A muffled whining drew me from my thoughts. I opened my eyes, blinking them a few times to clear the tears that had formed in them, then turned my head behind me to find the source of the noise.

It seemed to be coming from the house across the street.

A sudden worry filled me. I hadn't seen anyone else in this city, or any sign that anybody had been in it quite some time. I wasn't sure what to expect from anyone who had managed to survive what had happened here. The noise could be a serious threat.

But it could also be a friend. And... I was really starting to wish I had a friend right now. Waking up in the deserted lab, traveling through the devastated city, remembering all that had happened to me...that would have been scary enough all on its own, but I was also starting to notice new feelings of loneliness that I couldn't remember experiencing as a human. As a dragonet, the idea of being completely alone was... painful.

The whine repeated itself, followed by some scratching, and I smiled as I realized what I was hearing. I flew across the street to the far house and perched on a windowsill near the door. The scratching paused when I landed, and I let out a short whistle.

Excited barking suddenly reached me, and I felt my ear tufts perk at the sound. "Hi doggie! Are you stuck in there?" I fanned my wings out in excitement. A dog... that was just what I needed right now. The dance for the sun had done wonders for the fear and loneliness that had been sinking in, but it wasn't gone entirely, and the idea of being able to pet and play with a happy dog was an exciting one.

The barking suddenly broke off into a confused whine, and I felt my wings droop as my thoughts caught up. My sentence hadn't come out in human words - it had been a series of trills and chirps. The dog was realizing that maybe it hadn't heard a human whistling to it after all, but instead maybe just a bird fluttering around.

And... if I opened the door to let the dog out, how would it react when it found a strange creature waiting for it? Would the dog attack me? Would I be seen as a friend to it... or just a meal?

I needed to be smart about this.

I turned from the windowsill and flew away.

It took me about two hours of searching for a pet store - I could remember where a lot of places were at now, but I hadn't had a pet as a human, so I never had any occasion to look for a pet store. I came across a supermarket first, and decided that might be even better - I could check the grocery section for canned fruits while I was there. A dedicated pet store might have a better variety of things that the dog would enjoy...

...but pet stores also tended to keep live animals in stock, and I was pretty sure that I did not want to learn how they had done when the humans that fed them had suddenly vanished.

A small group of pigeons too small to really be called a 'flock' flew away when I landed in front of the sliding front doors. The power was out - just like everywhere else in the city - so the doors didn't part automatically for me, but with a good bit of pushing and leveraging my body I was able to nudge the door open enough to get through.

I felt a little embarrassed about just how much effort it had taken to push the glass doors. My body was much lighter now, and built for agility and speed. Even simple efforts of strength that I had taken for granted might be beyond me now.

I made a mental note to stick to doors with handles going forward, and to avoid any jars with tight lids on them.

It took me a bit of gliding around the store until I came across the section for dogs. I grabbed a few toys that caught my attention - a short 'tug of war' rope with knots for the dog to bite on, a few balls, and a rubber bone. I thought about some of the brightly colored chew toys and plush animals... but in the end I decided that it might not be a good idea to encourage the dog to play rough with and rip apart anything that even remotely resembled my current body. I rejected a frisbee for the same reason, since I suspected I might look a bit too much like a silver frisbee myself while I was flying. I did not want to find out the hard way how well my scales would hold up against teeth.

Even that simple collection of toys made flying a challenge, and when I reached the food aisle I realized it was going to be impossible to carry everything back in one trip. The smallest bag of dog food was barely light enough for me to get in the air with even when I wasn't holding anything else, and it was too bulky to manage much in the way of maneuvering. The smaller bag of food was outrageously expensive on top of that, and I spent a good two minutes rambling to myself in annoyed chirps and whistles about how no bag of food for a dog should possibly cost that much, not to mention one that held so little food in the first place... before it finally sunk in that I wasn't paying for any of the stuff I was taking anyways.

I eyed the significantly lighter bags of cat food and wondered if the dog would notice... but ultimately I decided against it. The poor dog had probably lost its family and then been stuck in that house for who knows how long. On top of that it had probably only survived by getting into the bags of food that had been stashed in the house for it, and with a dog's appetite and levels of self control there was no telling how long that supply had lasted. The poor thing was probably terribly lonely, bored, and starving.

A little more effort to make sure it had a good meal was the least I could do.

I grabbed a bag of treats to go with the other items and piled the packages by the door. With that out of the way I turned to my own needs.

I glided through the food aisles and eyed the various products, but none seemed that appealing. Even old favorites of mine seemed to turn my stomach sour at the thought of eating them, even if I could have found some way to cook and prepare them. The items in the frozen section had all melted and spoiled, and the stench from the meat section was too horrid to get anywhere near. I held my nose just long enough to grab the first canned fruit I came across, then quickly retreated to the far side of the store to eat.

The canned mangos were too hard to open with just my claws and I had to awkwardly employ a can opener to get to the fruit inside, but there were plenty of those in the store, and my hands proved nimble enough to use the tool to open the can. The mangos weren't as good as the peaches had been, but they still made for a nice breakfast.

I braved the stench in the grocery section long enough to add a few bottles of water to the supplies for the dog, in case it was thirsty, then glided through the rest of the store. The hunting and sporting section seemed promising, but all the equipment I came across was either useless - the Swiss Army Knife might be great for a human, but my claws were just as useful while being easier to use - or completely unusable - a bike or a gun might have been handy, but there was no way I could actually use either with my small size.

Though I did get a bit of a chuckle at the idea of trying to use a shotgun that was larger than my entire body. The kickback alone would send me flying, even without wings.

The pharmacy section seemed like it would be an essential stop, but proved to be disappointing. I had planned to grab some simple medicines, like Tylenol or even just sunscreen... but while I was digging through them, I realized I had no idea if even the mildest of medicines would be safe for me. I was pretty sure I only weighed a handful of pounds now, and every one of the boxes had very clear child warning labels. The medicine was clearly meant for a body with a hundred or so pounds of organs, blood, bone and muscle to spread out through. A child with half that much mass could face serious complications at that same dose.

Given my difficulty opening doors, I would be surprised if I even had ten pounds for the medicine to act on. Taking a product meant for a human body... did not seem like a smart plan.

I left the medicines where they were, and hoped I could find help before it became a serious issue.

After a few minutes of thought I also decided to skip over the sunscreen. I had already spent several long hours under heat lamps and had come out of that just fine, so it seemed my scales would already provide enough protection against sunlight. Instead I just grabbed a few boxes of Band-aids and a tube of Neosporin. I was pretty sure it was safe to use that on smaller animals, assuming you could get a smaller animal to let you put it on them, so I figured it should be okay for me. I could just use small amounts and stop using them if it caused problems.

I did another lap around the store, hoping to find an atlas - there was bottled water in the store, so I should be okay on clean water for a while, but it would be nice to have an idea of how to get to other cities in case one of them had survivors. The invention of GPS seemed to be my undoing, though. I found plenty of fancy digital devices that were advertised with all sorts of handy features to help guide me to my destination... but without power, they amounted to nothing more than paperweights. I doubted I could fly with them anyways.

I was about to give up on finding anything else when the jewelry section caught my eye. I landed on one of the display cases and inspected the items inside, thinking they might be useful. Most looked like they would be far too large to do anything with, and I started to get disappointed... but my eyes finally lit up when they settled on a small child's watch.

The digital display glowed steadily beneath the glass, and the band looked like it was small enough to fit around my tail or neck. There was even a sticker proclaiming the watch was solar powered... which struck me as a pricey gimmick with no practical purpose but to run up the price of the watch, given how cheap watch batteries were, but I grudgingly admitted having a watch with an advertised lifespan of at least a decade of normal use would be useful. It might not be the most comfortable way to wear a watch, and I was sure the bright pink would clash horribly with my silver coloration... but beggars can't be choosers.

Neither can people who wake up one day and find themselves transformed into a tiny dragon in a ruined city.

I sighed and tried not to dwell on the situation I found myself in. Freaking out wouldn't help any, regardless of how easy it would be to let myself panic over everything that happened. I was all alone, I had been turned into something completely different by some deranged scientists - one of whom used to be my friend - and the city I had lived in had been deserted... but... I was all alone.

As scary as everything was, there wasn't anyone I could lean on. I had to stay focused still. Fear could wait.

I whistled the 'Mission Impossible' theme to myself and tried to use my claws to cut a thin circle in the glass... but even though my claws seemed to be incredibly sharp, they weren't quite up to the task.

I grumbled for a bit about how cool it would have been if I had been able to cut through the glass. I banged on the now-scratched surface a few times just in case, but the display case wall held steady.

Fine.

I switched to whistling 'Flight of the Valkyries' and flew back to the grocery section. I grabbed a solid looking can of soup and flew back over the jewelry section, gliding over the target... and let go of the can of soup.

It took me three attempts before I actually hit the display case with my makeshift 'bomb', but the glass made a very satisfying 'crash' sound when the can of soup finally smashed through it. I swooped down to carefully pick the watch out of the shards of glass, then shook it off a few times to make sure it was free of any sharp edges.

I tried to loop the watch around my neck at first, but it was too hard to see what I was doing. I was also worried about it getting caught on something, not to mention how awkward it would be to look back at the display even if I did manage to get the band secured. After a few minutes of trying I gave up and tried slipping it over my tail instead.

That turned out to be much easier to do. My tail was just large enough for the first notch to fit snugly around it, which was a good sign - I wasn't sure how long the battery would last, but I would be able to carry the watch around on larger notches if my tail got larger. I wasn't sure if I would keep growing or how large I would end up, but given that I had just hatched from an egg three or four days ago, I figured it was a safe assumption that I would get at least a little larger. I made a mental note to set the time on the watch when the sun was directly overhead - I was pretty sure the blinking '4:13 AM' was wrong - then flew back towards my pile of supplies.

I briefly considered stealing one of the colorful play cars in the children's toy section and loading it up with my groceries... but in the end I dismissed that idea. I might be a tiny dragonet smaller than a house cat, and I was now wearing a bright pink watch meant for a little girl, but I still had some dignity. I grabbed the bag of dog food in my hands and picked up the rope in my mouth.

Time to start making trips back.