“Hatchlings get to do fun things,” the dragon complained. “Why hain’t I ever do fun things?” The dragon Sini remembered a time when many fun things were to be done and many happy times to be had. “How I’d love to just be happy, frankly.”

A little wolf popped up from underneath the bed Sini sat.

“Hey, Sini! D’you wanna go skiing? Good contrast to this hot weather, I ‘magine!”

“Naw,” said Sini. “Skiing is boring. Where’s all the fire at, huh?”

“Well,” said the wolf, “why don’t cha go skydiving with me? It’ll be a blast! Fall from five thousand feet in the air; hain’t nuttin’ better ‘an that, I ‘magine.”

“Naw,” said Sini.

“Aw, c’mon!” said the wolf, tugging on Sini’s foot.

“You ‘magine too much of skydiving. Dragons do it all the time when they plunge through the sky. S’like swimmin’, ‘xcept sorta not swimmin’ at all. A muscle movement, really.”

“Well, then what’s your idea of fun, mister?”

Sini frowned and looked down at his forepaw pads and studied them. In them he saw subtle intricacies and he did not treasure them.

“I don’t know,” Sini said.

Sini squinted at the subtle intricacies, trying to pry them apart from his paws to analyze them—each individually. The intricacies hit him in the head, and he was hurt.

“Ow,” Sini said.

“You’re lookin’ into it way too hard,” the wolf said.

“When you look into it it makes you wonder. Fun. What is it about a set of boards stuck to your feet or a simulacrum drop to your death that’s fun?”

“Maybe the fact that they hain’t just no boards, but some skis; and it hain’t no drop to your death because you would catch me.”

“How d’you know I would?” Sini asked. “How d’you know I wouldn’t just let your insignificant ass pancake from the impact of a five thousand mile plummet?”

The little wolf’s jaw dropped.

“How d’you know I wanted to go skydiving in the first place?”

The little wolf’s jaws clenched tight. He retreated to the place beneath the bed Sini sat.

“Yeah, you lil’ bitch,” Sini said. “And stay out.”

And that is how the dragon drove the wolf away.

The dragon sighed.

“Wolflings get to do fun things,” he later reminisced.