1
Orwell had rented an apartment for himself on the 25th floor of a high-end residence, in the central business district of Manila. It was a long flight from the Kingdom of Kronësvfurg, even for a full-grown dragon like himself. Yet somehow, it still felt too close to home.
Unlike most dragons, Orwell breathed bats instead of fire. He had spent most of his life trying to understand why, seeking answers from both science-based doctors and enchantment experts. But nobody could explain his affliction and why, of all things, did he breathe bats? He wasn’t always this way, he would tell his doctors when going through his medical history. He had exhaled powerful flames as a little boy and like all toddler dragons, he enjoyed setting things on fire. He set fire to bushes and abandoned houses, lit candles and roasted vegetables in the neighbor’s garden. It wasn’t until he reached his late adolescent years that the bats came and the fire-breathing simply stopped.
The bats were studied too, though Orwell made all the experts sign legal documents to keep them safe. No laboratory torture of any sort, like pinning them down, or cutting them open. The enchantment experts were most disappointed by this. But he felt the need to protect the bats, they were his neighbors after all And while they are in some ways an embarrassment, they were also his friends. Dimitrie was amongst his favorites.
Dimitrie spoke with a lisp but never seemed to mind it. He always made Orwell laugh and was very up to date when it came to young, worldly things. He told Orwell about TikTok and online shopping. In fact, he helped Orwell book his apartment through something called an “air bee and bee”. It is likely that Dimitrie was in it for a tropical vacation because he had purchased a set of trunks unwearable for the Kronësvfurg climate, but was trending in western countries where it was summertime. “Something about Harry Styles makes you irrational” Dimitrie explained. So Dimitrie did some research and found a long underground river tunnel in a place called Palawan, which he now claims has always been his dream destination. “I’m going to retire there,” he tells Orwell. Dimitrie is only thirteen and is about as sharp as a sea cucumber. Confident that his best buddy Dimitrie has zero chances of employment, Orwell tells him he should probably jump straight into retirement when they get there.
Entering the rented apartment, Orwell finds there is a mix-up. Someone is already living there. Not just renting it, but living there. Crowding the entrance of the apartment were little vehicles: a blue bicycle, a scratched up scooter, and a plastic pull-cart covered in stickers of puppies dressed as policemen and firefighters. The walls of the narrow hallway were covered with family pictures and right there, in the middle of the living room was a four-year old boy. Upon seeing Orwell, he runs and retreats into his tent yelling desperately for his mother. He stares at Orwell through a monocular, which is like a binocular but with only one ocular. What a strange thing, Orwell thinks of both the boy and the monocular. Dimitrie flies out of his left nostril to say the listing has mysteriously disappeared on the app, the number cannot be reached, there is no one available to help them out. Their money has vanished. He fell victim to what is commonly called a “phishing scam”.
“WHAT?” Orwell shouts, angrily huffing bats out of his nostrils. Dimitrie’s family stares at him, rudely awoken from their morning sleep. “I’ll try to fix it?” Dimitrie says, retreating into a nostril. Orwell knows Dimitrie will probably just hide and play his idiotic online games. He will have to find a place to go. In the meantime, he has a call with a therapist his doctor recommended. He suggests the possibility of a psychological issue, maybe some childhood trauma Orwell has locked away in his mind. What nonsense, Orwell thinks as he rejects his mother’s 15th call.
His mother liked to describe Orwell as the kind of dragon who enjoys his floral teas. She says this with a snort and a high-pitched laugh, looking around to make sure he’s within hearing distance. He never really understood what was so funny about it. He did enjoy floral teas, he collected them as he flew around the meadows of Kronësvfurg. They reminded him of springtime in the winter and gave him feelings of joy otherwise unachievable outside his cup of tea.
She wasn’t an abusive mother. She didn’t burn him with her flame as some dragon mothers have been known to do. But she did disapprove of some of his life choices, and she made sure he knew it.
The thing about Orwell is that unlike his brothers, he didn’t like burning animals for entertainment or nutrition. He has always adored animals, and was always protective of creatures big and small, from the goat in the farm to the spider on his windowsill. So when his mother told him to cook a little lamb one day, he said he could not.
Orwell had never seen his mother so angry. She was usually very understanding and sympathetic, the type to explain every single thing and choose to use words as her weapon for discipline. But in this instance, she had no patience.
“We killed a farmer for this lot,” she said to him in the loudest voice he’d ever heard come out of her. “A good farmer, a father of five little boys and girls. But he had to die so we could put food on the table for you. Now all you have to do is cook your own food and you can’t do that?” “No, mother, I cannot,” he said. And if a farmer has to die on his account, he would be fine living off of fruits and vegetables instead.
He’d been reading about veganism and thought maybe he could be more of an insectivore. Dragons need proteins and while he did not want to eat the little spider by his bedroom, he did not want to become malnourished either. Besides, he justified, he often bit into an ant or centipede while eating his vegetables. So for the longevity of his life, insects must continue to be part of this food chain.
“I’m going to be an insectivore, mother,” Orwell announced. His older brother by ten minutes, had told his mother he was gay just the week before and so Orwell thought he might as well jump on the coming-out bandwagon. His mother was very much an LGBTQ advocate and was even pro-choice, so it wasn’t very difficult for his brother. His mother embraced his new-found life path and immediately helped him with setting up a dating profile on a dragon dating app she’d heard about from her nieces. Orwell thought it wouldn’t be a thing telling her he was giving up meat but as it turns out, this was the one thing she was inflexible on.
Her eyes grew wide and skin cracked, as the heat rose from her belly up to her face. She let out a banshee scream, which Orwell had never heard, and he was impressed but also embarrassed as he had peed himself a little. His mother spread her wings wide, eyes black as night, hissing and she flew around the house. “She’s not taking this well, Orwell,” his sister whispered to him. She flew out of the house, burned down an entire village, and came back to tell him their deaths were his fault. In a raspy, growl she said she would burn down a village every day until he could grow a pair, and burn down the little lamb.
Day and night she would send him links to their family heritage, leading to a long, long line of fierce dragon hunters. His ancestors were legendary heroes to the many dragon communities kept alive by their pillaging. His mother often told him how she learned to hunt when she was only five years old, and burned down her first village when she was seven. She often told him how proud his grandfather and his great grandfather were of her. But then she fell in love with a good-for-nothing dragon, her heart taken prisoner by his striking looks. He led her to believe he was a courageous dragon but when it came time to feed their family, he couldn’t find the strength to slay the villagers and take their sheep. She nearly starved during her pregnancy with Orwell and his four siblings. And she has never forgiven him since. She banished him from their home and sent her siblings on a mission to find him and burn him alive. It was always a point of perplexity for Orwell that the woman he loved so dearly, who snuggled with him and read him bedtime stories was the same woman who had his father burned alive for not wanting to murder a herd of sheep. It’s about perspective, his mother would argue. But then, Orwell thought fearfully—would she have him burnt alive on the same difference of opinion?
He was a fan of the British monarchy and enjoyed reading historical accounts or watching documentaries about them on evenings alone, when Dimitrie and his family would fly off. He had read about how they had hidden their physically disabled family members from the public to preserve their pristine image as divine and unattainable human beings. He thought how in some ways his family was so similarly attached to their history, while there were many things they could accept, they could not allow the good family name to be tainted by a dragon incapable of being a fearless, savage beast. They can be gay. They can have abortions. They can even be communists. But in no way can they be anything but carnivorous killers. It was baffling to Orwell. And his heart went out to Prince Charles, painted a villain, but a mere victim to the pressures of being born into a royal line. And so Orwell decided he would not give up being an insectivore. This was his Camilla Parker-Bowles. He packed his bags and told Dimitrie to find a place with warm weather and lots of delicious tropical fruits.
2
“Tell me about your family” says the psychologist to Orwell. Her name is Doctor Oyun and she is ironically, of Mongolian sheep descent. He struggles to get a clear sentence out, anxious about what she might think. She’ll probably end the call abruptly. Tell him she doesn’t deal with murderous terrorists. Bats flutter around his head, waiting for the temporary inconvenience to pass. “Can’t he just a get stress ball?” Dimitrie’s mother asks him for the hundredth time. Dimitrie shushes her as he hides from Orwell’s line of sight, knowing his mistakes have not been forgotten.
“Well, I uh, I have, I have, I have, I have three siblings. And we are, we are, we are, dragon quadruplets,” he catches his breath and proceeds to describe each sibling to Doctor Oyun in great detail; rambling on and on about the exact shade of yellow of his brother Gunther’s teeth or the design of every shoe in his brother Lionel’s closet. It was an astounding amount of useless information, but exempting the involuntary baa-ing here and there, Doctor Oyun does not once interrupt. When he is done, Doctor Oyun continues with “you never mentioned your parents, can you tell me about them?”
As if accused of a crime, Orwell goes into guiltful denial. “Oh didn’t I? Why didn’t I? I thought I did, I thought I mentioned mother a few times. Didn’t I mention she birthed us all? I thought I did, why it must have slipped my mind. And of course father took part in the child-making process. You know it. Birds and the bees, all of that rudimentary stuff. I can’t believe I missed out on them, well I certainly didn’t mean to omit them, sometimes the mind goes blank, not intentionally of course.” Doctor Oyun let him vomit it all out until he was done and simply exhausted. He thought maybe he’d tired her out too, no follow-throughs after all that blathering. But without skipping a beat she says, “so shall we hear about them? Let’s start with their names.”
It was a devastatingly revealing conversation. At some point, even the bats fell silent to listen. The repetitive “yes mah-ster” of Dimitrie’s orc game came to a pause. He was pretty sure even the owners of the home they accidentally walked into were eavesdropping while waiting for the police to come. Doctor Oyun remained calm as he spoke of pillaging villages and murdering herds of sheep. Her voice did not waver, her tone did not change, she continued to ask and ask, like a journalist eager to get a story out of a psychopath.
He sobbed like a two-year old deprived of a barbie doll in Target as he said, “My mother would leave slaughtered sheep at my door”
3
A week after telling his mother about his dietary inclinations, and enduring the thickening smell of rot at his door, he decided to pack-up and live somewhere off the dragon grid. He found a vacant cave with Internet access and refused to tell anyone where he was.
On his own, he foraged when he was feeling gritty, but mostly ordered fruits and vegetable from wholefoods. This generally reduced his protein intake from insects so he began to sleep with his mouth open to attract flies for added nutrition. One day he awoke to a bat picking around his teeth. “Well you’re rude,” Orwell said. The bat flew out of his mouth, unshaken, and introduced himself as Dimitirie, son of Demolif. He was talkative and shared a lot of information that really didn’t interest Orwell. Like his stats on League of Laros, and the characters he had unlocked. He told him about some costumes with lots of power, and Orwell checked his watched a few times, wondering where the pizza he ordered an hour ago was. As it turns out Dimitrie was supposed to deliver the pizza, except tomato and pineapple pizza happened to be his favorite pizza of all time. And he was really hungry that day, not because he’d not had anything to eat, but because he happened to run into his friend Gustaft, who had scored some really good weed and so they smoked that and ate the pizza. But anyway, Dimitrie thought he should come clean to Orwell and he’d brought him a blunt as a peace offering. Orwell was sleeping and Dimitrie thought Orwell wouldn’t mind him helping himself to a snack. Dimitrie was truly apologetic—he was real and sincere in many ways—but thinking back on it, Orwell knew he probably came just to smoke the blunt together.
Orwell had never smoked weed, thought it seemed like a good a time as any to try.
He ordered another pizza and told Dimitirie to invite some friends. Dimitrie invited his whole family, including his hard-of-hearing grandmother who kept calling him Snell. Before Orwell knew it, they were all living in his nostrils. Throwing parties. Watching movies. Being loud in the wee hours of the morning, after a long evening of flying through trees. Orwell welcomed the company. He liked having people to eat with. They started a fruit review site and trolled the dung beetles for having shitty taste in everything. Orwell felt something he had never really felt in his life. He was happy and he belonged.
4
Finding inner peace gave Orwell the courage to try and fix things with his mother. And even though she had her siblings brutally murder his dad, and then murdered entire villages to demonstrate how vehemently against veganism she was, she was also still his mother. So he sends his brother a short text with a few emojis “how are you? *heart emoji* *dragon emoji* *fruit emoji* *fruit emoji* *fruit emoji*” As expected, within a few minutes his brother tells his other brother, who then tells his best uncle-cousin, who then tells Orwell’s mother about the text. Within minutes, he gets a call from her. He answers the phone taking a deep breath, but before he can even speak she says, “well I hope you’re pleased with yourself because I’ve wiped out at least 50 villages while you’ve been away. You’re an embarrassment to dragon society, and this senseless killing needs to come to a stop, so you best get your wits together and come home this minute with five burnt goats for your mother, your brothers and sister, and your very, very deeply offended uncles.”
Orwell couldn’t believe his ears. Was his mother mad? How did she manage to blame him for the vicious and brutal theft of so many lives? He thought maybe he’d yelled or growled and then put the phone down, but it was all a blur to him. His vision grew dark, he felt the urge to go out and burn something down. This was exactly what his mother wanted. She wanted to bring out the dragon in him. Show him the beast that runs through his veins, the power that pumps violently in his blood, uncontrollably coursing through him: a mindless pyromaniac set upon the earth.
Smoke starts to come out of Orwell’s nose and the bats rushed out in a panic. Many of them still in their pajamas, clutching valuables they could hang onto on their way out. Pictures of their children, laptops with important files, some brought food and toiletries—one bat carried out nothing more than a coffee bean. And Dimitrie, well, he was filming everything for Tiktok. Orwell could hear the bats panicking “It was so hot in there!” “I thought we’d be barbecue!” “What the fuck Dimitrie! I thought he was a dormant dragon???”
Orwell could feel his whole face turning red, growing hotter and hotter by the minute, as his skin cracked beneath. But then five passed, and there was still no fire. Seven minutes later, he could feel himself cooling down. The smoke was thinning out, and a passing wind took most of it away. The bats started floating closer to his nostrils, checking how safe it was to come back in. Then by the tenth minute, Orwell could feel himself growing calm and even sleepy. His wings droop to the floor, a yawn escapes his mouth. Has he lost his fire, he wonders. “What sorcery is this?” he’d read that in a book once and has always wanted to say it out loud. The bats slowly fly back in, checking their belongings for damage but except for a few melted chocolates and grilled bits of fruit, everything seemed okay.
5
Orwell sent a formal apology to the bat community through Dimitrie. He even made a fire protocol to prepare for any future incidences. But a few still left and decided to seek safer real-estate investments. Though many, like Dimitrie’s family, still chose to stay. After all, the view was unparalleled. Orwell’s fire protocol was set into motion by Donovan, who conducted weekly fire drills and set up insulated food storage on the roof of Orwell’s nostrils, using flat sheets from insulated take out bags. They used fire-retardant paint on their furniture and filed for the necessary insurance. They got a good deal too because not a lot of bats live in fire-hazard homes. Dimitrie did nothing to help, though he was always happy to check if there was an answer on Quora.com or Snopes. He also documented the scene “for future resources and more importantly: it gets a lot of likes”
Orwell on the other hand without thinking, told his sister what had happened, who told his brother what had happened, who told his best uncle-cousin what had happened, who told his mother what had happened, who then called up Orwell demanding he come home. She wasn’t too concerned about the bats, nor did she feel bad about the emotional damage she may have inflicted on Orwell. What worried her was that he did nothing more than breathe bats, and that he was incapacitated in the worst way possible. “You may as well be dead,” she said. Orwell’s mother pleaded with him to meet the doctors she’d called to help. “They’re the best dragon doctors in all of Kronësvfurg, they all studied in India and spent their residency at The Nepalese Dragon Hospital, where only the brightest dragons in the world get to attend.” But Orwell ignored her and so she began to attack his choices in life.
“This is because you chose to be vegan, you are poisoning your body, Orwell. Dragons aren’t meant to eat just fruits and vegetables and the insects that live in them! That would be like feeding a lion chocolates or a bird, well fuck if I know what birds eat.” Again the bats flew around Orwell’s head as smoke puffed out of his nose. One of the bats said to another, “if he doesn’t stop answering his mother’s calls, I’ll never find out who killed the Harry.” Then Orwell yelled at his mother, “IT’S YOUR FAULT! DON’T YOU SEE? YOU DID THIS TO ME!” his voice boomed loudly, echoing, but only in his head. He was so sure he’d said it. If not as loudly as he’d imagined, at least at a normal volume. But as he taps through the videos Dimitrie posted on Instagram, he sees he never even so much as whispered it. And all he does is sit there, blowing smoke out of his nostrils as he mother berates him on speaker phone.
6
“Did she do this to me?” He finally says to his psychiatrist in a whisper. He had stayed quiet for so long he thinks maybe she had gone up to make tea or go for a quick pee on mute. The kind of things people usually do on calls. Clip their nails, pick their noses, pluck their armpits, pushing the limits of having civilized conversations while acting like a caveman behind the video-off function. But as soon as he spoke, she answered. And in a matter-of-fact tone she says, “well, I hope this doesn’t disappoint you Orwell, but no. It isn’t her fault.”
“I’m surprised the doctors missed it. But the reason you’re breathing bats is because you’re eating a lot of fuits and nuts, and a lot of it probably gets stuck in your nostrils. And if you really think about it, and I hope you don’t take offense at this, your nostrils make for a great cave. It’s got changing views, fresh air, and a steady supply of food. In fact Orwell, those bats are borderline obese.”
He could hear the bats in his nostrils protesting. But Orwell nodded. He always thought Dimitrie could do with a bit more cardio. Although that didn’t explain why he couldn’t breathe fire and just as he was about to ask, Doctor Oyun continues.
“And your fire problem is simply a biological instinct overcoming another biological instinct. Where one is to breathe fire as a response to intense emotions, the other is to not harm others, most especially those you deeply care about.”
“Like Dimitrie,” Orwell says.
“Yes, and his family who have been your family since you left home.”
Orwell knew this to be true. Dimitrie’s mother took care of him when he caught the deadly 40-day flu, telling everyone to collect enough ice and snow from the mountain tops to cool his body down. The bat community carried in pail after pail of water to keep him hydrated and flew all the way to the Amazon to find the herbs he needed to heal.
Whenever Orwell felt bad about something, Dimitrie could feel it from watching the way his breathing changed. And immediately Dimitrie would find ways to change his mood. He’d bring his favorite food. Get his friends to come and pretend to be really interested books, just so Orwell wouldn’t feel so lonely and out-of-place. They would look up books on Goodreads and memorize reviews from other people then pretend they were their own thoughts. It always made Orwell laugh when they mixed up unfamiliar words and said things like, bananagram instead of anagram. Or when Josephayas, Dimitrie’s fourth cousin, said the hero severely lacked carrot development, and Orwell found himself stifling tears behind his book. These bats were his friends, his family, his heart and soul. Without them, he would feel alone again: a tame, living-creature loving dragon in a world full of fierce, fire-breathing ones.
“Orwell, I hate to say this,” Doctor Oyun says pulling out him out of his revelation, “but I’m going to need to hang-up soon. I have a soul cycle class in 15 minutes and they’re really strict about letting in late comers.”
“Of course, I’m sorry to have wasted so much of your time, doctor.”
“No, it was really wonderful speaking to you, Orwell. We should talk again to help you wade through your feelings about your mother. But simply put: bat-breathing is a decision you have made yourself, and if you really wanted to, it wouldn’t be that hard to fix. Just ask the bats to find somewhere else to live, wash your nose out with a bit of sea water and you should be back to fire breathing in just a day or two.”
“Okay doctor,” Orwell says as Dimitrie crawls out of his nostril eyes barely open, a bean of coffee hanging in his open mouth. It must be getting dark out, Orwell thinks. He hangs up the phone and goes back to scrolling for a place to stay. He peeks at the boy with the monocular and catches his eye just before the boy ducks behind the coffee table again. “We better go,” he tells Dimitrie, who nods and asks him to check his email. He’s found a new place just down the road. It’s got pool access and a small balcony with a griller. Maybe pass for some eggplants on the way home, some mangoes, and coconuts, and something exotic like dragon fruit. “Well, isn’t that just what I am?” Orwell says with a smile.