Friday Flash - Dragon!

This is a touch over 750 words :)

The sound of a twig snapping woke her. Jill froze and tried to get her bearings. She blinked and looked around. What am I doing outside? Even as she thought the words, she remembered the butterfly and hiding from Jacob.

Until she knew what made that sound, Jill knew she needed to remain quiet and still. Finally, her eyes adjusted to the gleaming sun. From the angle and intensity of the sun, it was late afternoon. It could even be after dinner. Since she’d landed in Honolulu she’d had trouble keeping track of the time. They were almost a full day ahead of where she lived.

Jill tried not to sigh when she realized here she could be in danger and yet again her mind was off wandering on a tangent.

A snort brought her attention to a spot on the other side of the rock. With slow, careful movements, she twisted her body and felt for her camera. She grabbed onto it and wriggled until she could peek around the rock.

Whatever was on the other side made a snorting sound. Jill gasped and cringed. What if it was a wild boar? Those pigs had huge tusks and were meaner than a rattlesnake. She’d seen a Six Days and Seven Nights and Aloha Scooby Doo often enough to know it was a wild boar that chased people in both movies.

Harmless or not, she wasn’t taking a chance. Jill glanced around quickly for a weapon. Her heart thundered in her ears making it harder to hear the rustling and snorting sounds from the other side of the boulder.

Before she could find a weapon, huge wings in a rainbow of pastel colors rose over the boulder.

Oh. My. God. She hoped that hadn’t been said out loud as she readied her camera. Jill snapped off several shots, and tried to move around to see the front of this giant butterfly. It was amazing and unreal. The rumors were true.

Now that she knew the source of the noise was harmless, Jill rose and crept closer, snapping picture after picture. Thoughts of the fame the images would earn her made her careless. When she stepped on a twig and heard it snap, she froze and took pictures frantically, knowing the butterfly would look her way. Probably as it flew off.

A green head with a long snout turned her way. As the rest of the body revealed when the butterfly turned, she realized she’d made a terrible mistake. Butterflies didn’t have razor sharp teeth or huge ridges running up and down their backs. They also weren’t the size of a human, and didn’t eat small creatures.

Jill swallowed and took slow steps backward, trying not to make the creature attack. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the green eyes looking back at her belonged to a dragon. A baby dragon? In the middle of Hawaii? In the real world? She was nuts. She’d skipped nuts and sailed over the deep end into the psychotic pit of no return.

A half chewed fish landed at her feet, and she heaved a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t a small cat or squirrel. Did they have squirrels here? Of course not, this was tropical paradise.

Laughter poured out of her as she tripped over something and went down on her ass. She was going to die, eaten by a monster butterfly.

The creature made a sound like a growl as it moved closer. It took a minute for her laughter to calm enough that she could see it was interested in her camera. The dragon snorted, and smoke eased out of two large nostrils on its snout. Jill erupted in more laughter as she crawled backward in an awkward crabwalk.

A dragon. A living, breathing dragon. In the middle of a tiny island on an ocean. How the hell had she remained undetected for so long? The rumors of giant butterflies would be more than that if anyone else had gotten this close to it.

If she was going to die, she’d take as many pictures of the dragon as she could. If her camera survived she’d still be the most famous butterfly photographer ever. More giggles escaped, but she ignored them as she worked the camera into a frenzy.

The dragon opened its mouth, revealing large pointy teeth.

“The better to eat you with, my dear,” popped to mind. Jill knew she had lost all hope of retaining her sanity at this point, and didn’t even care.

Michelle