warcode | (no subject)

The letter came by courier dragon, as did all their post these days with every scrap of metal and rubber and fuel being sent to the war effort and none to spare for things like mail delivery trucks. For once it wasn't the scarred retired veteran that usually did their route, his captain's grandson clinging to the harness. This beast was young and not yet full grown and her captain was an unsmiling young man in perfect pressed uniform, cap foregone by necessity and slightly windblown blond hair tucked into the straps of the goggles he'd pushed up to his forehead. He was younger than Bucky and slender as a girl, and didn't look at all surprised when Bucky came out to meet him on the stoop rather than wait for the letter to be put into his box. There were only two kinds of letters that merited this sort of delivery.

"James Barnes?"

He thought about denying it, given that no one but his ma called him that, but the aviator didn't wait for an answer before holding out the letter bluntly like he was impatient to move on, or perhaps just interested in not having a scene in a public street. There were eyes on them from the windows above and a few loiterers on the street had stopped to stare, as startled by the sight of a military dragon in their neighborhood as they would have been by a steamcar pulling up to the curb. Even in the Buroughs, specifically built to cater to the shipping industry and the extensive dragon coverts that had been established since colonization to protect it, there was still a lingering attitude that dragons were not civilized creatures and could not be trusted in the midst of so many people.

It wasn't untrue. Bucky had learned that the hard way when he'd taken up work at the docks, loading and unloading the beasts ferrying cargo for double or triple the money.

The courier was in fact shifting anxiously on her feet and lashing her tail a bit, although careful not to gouge at the street with her claws, and she snorted when a stray dog began barking at her. Her captain glanced quickly at her and left the letter within Bucky's unwilling grip, forcing him to take it more firmly or see it dropped on the ground. It was deceptively innocent looking, in brown paper and stamped neatly with the wax sigil of the Air Force. Thin, for the single sheet inside, and yet the leather and canvas satchels lashed to the courier dragon's harness bulged. The Air Draft had come at last.

The cry went up when Bucky was in the middle of untying the last knot on the crate he was meant to heave loose. His fingers slipped; the wooden box shifted towards him as the dragon whose harness he was clinging to jerked up in surprise at the noise, wings half-mantling. Only the quick reflexes of the crew on the other side kept the thing from slipping entirely and crashing to the ground with Bucky beneath it, and a hail of angry French came at him from over the top, but Bucky wasn't listening, eyes locked on the sudden scattering of men and dragons further up the length of the harbor. There were people running towards and away from the center of the disturbance, pushing each other aside and in one case, seizing a shoulder and throwing a punch that knocked the hapless victim sprawling, and Bucky was stripping loose of his harness before the crew on the French dragon he'd been unloading took up the alarm themselves, yelling in pidgin English and their own language and all but shoving off the dock crew workers, two words repeated over and over in their faces.

'She rises, she rises.'

He dropped the last six feet and hit the ground running, fear and adrenaline keeping him from feeling the impact. There were men trying to organize a retreat, two of his supervisors among them, and someone caught at his shoulder as he pushed past the rushing bodies, yelling his name, but he shrugged the hand off and plowed through. The dragons along the harbor were well and truly agitated now, roaring aloud and rearing up on their hind legs to beat at the air with their wings, throwing off cargo netting that hadn't already been unhooked and clawing furrows into the concrete.