"Wait just a minute," said Christine as she turned around and headed back to the barn.
"What are you doing?! We have to get out of here," hissed Brian.
"Not yet. That farmer still needs to pay for what he did to us," said Christine as she disappeared back into the barn.
Brian was frustrated. He turned to the others for support, hoping someone else would back him up and convince Christine to just leave.
"Don't look at me, " said Mike. "I agree with her. That asshole deserves to be punished."
The others slowly nodded. Brian sighed, outnumberd and defeated. Christine returned a few minutes later, giggling like a child.
"What did you do?" asked Brian nervously.
"Relax. I just gave him a taste of his own medicine. Just watch, " said Christine proudly.
The farmer stumbled out of the barn, holding a hand up to his sore head. He walked erractically, hunched over and staggering a little.
"Ow, you damn kids. You could have killed me. I am going to kill you!" he said as he lurched forward.
The group stepped back in unison. But then the farmer fell to the his hands and knees on the ground, moaning loudly.
"Oh, it hurts," he said softly.
The back of the farmer's back began to pulse up and down. The hump on his back seemed to get larger with each pulse, until finally the shirt tore and revealed two small leathery wings. The group gasped and the farmer looked at his new wings in horror.
"Jesus!" said Brian.
The farmer continued to groan and grit his teeth. His hair fell off his scalp in large clumps.
"What did you do to me? I'll.....I'll....Ugh..."
The farmer tried to advance towards them, still crawling on his hands and knees. But the pain as his hands and feet stretched into long scaly claws caused him to pause. Thick, leathery scales raced up his neck and began to spread across his face and scalp. He closed his eyes tightly as his jaw extended into a long snout.
"What the fuck did you do to him?" asked Mike with a little fear. It looked like Christine had just made their enemy even stronger and more powerful.
"I just used one of the potions on him. The whelp potion....I thought a whelp was something small, " said Christine defensively.
Christine turned out to be right. Instead of growing out of his clothes, the farmer seemed to shrink into them. Soon, a young dragon whelp about the size of a small dog struggled to work its way free of the large, baggy clothes that entrapped it.
"Aww, it is so cute! I had planned to leave him behind like this so he wouldn't follow us, but now I want to keep him. Come here, little guy, " said Christine as she reached out her hand towards him.
The little dragon whelp snapped his tiny jaw around her hand, biting it hard. Christine pulled her hand back sharply, rubbing it, while the others laughed.
"That thing may be small, but it still looks like he has bite. It would probably be better to leave him behind and keep going on our own," said Brian.
"Nonsense," said Christine angrily. "This thing is perfectly safe. It just needs a little obedience training."
Christine slapped the dragon whelp hard across its snout.
"Bad boy! Don't bite!"
The minature dragon looked up at her with wide, shocked eyes. It looked like it was going to cry. It opened its mouth and the group almost expected it to speak. Instead, it began to whine, a loud mewling noise that was painful to their ears.
"Jesus! It sounds like a squealing piglet!" hissed Mike.
"Can someone shut that thing up!?" yelled Joe, trying to make himself heard over the loud, annoying noise.
The group tried to catch the dragon whelp, but the small creature easily evaded them, running between their legs and dodging away from their outstretched hands. It ran around the field, continuing to honk and whine loudly.
The combination of the noise and the chase distracted the group so much they did not notice that it had attracted another visitor. A large full size dragon dropped out of the sky and landed in the field, appearing to come from nowhere. The group scattered at the sight of the monstrous beast, heading for the cover of the surrounding forest or hiding behind farm equipment.
Only the small dragon whelp failed to notice the dragon's arrival. It continued to run around the field, mewing and honking, caught up in the fun of the chase. It ran smack dab right into the middle of the massive dragon's chest resting on the ground. The dragon whelp stopped whining and slowly began to back up away from the much larger beast. It stared up at the dragon's head perched high above it on a very long neck. From the little whelp's perspective, the dragon's head seemed impossibly high up there, almost out of the range of his vision.
The large dragon bent down its neck and gave the whelp a series of short sniffs, followed by a long deep inhalation. The farmer-turned-dragon-whelp stood paralyzed, not sure how he was supposed to react to this. Apparently satisified, the large dragon began to nuzzle the small whelp with its long snout, drawing it closer to its large chest. The dragon opened its mouth and licked the whelp with its long, thick tongue, cleaning it and marking it as her own at the same time.
The farmer-turned-whelp began to panic and tried to run away. But the large dragon grabbed the little whelp by the scruff of its neck with her teeth, holding it gently in her mouth. The others could see the look of fear and helplessness in the little whelp's eyes as it rose higher and higher off the groung when the dragon streched her neck to its full height. It was like the poor farmer was begging for help, but there was nothing the group could do against a full size dragon.
The dragon turned to leave, glancing one last time to look over the group cowering in their hiding spots. It was almost like the dragon was warning them not to try to stop her. Or maybe rebuking them for daring to hurt one of her kind. Joe would later swear that the dragon winked at him, maybe sensing his previous dragonic form. Then it flapped its wings, sending dust and debris scattering across the field, before it took off into the sky and disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.