The first time you can’t answer the question, you are already within the Great Dragon.

Any bad decisions today? Mindy’s text reads.

Around you, the Great Dragon’s pistons squeal, stutter, while the crew’s stressed voices echo above and below you. And Ari’s already shoving coveralls into your arms while striding forward and you’re hurrying after them, ducking under pipes and beams, the smell of grease and burnt plastic all-consuming.

You’re tempted to text back “Nope” and deal with the lie later. But you’re moving, everything’s moving and you were only supposed to be walking home from your admin job when you saw this magnificent Dragon two blocks over and ran to catch up. You swore, time and again, not to do anything reckless, impulsive, ill-conceived, hadn’t you seen what happened to your older siblings, aren’t you the practical child, the responsible one, the youngest yet the wisest?

And still, you ran alongside the ever-moving Dragon, carrying nothing but an oversized tote bag with lunch’s leftovers and rarely used lip balms, grabbed onto one of its massive legs and called up “Need some help?” Before you could worry about the consequences, the fall, you were climbing, you were being pulled through a hatch in the Dragon’s glistening haunches, clasped on the shoulder by a willowy, disheveled, greased-splattered person who was shouting over the chaos of the Dragon’s inner workings that the crew could always use an extra hand.

“I’m Ari Activist,” they shout. “What’s your name?”

“Melody Misadventure!”

“Oh,” they say. “Well, that explains a lot.”

Your fingers hover over the phone as you debate your answer. Weigh the truth.

“New girl! Help here!” Ari shouts from above.

Ask me tmrrw. You text back before you put the phone on airplane mode, yank on the coveralls, and are carried away.

• • • •

The second time you can’t answer the question isn’t the second time Mindy asks it. But it’s the first time in the month of being within the Dragon that you have the space to consider it.

Mindy’s snubbed messages are queued up like your many siblings at mealtimes.

You need to answer me, Melody. It’s been twenty-nine days. Have you avoided mishap today? is the youngest text.

“Who the hell’s that?” Ari asks, glancing at your screen, as you sit shoulder to shoulder scarfing down an energy bar during a ten-minute lull.

“No one,” you reply, sliding the phone away before Ari can get a good look.

But your fingers are too sore and grease-chapped to lie. It was a week of harrowing fourteen-hour shifts, navigating the Dragon through the narrow streets of V___, convinced at every turn you were going to miss a redirect and the Dragon’s great foot would come down on a young family staring in open-mouthed wonder instead of the cleared road. Within this new life, you’re always on, always going like the Great Dragon. This monstrous plaything of a rich and bored techwiz, abandoned when he realized how much work a perpetual motion machine was. A Dragon that cannot be stopped, cannot be rerouted from its stubborn path, only nudged and inched onto a less disastrous course by a worn-weary crew.

No mishaps you reply and neglect to mention the myriad of near misses, the dangerous razor wire tightrope you pace daily within this constructed beast. How you’ve lost the time and room to be mindful of your every decision, the opportunity to weigh the benefits against the potential disaster before choosing.

You switch off your phone before she can ask the next question.

You know what’s coming anyway.

• • • •

But in the meantime, you’re slowly resurfacing from the chaos of change, taking your inner monologue’s run-on sentences and distilling lists from them, giving it all a bit of shape. The ritual is comforting, like putting on old, familiar clothes, like rediscovering yourself in this new, strange life. You’re remembering information you don’t need immediately, too. Like—

1. 1. Ari joined the crew because they hated what these techwizards set in motion without thought of the consequences.
   2. Despite its magnificent exterior and expensive components, the Dragon’s innards are held together by spray-on rubber sealant and epoxy because no one has the time or the resources or the energy to fix it properly right now.
   3. Like Ari, everyone on the crew has a righteous reason for being here. (With names like Solomon Saint, Pallavi Progressive, and Ramona Reformer, you shouldn’t be surprised, but you still are.)
   4. The Dragon’s walls are thin. Sometimes, on calm nights, when the Dragon is traversing open fields and needs to be averted only occasionally, you hear muffled weeping from the other cabins. But in the morning you’re not brave enough to ask, and you’re too much of a coward to offer comfort in the moment.

You’re starting to watch the world outside your cubbyhole bedroom window, noticing its quirks as the Dragon stomps through. Like—

1. 1. The old matriarchs with their towering carts of semi-sentient plants and herbs, rolling their eyes at the passing Dragon.
   2. The delivery crews on gliders clustered like flocks of birds, perched for flight at an order’s notice. Who dart and weave fearlessly between the Dragon’s feet to shave seconds off their delivery times.
   3. Those who stop to watch the Dragon, wonder in their eyes, phones raised.
   4. Those who don’t.

There’s joy in noticing the little details that find you, in simply observing as the Dragon moves through the world and you move with it. It feels like waking up.

Except, you are just awake enough now to worry about what’s coming.

As you attempt to solder new copper fixtures in the Dragon’s fickle right foreleg, your old fears begin to gnaw at you again. Haunted by all the potential consequences you didn’t stop to consider before you ran after the Great Dragon. But you remind yourself you aren’t like—

1. Your brother, Malcom, who joined a troupe of clockwork acrobats.
2. Or your sister, Miriam, who decided to try her hand at kraken fishing.
3. Or Melina,
4. Marvel,
5. Moria,
6. Or Max.

All your siblings who left spectacularly and returned like a Misadventure, lucky if they had all their digits. Their glorious ascent never lasted long.

You promised you wouldn’t be like them.

And still, when you turn on your phone, there are no surprises. Mindy’s question is waiting:

Melody, if you are not responsible and safe, disaster will follow. What will you do then?

For Misadventures always come crashing down.

• • • •

The third time you can’t answer the question; the worst has already happened.

No recklessness today? No harm? lights up your screen like a sick joke.

You missed a redirect.

It’s been months and none of your shims, epoxy, spot welds, or retrofits have lasted in the Dragon’s right foreleg. You were in the knee, frantically trying to align a jammed gear train as the Dragon trampled through the streets of W___. Above you, the crew’s requests rang out, frantic and demanding, and you’d been among them long enough to know without knowing that the Dragon was on a collision course with something important.

But your previous repairs were splintering, the crews’ voices pitched higher, louder and you had no other ideas, no time to think, so on impulse you jammed your arm through the moving, discorded parts and pulled.

There was panic. Pain as the gears bit down on your arm. An instant where you thought it worked.

But then there was a scream, a wet muffled sound. Then a horrible moment of silence that was infinite.

Only later did you learn the Dragon had crushed a girl and her dog.

The knee moved, freeing your arm. The structure shifted and suddenly you were falling

falling

falling

only to be caught midway down by your coverall snagging on a jutting pipe.

But it was a crash all the same.

“Nothing broken and hey, you didn’t lose a limb,” Ari reassures you, inspecting the damage as you curl up on your narrow bed. You’re not comforted. Your arm is a swollen and bruised mess, but your heart is worse.

Not all Misadventures are lucky enough to return with only severed fingers. You knew this, you promised yourself you’d be different, more mindful and calculating than your siblings. But still you ran after the Dragon because you were bored of your admin job and tired of being afraid. As if you could be some Susie Success.

You don’t leave your tiny bedroom for one day.

Two.

You are both painfully aware of your tears and the Dragon’s thin walls, but don’t have enough willpower to stop yourself. You pack your bags. Plan to disembark at the next city.

On the third day, you find a note:

We’ve all screwed up.
We’ve all been too slow or not clever enough for the Dragon.
Things would be so much worse without you, Melody.

It’s signed by everyone on the crew.

It’s not enough to convince you to unpack, but you emerge from your room, dehydrated and eyes red-rimmed, and have a late night meal with your crewmates. You’re in awe of their sympathy and compassion in the wake of your disaster. They try to make you laugh.

Your phone lights up. Any misfortunes today? Mindy texts.

“Who’s texting you in the middle of the night?” asks Ari and you show them your phone.

They go quiet for a moment as they scroll through your text history. “But why?”

“Because I didn’t want to be my namesake.” And you explain then how you downloaded Mindy to ask you these questions daily and keep you aware and pragmatic even if she was just a clever algorithm. Because you saw what happened to your siblings, how they didn’t think things through and then couldn’t face their coworkers or their friends or themselves. How your family’s every impulse always ended in disaster.

“I think I should go,” you say.

“I think you shouldn’t,” replies Ari.

“You’re courting misadventure. Literally,” you warn.

“Have you met this Dragon? This is a bigger disaster than anything we could make.”

You laugh at that. Then cry.

Because it’s true. It’s so true.

• • • •

Have you made the right decisions today, Melody? Mindy asks as the Great Dragon creaks and shifts around you. It’s been another long week of near calamities and every part of you aches and your nerves are shot. But your efforts helped mitigate some heedless destruction, which is a small thing in this giant beast, but a huge thing to the citizens of Z___ even with your mistakes and errors factored in.

Always, you text back.

Then you delete the Mindy Mindfulness app from your phone.