The dragon child

Bicot and the Graoulle

Author's note: 5 or 10 years ago, it didn't matter, it happened at the same time, the exact date didn't reach us, the dating being subject to many debates on the very date of Christ's birth to set the year zero.

Metz, a city not too far from the Ostrogoth border as a dragon flies, was called Mettix at the time

The population was slowly recovering from the destruction caused by the Huns who had destroyed everything. Villas, wheat granaries, the Roman fortress and the ramparts were on the ground, the amphitheatre. Everything was in ruins. The libraries had been ransacked first, as if a beast had rushed into them and taken everything inside. Probably Huns spies preparing the invasion and ransacking maps and command centers....

Located in Francia and being a strategic point, the city rose thanks to the intervention of the all-powerful and rich bishops from Rome and the peasants became Christianized en masse. The faith that could fill the stomachs at that time... the choice was quickly made!

Life was austere and only the nobles, merchants freed from serfdom and monks had access to writing.

Peasants and farmers belonged to the Lord's land and were only different from slaves by name and the terrible military galleys.

The Bicot family had a typical small cottage made of stacked shale stones, a cob roof and a few farm animals that allowed the family to barely get by.

War taxes and duties kept ravaging peasants to such an extent that the elderly quickly died of disease due to malnutrition and local epidemics. Children were then the only wealth of a family and knowing how to read was a grail for them, it was the promise of a servant's work for a lord and an assurance for the family of the hope of a better life.

Books were considered divine works and treasures, only by ink and without counting illuminations and various gildings. Some even had gems embedded in the cover.

To have one's name or a reference in a book was the way to immortality because the books represented timeless power, the power of the church, the holder of history, philosophy and medicine.

Books were the prerogative of nobles and kings.

Mica and Bica Bicot were brothers and sisters and were 4 years old. They loved to play by the creek with Nounet, their farm dog who protected them from potential predators. His stature had already driven wolves to flight, protected livestock and saved children from a forest bear. Small, Trappu, not dangerous to an adult, but children would have no chance.

In Mettix, local lords and their henchmen ruled their lands like any mafia clan nowadays.

Extortion, blackmail and conspiracies to steal other people's property were their favourite sport when they were not hunting or waging war.

What was funny was that in the war they were always on the front line and the next moment back in position, already discussing the next battle.

On that day, wolves attacked the pastures in groups and the dogs were requisitioned by the lord for the beatings. The children were tired of being locked up and fled with several from the village.

The wolves, very clever, did not risk a direct confrontation with the hunters and the current hunt, which was in itself a pretext for hunting and, rather than emptying the game reserves on the Lord's land, it was the excuse to take from the farmers, who had nothing to say...

4 children, equipped with sticks, ran on a path along a small river but whose inhabitants feared flash floods.

Many children drowned in it but the violence inflicted on children and the right to cook that became with the passage of time an unpunished scourge and often the victims of kidnapping or rape ended up in the river, drowned by the floods, devoured by the wolves or even better, by a dragon! The royal apology.... This vicious cycle lasted until today.