“So your cover with Jaime is blown. Wow. That’s rough. How’s Mary going to take it?” asked Icicle, a white p’ckit dragon, was Smerd’s friend who had bonded with another one of the kids at Whitmore Middle School.

Smerd and his friend were sitting in Smerd’s pocket dimension, in his video gaming lounge. The two dragons, one white and one purple, lounged on bean bag chairs (sized for p’ckit dragons) that matched their scale colors. There were several other bean bags in the lounge, colored for some of Smerd’s more regular visitors, including his girlfriend Roxxie. She had a nice yellow one.

“I don’t know.” Smerd sighed and reached into a bag of corn chips that was as big as he was. “I feel like I let her down.”

It was Smerd’s third bag. Icicle realized his friend was stress-eating. Food was Smerd’s thing. 

All dragons had innate hoarding instincts. Diminutive though they were, p’kcit dragons were no exception. Unlike the classic large dragons of Earth mythology, who slept directly on their hoards with their gigantic bodies, p’ckit dragons, being only inches long, kept their hoards in their pocket dimensions. Unlike what the Earth humans thought of as traditional dragons, with their gold, gems, silver, etc., each p’ckit dragon had his or her own unique idea of what constituted the concept of “treasure”. For Smerd, it was food. For Icicle, it was magic. For Smerd’s niece Melody, it was music. Melody’s p’ckit dimension had musical instruments from alien cultures and original signed sheet music from Mozart and Beethoven that she had acquired in a time travel adventure. Smerd’s girlfriend Roxxie collected maps from many worlds and especially prized her maps that showed ways that worlds connected. Roxxie traveled the multiverse with her maps. Smerd’s dragonish treasure hoard contained enough Earth junk food to give an entire army a sugar rush.

Icicle watched as Smerd finished his bag of corn chips and start to get up to walk to a nearby pantry. Any place in Smerd’s pocket dimension was never far from one of its many pantries. Icicle wondered if there were dozens or hundreds. He wouldn’t doubt it if there were hundreds. Icicle decided to keep Smerd talking to help his friend stop stress-eating. As a p’ckit dragon, Smerd never got fat from the junk food, but it still unnerved Icicle to see his friend so freaked out.

“How’s Jaime dealing with it? What’s going on out there?” Icicle raised his eyebrows and pointed upward to indicate the main universe outside Smerd’s pocket dimension.

“He’s in P.E. and there are no pockets in his gym clothes.”

P’ckit dragons used the pockets of their bonded hosts’ clothing and luggage to move back and forth between their respective pocket dimensions and the main universe. If a host stripped down naked and wasn’t carrying anything that had compartments (a backpack, a purse, etc.) a p’ckit dragon was temporarily stuck. 

“We’re in a locker then? You did close things off so the locker room stench doesn’t get in here, right? Human adolescent boys can be so stinky!”

Smerd looked alarmed for a moment as if searching his memory to make sure he hadn’t been too distracted by the day’s stresses to take care of that important little detail.

“Yeah, we’re good,” he finally said.

“We could make Jaime forget today,” Icicle tried to helpfully volunteer. “I have a Potion of Forgetfulness in my hoard.”

For a long time, Icicle had been bonded with a powerful mage in another world of the multiverse, Don Espino de la Rosa. Icicle and Don Espino had been separated while adventuring, but Don Espino was Icicle’s favorite host he had ever had. Icicle missed Don Espino very much, even more than the white p’ckit dragon missed magic. In Don Espino’s world, magic had been abundant, but here on Earth, it was extremely rare. It took a lot for Icicle to be willing to part with a magical potion from his hoard of magic, since it was so hard to find real magic here on Earth, but Smerd was a true friend.

Smerd rejected the offer out of hand. “No, I think Mary would be even more mad if I did something to Jaime’s mind than she will be just for blowing my cover. Besides, it’s not the kid’s fault. And think of all the problems that he’d have from forgetting an entire day.”

“What was that pink stuff anyway?”

“I don’t know. It came from some kind of pink bunny creature.”

“Do you think any got in here?” Icicle looked around.

“Jaime’s backpack got totally covered it, but I don’t think any got inside.”

“That’s probably good.”

Smerd suddenly sneezed.

Both dragons looked at each other concerned for a moment.

“Coincidence,” Smerd said hopefully.

“Sure.”

Then Icicle sneezed.

“Let’s look around and see if any of that pink stuff got in after all.”

“Ok.”

Smerd and Icicle headed for one of the gaming lounge’s doors, opened it and went through. Smerd, in front, stopped so abruptly that Icicle bumped into him.

“What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t the right room,” Smerd said before sneezing twice in a row.

“It’s not?” 

The two p’ckit dragons were in a room that Icicle didn’t recognize, which in itself wasn’t strange. Smerd was about 400 Earth years old. As a p’ckit dragon aged, the size of his or her pocket dimension grew and grew. There were many parts of Smerd’s pocket dimension that Icicle had never seen. At his age, Smerd would have a few hundred rooms by now.

What was strange was the sparkly pink dust coating everything and swirling slightly in the air from Smerd’s sneezes.

“Leth go back,” Smerd lisped as he held his nose.

The two dragons returned through the door from which they had entered the pink-dusted room. They should have returned to the video gaming lounge, with its bean bag chairs, video gaming screens, and empty corn chip bags.

Instead, they were in one of Smerd’s food vaults, this one dedicated to his favorite golden snack cakes. Rows and aisles and shelves of cream-filled sweet goodness stretch in all directions except for the door behind them.

Smerd grabbed the door and tried again. This time the two dragons were more cautious. They only looked through the doorway. They didn’t go through. Through the door was one of Smerd’s guest bedrooms with a p’ckit dragon sized bed for sleepovers.

“This room shouldn’t be anywhere near here,” Smerd exclaimed in exasperation.

“There’s pink dust in here.” Icicle pointed to a light dusting of pink on the otherwise green bedspread. The guest bedroom wasn’t buried in the dust as the first out-of-place room had been, but it was definitely the same sparkly pink stuff.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Smerd, “but I don’t like it.”