Cat Dragon

Enter the imaginarium

Jan 21, 2023

The tour guide hadn’t been kidding when he said you could literally find anything you could conceive of in the imaginarium. Konya had quite the imagination, but she hadn’t brought the creature before her into existence.

The thing was, once imagined, creatures within the imaginarium persisted, inhabiting their fantastical environs forever—unless some other creature ended their existence. Or they were deemed dangerous and hunted down.

But the creature sitting placidly on the log in front of Konya seemed anything but dangerous. It was beautiful—a cat dragon.

“Do you think I could pet it?” She asked the guide.

“Sure. This one’s pretty tame,” he answered with an odd smirk.

“Are you certain?” Konya hesitated at his look, but he was quick to reassure her, so she slowly approached, careful not to spook the creature. It looked her in the eye as she neared, but there was nothing threatening in its posture, so she reached out…

“Touch me and I’ll bite your hand off,” the cat dragon snapped.

Konya jerked her hand away, stumbling a few feet backward. She whirled around to face the guide who had started to laugh at what he clearly thought had been a clever joke.

“You said it wouldn’t bite.”

As the guide continued laughing, the dragon cat spoke, drawing Konya’s attention back to it. “I’m a he, not an it. My name is Monfir. I created this imaginarium.” He glared past Konya at the guide. “And if Brast pulls that stunt one more time, he’s going to be looking for another job.”

Brast just continued laughing, clearly not worried in the least about his job, though he did say, “Sorry, Boss. It’s just too easy. I can’t resist.”

Konya grabbed Brast by the neck and pulled him close with an inhuman strength. As his eyes bulged and he desperately tried to break her grip, her own laughter rang out. “Thanks for creating me, Monfir. Existing is going to be fun.”

She let Brast go with one last chuckle. As he rubbed his throat, she said to the cat dragon, “Who are we going to prank next?”

This story was so much fun to write. Even I didn’t know Monfir had created Konya until my fingers typed the words. I love stories in which a prankster gets pranked. I hope you had as much fun reading this story as I did writing it!

As so often happens nowadays, the image came first and sparked the story. And I really want a cat dragon. As long as it doesn’t breathe fire. Or, you know, eat me.