“Look, you just sit there and I’ll sit over here and we’ll get along fine. Okay?”
He limped over to one of the cartons and sat down, alternately rubbing his foot and brushing his clothes off.
The powder was, of course, the remains of the late intruder/assassin. #6 flame has a tendency to have that effect on humans, which is why I used it. While human burial rights have always been a source of curiosity and puzzlement to me, I was fairly certain that they did not include having one’s cremated remains brushed onto the floor or removed by a laundry service. Still, considering my difficulty in communicating a simple “look out” to Nunzio, I decided it would be too much effort to convey to him exactly what he was doing.
If my attitude toward killing a human seems a bit shocking in its casualness, remember that to dragons humans are an inferior species. You do not flinch from killing fleas to ensure the comfort of your dog or cat, regardless of what surviving fleas might think of your callous actions, and I do not hesitate to remove a bothersome human who might cause my pet distress by his actions. At least we dragons generally focus on individuals as opposed to the wholesale slaughter of species humans seem to accept as part of their daily life.
“You know, Gleep,” Nunzio said, regarding me carefully, “after a while in your company, even Guido’s braggin’ sounds good . . . but don’t tell him I said that.”
“Gleep?”
That last sort of slipped out. As you may have noticed, I am sufficiently self-conscious about my one-word human vocabulary that I try to rely on it as little as possible. The concept of my telling Guido anything, however, startled me into the utterance.