Page 47 of Claimed by the Savage Dragons

He goes over to the gleaming silver box and opens the door. There’s a light inside and my eyes widen.

‘Is that a fridge?’

He turns and regards me with amusement. ‘Never seen one?’

I snort. ‘Of course I have. Just never one that actually works.’

I peer inside, seeing glass bottles of juice and what looks like milk as well as covered bowls and earthenware containers.

‘How do you…have all this?’ I ask, unable to keep the awe from my voice. ‘I thought most of the old world technology was gone.’

‘Not for us.’ He picks up a bowl and looks inside. ‘We have knowledge from that time so we can keep things working, make new if we need to. Like this dam. Others like it. It means we have power. That along with various trade routes means we can live not all that differently from how we did pre-Fall.’

He puts the bowl in another little box on the counter that I recognize as a microwave, only because my rich friend’s family kept one in the community center that was powered off some old solar panels.

It whirs to life, and I watch the bowl going around in a circle inside it.

Brax grabs some bread out of a wooden box and cuts a few slices, lathering them with butter.

The microwave pings and he takes the bowl out, giving it a stir and pouring it into two smaller bowls.

He puts it in front of me with a spoon and some of the bread.

‘What is it?’

‘Just chicken soup.’

‘This is all so surreal,’ I mutter as I stare at it, but I take up the spoon and I eat, tearing off chunks of the bread to dip.

Brax does the same, and when we’re finished, he washes the dishes in the sink and puts them on the drying rack before turning to me.

‘Tor won’t be quick. This is the first time he’s gone out like this for a long time.’

He doesn’t move, just watches me for long enough that I start to feel awkward.

Then, he turns on his heel and leaves the room. ‘Come on,’ he calls.

I follow him quickly, down a flight of stairs to a large room.

I gasp when I see what it is. Books line shelf after shelf. Some are huge, and others look like novels.

‘Can you read?’ he asks.

I nod absently.

‘Wow,’ I breathe, taking one off the nearest shelf and flipping through it.

He smirks. ‘Never seen working books before either?’

I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Funny. Of course I’ve seen books before. We had a small library in my town, but never so many and a lot of them were falling apart. These are all in much better condition. My mom…’

I shake my head at myself, wondering why I’d assume a creature like him would care about anything a lowly human would have to say, but he swings back to look at me with an interested expression on his face.

‘Go on,’ he urges.

‘I…I was just going to say that my mother told me stories of the place where she grew up. It was an old city, she said. Learning was a big deal there and this just reminded me of how she described all the books. So many that they had to have a system to keep track of them all.’

‘An old city?’ he asks with mild interest.