Atmais the Dragon Mimic (complete)

A long time ago, in what almost feels like a different world, I grew up with my grandparents. My grandfather owned and operated a small airport on the island where we lived. The island of Blackforte was a tourist destination, and the airport had two planes going in and out at all times. My grandfather flew one of the planes, while an old war friend of his operated the other. It was my dream to be a pilot like my grandfather one day.

I was practically raised inside that airport, often at my grandmother’s feet as she sold tickets and checked bags. When I got bored I would play outside, as there was a small garden with seats where passengers could sit and wait if they liked. I used to like pulling weeds, and as I grew, I started sneaking plants into the garden. The forest was pretty close by and I would go there to snoop around, bringing back plants I found with me.

One time when I was doing just that, I was exceptionally bored. It was a particularly busy weekend for the airport and, as such, my grandmother insisted on me leaving the airport so she didn’t get overwhelmed. Because it was so busy, there were a ton of people at the airport, especially in the garden. This was irritating to little me as it felt like these people were overrunning my home. Rather than stay annoyed, I left. I went into the woods with my bucket and shovel, and decided to stay there for a while.

I went further into the forest than I had before. It seemed like the best thing to do, considering I couldn’t get close to the airport. As an adult, I realize how bad an idea this was, but back then it was like a whole new world. I searched around for interesting plants or cool patches of moss I could take back to the airport. As I was digging, I heard a noise near me. I should have been scared, but I was annoyed that something was ruining my ‘me time’. I kept working, intent on ignoring everything. The noise continued until finally, I had enough. I wandered towards the sound of it, ready to tell whatever it was off.

Something was caught in a net, and from the looks of it, I could tell it was a mermaid net. Whatever it was must have gotten caught down at the beach and dragged itself here. It was struggling to get free, only making the net tighten around itself. The string had cut into them, causing lots of bleeding in various places.

“Are you stupid?” I snapped.

The creature stopped moving.

“Stop moving!” I stomped towards it, taking the old army knife my grandfather didn’t know I took and extended it towards the net. The creature inside hissed and screamed, but I managed to cut the net enough that it started to free itself.

I huffed. “There, isn’t that better than before?”

The creature scurried out, going up the side of a tree and falling down because its hand was cut. It flopped around then got up and looked at me with these bright red eyes that started glowing.

I’ve always been a bit of an asshole, I won’t deny that. But as a kid, had I not been taken in by my grandparents, I could have gotten so much worse. Whatever untapped power I had, they put it to good use. But at that point, I was still a wild asshole and was known to swing in different ways. I hit the creature with my bucket.

“Don’t look at me like that!” I snapped at the creature.

They fell back and covered their head with their hands. They were pale in color, with black markings over their limbs. “Stop,” they whined.

“Oh, you can talk,” I lowered my weapon and waited.

“Stop,” they sniffled again.

I sighed and knelt down before them. They were quite small, and I wasn’t exactly sure what they were. “Are you scared? What happened?”

They looked at me with those big, red eyes. They had scales that flared out around their brows and under the eye socket. Their hands had webbing between the fingers and fins along the top of their head. Blood smeared across the pale of their body and I could even see the pink inside some of the cuts.

“I think I have some bandaids.” I started searching the pockets of my overalls. Each pocket always had a purpose.

The creature sniffled.

“Here.” I extended a fistful of bandaids to them. “These will help your cuts.”

The creature looked up at me, extending their weird little hand. They took the bandages and sniffed them.

“Put them on the cuts,” I instructed. “Ugh, here.” I knelt back down beside them, taking bandages to cover cuts I saw. They sat there, looking like a pudgy scaled cat. They must have been young, I thought. I felt bad for them.

“Are you alone?” I asked.

They simply blinked at me.

“My name is Beatrice, but no one better dare call me that!” I huffed. “Call me Bea or don’t call me at all!” I thought I was clever, I really did.

They stuck their tongue out.

I frowned as I looked at them. “So what are you? Do you wanna go back to the ocean? Is that where you came from?” The sound of a plane overhead made them look up, gazing through the trees. Their mouth opened and their tongue slipped back inside. Their eyes glowed again and they reached up to the sky.

“Can you fly?” I asked.

They made a small garbled noise that sounded almost like a plane engine.

“I’m gonna fly one day,” I told them. “My grandpa flies those planes up there. When I’m old enough, I’m going to become a pilot like him.” I smiled up into the sky.

The creature sighed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Humans can’t fly,” they said.

I grinned. “So you can talk?”

The pudgy, scaly cat thing frowned at me. “Humans can’t fly,” they repeated. They looked back up into the sky. “You should just stay on the ground.”

“Oh, really?” I huffed. “And what do you do?”

“I can do whatever I want.” They stood up and wobbled. “Unlike you.” They smiled smugly at me.

“So can I!” I huffed.

The creature smiled back at me. “Then fly?”

I gave them a super angry look. “Who do you think you are?”

They looked at me with wide eyes and suddenly a smile grew. They started to laugh, and soon I joined in with them. “My name is Atmais,” he told me. “But you don’t have to call me anything else.”

“Are you okay?” I offered my hand to help him up.

“I got stuck while swimming.” Atmais took my hand and he felt so warm, like laundry hung to dry. “I got scared.”

“That’s okay. People get scared all the time.” I walked beside him through the woods. “Do you want to help me find plants?”

Atmais looked at me with a sweet, timid look. I then picked up my bucket, which I felt bad to have hit him with. I then collected the plants that had toppled out and I showed him. I told him about the garden and how I was sneaking plants in to confuse my grandmother. He loved it and we walked through the woods together to find more.

After that, I spent all my time with him. During that summer, I found every excuse I could to go and play with him. It was lucky my grandparents were busy or just assumed I was up to my usual antics. I told Atmais all about the airport and the planes, all about my grandfather too.

“You really wanna fly?” Atmais asked. We were laid together on the beach, watching a plane take off from the airport.

“More than anything,” I beamed. “I wanna be up there like my grandpa! I wanna fly all over the world if I can. But I’d be happy just flying to this island too.”

Atmais scooted close to me. “Maybe when I’m big enough, we can fly together.”

He was so little, I really couldn’t imagine him being any bigger than me. “Okay!” I rolled over so I could see him better. “We’ll fly side by side.”

A small smile spread across his chubby face. “Where would we go?”

“Anywhere.” I reached out and pet the top of his head. “We can go anywhere at all.”

His red eyes glowed, even in the bright light of the sun, and he came in even closer, rubbing his head into my palm. “I would like that a lot!”

We got caught in the rain one afternoon and we huddled under a bus stop as it poured. There was a chill in the air, which signaled that summer was at an end. I was clutching my bucket to my chest, watching as the rain came down. My hair and clothes were plastered to my skin, and yet the summer warmth trapped into the bus stop kept me from shivering. I was smiling, but Atmais had a sorrowful look upon his face.

“It’s okay! Once it stops raining, we’ll be able to go.” I pet the top of his head. “Even if it’s still raining, we’ll both run and get home!”

Atmais had a pout on his face and a sad look I had never seen on him before. “I’ll have to go soon.”

“Well, we can run!” I laughed.

He shook his head and bowed his head down lower. “No. I mean I have to leave the island.”

My heart was a soda can being crushed under someone’s foot. I let go of my bucket and set it aside. “Why?” My voice came out so much smaller than I was used to. I was used to being so big, it sounded like someone else was speaking.

Atmais looked at me with those big red eyes. “Because my dad is coming. I have to go with him.”

“Will you come back?” I asked. Atmais was my first real friend since moving to Blackforte. After my parents had died, all I had were my grandparents. Atmais was the first person I had been able to reach out to and depend upon. I hadn’t felt so hurt, and it terrified me.

Atmais looked at me, those red eyes glancing over my expression for a moment. Then all he did was shrug at me.

A surge of anger rushed through my tiny body, replacing all the hurt that had been there before. “I don’t like that answer!”

“But I don’t know,” Atmais said simply. “You’re just a human, so I can’t really explain it. I just know I have to leave.”

That still wasn’t good enough for me. Anger was all that existed inside me and it felt like the only thing that could ever exist. “Just a human?” I spat at him. I stood up off the bus stop bench and started to leave.

“Bea! Wait!” Atmais chased after me as I left.

“No!” I shouted back at him. “I’m more than just a human!”

I could hear Atmais running after me, his legs were much shorter than mine so he had to scurry really hard to keep up pace. This only made me angrier and I wanted to run faster and harder from him.

I was getting soaked as I barreled through the rain. Back then I thought, if he was going to leave and never come back, then he might as well say goodbye then and there. I stopped when I came close to the airport and when I turned around, Atmais was gone. I looked around for him, thinking maybe he tripped or fell near the garden. I went back onto the beach where I left him, but the rain had washed away his tracks. I rushed back to the bus stop where we had been, and all that was there was my bucket with some plants in it.

What had I done? I ran back to the airport and cried on my grandmother while she sold tickets. All that anger swept away from sadness and fear again. I wanted to see my friend again, I wanted to apologize. But he was gone.

The next summer came and I waited the entire time to make my apology. I searched the woods to look for him, and I walked along the beach. I had no idea where he would come from if he returned. I did the same the following summer, and one last time the summer after that. But he never came.

Lots of summers have come and gone since then. I left Blackforte for a while, earning my pilot’s license as well as a degree to help me run the airport. But a summer came that took my grandfather from me. His plane crashed, and after that, I could no longer put myself into a plane, let alone in a cockpit like I always dreamed about. I took over the airport, running it as best I could.

Something strange had been happening recently. While running controls and working the tower, the pilots had begun noticing something in the air with them. We had begun jokingly calling it the ghost plane. But recently I even saw it. The plane looked very similar to the one my grandfather flew, and it stayed mostly in the clouds. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have said it was just a trick of the eye. I had also talked to some of the merfolk down at the docks who had asked me if we had a seaplane. We didn’t. The merfolk all then murmured something about a plane often coming down onto the water and sucking up large quantities of fish in the motors!

I hated to think about it, but I seriously started wondering if there was a possibility of there being a ghost plane. If so, was it my grandpa? It would make sense he would haunt this place, especially the air around the airport. He always said that his favorite view was of the airport before landing.

One evening it was exceptionally dark and stormy. I had canceled a flight going out and was waiting on a plane to come in to close up for the night. I eventually got a call saying the plane was unable to take off and would arrive in the morning, so I was finishing up work when Captain Prentiss, one of the pilots, came in.

“There’s a plane landing! Why didn’t you make an announcement?” She looked pissed.

“No, there can’t be,” I shook my head. “They just called and-” We both looked at one another and rushed out of the tower. We ran out onto the landing strip, watching as the plane came down. It made no noise, no sign of an engine even though I could see it. It looked almost identical to my grandfather’s plane, except it had big red lights at the front.

“Should I get a gun?” The pilot asked.

“Just wait,” I whispered. “Wait.” As the plane landed, the whole place became still and quiet. We stood there, waiting. There would always be some movement, the door opening, something happening. But everything was so still, it didn’t feel right at all.

“Well?” Prentiss hissed at me again.

I stepped forward, going towards the plane. If it was a ghost plane, I wouldn’t be able to touch it. My fingers would go right through it and that would answer that. But when I touched it, it was solid. Not only that, it felt warm and a little scaly.

“Bea?” Prentiss shouted towards me.

I looked up at the plane, and saw the underbelly of it shift as if it were breathing. I moved backwards, taking very, very slow steps as I made my way back to Prentiss. “Get inside,” I told her urgently.

Prentiss came closer. “What?”

I whipped around and glared at her. “Get inside, now!”

Prentiss looked at me like I was crazy, but when the plane shifted and dipped lower, she took off like a bullet for the airport. I ran too, barely evading what looked like the front of the plane opening like a mouth. We ran inside for cover and when we looked out the window, the plane was still and normal looking.

“You saw that, right?” Prentiss hissed. “That thing moved!”

“Yeah, yeah, I saw,” I panted. My heart was going a million miles a second it felt like. I pushed my wet hair back from my face and slowly breathed out. “Okay, good, I’m not losing it.”

“After this, you might,” Prentiss huffed. “What are we going to do? If it stays out there we won’t be able to fly any planes.”

“I’m trying to think.” I sat down with my back to the window. “Maybe we can use those gas bombs the TSA sent us?”

“Would those work?”

I shook my head and scowled at Prentiss. “I don’t know! It worked on that pigeon invasion two years ago.”

“Is that thing even close to a pigeon?” She turned back towards the window and her face went completely pale.

“Prentiss?” I turned around and saw the plane was right up upon the window fogging the glass with its breath. “Motherfucker,” I whispered as all the air was squeezed out of my body.

Prentiss ran, bolting from the spot and leaving me there. I couldn’t move, I just stared through that fogged glass at the propeller that was almost touching. I slowly stood from my seat and turned to face the window. The red light shone bright even through the fogged glass and, for a moment, I wondered if this was satan or one of their minions.

“Come out,” a deep voice bellowed.

I sucked up air and clenched my entire body.

A wing came forward and tapped upon the glass. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” they sang. “You keep running away from me, Beatrice.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be scared or pissed. No one dared to call me Beatrice. I furrowed my brow, wondering how this hell plane knew the right button to push. I moved, albeit heavily. I went back outside, opening the door and peering through a crack at the plane. The body had changed, looking more like an animal than a plane. The wings fell to the side, wrapping around the body and going smooth. The creature turned towards me, red eyes flashing brightly.

I lifted my arm up to block the light; squinting, I saw something of a face. “What are you?”

A small laugh rumbled along with the storm. The plane, or whatever it was, came closer to me and knelt down upon the ground. It then threw a bucket at me.

I was stunned, standing there with my face hurting while the little bucket plopped upon the ground and bounced at my feet before rolling back towards the plane thing. I looked up, staring through the air and rain as the red eyes dimmed. A smirk grew across the face, which was wide and blunt like the front of a plane. Black fins grew along the side of the head, almost resembling cat ears, and scales grew around the brow and under the eye socket.

“No,” I lowered my arms from a defensive pose. “It can’t-” I stepped out more into the rain. “Atmais?”

He lowered his head down. “Hello, Bea.”

My jaw dropped wide open.

Atmais’ smirk grew. “Long time no see.”

The rain began to stop, slowly thinning out until only droplets from the roof fell. The air became humid, especially from the residual heat of the tarmac. I hadn’t seen him since we were small, now he was huge and I was still somewhat small. I wasn’t sure what to do or say, it felt like a dream.

“You’re really here,” I whispered low. I reached out then recoiled my hand again. My head bobbed up and down as I tried to take in all of him. “You really did grow up big.”

Atmais tilted his head to the side, extending his neck then pulling it back in. “You haven’t.”

I pressed my lips into a tight line. “What are you doing here?”

Atmais’ eyes darted around for a brief second. “Mainly hunting, but I thought I’d pay an old friend a visit. But you were never in any of the planes, so I landed.”

I avoided his eyes.

“Did you never become a pilot?”

“Why don’t we go somewhere and get away from the airport?” I said urgently. “Before someone comes shooting and- well, before someone comes!” I walked him away from the airport, taking him down to the beach.

The sand was wet and thick all along the beach, and in the distance, thunder threatened to bring the storms back. Rain sometimes sprinkled, but it was a light mist at most. I wasn’t sure what to say, I was still running on adrenaline and fear from before.

“You know, you’ve been giving us a lot of problems since you started showing up.”

Atmais laughed. “Have I?”

I put my hands upon my hips and gave him a scolding look. “Yes! We’ve been calling you the ghost plane! We thought we were being haunted or something. But I guess it was just you. All that worry for nothing.”

I smiled up at him. “You really know how to make an entrance now.”

Atmais chuckled and swept his tail out across the beach, swiping several crabs back into the ocean. “Better than a pitiful exit.”

I recoiled as I remembered the way I had run away from him. “It really is.” I sighed heavily and took my hands off my hips. “In the rain too.”

Sitting down upon the beach, Atmais curled his tail around himself then folded his long arms out before him. I stood beside him, standing as tall as his shoulder. He had some of the same features as he did as a child, he still was pale with black markings, although his fins had grown bigger, scales had grown thicker and harder.

“So, hunting-” I murmured.  “Is that why you’ve been stalking the island as a ghost for the summer?”

Atmais’ ears twitched and he looked down at me. “And to prepare a nest.”

“Oh,” I fidgeted in place. “So, you’ll be here for a while then.”

He turned his eyes towards the horizon and gazed out over the ocean. The red glow came to his eyes, illuminating the beach before him. “Until I find a mate at least. Then I will go wherever they go.”

“That’s nice.” I followed his gaze out along the ocean. “Got anyone in mind?”

Atmais shrugged.

“What’s your type?” I tried to say jokingly.

His eyes cut down at me.

“Just trying to help.” I looked back out over the ocean then clasped my hands behind my back. “It’s been a really long time.”

“It has,” Atmais murmured. “To be honest, I’m barely certain why I came back here at all. I just wound up here again as if I was called.”

“Maybe you missed it?”

“Maybe I just wanted to throw a bucket in your face.” Atmais recoiled his neck then looked down at me again.

I screwed my mouth up into a tight line as I bowed my head. “I kept waiting on you,” I murmured. “I searched the entire island for a few summers. Then I just waited until-” I met his eyes again and shook my head. “But you never came back.”

“Aww, you missed me?” he laughed with a mocking tone.

“Hey-” I barked at him.

Atmais lifted a hand and placed it on top of my head. His palm was so huge it easily could have closed his whole fist around it. I stood still under that palm, feeling him slightly pet then move his fingers down to the back of my neck.

“You were angry, I get it.” He fussed up my hair with all his petting. “I remember how lonely you were.”

I held my breath. “I wasn’t-” I tried to push at his hand with both of mine, but he was much stronger than when we were children.

“Maybe that’s why I came back,” he chuckled.

I furrowed my brow and scowled at him. “Don’t taunt.”

Thunder rumbled much closer to the shower. A wing grew from his back and extended over my head as the rain began to pour. “You should go home. Humans are so susceptible to the rain.” Atmais stood and kept his wing over me. He walked me home, which was the same place I had always lived. After my grandparents passed, I lived alone there.

“It’s quiet here,” Atmais shrunk down as he walked onto the porch. He took on a longer, more narrow shape, almost looking like a snake with legs.

“There’s no one here to make noise.” I told him.

Atmais came into the house with me, sitting near the table as I turned the lights on. He looked around, seeing the clutter that had gathered from me being so busy. “I had always wanted to come inside here,” he murmured. “Back when we were little. I was curious to know what it looked like inside.”

“I haven’t been able to clean.” I moved a stack of old mail off the table and into a bin. “I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

I sat down across from him at the table. His long body had coiled around and his tail had wrapped itself around my chair. “Running the airport.”

Atmais’ eyes widened. “You run it now?”

I nodded and picked at the skin around my thumbnail. “After grandpa passed, it went to me, so.”

His ears went up then flattened back down against his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a while ago,” I muttered. “Nothing to be done now. But I run the airport, we’ve got three planes now rather than just two. Four if we include you.”

“Do you fly any of them?” Atmais asked.

I remained quiet. “Used to.”

His eyes glew bright. “Used to? What does that mean?”

This has been something I had been stewing on for so long. Ever since grandpa had passed, I hadn’t been able to get into a plane, much less pilot one. I got chills down my spine when I did and they festered in my stomach until I had to throw up. I knew it was fear driving this, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself at all, let alone somebody else. “It means that I used to. I don’t anymore. Running the airport is much more important and it’s my responsibility. So I made a call and I don’t fly anymore.”

Atmais narrowed his eyes and glared down at me. “That’s bullshit.”

“No, it’s not!” I tossed back at him. “I’m working, that airport relies on me!”

Atmais slammed his hand down upon the table, rattling it and shaking stacks of things from the surface which clattered and fell to the floor. “All you talked about was how you wanted to fly, how you wanted to be like your grandfather. I thought for sure if I ever saw you again it would be in the sky! And I find you here on the ground, weighed down by sorry excuses. You wanted to see the world, Bea. You wanted to stay in the clouds. What happened?”

I looked at all the things that had fallen on the floor then back up at Atmais. I felt so afraid to tell him. I was ashamed of it. “I can’t do everything! The airport was important to my grandparents. People count on that airport! If I don’t do my job, people won’t get where they need to go.”

“You can do that by flying,” Atmais scoffed.

“It’s more than flying!” I snapped.

Atmais reared back, he stared down at me with a strange look in his eyes. He sighed and turned away. “I came looking for my friend. I suppose I still will be.” He slipped out the door.

“Wait!” I chased after him. “Atmais, don’t go!”

He stopped on the porch and turned his head over his shoulder. “I’ll be in Blackforte for a while. You can find me where we used to play.”

Once he was off the porch he started changing, turning from one form to another until he was a plane. He took off, going up into the sky where I couldn’t follow him. He vanished into the clouds.