We Are

It wasn’t long before I discovered that I wasn’t as protected as I had hoped that I was; for, the same idiot who’d approached me after poker with his dumb<? offer suddenly showed up out of nowhere while I was reading a book, shrugged, and said, “Shoulda accepted my offer.”

Then, he was suddenly on a boat somewhere, and I was in the water near him, and I was now figuring that I must be dreaming because this was impossible! Just like with that Shoma dude appearing in my car… Hmmm… Why was life suddenly becoming so absurd!?!

“I know that I’m just dreaming!” I called out, “You’re not real!” to which he responded, “Very good! You shouldn’t have any trouble breathing water, then, since you’re only dreaming and all.” and I suddenly felt metal clamping around my ankle and was immediately being dragged downwards through the water!

It turned out the breathing water was not an ability that I had (regardless of whether I was dreaming or not), and I was soon evacuated from whatever strange reality that I was in…

When I woke up, I was greeted by a person who said, “So glad to see that you’re awake! Welcome to this miserable cave! And it is miserable, I assure you. I’ve only ever had 6 human visitors, and you’re one of them!”

My first thought was that this must be a dream within a dream, but (since this dream didn’t seem quite as terrible as the last one) I figured that I’d play along, and said, “Hi. I’m Storm. What’s your name?”

“Storm! What a lovely name! My last name was Tempest, which is quite similar to Storm, but now I go by Kahuna. You don’t happen to remember how you got here, by chance, do you?”

“Long story.” I muttered, “But none of it makes any sense, and I figure that I must be dreaming.”

“Oh!, do tell! I have no intention of making fun of you if any of it seems unbelievable, so don’t be shy!”

And, so; I told them about the recent events that I’d experienced, starting with the jack@$$ who’d both made me the catch-the-supposed-murderers offer and decided to test out whether I could breathe water.

“I don’t know who the person who sent you swimming with the fishes is, but I do know who that Shoma person is! He visited me one time! It was a very brief visit, mind you (far too brief!, I might add), but it was definitely him!

Anyhoo, while breathing water wasn’t an ability that you had, you dropped out of the water and into this cave right next to where I was enjoying a lovely meal of chicken nuggets! I managed to resuscitate you, but kept you in unconscious-mode for a while so that you could rest up a bit before we began chatting. You want some chicken nuggets, by the way?”

I nodded, and a bowl of chicken nuggets suddenly popped out of thin air and onto a table that was next to me! I began eating, and they tasted very real for dreamland nuggets, but I still figured that I had to be dreaming.

“So,” I asked, “you have magic powers, like Shoma and that other dude, eh?”

“Oh, yes! Well… Not magic… I don’t think of it like that. But I suppose that it may as well be. I’m much more powerful than those two are, though! Well… More powerful than Shoma is, anyway. I can’t say for sure about that other dude without knowing more about him.”

“If you’re so powerful, then why do you stay in this “miserable” cave, then?” I questioned, to which another voice responded, “Because I, Maximon!, keep them trapped here! And the best part is that Shoma, Khin, Diago, and the others all think that they’ve escaped and are always panically on alert for any sign of them using their inordinate amount of power to cause trouble for humanity! All in all, it’s the greatest troll of all time! Muahahahahahahahahaha…”

I turned around to see who the other person was, but saw no one, and didn’t hear any more talking from that voice.

“That’s ONE possible explanation for why I’m still in this wretched cave, but I have my doubts.” Kahuna huffed, and added, “I’m gonna go ahead and leave you to it, then, but I’ll leave food at various locations for you. You probably won’t see me again for a while. Maybe never! Toodles!”

And, with that, I was alone in the cave; and faced with the decision of what to do next.

There were a bunch of various routes that I could take from the cave-room that I was in, and I began walking down one of them. I brought some food and water (along with a flashlight and some spare batteries) that’d been in the room that I’d just been in with me.

There were a lot of little creatures of various sorts crawling on the walls, but none of them were leaving the walls and causing trouble for me.

Some of them looked very unusual, though, and I wondered what in the world they were. For example, there were some lizards who appeared to have butterfly-like wings and would breathe out fire from time to time. So, dragons? Well… If they were dragons, they were very different from any dragons that I’d ever seen depicted; but dragons were fictional, anyway, just like this whole dreamworld that I was in! Soon, I would wake up and get back to real life, but for now I just continued walking.

Suddenly, I encountered a fire-breathing-butterfly-lizard creature who was WAY bigger than the other ones on the walls, and she said, “I see that you’ve noticed my children. I’m very glad that you haven’t been foolish enough to mess with them, for that would make me very angry.”

“Are you a mother dragon?” I questioned, to which she responded, “Yes, indeed. And you are free to walk through this part of the cave as long as you don’t cause any trouble. Cause trouble, and you’ll be sorry…”

“Is this cave big enough to hold all of your kids once they grow up?” I asked, to which she responded, “No. This isn’t even our home planet. Once they get bigger, they’ll be transported to our home world and have much more room to move around, but I like to raise them here until they’re big enough to fend for themselves in order to keep them from being destroyed by my enemies on our home world.”

“That makes sense.” I responded, and added, “So, you can just pop from one place to another, just like some of the people I’ve had run-ins with lately can?”

“Most definitely.” she assured me, “It’s actually only because of us dragons that any of you humans even have the power. Some of us have transferred power to humans because we were about to die and thought that it’d be a pity to just let the power die with us. We get to take our consciousness with us when we leave our bodies, but not our power.”

“So, that’s how Kahuna, Maximon, Shoma, and the dude who drowned me all got their power?” I asked, to which she responded, “Yes, though only Maximon and the two people who joined together to form Kahuna received the power directly from a dragon. The others received it indirectly.”

“Kahuna is actually two people?” I asked, confusedly, to which she responded, “A woman and man who’d both received power from dragons joined together to form a single human named Tempest. Their name is now Kahuna, though. They’re unable to leave this cave, though, because Maximon has them trapped here.”

“Huh.” I said, and suddenly was for some reason not feeling good about remaining in this part of the cave anymore, and said, “It’s been nice meeting you, but I’m wanting to explore some other parts of the cave now, I think.”

“By all means,” she responded, “and feel free to visit again if you like. Just remember, though, that if you hurt any of my children then it’ll be the last thing that you ever do.”

“Of course, of course.” I assured her, before pausing and asking, “How is Maximon able to trap Kahuna in this cave, considering that Kahuna is a combination of two people who received dragon-power and Maximon is originally just one person who received dragon-power.”

“For some reason, trolls become much more powerful when they receive dragon-power than humans do. I’m not sure why.”

“Wait? Maximon is a troll? Is he from another planet, or were there always trolls on Earth that I just didn’t know about?”

“I’m not sure where the trolls originated from. It’s very funny that you seem to think that humans originated on Earth, though, lol.

Humans have been around for trillions of years, and have lived on countless planets. Earth was seeded with some humans once your atmosphere and environment became human-friendly enough, and that is why y’all have a hard time proving that humans evolved on Earth from other species. They didn’t. Humans were seeded on Earth by aliens a long time ago, though it’s possible that humans did evolve from other species trillions of years ago on other planets; but that hasn’t (to my knowledge) been proven one way or the other yet.”

“Them be fightin’ words!, lol.” I joked, and added, “Rejecting the theory that humans evolved on Earth from other species gets you accused of peddling pseudoscience in a lot of circles.” when the dragon appeared to not get my joke.

The dragon still seemed puzzled by my words, and I added, “Anyhoo, so how long have trolls and dragons been around? And why don’t humans know about all of these other planets, even though we were supposedly seeded from them?”

“Dragons have been around longer than trolls, and trolls have been around longer than humans.” she replied, and then added, “And, to your other question, plenty of humans on Earth have discovered the existence of aliens and other habitable planets, but they tend to be accused of things such as being crazy or peddling pseudoscience when they tell other humans on Earth about them, lol.”

“Touché.” I chuckled, “That sounds about right.” and I waved goodbye to the dragon and began walking back towards the cave-room to try out another one of the paths…