The interrogation room was a relatively drab affair. Far from what movies and TV imply, with metal furniture, breeze-block walls and a suspicious mirror on one side, it was actually a relatively normal office room that wouldn't seem out of place in any building up or down the country. Relatively small, a wooden table, four padded chairs that had clearly seen better days and a sad-looking fern in one corner. I'd been waiting here for approximately ten minutes now, unsure if this was an intentional delay to make me "stew" or just that the police genuinely were unsure of how to deal with me. I was pretty certain I'd not committed any crimes, but given that I was over 800 years old this was certainly a possibility.

I looked at my watch - 1pm and I'd not eaten since breakfast. Instinctively I reached for my phone to wile away a few minutes, but remembered that it had been confiscated at the front desk when they brought me in.

I should have been more careful really, to let myself get caught again like this.

My story begins, as all good ones do, in the 12th century. Wales has always been a country strongly associated with dragons, and I was hatched somewhere in the Cambrians in Spring of 1191, according to the best estimates of my parents. I spent my formative years mostly hidden from public view - an easier feat back in those days, although an altogether more necessary one given the propensity of organised religion at the time to blame sightings of us for everything from female histrionics to the Black Death. It wasn't like the old days though, my grandparents would say, when dragons would be worshipped as protective guardians. Not that we were ever very good at it - a full-grown, bipedal dragon doesn't stand much taller than your average human, despite popular conceptions depicting us as almost saurian in nature.

Of course, we fairly quickly learn to present ourselves as human. It actually takes surprisingly little work, but I won't say it doesn't involve magic, in the same way that a 200lb reptilian creature being able to fly with a 2m wingspan needs more than a little supernatural help. By the time the Black Death rolled around in the middle of the 13th century I was happily walking amongst the people of England and Wales with the humans totally unaware of my true nature.

A major advantage of an extended lifespan is the investment opportunities. Compound interest is a powerful thing even in human lifespans, but over the centuries it can really add up. It's not really the case that dragons hoard gold so much as we sort of accumulate it naturally. It means that, by the time we hit a couple of hundred years old, we're comfortable enough in our environment that we can essentially do whatever we want. It was around the time of the Tudors that dragons in general decided "fuck that nonsense" to living in caves and started to live amongst the humans, getting in on the nascent "arts" that were becoming so popular as science replaced mysticism.

But we were always there in the background, financing the industrial revolution, the age of exploration, most of the major banks actually. I was too young to be involved in all of that, and a lot of it's regrettable but nobody ever claimed that dragons were good. We're self-serving though, not evil.

Over the next 500 years or so I'd seen most of what the world had to offer and was starting to think about settling down and having kids of my own, but instead I managed to get very caught up in the Manchester rave scene of the 1980s and 1990s and that had kind of gone on hold for a while - it's rather amazing what human narcotics can do to nonhuman biology - and now I found myself presenting as a young, nondescript male living in a grimy bedsit in Stockport. 

The door swung open and a police officer walked in, followed by an armed officer in full riot gear, to my surprise.

"Mr Davidson, please don't be alarmed by the armed support, he's here to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Please don't stand up, simply nod to confirm your acceptance."

I didn't have much choice but to agree to the officer's demands and nodded my head.

"Now Mr Davidson, I think you know why we've brought you in for questioning today, but would you like to say anything before we begin?" I'd still not said a word to the police since my arrest outside  Tesco this morning, making liberal use of my right to remain silent.

"Yes, I'd like to know what I'm being arrested for as is my right as a British citizen." I delivered my lines in a flat, unemotional monotone, hoping it projected an aura of calm and control.

"Mr Davidson, I don't believe you are a British citizen. Your drivers' license here lists date of birth as January 30th 1961, and yet we clearly do not have a 56-year-old man sitting in front of us. This ID is fake, Mr Davidson." Crap. I'd never thought to actually update it, or even properly change my appearance, I was still showing as the same young adult I'd been thirty years previously.

"Looking young isn't a crime," I hazarded.

"But ID fraud most definitely is, and this is most definitely a fake ID. While searching your property we found several similar licenses dating back to the early-20th century - just what sort of game do you think you're trying to pull here Mr Davidson?" Oh crap I didn't think they'd actually search my flat. "Are you aware of the recent sightings of unexplained flying objects in the Stockport area?". Shit. "Local kids have been calling them 'gliders', flying from the rooftops in the twilight."

"I've seen the pictures in the paper, yes." They were blurry night-shots taken on a smartphone camera, nothing that couldn't be faked, but of course I knew they were me. After a few years in the same place I'd been aching to stretch my wings and had perhaps been less than responsible in keeping it secret.

"Mr Davidson what the hell is going on?" the officer was clearly loosing his cool. I sat for a moment, staring blankly at him. I ran my hands through my hair, thinking of a suitable response.

"I think I'd like to speak to a lawyer please," I said, hesitantly. "I would also like to know what charges I am being brought up on, please, as nobody has been able to give me a straight answer."

"You're a dragon Mr Davidson, stop fucking playing dumb", the officer slammed the table with his palm and the armed guard pointed his rifle at me.

"That's absurd, dragons don't exist," I answered, looking at the floor and sweating bullets.

"Shoot him."

"What" came the response from both myself and the guard. "Sir this is a gross violation of protocol which could lead to serious discipline and even prison" came the voice from underneath the riot gear - I now realised the armed guard was a woman. "It's a violation of human right-"

"He doesn't have any human rights! YOU! SHOW YOURSELF!" The officer was standing and pointing at me. There was nothing on my person to suggest I was anything other than human, wearing off-white trainers, dark-coloured slacks and a button-up shirt.

"Bit dramatic, don't you think?" I said. I stood up, the guard's gun still very firmly trained on me. "Fine".

I should probably mention how I ended up arrested in the first place. Although actually I'd like to know the full story myself. I generally spend most of my time in a crappy little studio apartment with a laptop for company. The Internet has made hiding from public view incredibly easy, and I'm very glad I was able to fund its initial creation back in the 1970s. Of course, however, even dragons need food, and some days you just feel like going for a walk. I'd been something of the talk of the town for the last few weeks, with reports of "the Stockport Monster" drawing in tabloid newspapers from around the world. Two people had managed to snap blurry photographs of something flying in the twilight and apparently this was enough for a media circus. If I'm honest, there's a part of me that kind of was trying to get seen during my night flights, just for the thrill of it all.

What I wasn't counting on was anybody seeing me change. Now, the change isn't a complex process, and in fact it looks no different to the average person to someone changing the channel on a TV. One moment there's a dragon, the next there's a dragon pretending to be a human. Changing back in a darkened side-street after one of my flights, I was surprised by a group of rather drunk students. While they quickly turned the other way, it was clear that they'd seen everything.

With the knowledge that I really ought to leave relatively soon and assume a new identity, I had begun making preparations, but still needed to eat, and the morning of my arrest I found myself out of milk. Grabbing a handful of change off my counter, I'd made my way to the local store intending to do a bit of shopping before it got too busy. Sadly though, it turns out that Tesco doesn't accept florins, and store security quickly arraigned me while calling the police. How the fuck was I to know that six people reporting a dragon in the street would constitute some sort of local emergency necessitating a riot van?

I think the two officers were somewhat surprised. No, that's an understatement. As I said, the change isn't a complex one. There's no talon-growth, no rippling scales, no bursting out of my clothes or crackling bones - one moment there's a normal man standing in front of you, the next a seven-foot-tall blue dragon. It's always a relief to stop maintaining the facade, feeling like taking off a slightly-too-tight belt after a long day at work.

I sat back down. I noticed that the armed guard had lowered her gun - the power dynamics had shifted. I threaded my tail through the hole in the back of the chair - another feature I'm glad my people had had made standard on furniture - and waited patiently, clasping my hands together.

After regaining his composure somewhat the officer began with the formal questioning:

"What the fuck are you?!"

"I'm a dragon. Hello. I'm also much older than 56, and no, I'm not going to hurt you - I have nothing but respect and honour for the law enforcement in this fine ci-nah I'm joshing with you you guys fucking suck." Apparently still in shock somewhat and unable to process the diss, the officer continued.

"Dragons don't exist! This isn't possible! And even if you did you should be living in caves and breathing fire and stealing virgins!"

"Whoa, now those are some offensive stereotypes right there. I mean, I know you people probably don't have a sensitivity training for mythological beings, but c'mon, show some class man!"

"What are you?!"

"I already said, I'm a dragon. I'm 826 years old, I've been living as a human male in the North of England for the last few decades. Obviously dragons exist, I'm right here now."

The expression on the officer's face turned to fear. "Are you going to incinerate me now because I know about this?!"

"What? No! Look I already said I can't even breath fire, that's a ludicrous and harmful assumption." it occurred to me that, contrary to much police procedural work, this interview was not apparently being taped. "And furthermore, I don't live in a cave and I keep my money in the bank because I'm not a fucking savage."

"Dragons don't exist!"

"Well the thing is you or your superiors obviously gave enough credence to their existence to send an armed guard in here with you." 

This thought seemed to give pause to the officer's increasingly frantic demands. Why would his superiors send in an armed guard for an interview like this - it didn't make any sense. None of this did. Thoughts, swirling in his head:

"How are there dragons? How have we not known about this? Why do we even have armed guards for this? Why do I feel so tired?" and then, as though awaking from a dream, "Why am I lying in my bed when I should be at work?"

 He looked around his bedroom - of course, he was sick! God that was a weird dream. He shouldn't have stayed out drinking last night. Was he drinking last night? This wasn't going to reflect well on his performance review

"For fuck's sake mum did you have to point a gun at me?"

The officer was now slumped in his chair, the armed guard having removed her face mask and held it to his mouth, inducing sleep.

"Oh please it's not even loaded. You were going to get yourself found out and vivisected if I'd not snuck in here and blagged it to rescue you. Again." It was true - my mother had had to save me on a number of occasions in the past, although it had been a good few decades since the last incident. She removed her helmet, revealing her full head - she didn't look that much older than my human avatar, a fact belying her 1400+ lifespan. 

"It was seventy years ago, and it was Nazis last time, you can't still be mad at me for that!"

"You've got to take care of yourself. If I'd not seen your pictures in the paper I wouldn't even be here and you'd probably be on a slab at some military black-site. I worry about you!"

"I had it under control, I'd have been fine", I retorted.

"You could have killed the poor man!"

"I wasn't going to kill him, I was just...well I was..."

"Look we have to go now. Help me get him outside - he's going to wake up in a few hours thinking he spent last night on the lash and this was all a hallucination." I changed myself back to human form and grabbed the man's legs, why my mother took his arms.

"Bit cliché isn't it? Ending the whole thing on the 'it was all a dream' angle?"

"It's always worked in the past. Come on, let's get him home"

After hugging my mother goodbye, thanking her profusely and promising to come visit her more often, wherever it was she was living at the moment, I was left outside my flat once again, wondering where to go. Obviously I couldn't stay here any longer, not without substantially changing my appearance - and I'd grown rather fond of my face over the last three decades. Or perhaps I could spend some time away from humans, maybe another decade or so travelling in the Himalayas. You know, that actually didn't sound too bad - find some remote part of the world, get to know my draconic roots, y'know? Or I could just go and veg out on the sofa. Actually, that sounds pretty good right about now. Maybe I'll find myself later.