Driving an old car was a pretty good way to stand out, but in the barren areas that Dominic frequented, it was a way to feel at home. Dom had become a courier, and he cherished just about any kind of normality he could try and squeak out of his current situation. Most jobs were boring, painfully simple tasks where he spent more time simply staring straight and keeping the wheel propped up with his knees. Roads droned on, and engines hummed happily into the horizon. Transitioning into this line of work had been hard for him at first, but Dom now found himself infatuated with the road itself, the jobs nearly meaningless to him. He'd spent enough of his time shut up inside of his room - he was just happy to be out and about for the first time in a long while.

This job was a bit different, though.

This time, Dom had been tasked with transporting more illicit materials. Draconic medical supplies, to be precise. Most of them were totally incompatible with human physiology, leading to them being labelled as "dangerous contraband" at best, and "human killers" at worst. For the first time in awhile, the dragon was actually frightened by the prospect of his work, and felt legitimately threatened each time a marked police car rode by him. The most dangerous items he had delivered in the past never went past the realm of "sensitive files," something that wouldn't be noticed or even cared about if he were to be pulled over.

He leaned against the side of his car, uncaring about the paint. He drove the car so much, the front was already a mosaic of road rash, rock dents, and tiny imperfections. Dominic loved to have his T/A be clean, but the usual wear and tear was something that he wore with a badge of pride. Using a nearly fifty year old car daily was bizarre, but try as he might, he couldn't see himself driving anything else across the country.

The gas station lights flicked over his head. It was the middle of the day, but it was still dark enough to set them off. The gal behind the glass and inside of the small booth in front of him gave him a sour look. A sign with large letters was stuck to the window in haphazard fashion, simply reading -

"No dragons allowed."

Dom raised an eyeridge, but relegated himself to a simple sigh. It was a smaller town, tucked deep into the middle of nowhere - he supposed he couldn't have expected them to be very friendly to outsiders in general, much less one that was an entirely different species from them. Without wanting to "antagonize" further, he stood up. Making sure to watch his posture as to remain as non-threatening as possible, he made his way to his car door and popped it open with the satisfying sound of new weather stripping. Peaking over his shoulder to make sure the clerk wasn't aiming a gun at him like some people had before (which, to her credit, she had not), he slid inside his car and started it up. It sputtered, the old carburetor struggling more every day with the intense amounts of gas being pumped through it on his hundred-mile daily drives.

But it started, eventually. Dominic punched it, not wanting to hang around here for any longer than he had to.





 Apron55 did this wonderful work for me a good few months ago. I've been wanting to try my hand at writing a small "vignette" description to accompany it for quite some time.

Please leave a comment, and tell me what you think!