Manzanar looked over his turnips. Turnips, he thought. At least they weren’t beets. Or rutabagas, whatever those were. Turnips were nice. They were ordinary, safe, very turnip-like. And it was a nice day for fishing, he thought, chuckling to himself.
The hens clucked at him in their pen- safe, sound, and gently resentful, the sun rose in the sky in the way that the sun usually did, and Manzanar was pretty sure he did not hear the sound of a pen’s nib somewhere in the distance.
“Stranger! Stranger!” - a man ran into view from the trail. The man was ragged, out of breath, disheveled.
“I’m not the stranger, you are,” Manzanar said, gripping his hoe tightly. He knew how to use it, and wanted this stranger to know it - he’d been hoeing his whole life, really. Turnips, beets, Sarai…
“Beware,” the man shrieked. “It’s a wyvern!”
“A what?”
“A wyvern! … a monster,” the man rubbed his face. “Do you have somewhere to hide?”
“Yes,” Manzanar said. “But it’s not big enough for the two of us, I think.”
“It’s coming now! It’s… impossible to describe! Wingspan of a hay-cart! Shadow of a barn!”
“That sounds like a description,” Manzanar said, “But-“ and then a horrible, indescribable winged dragon-thing with two legs and a barbed tail, reddish-brown with a maw full of sharp-looking teeth appeared. It glanced from side to side, noting the stranger and Manzanar, both of whom quailed - and as Manzanar blanched in fear, it dove for him.
Manzanar, panicking, grabbed the hoe like a club and swung it, trying to frighten the wyvern. It darted at him, unafraid, and the hoe’s head caught its neck - and broke it immediately. The wyvern, all eighteen inches of it, tops, went limp and cartwheeled into a tree with a decisive BONK-unless that was an ooga-horn; Manzanar couldn’t be sure with all the adrenaline.
“You… you killed it,” the stranger said, dismayed.
Manzanar, gently horrified, nodded. “It could have been cute, if the story’d been writed better.”
The hens glared at the tiny corpse judgmentally.
“Shut up, chickens!,” Manzanar snapped. The hens glared at Manzanar judgmentally. “I… it was so small! … it looked bigger, I think we just discovered perspective and how it doesn’t really apply to the page very well.”
“I have no idea what galley you’re on, but they only pay me scale.” He bolted. “Goodbye, dragon-slayer!”
“Dragon-slayer,” Manzanar thought to himself. “I like the sound of that.”
Somewhere overhead, a quill scratched, then coughed-clearly unimpressed.
“Maybe it’s a nice day for a-hoeing.”