, a small high roar wailed into the night.

Bishop smiled.

“There is a dragon singing tonight who wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. Maybe she dies in 50 years, maybe she dies tomorrow. Maybe in ten years the species is wiped out altogether. But tonight , she’s singing.”

Bishop flexed his right hand. “All we ever have is the present,” he said. “I get that now.”

Garibaldi looked at him, looked at him for a long minute. In the distance, a dragon called and she stared into the darkness, smiling weakly. Then all was silent but the waves, and she looked away, down at her Casio.

“It’s late,” she said. “Go get some sleep. First thing in the morning, I want you in the infirmary getting your anti-epileptics sorted.” She took a step away, then looked over her shoulder. “I want us in the air by eight. We have a whelp to check on.”

Bishop listened as Garibaldi’s footfalls crunched up the strand, then faded amidst the sound of dragonsong. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, or if it would come at all. But he had this one moment, this one standing wave of the present.

Bishop smiled, and then he jumped up, laughing. He ran to the water and kicked the great floating ball of the moon’s reflection, then scampered back as the waves chased him up the beach.

The dragons were singing again, and Bishop stretched out his arms and ran, sailing up and down the strand. He laughed again, laughed and laughed like the little kid he was, and had been, and always would be. He laughed and threw his head back, and then he howled, his voice mingling with the dragonsong, mingling and disappearing amidst the waves and the wind in a moment frozen like a fossil, a moment at once instantaneous and infinite.