#and ej

Warning: Contains 100% snark and fantasy-doubting. 

It was probably not a dragon egg.

Probably…

Now, it’s not like I’d ever seen a dragon egg before, so I could hardly compare this egg to the multitude of dragon eggs I’d very much not collected over the years.

But that said, as I stood there contemplating what it could be, I was very aware that the large egg in my hands was still as obnoxiously hot as when I’d first picked it up. I looked down, examining it again: the rough, lumpy shell looked like it was made of rock, but scattered across the surface were angular patches of dark, shining colours. Reds and greens, blacks and blues, jewel-like in how they caught the sun. The egg itself was the size of a laptop, or perhaps a small dog, and if anyone spotted me in this very public park, I’d not exactly be inconspicuous.

All of this was what had contributed to my initial assumption that it was a dragon egg, but I wasn’t sure how much strength that claim held, on account of dragons not actually existing.

My eyes shifted back up to the tear in the air in front of me – which, if anyone asked, I certainly, definitely, 100% did not cause. Or at least, I don’t think I had. There were a hell of a lot of time-space tears being opened up across Earth recently, and the Department of Dimension was starting to get more than a little antsy with the people who were opening them up by accident. And considering I worked for said Department, it would probably look really bad on my yearly work review if I had indeed opened up one the very things we were trying to stop.

In my defence, despite the lack of understanding surrounding these tears that had started appearing thirty years or so ago, I’m pretty sure a sneeze wasn’t enough to rip a hole in the fabric of time and space to another dimension… But the fact remained: I’d sneezed, the tear tore, and a dragon egg rolled out of it.

You know, that was still probably not a dragon egg.

Looking around, I tried to piece together what it was I was supposed to do in this moment. The tear before me wasn’t a massive one, so it wouldn’t be a priority that would send the whole Department into a flurry of panic; it was about my height, jagged and sharp, the bottom being… well, about as big as this probably-not-a-dragon-egg egg, and narrowing towards the top. It hovered above the ground, distorting the air around it so that the woodland on the other side looked a little off, and it had a sort slightly silvery shimmer, just to up the whole ‘other-worldliness’ of it, I suppose. You can’t see through tears, that’s a common misconception that authors and film-makers have amplified: they’re not open doorways straight into other worlds, but instead you just see this dull, grey, misty nothingness that is the shattered fabric of space and time. Small tears like this are actually almost pretty. The big ones – like the one that opened up above Wimbledon at Christmas that was the size of football pitch, and kind of ruined my holidays – were terrifying.

I should have called up and reported it immediately, even anonymously, but the egg in my hands made me second-guess that idea. It was rare that things fell out of tears, but they were seen as highly dangerous objects that needed to be destroyed immediately. Why? I didn’t know. It was just an order from far higher than I could ever hope to get. So far, the only things that had fallen through were tiny stones or a branch of a tree.

Super dangerous, I know.

At the very least, nowhere near as dangerous as an egg was.

I looked back down at it again, my face probably as twisted in doubt as my stomach felt. I couldn’t leave this egg to be destroyed or picked apart by scientists. I had to protect it. Irrational, yes. But a sensation I couldn’t shake.

So I just left.

Great job, Hallie. No way you won’t get that promotion now…

I pulled my sketchbook out of my bag to awkwardly fit the egg inside – I’d get a lot less stares carrying that than a dragon egg – you see a lot of weird crap in London, sure, but I wasn’t going to risk it. I started towards the edge of the city park. I wasn’t completely stupid, however. Tears were dangerous, even when they weren’t spitting random bejewelled eggs at you; I could only imagine the horror that would happen if some child wandered into one. So, once I was out of the woods (literally, but not figuratively), I grabbed my phone.

“Thank you for calling the Department of Dimension. If you have a query about out services or policies, you may find your answer on our website.”

I groaned. It had been a long time since I’d been on the other side of the awful automated greeting. It took an embarrassingly long time to actually get to a human speaker, which did at least give me a chance to work out my story.

“Hello, this is the Department of Dimensions Report Hotline, how can I help you?”

I grinned, recognising the voice immediately.

“Benny! Thank God it’s you…”

“Hallie?” Benjamin asked, sounding happily surprised. “If you’re calling because you left chocolate in your desk, I already ate it, and you shouldn’t use the report hotline to threaten me off it.”

“You ate my–” I clamped my mouth shut. Priorities, Hallie… “No, I’m calling because I actually have a tear to report.”

That seemed to get his attention. I could already hear him beginning to type –filling in a statement. “You spotted a Deviation?”

Oh, so we were in official terminology territory? “In Ashbury Park, over by the graffiti wall down from the fountain. It’s pretty small, probably Level 4. 3 at a push. Looks pretty new, but I don’t know how it was made. I didn’t see anyone else nearby.” I could be forgiven for a few white lies to save my own skin, surely?

“Damn, I love having a confident idea of the level,” Benjamin laughed. I could relate: most of the public, didn’t know what the levels even were. I was probably Benjamin’s favourite caller ever. “Any debris?”

I cursed inwardly.

“Nope,” I answered in my most forcefully-normal, totally-not-high-with-nerves tone.

“Awesome, we’ll send a team out to sort it. Thanks Hallie! Are you in tomorrow?”

“Bright and early. Someone’s gotta input that tear!”

“Well, I better send this to the cleaners. See you.”

“Bye, Benny!”

With the goodbyes finished, I hung up, and groaned to release all the stress that had built up in my stomach. If you opened a tear, no matter how accidentally you did so, you were put through a brutal interrogation, but if lying about it was that stressful, I’d take the interrogation any day. I adjusted the strap of my bag as the egg weighed heavily on my shoulder: it better have been damned grateful I’d done that to save it.