Cleaning night

At midnight they’d light the sky on fire. It was 11:57. He could do this. He could stay awake

Percy snored in a ball at his feet. The baby megalosaurus’ warm scales rested on his ankles. Somehow, his cuddly, scaled pet could curl into a ball and take up more of the bed then when he was stretched out with his long tail and claws extended. He never should have let the megalosaurus share the bed with him, but now, after all these years, it was too late. Percy wouldn’t sleep anywhere but Dune’s feet.

He tried to nudge the sleeping ball off, but the only thing harder than moving a sleeping megalosaurus was an awake megalosaurus, and he didn’t want to risk waking Percy. So he slipped his feet out from underneath the snoring ball of scales and sat with his knees pulled up to his chest. He rested his chin on his knees and yawned.

It was still 11:57. Why did waiting for something always make time slow down?

Cleaning night happened six times a year, and in his entire thirteen years, Dune had never managed to stay awake for it even once. His mum insisted he was awake for it when he was a baby, because he was always awake when he was a baby, but he didn’t think that counted. He couldn’t remember and wouldn’t have known what he was seeing anyway. Babies didn’t know what wyverns were.

Every 2 months, all the buildings in the city put their big bales of garbage on the roof, and a team of fire wyverns flew over each neighborhood to burn up the trash with their fiery breath. Then a team of blood crystal wyverns followed and ate up all the ashes.

It was a pretty big surprise when Dune saw a person in all black leaping across the buildings. Two dozen ravenous wyverns dove from above. The person got out a pistol and shot Dune’s window. Glass shattered. And the person leaped into his room. The fire wyverns breathed their fire and Dune ducked out of the way. The other person, however, was not so lucky. When the fire stopped ashes were where the person was. A blood crystal wyvern stuck it’s head through the used-to-be-window. Dune was about to rush out of the room when he felt a claw on his leg. The wyvern had him! He was being dragged closer and closer to it’s head. He was thrown into the air, then he felt the slimy wyvern’s mouth and he couldn’t see any more. A moment after he felt a CRUNCH, and it all went dark.

-Fenrir