The Dragonfly Café

The Dragonfly Café

An intense wave of nausea hit me like a charging bull as I stepped through the swirling portal.  The next thing that hit me was the defining buffeting wind as I reached the unfamiliar terrain on the other side.  I struggled to keep my footing and to keep from vomiting as I quickly assessed my new surroundings.

I was used to expecting the unexpected during my travels on the chaotic plane of Limbo, but this had to be the strangest location yet.  The strength of the wind here was a first, as was the cacophonous oscillating noise.  It sounded as if the wind was blowing in short rapid blasts rather than ordinary random gusts, though it felt as steady as a mild hurricane.  The ground was covered in thick stiff knee-high green grass, all bent in the direction of the wind.  As I looked around, I saw no portal aperture.  Great!  Another one-way door.  I hated that.

There was a small settlement here.  One round squat stone tower surrounded by several weathered wooden shacks.  Opposite the settlement, the grassy hill sloped downward and disappeared into the swirling gray mists, which seemed to be the one common trait over all of Limbo.  The largest and closest shack had a sign above the door:  “The Dragonfly Café”.  Nice.  Why anyone would run a café at a place like this was beyond me, but it seemed like the best chance to ask around about a portal out of here and the possibility of cooked food and something other than stagnant water to drink was irresistible. 

Still fighting nausea and leaning into the wind, I half staggered half trudged toward the shack.  When I finally reached the door, its large size, probably 10 feet tall and half as wide, concerned me quite a bit.  It was big enough for slaadi and that was not good.  But since I couldn’t stand the thought of being battered by the wind any longer, I readied my wits and pulled on the door.  It was heavy, so I struggled to open it and slip through before the wind slammed it shut behind me.  I quickly studied the interior as I caught my breath.

It actually looked like a café.  There were tables and chairs, at which half a dozen patrons sat, all staring at me but none looking at all surprised.  Three of the patrons were human, one was a dwarf, and the two in the furthest corner were gith.  There was a counter with an assortment of breads that smelled good enough to make my sickened belly begin to grumble, but the figure standing behind the counter alarmed me to the point that I forgot my hunger and remembered my sword.

It was a large blue slaad.  Every other encounter I had ever had with these powerful frog-like humanoids had ended with them attempting to devour me and me either killing them narrowly escaping.  I drew my blade with one hand and gripped the door handle with the other.  One slaad I might be able to handle, but if the rest of the patrons attacked, I needed to run for it.  The response I got from the patrons and the slaad was no attack, however; instead, there was a bout of laughter.

“Relax friend!”  The blue slaad bellowed as his laughter died to a chuckle, “nobody’s going to eat you here.  Especially me!  Come and sit down.  I’ll pour you a cup of coffee.”

I suddenly felt foolish for my reaction.  I sheathed my sword and sheepishly walked in and sat on a chair closest to the counter.  They didn’t have coffee in my homeland, but I had been introduced to many new things during my travels through Limbo, since its borders and portals lead to countless other strange lands and times.  I didn’t really like the hot bitter beverage, but having already embarrassed myself, I decided to accept the offer and drink it anyway.

“Welcome to the Dragonfly café” The hulking slaad said, grinning with his enormous frog mouth, bristling with rows of needle-sharp teeth.  He reached over the counter with his long scaly blue arm and set a porcelain mug of steaming hot black liquid in front of me.  “Drink up; it’ll calm your stomach.”

I wondered if my nausea was that apparent and I imagined that my face must be a shade of green.  The coffee actually smelled quite good.  I blew at it and sipped it.  It was as bitter as I had remembered, but somehow it tasted wonderful, and just as the slaad said, my stomach began to calm down.

“Thank you” I replied to my unlikely host.

“My pleasure, first cup is always on the house.”  The slaad grinned.  His monstrous mouth looked deadlier than that of a giant frenzied tiger shark, but his expression was somehow warm and friendly.

“I guess I don’t have to point out that you’re not like any other slaad I’ve encountered on this plane.” I said after my second sip.  That comment brought out another chuckle from the patrons.

“No, I don’t suppose I am.  I grew up here on Dragonfly Hill, only place I could fit in.  Of course, everyone fits on Dragonfly Hill.”  Another chuckle from the patrons and some of them lifted their mugs. 

“Is there another portal around here?  Or a mage?”  I asked hopefully, “I’ve been trying to find my way home for, well; I don’t really know how much time has passed.”

“Portals?  Not that anyone has found, “the slaad shook his bulbous head and then grinned the three foot span from ear to ear, “but a mage, yes.  You’ll want to talk to that dwarven gentleman right there, he’s the mage’s assistant.”

“Hmph!”  The old dwarf snorted, shaking his head.  “You’re better of sticking around here, lad.  The green slaad I work for is crazy.  And he might be able to get you outta here, but there ain’t no guarantee you won’t be smaller than a flea when you get to the other side!”

“What?  Why is that?”  I asked, dumfounded.  My heart sank and panicked at the sound of relying on a green slaad.  This blue slaad was quite an exception to his race, but green slaadi?  I had only ever run into one and I vary nearly lost my life.  And I knew enough Limbo lore to know that green slaadi were only a step away from the insanely evil gray sladdi.  And what was this about being smaller than a flea?

“You haven’t figured out were you are yet, have you?”  The dwarf scowled.  The other patrons all turned and looked at me sympathetically as the old dwarf elaborated.  “They don’t call this ‘Dragonfly Hill’ because it’s a cute name or because there’s any bugs in the field.  We’re in a town that’s been built on the back of a dragonfly, and it ain’t no giant dragonfly neither!”

The room suddenly spun and my head swam in the realization of what he had just explained.  The last portal felt so different because it must have shrunk me.  I was probably small enough now to fit through the eye of a needle.  Sure, my size change could be reversed with magic, but should I trust some maniacal green slaad to cast spells on me?  I wanted to get home, but there was no way I would be able to survive anywhere at my current diminutive size, not at home and not anywhere else on Limbo.  There was no other place I could survive but here, on ‘Dragonfly Hill’.

Still, I pondered the thought of this desolate existence and decided in a moment that should the green slaad’s magic go horribly wrong, even death might not be much worse, so I drained the rest of my coffee, preparing to ask the dwarf what it would take to petition his employer for aid.  As I finished the last bit of the now tolerably hot coffee, something slid into my upper lip from the bottom of the mug.  I reached in and pulled out what looked like a long sharp coffee-stained tooth.  There was a collective gasp from everyone in the café.

“Oops!”  The slaad said; his wide yellow frog eyes getting even wider when he saw what looked remarkably similar to the teeth in his own mouth.

“Blue!”  One of the gaunt mottled yellow-skinned githzerai leapt to his feet and shouted at the slaad, “You promised this would never happen again!”

“I…I’m sorry!”  The slaad pleaded.  Normally, a single blue slaad might be able to kill everyone in the room, but this particular slaad actually looked like it was going to cry.  “I’ve been filing my nails to stubs and checking my mouth for loose teeth every day.  I don’t know how that happened!  Maybe it’s one of the mage’s!”

“Nope,” the dwarf stated casually as he sipped his coffee, “too big to be one of his.”

I was shaking.  My subconscious mind had already grasped what this meant, but my conscious thoughts were in denial.  The blue slaad felt around his enormous gumlines with his thumb and then froze.  He looked at me with a tear in his glassy eye and then pulled his flabby scaly upper lip high enough to reveal an empty socket.

“You’ll have to come with us.” I heard and turned to see both of the githzerai now standing behind me with their swords drawn.

“What?  Wait!  But!”  I stammered, my mind reeling with panic.

“Don’t resist”.  The gith that had protested earlier spoke with authority.  He looked like he was quite capable of taking my head off with his ornately crafted gith sword.  The razor-sharp jeweled blade crackled and hummed with psionic energy.  “We’re not going to kill you; we’re only going to detain you until the transformation is complete.  If the madness doesn’t take you, you’ll be released and welcome to join our community.”

“If it does?”  I couldn’t help but ask as the gith that hadn’t spoken relieved me of my sword and crossbow.

“Then you’ll be escorted off of Dragonfly Hill.”

He didn’t have to elaborate on what he meant by ‘off’.  I went with them.  My conscious mind had finally accepted my eminent fate and I had no reason to fight.  We forced our way out of the café door and across what I now realized was the bristly hairs on the back of the dragonfly, and not grass as I had originally assumed.  The gith showed me into a small shack on the other side of the village.  It was reinforced with iron and the large door bolted from the outside.

“We’ll check on you tomorrow; the transformation should be complete by then.”  The gith said as I shuffled into the small empty room.

“This has happened before?”  I suddenly thought to ask before they shut the door.

“Twice,” he replied solemnly, “maybe you will do better than they did.”

With that, he shut the door and bolted it.
…

The only consistent law in the outer plane of Limbo is that there are no laws.  Even the very laws of nature are ‘fuzzy’ at best.  For example:  On any other plane, an established racial behavioral trait, such as the fact that in spite of red and blue slaadi causing each other to ‘spawn’ through infecting a host, they cannot stand one another, would have few if any exceptions. 

But there was truly an exception on Dragonfly Hill.  The blue slaad responsible for my current state took me in and treated me like a human would treat his own son.  I was now the co-owner of the Dragonfly café, and all the patrons there now affectionately called me ‘Red’.