Page 66 of Dragon Cursed
"It's a lot."
"It is a lot."
The road thickened as they approached the city.
More cars.More lorries.More signs.The signs began to refer to a place called the M50 and a place called the city centre and a place called the Port Tunnel.Alsander, who had once known the road into Dublin as theSlighe Mórand had walked it in 1683, sat very still in his seat and tried to take it all in at once.
Then there were the buildings.
They were tall.Not tall the way a cathedral was tall — not the kind of tall a man pointed his head up at to see the bell.They were rectangular.They were made ofglass.
He could see Margery reflected in the side of one as Poppy slowed for traffic.Margery and the two small figures inside her.
"What is that one?"
"An office building."
"A place to conduct business, yes, I know of such places.What sort of business do they conduct?"
"I don't know.Probably insurance.Or technology.Or banks.But I think they're mostly insurance or technology.High tech stuff."
"I know what technology is.What is high tech stuff?"
"I —" Poppy laughed."Like this old car, only better.There are radios.Television.Satellites.Wireless phones.Video streaming.Computer chips.”
He listened, his face carefully kept blank.It was as if Poppy spoke a different language altogether.One he hadn’t learned yet.“I enjoy the theatre.Does that still exist?"
"Yes.I sawA Midsummer Night's Dreamlast year."
“So many changes, yet theatre has endured,” he mused.“Shakespearehas endured.I saw that production while visiting London in 1602.”
Poppy’s eyes widened like giant saucers.“Oh.That’s—that’s a long time ago.I would love to hear about it sometime.”
The corner of his mouth curved up.“It seems we both have a great many things to share.”
He looked at the building made of glass.
He looked away.
He looked back.
There were buses.
There had been omnibuses in his time, drawn by horses, which he understood.These were not those.These were vast yellow rectangles on wheels, taller than the houses they passed, and they were full of humans.Humans, and if he was not mistaken, one shifter.A wolf.
The mortals were looking at small bright objects in their hands and not at the city, and he wondered if the city had become the kind of place that people no longer looked at because there was too much of it to look at.The wolf had one of the objects, as well, but as Alsander passed by, he looked up and scanned the area.
Their eyes connected.The wolf nodded in recognition as Poppy’s car passed by.
Alsander nodded, then returned to his task.He needed to absorb and process information as quickly as possible.There were smaller, two-wheeled vehicles weaving between the cars at speeds that set his teeth on edge.The urge to turn one to ash when it cut in front of their car, forcing Poppy to slam on a pedal to slow the car with a rapidity that nearly put his face in the dashboard, was difficult to suppress.The expletives he let out would have made a hardened criminal blush.Poppy just laughed.
There were people on the pavements in clothes he couldn’t place.A woman in a red coat.A man in a soft black sweater and the kind of close trousers he hadn’t seen since he had hidden in the wood.A girl, perhaps seventeen, with hair the color of a peach and a small gold ring through one nostril.
"We're close," Poppy said."Ten minutes."
"You are nervous to see your kin?”
“A wee bit, yes.You're doing very well, by the way."
