Dipper (for writing contest)

[Bane]

This story is ten pages in ten pont font on Microsoft Works, which is the only writing progrm I have

It is 5393 words.

[Bane]

I’m giving this small gem dragon more intelligence than they obviously have, but his parents were mentasynth enhanced before they mated. He is actually much like a dog now. His keeper, Zil, loves him.

Dipper had just been flying around on the new world that his keeper, Zil, had found when he came upon an expansive cave. Zil will like this, he thought.

As he looked through the cave, he saw many colorful things on the wall that glinted and sparkled. They often caught his attention and he would hover there, staring. He went farther into the cave then he had thought possible when he flew into a cloud. He had never encountered a cloud in a cave before, so he swooped through it to see if there was anything interesting. It smelled different then a normal cloud, and seemed to be rising toward the ceiling of the cavern. He followed the cloud out a hole in the roof and found that he was quite a distance from where he had started.

He went back down through the smoke hole, having figured out that it wasn’t so much a cloud as it was a cloud of smoke. Descending through the smoke, he paid it no more heed. It smelled interesting, but mostly just burned interesting. When he was low enough that he was out of the smoke, he saw the fire with meat cooking over it. Further to the left, he saw red meat hanging higher up in the smoke. He liked red meat, but remembered how Zil had gotten mad when he tried eating some.

He heard noises off to one side and went to investigate. In a room off to the side of the main cavern, he found a man going about his business. When Zil did this, she didn’t want his company, though he had never known why. He always liked company whenever he could have it.

Continuing from the little room with the man in it, he went on to find a place that held all kinds of trinkets. There were even things that he could hold on his own, which was a feat of it’s own since his limbs were so small.

There was one thing that really caught his attention. It was a shiny-sparkly thing that he really liked. He could even pick it up on his own. It had a small blue-green-yellow-orange orb on top. He thought Zil would like it that he had found such a pretty thing, so he took it out the hole in the roof and took it to the camp where Zil was.

¥

When he returned from the restroom, Tronx went straight to the area he had seen the little bug fly to. The bug had hovered around the shelf for a while before it had flown out of the smoke hole. He had watched it as it descended from the smoke hole and flown around the room, then come to the restroom where he was and hesitated before moving on to the shelf.

Looking through the latest bounty of his Quest, Tronx found that one of the better pieces was missing. It had been one of his favorites and was one of the few things he kept from his Quests, and he had put it on a ledge that made a convenient shelf. The trinket was a gold nugget with sapphire, diamond, and emerald jewels inlaid in it. He didn’t think the little bug he had seen would have been able to take it, but he hadn’t gotten a good look at the bug, either.

The room he used as a restroom looked out on the rest of the cavern. Since he was alone in his cave, he didn’t bother with a privacy curtain or door. Thus, the restroom looked out on the rest of the cavern. The only things he couldn’t see from there were his sleeping room and the walls immediately outside the restroom.

He should have gotten a better look at the bug that had flown in through the ceiling. Maybe there was some other kind of bug that he had not found on this planet since he’d landed on it.

¥

[Bane]

Zil saw Dipper coming in through the canopy of branches above her head before he squeaked his return. She had been gathering the last of the dried meats and putting them in pouches for the trek later. As a squeaking Dipper alighted on her shoulder, she noticed he had something in his claws.

She held out her hand for the object and he dropped a tiny gold nugget with a sapphire, emerald, and diamond in it into her palm.

“What’s this, Dipper?” She asked him. She knew she did not send him to get anything for her, but he did sometimes bring her things he found “shiny-sparkly.”

As though in answer, he showed her pictures of an immense cave that he flew through. She got feelings of being in a cloud when he flew through the smoke, and she saw the cook fire and the drying meat. She got a glimpse of a man doing the necessary and then she saw the “shiny-sparkly” ledge. There were a bunch of things on the ledge, and one of them - the one Dipper had taken - was the one she held in her hand.

“Dipper,” she said. “You know you can’t take things from other people. You’re going to have to take me to the cave of the man you took this from.”

The little dragon gave a despairing squeak. He always hated giving back what he had taken. Dipper always brought her beautiful gifts, but they almost invariably came from someone’s home. This one looked like it was important in some way, at least to the owner.

She fed Dipper before they set out toward the cave that he had invaded. It took nearly two hours to hike there, and Dipper fell asleep twice on her shoulder while she was walking. She would wake her up when she wasn’t sure if she was going in the right direction, and he would fly through the trees and come back and tell her where to go. She didn’t have to change course often, and they reached the cave before nightfall.

¥

Tronx knew someone was in the cave. He had set up early warning sensors all around the two entrances, and the intruder was coming from the one farthest from where he was. He wasn’t worried about them getting to him through the maze of caverns. It wasn’t easy to get to were he was from where they were.

So he was surprised when a woman came into the main cavern some fifteen minutes later. The last person that had come to his cave had gotten lost and died before they ever found him. Just one wrong turn… he thought to himself, shaking his head.

The woman apparently hadn’t seen him, but she had seen his shelf. Walking up to it, she pulled something out of a pocket and said something that sounded like, “Where did this go?”

She laid something on the shelf and turned to leave when he stood, calling attention to himself. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” He asked the woman.

“I am Zil,” she answered, almost as if she had known he was there. “And I am here to return what was stolen.”

“How do you know what was stolen if you haven’t been here before?” He asked.

“Dipper,” she said, pointing to her shoulder, “Stole a gold nugget from you and it should be returned. He told me where he got it and I came to put it back. You hadn’t moved, so I assumed you were asleep.”

This was by far the oddest conversation he had ever had. It was even odder than the conversation he’d had once with a cute, furry alien. “Who…no what is a dipper?”

[Bane]

“Dipper,” she said, “Is a gem dragon I got on a far distant planet. He came in here earlier today and took the gold nugget you had on the ledge. It was shiny, he liked it, so he brought it to me.”

Yes, this was a very odd conversation, indeed. “Who are you talking about?”

“Dipper,” she said, as if that explained everything. She pointed to her shoulder again.

“You keep pointing to your shoulder,” he said. “I’m taking that to mean you’ve named your shoulder Dipper and it somehow flew over here and stole from me.”

Zil looked at him as though he were dumb before answering, “Didn’t I already mention that Dipper is a gem dragon? He’s asleep on my shoulder. You must’ve been here a long time if you think shoulders can fly.”

He couldn’t believe it. She came into his cave, into his home, and accused him of being hair brained. Then, an idea suddenly dawned on him. He remembered the little bug coming in and taking off with the nugget. It couldn’t be that simple.

“You mean,” he said, “That the bug in here earlier is a dragon?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, running a hand through his hair.

“I can wake him up if you want,” she said, and started to touch something on her shoulder. All of a sudden, Dipper was in the air hovering around the shelf. He brought two other pieces to Zil before he got the idea not to take them because she didn’t want them and got mad when he brought them.

Tronx was amazed. A creature like that would be immensely helpful in his line of work. If only it were bigger than the size of a large bee. “Well, that explains a lot.”

¥

Zil didn’t know how Dipper waking up explained anything, but she was too tired to say anything. She had trekked for one and a half hours to get to this cave system, and she was bushed. She must have swayed on her feet because the man said, “Since you got here so late, you might as well stay here for the night. I have extra bedding that I got somewhere on the Scorpio Base. You can use it. We’ll talk more about your dragon bug in the morning.”

Thinking she should say something, she asked, “What is your name?”

He looked at her for a moment, and she almost added, “Well, I told you mine.” But he responded, “My name is Tronx. That’s all you need to know.” And walked into another room.

He returned with a large blanket and a bundle she had never seen before. She watched as he unrolled the bundle and it fluffed into a mattress. When she sat on it, instead of being filled with air, it was semi-solid.

“What is this made of?” She asked. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Looking at her, he said, “It’s an exotic material that comes from Scorpio IV. It grows in the swamp as a tree. They cut it and make the pulp into different sized mattresses that collapse when pressed and rolled. They’re very storable, and much sought after by ship crews who want something better than their bunks to sleep on.”

All that explained to her, in her tired state of mind, was that the stuff grew in trees and was cut and then squished. That was the last thing se thought about before she fell asleep.

¥

[Bane]

She woke to the smell of something cooking. Not quite remembering what had gone on the day before, she sat up cautiously. When she saw Tronx bent over the fire, she calmed. The night before came flooding back.

“You’re going to have to learn to stop broadcasting if you’re going to hang around,” he said, turning with a plate of breakfast cakes in his hands.

“Broadcasting?” She asked, confused.

“Yes, broadcasting,” he replied. “I’m telepathic. I can hear most of what you are thinking, though I try to tune it out. You’re particularly strong in the morning, apparently. Did you know you dream about your dragon bug a lot, and that you do it loudly?”

“I…” she started. “I what?”

“You dream about your dragon bug. Now,” he said, “I made pan cakes for breakfast. The trees on this planet produce a very tasty syrup that goes great with them.”

She took the plate and began to eat, eyeing Tronx in a weary sort of way.

¥

The woman had a very good, clean mind. He knew the moment she started to wake up. Their weren’t that many women like that. He should know, he had slept with his share of them. Most of them had such horrid dreams, too.

One dream Zil seemed to favor was of this large swarm of what seemed to be more of these dragon bugs. She kept repeating the word “bond” in her mind, too. He didn’t know what that meant, but it had something to do with the little bugs.

He sat with her while she ate, but only ate a little of what he had cooked. It had been almost a year since he’d had any company, and he was enjoying it more than he’d thought he would. He was intrigued by this small, almost petite, woman. Though most of the time he blocked what she was thinking, he let the stuff about Dipper sink in.

He didn’t know how to broach the subject of the dragon bug, so he didn’t say anything. But he sure did watch when the little thing came zipping in through the hole in the roof. It would flit around her head and she seemed to know what it was saying. He caught flickers of images, but the woman was shielding against him knowing what the bug told her. Why would she shield him from that if she couldn’t shield from anything else?

“So,” she said after finishing her breakfast, “you can read my mind?”

“In a sense,” he replied. “I can hear what you think if I concentrate on it. Most of the time I don’t”

“Why not?”

He was surprised that she showed such interest in the fact. No one else ever had. Instead, they had called him a freak and driven him to the life he had lead. “Because if I listen to everything I can hear, I would have eternal headaches. It’s much like listening to a frequency that you have to concentrate on to hear what the people are saying over the static. If you concentrate too hard, you get a pounding monster of a headache. If you tune it out every once in a while, it’s still there, but you don’t hear it.”

“Ah,” she said, but he knew that she did not understand.

[Bane]

Those without the gift of telepathy never fully understood. But there was something different about Zil. She seemed to be able to speak to the little dragon bug and give it commands.

“How do you speak to Dipper?” He asked.

“I speak with him in my mind,” she replied. “Most of the time he only shows me images, but sometimes he gets entire thoughts out.”

He considered this. There were very few people that could actually understand the meaning of the images thy received. She must be only a receiver. He tried sending her an image of his bed, and was surprised when she gasped and stared at him.

“Was that you?” She asked. “I just got a picture of a bed.”

“Yes,” he said. “I sent you a picture of my bed just to see if you could receive. Apparently, you can. Now I want to know if you can send. Think of what Dipper looks like. Don’t think of anything else, just what he looks like.”

Suddenly, Tronx was getting swirls of color from red to orange to blue. He didn’t see any definite shape to the colors she was thinking about, and he had to shut off the flow before he developed a headache.

“Whoa, stop,” he said. “Stop!” He had to yell because she didn’t seem to hear him.

“What?” She asked. “Did I do it right?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I told you to picture Dipper, and all I got were swirls of color. Is he jut a colorful blob that floats around?”

“No,” she said, looking worried. “I clearly pictured him. You must have expected an image of a larger dragon, zoom out from the image.”

He pictured what she had shown him and did as she said. There was, indeed, a dragon where she had at first sent him colors. It was intricately colored, and extremely small.

“Is that the creatures that took the nugget?” He asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Dipper is a gem dragon. They’re not much bigger than a large bug. It makes it easier for us to travel without him being large.”

“I can see why,” he said. At that time, he got up and put the dishes they had used in a hole that must have been a sink. He then went back to his room and got dressed the rest of the way to go out and hunt.

When he came back out with a bag and his staff, Zil asked, “Where are you going?”

“Hunting,” was all he said as he exited the room.

¥

Zil watched Tronx leave and then sent Dipper after him. She got off the mattress and pulled on her boots. She followed him through the door he had taken, and made sure Dipper told her where they were going. He was at a house she hadn’t noticed in her fly-by when she caught up to him.

She watched as he entered the house and shut the door. It was several minutes before he exited the house, and she could see that the sack at his side had something in it. When he came out of the house, he saw her and headed over to where she was.

“Why did you follow me?” He asked.

“You said you were going hunting, I thought you would like some help,” she said. “I thought it would repay you for letting me stay and eating your food.”

He sighed before going on, “I do a different kind of hunting most of the time. This isn’t for food.”

It then dawned on her that he was stealing things from this house. She turned around, thinking loudly, This is despicable. I can’t believe he was so nice and he does this. Maybe I should have kept the nugget, but then I would be no better than him.

“I heard that,” he called after her.

“Good,” she replied, walking off through the trees. She went back to the cave and gathered her things, making sure all o it was there. When she got back to her camp, she yelped when she saw Tronx there.

“Why are you here?” She asked. “And how did you know where my camp was?”

“It’s not that hard to follow you when you think that hard. Just a little push, and your mind revealed where your camp was,” he replied, as though he thought that alright.

“I suppose I had better go and make sure all my things are where I left them,” she said, and brushed past him. She had gotten to the door of her shuttle before he caught her arm and roughly pulled her back against him.

¥

[Bane]

“What are you doing?” She asked, as though that would help.

“I’m taking you back to the cave,” he replied. He hadn’t been surprised when she struggled after he grabbed her. When she had left him at the house, he thought about what she had thought about when she left.

I would be no better than him, she had said. He wanted to know why she thought him low.

When they got back to the cave, he put her down on the mattress that was still on the floor. She seemed to be scared of him, but she didn’t have to be. He just wanted to know some things. Before he asked her anything, he noticed the little dragon bug on her shoulder. He tried to get it off, but it stung him and he desisted. He noticed how, when he got near to touching her, Zil cringed.

“Where did you get Dipper?” He asked. He was curious to know if he could get one of his own.

“I got him from a world far away from here,” she replied, cryptically.

“What world?” He asked, patient.

“I can’t tell you,” she said.

“All I have to do is get it from your mind.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because I’m trying to be nice and let you tell me on your own. Now, what planet did Dipper come from?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said again.

“Can’t, or won’t tell me?”

“A bit of both.”

“Alright,” he said, deciding to take a different tack. “Where did you come from?”

“Nocturne,” she said.

He had no idea where that planet was, and didn’t believe it actually existed. It had to be a made up planet that she hoped he would try to find and that would lead him to the ends of the universe so she could try to escape. He wasn’t biting.

“What planet did you really come from?”

“I just told you,” she said. “I came from Nocturne.”

He ran his hand through his thick hair and sighed in frustration. If she was telling the truth and Nocturne was real, he would have to take her with him to find it. Before he could ask anything else, she surprised him and got up and began to pace. She must have known that she couldn’t escape.

“Why were you stealing from that house?” She asked.

It startled him that she would ask him that.

“I like what they have,” he replied.

“You can’t get things of your own without stealing them?”

She had obviously never met someone like him before. He had been ostracized his entire life because he could hear people’s thoughts. Other’s feared him. There was no way anyone would let them work for or with them. His kind had long ago gone underground to avoid being killed. When his parents realized what he was, they tried killing him, but someone else ha heard him at birth and came to get him before they could do anything. Before Igneus had come and gotten him, he thought he was crazy because he could hear voices. Then, Igneus showed him what he could do with his powers, and he had been a thief ever since.

He had finally stolen and hawked enough to get his own small ship, and left his home world. When he had landed here and found the caves, he had kept on with his ways. Only this time, he kept what he took because he liked it. Igneus had created the perfect klepto.

“I don’t how to get what I want without stealing it,” he said. She looked as though she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t say anything. “This is how I was raised. If it wasn’t this, I would have been killed before I was a year old.”

He thought he saw pity in her eyes, and he didn’t like that. Pity was nothing that would ever help him.

“We have people like you on Nocturne,” she said, so quiet he almost didn’t hear her. “The ones who can read minds are said to be great magicians. They don’t steal things.”

He wondered if maybe this world was real, where those who could read minds were not ostracized. Maybe she would bring him there.

¥

[Bane]

She couldn’t believe he was asking her where she “got” Dipper. There was no way she would tell him so he could go and steal an entire nest and use them to help steal things. The regular gem dragons weren’t nearly as smart as Dipper, anyway. He wouldn’t be able to control them. She saw the look on his face when she told him about Nocturne, too. There was no way she was taking him there, either. She would not let him ruin her world the way his seemed to be ruined. Who killed their babies because they were more advanced than everyone else, anyway? Nocturne may do him good, but she didn’t know what he would do t the planet.

Since she obvious she couldn’t leave the cave, she sat back down and looked at him.

¥

When she started looking at him, he got a flood of different emotions from her that he couldn’t sort out. Not one of them was a good emotion, either, so he tuned them out. He knew now she would not tell him where Dipper had come from. Apparently, the little dragon bugs weren’t all that intelligent.

He asked, “If the dragon bugs…”

“They are NOT dragon bugs! Would you stop calling them that? Dipper is a gem dragon,” she screamed at him.

“Fine. If the gem dragons aren’t that smart, then how did Dipper know you would like what he took?”

“He’s been with me since he was hatched. He knows. That, and it’s the only thing he could have carried,” she said, continuing because it had nothing to with where Dipper was from. “He thought it was shiny-sparkly and brought it to me.”

“Shiny-sparkly?” He asked, confused.

“He’s like a little kid. If he sees something he thinks I - who am his bonded - would like, he tends to take it. He’s done it before and each time I made him take it back or I take it back myself. I don’t keep what he takes, and he doesn’t do it often. He knows I don’t like it. Shiny-sparkly is what he calls the things he brings me because most of them are shiny and sparkly.”

He still wondered how she had trained the little guy to tell her these things. Maybe it just told her. He was beginning to think that if he kept her long enough, she would let him know where se had gotten him.

¥

That night, he made sure there was no way she was getting out of the caves. He made her sleep in his room and rigged the alarms to go off if she so much as looked at the door funny. She didn’t move to much through the night, and her dreams stopped. He had liked her dreams, but she had learned how to close her mind from him by the time he took her to the room.

¥

It was the next month before he convinced her to take him to Nocturne. He let her send a message ahead of them, but did not know what she had put in the message. She said she needed to know what planet he was from so she could tell the elders of her planet. They didn’t like outsiders coming in if they did not know much about them.

He told her he was from the planet Gona in the Helios sector of space. When she said her people would let him come, he brought his things to her shuttle and put them in the room with her. That way, he would know if she tried to do anything to him.

¥

[Bane]

They made it to Nocturne within three weeks of take off. Zil had sent a letter about the man she was bringing home, and her people had said to bring him. Under that circumstances, they would not want to anger him. The others on her planet that were like him had made contact with her three days into the journey.

“Jaime, I don’t know what to do,” she had told her friend. “He sleeps in my room hoping to get out of me where I got Dipper.”

“You must not tell him,” Jaime said. He looked worried and didn’t like the idea of Tronx coming to Nocturne.

“I haven’t, and I’ve been using the shielding exercises you taught me since I found out what he wanted. He won’t find out.”

“Did you use the Apocalypse program when you keyed in the coordinates?”

“Of course,” she said. “I was taught to do that when I first started training for Flight and Exploration. You know that.” The Apocalypse program was one that would delete the coordinates after the ship was on the right heading. It did not delete them from the ship, for the sip had to know how to get to the planet, but Tronx would not be able to hack in and find them.

“I know, hon. But I don’t want you with that man any longer than it takes you to get here,” he said. “He will be taken care of when you land. Get here as fast as you can.”

“I will,” she said. “What do you mean, he’ll be ‘taken care of’?”

“We won’t harm him,” Jaime said. “We’re just going to get him away from you.”

“Who are you talking to?” Tronx said when he entered the room through the portal behind her.

“No one,” she said, turning of the comm and signing off with the Apocalypse command so he wouldn’t be able to find out who it was. She knew Jaime would understand.

“This whole secrecy thing is going to have to stop,” he said. “I don’t know how you learned so fast how to block me, but I’m tired of it. I want to know who you were talking to.”

“I was talking to my mate,” she said. “Happy?”

“No,” he said. She had a mate? “Not really.”

“Good,” she replied. “You shouldn’t be.”

¥

When they got to Nocturne, Jaime and a bunch of other Psi’s walked in. Jaime took her in his arms while the others escorted Tronx off the ship.

“Are you alright?” Jaime asked, after a gentle welcoming kiss.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I need to report to the base and tell them about the new planet I found. There are people there already, but my ship got all the information they should need. I think they got all the bugs out of the system.”

“Did Dipper do all right?”

“He did fine,” she said, enjoying being back in Jaime’s arms. “I think we’ll be able to bring the Drunk Dragons there soon. It would be a nice place for them.”

Resting his chin on the top of her head, Jaime asked, “So, who is this guy, Tronx?”

“He’s a psi. Says he comes from Gona.”

“I know where he comes from,” Jaime said. “We did some research on the planet, and it is a truly ghastly place. They don’t allow those with any psi talent to be part of the society. Something about it being evil. All the psi’s there have an underground culture that they live in. Most of them turned to petty theft as a living. Your friend Tronx was one of the best form what we were able to find out, or one of the worst. Depends on how you look at it. Our information came from “respectable” citizens of the city of Relin. The considered the psi’s of the city to be a nuisance.

“If a psi was born to a normal family, the babe was killed. Tronx was strong enough at birth that the other psi’s heard him and came to save him from his fate. He would steal and hawk things to get money. With that money, he bought himself the ship that you left back on that planet. He didn’t seem to be able to stop thieving, though, and continued to do so on that planet.”

“Oh, Gods. I didn’t know it was really that bad on the planet.”

“It is,” Jaime assured her. “But he is here now, and apparently he wants to like it. He’s not to good at close beam broadcasting, and most of us can hear him loud and clear.”

Zil didn’t know what to make of the news about Gona. She hadn’t believed him when Tronx told her about how he would have been killed. It just didn’t seem right that parents could do that to their children. At least he was on a planet that would appreciate him, but only if he could stop taking things that did not belong to him.

¥