The dog pack was slowing its pace. They all entered a long straight street lined with little houses, each with a tiny front garden. With the faultless instincts of all city dwellers, the residents had evaporated leaving only a tall stooped man, dressed all in black leather, walking purposefully away from the end of the street where the chasing pack was gathered.
Willet heard a dragonish voice in his mind. “Is this he?” 
Badger nodded and three dragons materialised at the other end of the street. For a moment, Willet thought that they would scare the dragon hunter into doing something desperate, but they were cleverer than that. The drake was there, looking as if he was being escorted by concerned females.
“Come away,” one was saying while the other seemed to be trying to shepherd the bulky male with her slender body. 
The black-clad man, if indeed man he was, stood a little straighter and Willet could see his throat vibrating as he made a strange humming sound. The drake lifted his head and pointed like a hound on the scent.
The sound of the dragon hunter’s laughter scraped over Willet’s nerves like fingernails down a blackboard. 
T’i’asharath spoke in his mind.
“We need to keep the creature occupied for now while we incapacitate his dwarves and liberate his victims.”
Willet thought he had rarely heard such sorrow in any creature’s mind voice, but he switched his attention to the scene in front of him. The two female dragons were attempting, with a careful lack of success, to head the drake away from the humming hunter. Willet looked carefully at the dark figure and made a discovery. The dragon hunter wasn’t human. He was a lycanthrope. But what was his true form? Whatever he was, he was shielding closely so this wasn’t something easy to find out, but then Willet got a stroke of luck. The hunter was so intent on calling the drake into his murderous clutches that he let his shield drop for a nanosecond. And that was enough. Willet saw; and what he saw was like a punch to the stomach from a mailed fist. 
The creature in front of him was a black unicorn. This was bad trouble. As such it was immune to almost all magics, and its twisted obsidian horn was the most poisonous thing in a city full of poisoners. He bespoke T’i’asharath.
“My lady. We have trouble here. The dragon hunter is a black unicorn.”
“I come. There is only one way to deal with the likes of that.”
The sense of the dragon mistress moved from a distant voice to right overhead. 
“I cannot see it. Its shield is too good. Unless I can discern its true form I cannot do that which must be done.”
“Then I must put a crack in that shield.” 
Willet flowed into his true form, finding Badger immediately at his side. 
“What? Why?”
“T’i’asharath is here. But she needs that thing to drop its shield. Unless she can see its true form she cannot deal.”
“OK. I think. Let’s do it then.”
They moved towards the dragon hunter with Willet’s steel-shod hooves ringing on the cobbles. Badger unfurled his wings and flew at his partner’s shoulder.
Willet raised his voice. “Ho one horn. What business has the likes of you in my domain?” 
His voice held the martial tones of a sounding bugle and the unicorn could not resist a call to battle from another stallion. But still he kept his shields in place. Willet laughed derisively.
“Look at it,” he sneered. “Afraid of who it is. Hiding in the form of the two-legs who gelded it when it was a foal. Look at the poisonous little thing. Singing to dragons. And all because it can never get a mate if it’s own.”
The lycanthrope showed long yellow teeth.
“Go away bird-boy. Lest I put my horn to your chest and stop your breath.”
“Would that be the horn you are so ashamed of that you hide it from the world?” 
“What business is my horn of you?”
Willet bulked his impressive chest and carefully rippled his drum-tight stomach. “My city. My business.”
The dragon hunter made noise that was very close to a growl and fully turned to face Willet. 
“Go away. Lest I kill you.”
“And who will help you to do that eunuch?”
This was enough to enrage the black unicorn who leapt forward, dropping his human simulacrum. As soon as the unicorn was clearly discernible there came a sound beyond sound and the elegant form of T’i’asharath arrowed down from the sky at killing speed. Willet heard the sound of crushed bones as she bit, and the scream of mortal agony from the lycanthrope. He contrived to close his ears to the dragon hunter’s pain and bespoke T’i’asharath.
“Have you rescued his captives my lady?”
“Those that could live. Some have had to be relieved of their agony.”
“I am sorry.”
T’i’asharath inclined her head before roaring to the sky. Four muscular guard dragons dropped to where the unicorn writhed on the ground. They hoisted it between them and winked out of being.
“The hunter faces my mate at Dragonheart.”
Willet and Badger bowed.
“Will you come and witness that justice is done?”
“If it is the wish of Dragonheart that we so do.”
It was possible to feel the queen dragon communicating with her mate even though what they said was outside the comprehension of others.
“It is not required, friend of Dragonheart. Yet we would ask a boon of you and your mate.”
“What would you ask of us?” It was Wenda’s voice coming from behind him and all he could do not to jump or allow his head to snap around to where she stood. Instead, he extended his hand and felt her cool, slim fingers mesh with his own.
“There is one of your own kind. A foal. She has neither sire nor dam. Wilt thou take her? She needs kindness and care.”
Wenda squeezed his hand and he turned to look at her. “It is on your shoulders that the care will fall my dear love.”
Her smile was blindingly bright although her voice was carefully formal. “If it pleases you. It would please me.”
“Very well, my lady bright.” Willet bowed to T’i’asharath. “We would be pleased to take a child into our home and hearts.”
The dragon communicated with some other entity, and a green female dragon winked into being with something small nestled in the space between her wings. As she landed, the baby centaur stood on unsteady legs.
“Mama?” the voice wavered on the edge of tears and Wenda was there like a flash taking the little one in her arms. At once the baby quieted and burrowed into Wenda’s embrace.
“It is well,” the dragon queen intoned, and as she spoke Willet could feel the dragon force leaving the city.
“Call it in” Badger said with a grin. “Tell them the dragon hunter has been neutralised, then you and your wife take your,” he stopped and thought for a moment, “daughter home.”

©️ Jane Jago

Meh
What a word
Meaning obscure
Pronunciation absurd
Meh
What an emotion
Can be cured by the application
Of alcoholic lotion

©️jj 2020

Somebody who should have known better once said that a day would come when everyone was famous for twenty minutes. And now it’s here how much do we hate it?

That, my dears, seems entirely dependent on your age.
Mostly people over fifty (with a few frightening exceptions) find it all a bit distasteful and struggle to see what the cult of fame has to offer the world – except inanities and conspicuous consumption.

So why do people engage? 
Because they want to be famous, did I hear you say?

And why is that pray?
The desire for fame seems to me to be both vapid and grasping, and to speak loudly of a life with fuck all in it. 
And you need not look at me like that neither…
I’m not famous: ‘Granny’ might be, but she’s not precisely me. And I ain’t precisely her. So.

But back to the rant you so rudely interrupted.
When I was a younger person you had to do something pretty big to get famous: 

• Climb a shagging great mountain in your flip-flops. 
• Discover a cure for stupidity. 
• Write a post-modern novel post mortem.
• Stop a war.
• Start a war.
• Run faster than whoever was chasing you. 
  And so on.

Now?

• You can be famous for being somebody’s mother.
• You can be famous for who you marry.
• You can be famous for who you sleep with (polite euphemism for shag).
• You can be famous for spending immoderate amounts of money
• You can be famous for making videos of yourself in your bedroom behaving inanely.
• You can even be famous for having a big fat ass.

Tell you what. I. Give. Up.

What would happen if we just ignored the ‘influencers’ and their overblown egos?
Maybe corporate eejits would stop paying them inordinate sums of money to promote products on their websites/blogs/vlogs/whatever. Maybe teenage girls would stop drawing their eyebrows with magic markers and trying to be both thin and fat at the same time.
Maybe we’d go back to famous people being ones who did something positive with their lives.

Maybe.
And maybe not.
Maybe our collective psyche is so fucked up that we need useless celebrity to enable us to get through life.

And that is such a frightening thought that me and Gyp are off to the pub. You lot can do whatever it is you have done to deserve a woman famous for her backside. I need a pint and a game of darts to cleanse my palate.

Urien considered the creatures dispassionately. They were, he thought, neither clever nor important, and where they had once been amusing they were now just an irritant.

He sighed, and his wife Calliope blew in his ear. 

“Why the long face lord of my heart?”

“One wonders why the creator…”

“She was having an off day methinks”

He frowned at such presumption but Calliope continued.

“We are neither darkness nor emptiness, but what have they dubbed us?”

Urien nodded wisely.

“Fools.”

“Fools we could do without”

He farted and a minor star was extinguished.

“Done…” he said.

His beloved Calliope smiled.

©️jj 2020

The dragon spiralled down out of the sunset, with the orange light setting his skin aflame so that he looked as if he was made of oil and steel. Tia stood and watched, wryly noting the Diamond Throne banner, whilst being careful not to move or speak until the shining one’s feet touched the ground and he furled his wings.
She bowed her head in a formal gesture of welcome.
“Greetings lady,” the voice inside her head was deeper than she expected. This must be a full male, which meant he would be a shifter as well. He would bear watching. Carefully.
“Greetings, bright one.”
The dragon regarded her out of whirling multi-faceted eyes before bowing his head. The silence lengthened, and seemed to Tia that her uninvited guest was trying to make her nervous with his lack of comment. She broke the silence in a deliberately small voice.
“What does my lady mother want of me?”
“Naught. She would merely ascertain that you are well.”
Tia cast down her eyes so he could not see her contempt.
“Perhaps my lord dragon would care to assume his human form and venture inside, to where we can speak in more comfort.”
If it was possible for a dragon to look puzzled, he did so.
“May one ask what makes you think this dragon has a human form?”
For a moment Tia dropped her shield of humility.
“Who am I?” she raised a narrow dark eyebrow.
He thought about that one for a moment before dipping his head.
“One is ashamed.”
Tia was at great pains not to show her contempt for that remark.
“I apologise. It was not my intention to cause you disquiet.”
She felt the dragonish laughter as a vibration that ran right through her skeleton.
“My name is M’a’tsu, and I would be honoured to visit with you.”
Tia curtseyed.
“I will leave you to make the change in privacy.”
She turned and made her way across the flower strewn meadow to the grey stone buildings that clustered at the base of the cliffs and the stone stairway to the temple.
M’a’tsu watched her go, enjoying her long-legged stride and the way her body moved under the simple linen robe she wore. He found himself fantasising about tying her up with the rope of her own black hair, which hung in a braid almost to her knees. Giving himself a sharp inward reminder that he wasn’t there for pleasure, he took the necessary time to compose his mind before making the change.
Once he was in his human form, he stretched for a moment enjoying the different sensations afforded by thinner skin. He looked down at his muscular perfection and briefly considered remaining unclothed but the pleasure of the rapidly cooling air against his human flesh had to be balanced against the possibility of giving offence. Accordingly he shifted himself leather trews and a waistcoat, electing to remain barefoot for the sheer delight of the feel of grass beneath him.
The temple on the clifftop seemed bigger now and much further away. He rather wished for his dragon form and the possibility of flying instead of climbing the steep stairs. However, that was forbidden and he had no wish to incur the displeasure of the goddess. Dragons before him had crashed to their deaths against the jagged rocks of that cliff face. He had no mind to join them. He squared his shoulders and began to walk.

From The Dragonheart Stories: Fairytales for Grownups by Jane Jago

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Exercise Classes

Every Wednesday night, since time immemorial, it’s keep fit in the village hall. Runs for two solid hours – and they reckon you could fall to your death on the sweat slick that seeps out under the door. 

I went once.

Why have I never been again?

A bossy cow called Noreen dressed in pink spandex.

Half a hundred middle-aged women in leotards (the skinny bitches look worse that the fat buggers)

Laying on the floor next to someone whose pubes are out of control 

The distinctive aroma of the yoga mat

Need I say more?

Don’t do it people…

“I suppose there is a reason for this, Bard?” Bryn’s assessing gaze held accusation. His greying hair was kept back from his face by a simple thong. He looked so much more the true Briton than Dai although his blood was mixed with Roman and every corner of the Empire. “Up at the crack of dawn, dogs and full detail. Looking for a girl you have sleeping under your own roof?”
Dai tightened his lips into a straight line.
“Are we not all good men of Britannia?”
Bryn’s expression changed.
“So your pet praetorians…?”
“Should be doing their job – as you do yours, Investigator Cartivel.”
“That is merda,” Bryn spat in the grass. Beside him were three of his team piloting short-range drones to scan the surrounding area. It was their second stop and they had four more to make to cover the area Logan had suggested.
“I prefer to call it ‘the truth’,” Dai said, shielding his eyes against the autumnal sun to watch one of the drones.
“Ah, so we have sunk so low as that. Next it’ll be justice and then where will we be.” Bryn sucked in his cheeks as if something tasted sour. “It is strange, because I was thinking it is more about you dressing up lies in gladrags. I was also thinking it means you are walking into the line of fire without any back up because you don’t want to let anyone else take that kind of risk.”
Dai glanced at him, but Bryn was staring out over the bucolic landscape as if that was all that held his attention.
“You don’t know-”
“I know when you are being a stubborn, stiff-necked, pure-blooded Celtic spado.”
Dai shook his head and sighed.
“Do you think I could face your Gwen if anything happened to you through me?”
“She’d be sure to put a curse on you,” Bryn agreed and looked back at Dai. “But I didn’t move out here away from the bright lights of Londinium and into the wonders of rural Britannia just to watch roses growing and sip mead. And my Gwen knows that. Besides, she’d take it ill if I started hanging around the house and pruning just yet.”
For a moment, Dai tried to marshal all the arguments he had been rehearsing since the previous afternoon. But as he met Bryn’s gaze they all retreated, broke and ran for cover. So, instead, he smiled and felt a sudden deep gratitude, together with something that could even have been relief.
“Well, we are both good men and good Britons, it would not be fair of me to keep you from your chance to join the cause.”

From Dying for a Poppy by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Everyone else had made their kill, but Campion looked at the creature in her hands and couldn’t bring herself to break its neck.

Instead, she returned it to the forest floor where it sat and looked at her.

Old Milkweed came out from behind a tree. She looked stern.

“Kill it.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Will you be outcast for the life of a bunwit?”

Campion nodded and felt a strangeness – self being drawn away from noise and blood to a place of quiet greenness.

“Welcome daughter.”

She left her useless body and became one with the spirit of the forest…

©️jj 2020

They came across the first body before they had reached the edge of the blackened area. It was so badly burned that Caer could not even tell whether it had been truly human. There were others scattered around, all equally burned and very dead and as Caer had suspected there was nothing of any value left in that blackened zone. Even the metal was too brittle to be of use, shattering if hit hard. But when they reached the part of the hulk that lay beyond the devastation, it was a very different story.
The men left their ponies and clambered into the metal cavern, making echoes with their shouts of discovery. There were several undamaged crates, which they forced open to reveal such familiar offworld devices as flash-lights and power-cells, and a whole range of other strange items which none of them could identify.
Caer instructed Shevek to take one of the other men and ride out in an arc around the hulk away from the burned area, just in case anything else of any value had been thrown clear of it by the explosion. The rest of the Zoukai he set to collecting samples of the salvageable loot to take back to Alexa. Looking around, judging quantities and weights, he realised it would probably take the best part of the next day to remove all that was here. For all the richness of the haul, he could not help but feel a small bite of disappointment that there were no weapons – the kind that could fire many times from a single reloading or burned through flesh and bone with an invisible finger of fire. Caer consoled himself with the thought that the bonus he could expect from bringing this hoard into Alfor, would buy any such weapon that might be imported from Keran.
He had just finished selecting the samples to take back for Alexa, when he heard an excited yell. The Zoukai he had sent out with Shevek, was waving to him. He swung himself onto his pony and rode quickly towards the waving man, who shouted again as he got closer:
“Captain, you must see this.”
“See what, Zarul?”
He reined in his pony beside the young Zoukai.
“A man from the stars, Captain, an offworlder – and he’s alive.”
Caer looked at the younger man doubtfully. He could see no way anyone could have survived the explosion. Even if they had been able to get some distance from it the force alone would surely have been fatal.
“You are certain?”
“Well Shevek says he’s still breathing.” Zarul scratched at his bald scalp. “You can come and see for yourself.”
Caer pushed his pony into a fast trot, suddenly very curious. He might not trust Zarul, but Shevek had been riding with the caravans since before Caer had been born. Though when they reached the place where the old Zoukai was standing, the man on the ground beside him certainly looked dead. He was not burned as the other bodies had been, but he lay as still as a corpse and the side of his head was thick with blood.
Caer slid from his mount and crouched down, his fingers probing beneath the jaw. There was a pulse. For a moment Caer felt an odd sensation of excitement. Although he knew that people lived on other worlds which were out amongst the stars, it had never before seemed fully real, he had never actually seen anyone from offworld before. Curious now, he drew his knife and ripped through the cloth of the offworlder’s garments, surprised that such thin fabric resisted the blade. The other two Zoukai helped him cut and pull off the clothing, including a heavy belt, until they had stripped the man.
Caer’s breath hissed between his teeth. For some reason he had assumed that offworlders would be frail, with weak, puny bodies. From all he had heard they were feeble, using machines they had invented to do the work of their muscles. But this one was as strong as a Zoukai, and his body was built like any ordinary man. His flesh carried several old scars and his muscles were clean and compact beneath the skin. The thought struck him that this man would fetch a fortune in the Alfor slave pens. The castellans would be scrambling over each other to purchase something so rare and exotic as a genuine offworlder.
“See, he is a fighter, Captain. This and this – they were made by blades.” Zarul said, pointing at the scars.
Caer nodded.
“Well, if he lives, perhaps we shall find out what kind of fighter he is, this man from the stars.”

From Transgressor Trilogy: The Fated Sky by E.M. Swift-Hook, a Fortune’s Fools book.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Gym Membership 

My grandson’s family got given a gym membership for Christmas two years ago. He proudly tells me they used it twice. He thinks pumping iron a dead bore. His wife said the pool was so chlorinated she came out pale green. And his teenage daughters insisted that the place stank.

This is an extreme case, but research (a straw poll taken at the Cat and Scrotum just before lockdown) suggests that only one gym member in twenty even knows precisely where the place is.

Advice then. Only buy gym membership if you are serious about getting fit.

Bet you aren’t…