The light fluttering of wings wasn’t enough to alert Jack. He didn’t see Piper coming. The sudden spark of breath and ignition of fire just feet from his head had Jack startled, jumping back as though the door he was about to knock at had electrocuted him. 

It took a quick moment to realise what had just happened, wide eyes on Piper perched on the sconce as the information sunk in. 

“You are actually a drag…?” The question expelled incomplete from his mouth, while he took a quick look around the area for Cheryl. She was nowhere to be seen. “I always imaged you’d be bigger….” He said, looking back at Piper, “You really shouldn’t sneak up on people, I almost shit myself.” Jack had never shat his pants in his life, it was just a figure of speech. In fact, Jack wasn’t the type to scare easily under most circumstances, but the events of the last few hours had him understandably on edge. 

He took a moment to gather his thoughts, deciding to keep his voice lowered as not to wake anyone sleeping inside the house. It was one to knock with purpose on somebodies door in the middle of the night, another thing completely to wake someone up by standing on their porch having a conversation with a kitten-sized dragon. Not that he was yet certain Piper was an actual dragon. That question of itself seemed too bizarre for Jack to even consider at the moment. 

“Why are you here?” Jack asked in a lowered tone, but not quite a whisper. “Come to mock me? Poke a little fun at the new guy for saving your girlfriends life? That would be about right. I’ve been on this God forsaken planet less than a few hour and have been chased by some horse size vulture, been accused of being a pervert with a sword to my throat, been given water that smelled like it was dredged from someone’s toilet, and then got interrogated by a guy wearing a red skirt and smelling like he hasn’t wiped his ass in over a year – so go ahead, you cute little bastard, take your best sho –” 

Jack’s rant came to an abrupt halt as his eyes narrowed, peering at Piper like he was now watching the neighbour’s dog take a dump on his lawn. 

“Wait… he changed his tone to match his look, “Is Cheryl in trouble or something? Oh, maybe she started up a blue-light disco in a building down the street and wants me to be the main dancing attracting to scoff at? Or did she kill someone else already? That wouldn’t surprise me. Have you come to fetch me so I can go and try and save her life again with not so much as a thank you for my effort??”  

As Jack’s rant finally came to an end, he realised just how silly he must have looked talking to a small animal. Had this thing really projected its thoughts to him earlier that night? Everything was becoming very surreal to him at this point. At the very least, he felt a little better to have gotten all that off his chest.