Eels writhed in a pond at Romulo’s feet, performing an insane little dance above a bed of sticking muck shot through in places by stalks of grass. He stared at them with the look of someone having an existential crisis, though in truth his mind was as blank as it ever could be. Forcing himself to look up, to come back to the world, he thought for the first time that there was something slightly funny about the way his house burned, across the pond. It was like a parody of his idyllic life on the acreage, the way the walls stood even as fire poured out the windows and the roof caved in, as though the skeleton of the house thought everything would be fine if it just stayed perfectly, perfectly still.

His experiments had gone awry, there was no getting around that. Apparently, he had to admit with some ruefulness, it was not a good idea for a failed chemistry student to get his hands on a biological replicator and try to create new life. The low-oxygen eel experiment had worked because, well, that species of eel didn’t need much air in the first place. The two-headed, two-assed cat had also been a decent success, though whether the thing had gone running into the fire as a stupid mistake or a suicide wasn’t clear. Muffins and Oblong weren’t the happiest conjoined twins.

But this? This had gone badly. His home, and with it his biological replicator, his sofas, his heirloom grandfather clock, his notes, Vanessa’s last gift to him before she left for Luna, all of it was gone. Red-hot puddles or ash, equally formless and useless. It was stupid, he realized now, to try to defy god and bring back the mythic creatures that had haunted mankind’s dreams since the first hominids hopped out of the trees with an attitude along the lines of “I want to kill whoever’s beyond the horizon and take his stuff.” Reflections of their own soul, not of anything that could possibly live in this world.

So it was that when Romulo was about to turn around and begin fantasizing about getting a day job, he almost missed it. The long, supine form, the broad reptilian wings, the crested head, the fluted snout. It shot out from the fires it had created with beautiful, sweeping motions of its wings, legs tucked close to its belly where the tail started. Ah, he realized with clinical detachment, even as his heart began to thump again with gusto, the gas bladder hadn’t exploded. It had expelled. A new dragon took off at a tremendous speed into the countryside, legend become flesh, elder gods become a fresh species for Linnaeus’ disciples to name and poke and prod.

“Boy,” Romulo said, “I’d hate to be that poor guy.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stalked away, head held low, the heat of his greatest accomplishment palpable against his back.