Dragons Awake!

“Steve… Steve…Steve…”

Steve opened his eyes and saw beige canvas. Oh, yes, he was taking time out from his work as an environmental biologist to assist his uncle, a renowned palaeontologist, on his latest dig. Uncle John had high hopes for the bones they had started to uncover yesterday.

“Steve…”

His eyes travelled around until they focused on what was standing beside his sleeping bag. No, he wasn’t awake yet; he was still dreaming. A very small dinosaur was there in the tent with him. And it was calling him by name!

“Steve, pay attention! This is very important day for both of us. Although your uncle thinks I’m a dinosaur, I’m actually a dragon.” The apparition carefully unfurled its wings and let a brief puff of smoke out of its nose. “See?”

“This is the best dream I’ve had in a long time! Do tell me more.”

“You’re not dreaming, Steve, you’re awake and I’m the ghost of the dragon whose bones you and your uncle started to dig up yesterday. I died here a long time ago, the last of my kind, and just a baby into the bargain. But now you have the chance to bring me and all my species back to life if you just agree to help me. What do you say?”

“That sounds great. They may even name you after me: Draco stevenisis. What do I have to do?”

“Although your uncle will continue to think that my skeleton is that of an ordinary dinosaur, you will remove bits of bone from which DNA can be extracted. You know, like in that movie, Jurassic Park?”

“And how, pray tell, can a long-dead dragon know about a twentieth-century movie?”

The dragon sat down on its haunches and gazed at Steve reproachfully. “Although I’ve been dead for a long time, my spirit has ranged far and wide, picking up all sorts of information that I thought might come in handy some day. Capiche?”

“Okay, I get the picture. So, if I remember the movie correctly, all I have to do is to clone the DNA and there will be a whole island full of fire-breathing dragons. Right?”

“It’s not quite like that. What you need to do is insert my DNA into viable chicken embryos, letting them develop to full term and then breeding the males and females together. Does that sound like something you could do?”

“Well, I certainly have the equipment and knowledge to carry out an experiment like that. Although I don’t know of any deserted islands where I could release the potentially-dangerous end products. Assuming I’m successful, of course.”

“Don’t worry about the island. I have just the right place; it’s all been organised by a friend that I made while waiting for someone appropriate to find my body. And, believe me, you are the best person for the job, so I have every confidence in your success.”

Steve climbed out of his sleeping bag. “Okay. It’s time for me to get up now. So, if you are not a dream, prove to me that you are real, that is to say a ‘real ghost’. I need a good reason to do what you’ve asked me to do. You do know that it is unethical to remove part of a fossil from a dig site, don’t you? And I would be betraying my uncle, whom I love and respect.”

“Okay. This won’t be easy because I’m basically incorporeal. But I’ve been saving up my psychic energy for quite awhile, knowing that I’d need to do it. See that shirt you wore yesterday and threw over the back of the chair? It still looks the same as it did when you took it off, doesn’t it? No holes or burned places anywhere?”

Steve nodded, keeping his eyes watchfully trained on his dirty, but otherwise intact, shirt. A short burst of flame erupted from the ghost dragon’s nostrils and the shirt was peppered with spots of fire that soon smouldered into black-circled holes. Steve snatched it up and examined it from all angles. Then he pinched himself hard and examined it again. It was still singed. “Okay,” he said. But, when he looked around, his ghostly visitor was gone. He found another shirt and started to get ready for what he knew was going to be a big day.

***

Many months later, on a suitably secluded island, Steve examined the chicken eggs he’d successfully inoculated with the dragon DNA that he’d purloined from his uncle’s dig. They were starting to crack open and, as he watched, dozens of little dragons and dragonesses emerged into the world for the first time in a very long time. Draco stevenisis was back from extinction!