What I was looking at was not meant to be there.

Everything I knew told me it shouldn't, couldn't, and didn't exist.

It was a thing that lived solely in the imaginations of dreamers; a mythic symbol decorating history, appearing on coats of arms, flitting across the pages of fiction and through the big and small screens of movie, television and video games.

Now, here it was, born in front of me, alive and present.

Real.

A dragon hatchling.

Stunned beyond further reaction, I slid downwards, my hoodie dragging over the rock, until I was sitting on the ground, back against the cave wall. For moments, it stood motionless in its initial pose, then it turned without any other consideration for the environment to look directly at me, knowing exactly where I was. The irises were gold, the pupils black and slitted like a cat's eyes, and the gaze seemed to penetrate right through me. There was an innate shrewdness in its attention that was weighing what I was worth. For a creature so new and young, the level of perception, how acute its senses were, and the obvious potential for what it could become, were in combination actually terrifying.

I stared right back, unnerved.

The head tilted and leaned forward a fraction, still observing as it made some kind of private internal judgement.

I blinked, swallowing uncomfortably, but I did not look away.

It leaned back slightly, curiosity unfinished, and then stepped out of the egg's remnants, dropped onto all fours and began to approach.

Stay still, I told myself, and don't do anything to alarm it.

The egg had been about the volume of an oversized American football, and the hatchling was no larger than a small housecat. The front limbs had the familiar three joints of shoulder-elbow-wrist, but the rear had a reversed fourth joint between the knee and ankle. The extra joint compacted the longer back legs so the body was basically even as it walked. It was nimble and quick, the basics of movement coming easily and naturally, with no extra practice needed.

Born ready to survive.

From a purely visual inspection, it was at an ideal midway point for physical proportions. I had seen all sorts of depictions of dragons; everything from long, thin, serpentine shapes with overextended necks and tails similar to those in Asian cultures, to shorter heavier shapes with squat and stubby extremities that were built like a tank. This one had a structural design that was a perfect balance of weight and shape. There was enough mass for it to use raw physical power if required, but not so much bulk to restrict its ability to move and react. The neck and and tail were counterbalancing evenly, and as a whole it gave off an aura of both elegance and strength, despite the fact that it was a newborn.

And then ... there was the head.

Narrowing, triangular, it was a focused predator's skull. My first image was of the dragons of Skyrim; tiny nostrils on the end, a modest upswept nose horn on the tip, with smaller mirroring downswept spurs on both sides underneath the jaw. Bony ridges surrounded the eyes, on the cheeks below and the bridge of the skull above, rising backward into a pair of immature curving horns.

Like the rest of its body, it was a vivid scarlet from top to tail, with the exception of dark dirty-charcoal claws and two shocks of bright gold, each running on either side of the head from ear to neck in a brilliant gilded seam that narrowed and vanished at the shoulder. Just above and behind, the wing joints and the wings themselves; four bony 'fingers' with a membrane like a bat's between them, coming off the main skeletal branch of the 'arm'. Each of those fingers ended in a spiked claw, the same grey as the other claws, with the arm itself possessing a hooked thumb spike at the junction where it split into the fingers, a practical tool for grappling with. Idle, the wings sat half closed, not required for balance while it walked.

In its entirety, it was sight to behold.

Beautiful, and with a future deadliness that would only grow.

Undaunted, it ambled directly to me and did not pause as it climbed onto my legs and up my torso. The claws went right through my clothing and my skin. It wasn't enough to properly hurt me, but it was kinda painful, like a mischievous cat digging in but much worse, and I suppressed the urge to cry out in pain and throw it off. Reaching my head, it raised itself so it was looking straight into my eyes, less than an inch away from the tip of my nose, the wings spreading to grip my shoulders so I really couldn't do anything much to get away.

"Hi," I whispered, trying not to show how intimidated I was by this little creature.

The moment was pivotal.

There was the very strong feeling that if I did the wrong thing, it would not hesitate to kill me.

We both continued to stare. For close to a minute it was eye to eye. The discomfort from where I was bleeding in a dozen places from its climb was distracting and unpleasant, but I ignored it. At last it broke, rearing back a couple of inches, then suddenly, the jaw opened displaying a line of teeth, and it hissed, loud and threatening.

Um, alright.

I didn't flinch.

Five more seconds of judgement followed, but it was satisfied, because it turned away, then pulled itself onto my left shoulder, then climbed around behind my neck to lay its head onto my right. The tail dangled lazily down over my chest and it got comfortable across the material of the hood, draping itself around me like a reptilian version of a fur stole.

What the fuck just happened?

I could feel the weight of it, the dragon who had just taken my shoulders as its own lair, and was quite happy staying there. It didn't shift at all as I very carefully and slowly stood, and tried to retrieve my scattered items. The box, book and MP3 player were stashed into the school bag and all the while I kept my body as even and flat as possible. Still, it didn't so much as stir. No more claws were digging in, as it had found its equilibrium and was simply resting, the motion of my movement too small to be a bother.

There is a baby dragon asleep on my shoulders. I repeated this to myself a few times, the bag in hand, making my way out of the cave and down the slope. There is a mythical creature that should not exist and it is lying on me, right now. It is a thing, and it is real.

Approaching our back fence had my nerves going crazy. Our back yard was well walled-off, as most of the neighbouring yards were, but the public council land was in the open. At a distance, there was no reason to think anything of my appearance, but if people got close?

I'd rather not be on national television any time soon. At least, not for something like this.

Slipping inside our section's boundary was a relief, but then another thought, one that was dogging me as I walked back: what was I going to do with my newly acquired visitor?

There was no way I could take it inside. 'Oh hi mom, glad to see you're home! Hey, I just found this wandering around on public land, can I keep it?' Yeah, there's no way that's going to work. There has to be another solution, and I think I know what it is.

In one corner of the yard, there was an old pre-fabricated equipment shed. It was mostly full of gardening tools and random items related to home DIY that my mother hadn't finished nor got round to doing. There was a workbench and a big wall-rack for the implements, plus the lawnmower in storage. Most importantly, it had a good floor space and area to set up bedding.

This will have to do.

It took a single trip into the house, my passenger still paying no notice, to gather what I needed. Then, back out to the yard with items in hand. A long time back, we owned a Jack Russell terrier, and though my mother loved animals, she had been too busy to look after a new dog after ours had died four years ago. The dog bed, however, was still stashed away, and with it I created a nest of blankets on the shed floor.

Hopefully this will be good enough.

Poking it gently with a finger, the creature stirred in response, emitting a soft rumble of complaint, the only sound I'd heard apart from the earlier threatening hiss. Abruptly it was moving around my neck, a warm scaly mass with a faint pinch of claws, a much less intrusive grip than originally. In a moment it plunged off my shoulder and to the floor, landing with the awkward half-managed balance of a kitten who has no idea how yet to properly fall from any height. It cast its attention over the room in a mere second, and then promptly went for the freshly-constructed bed, recognising it as the sole point of interest. Sitting dead centre, another lordly glance was given, simply to affirm the right of ownership over the newly acquired equipment-shed kingdom, and finally it turned to eye me intently, leaning back on the haunches.

Expectant.

So, what next? You have somewhere to sleep, you're inside and safe from anything that could be dangerous. All you should want now is, um ... oh. Right.

Food.

What was I going to feed it?

I didn't need to be a genius to know it would eat meat, but reheated ravioli and whatever else our fridge contained wasn't going to be suitable. Certainly not right now, and not in the coming future; there wasn't any easy way to explain food vanishing without saying where it went, especially since there were only the two of us at home. I needed another way and I didn't have one yet, but ... I did have an idea about where to try.