Sometimes, I do things. Other times, things happen, and I pretend I know what's going on.

  "This... is a playground!"

  One thing that I noticed was that kids had no place to play in. No place where they could be safe, cared for, easily found and more importantly, where they could get rid of their excess energy. Now, normally, they didn't have a lot of that last one, but as the humans started to outstrip my ability to recall modern technology and started making their own, kids no longer needed to work.

  That, actually, was one of the things I was aiming at. Education was integral to development and progress as a society, and in order for people to have time for education, speeding up work was obligatory. With just improvement of tools and my own help, I managed to push the eight hour work week.

  This had more purposes to it than just being familiar to me, free time is paramount and incredibly important.

  After all, if they're busy just working to subsist, they won't be able to invent all sorts of fun stuff that I don't know how to recreate using my powers. It'll take years but I WILL get these people to develop videogames, and a controller big and durable enough to be used in my hands!

  And what was I doing?

  "Great One?"

  Oh right, the playground.

  I looked down at me. The small plaza I had converted into a playground wasn't big enough to contain me, but I could curl my tail around my waist and raise it some, furl my wings and stand on two legs. I was definitely not built for bipedal motion, but I could do it. Left my front legs, arms, whatever, feeling very awkward though.

  "Yes, the playground," I said, nodding to myself, as I regarded Castile, of my Kobolds, perhaps the one most well suited to handling children, on the basis that she had eight. When, exactly, she found time to raise eight adoptive children was anybody's guess, but they were working on being ready to become Kobolds themselves.

  She gestured at the big slide, I made it taller than most, I made sure that it was made out of very durable steel coated with rust-resistant green paint, about two meters in height at the top, curving at the nearly fifty centimeter mark, to bleed off speed, banking to a slow fall into a sandpit.

  "Castile please ride the slide to demonstrate its use," I gestured towards the slide, pointing at it with the tip of my tail, "just climb the ladder there, sit on the top and push yourself forward, then slide down along its length."

  She was a little bit too tall and heavy to use it normally, it was designed for kids after all, but just about narrow enough thanks to me designing it with fat kids in mind, some day we'll have enough food security for people to be fat- and I'm getting distracted.

  The Lizard-like kobold did as I instructed, tucking her tail in as she slid down the slide.

  The elders let out oohs and aahs as they witnessed the simple, yet fun, slide at work, and within a scant few seconds, Castile hit the ground. "Did I do it right?"

  "Excellent," I said, "and now, we shall display the swingset," I said, gesturing with my tail towards the swingset, which was a set of four swings. The design was simple, three support rods on each side anchored to the ground and meeting at a point in the middle, then a long metal rod in the middle with the attachment points for the swings' cables, separated in the middle by a pair of support rods.

  Simple, clean, efficient design.

  "How do I do this?" Castile asked, as she pushed first her tail past the cushioned leather seat of the swing and then plopped her butt on it.

  "Grab the cables," I gestured the two colorful cables supporting the swing, I made sure to coat them in a plastic-like substance to make them less abrasive, "and then while pulling back on the cable with your hands, swing your legs forward to push yourself forward, then when you're swinging back, tuck your legs in and push forward with your hands while pulling your hips back!" I instructed.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  Through all of that, I was trying to make gestures with my hands as if to show her what to do, but it was really hard to explain considering the sheer size difference.

  "Is it like this..?" she muttered, as she began trying to follow my instructions, slowly but surely starting to get the, heh, swing of it. "Oh, I think I get it, so if I do it like this..."

  She swung her legs forward a little more strongly, imparting more momentum forward, then stretched out her tail and made herself more aerodynamic for the swing back, using it as a sort of cone. In short order, she was picking up speed.

  "Alright now don't go TOO fast or you'll-"

  Invariably, she swung too hard and managed to push herself parallel to the ground, causing the fall to be a bit more brusque and violent than normal.

  She didn't quite lose her grip, but it was clear she almost did, as she came back down.

  "W-Woah, that was- intense!" she cried, breathing a little heavily. "For a moment I felt like I was falling for real!"

  "It can be very exciting," I said, nodding to myself, "but dangerous too, this is why the swings and the immediate area around them will need to be taken care of so that it's always soft enough to absorb impacts, to prevent injuries."

  I had to figure out some way to do it. Of course I'm a Dragon so I could just... make a soft rubber floor, but I wanted them to be able to recreate a playground on their own so that they could expand on the concept and make their own playgrounds for their children later on in life without my help.

  "That is enough, the swings have been sufficiently demonstrated," I said.

  The elders seemed keen on trying them out, but I put my foot down, moving them along, as I pointed them towards more and more games, I showed them the monkey bars, I showed them a jungle gym, and I even showed them how adults could enjoy the playground as well as use it to get their exercise.

  Which, mind you, was also something I had to explain. Most people got and understood training for combat. There was no realistic means for the tribe to have a standing army, the Dragonguard was only possible with a lot of sacrifice, and even the law enforcement and keepers of the peace basically had other jobs that they did when they weren't needed.

  Working out was mostly a foreign concept, but one that they could be taught about. For both health and appearance benefits. My Kobolds, of course, didn't need it, I made sure they would always be in peak health no matter what, but the humans would.

  Castile really tried her best to show off the workout equipment, though it was simply too easy for her to do pullups, to use the bars and the rings to swing her body around and lift the weights I had prepared, but the humans would find them a lot more challenging.

  "So now that I've shown you all this, can you work on spreading the use of the playground? I would rather have the children playing and exercising in playgrounds than working hard or physically challenging jobs if and at all possible," I said.

  "Elder Fairhair IV, you're the one with the largest cohort of children," the youngest of the elders, at least I think since he's the only one who still has black in his hair, "what do you make of this?"

  "Ah, young one, we do not question the Dragon, we do what he says and figure things out as we do," he said, his voice sounding amused. "The Dragon's Wisdom is strange but effective."

  Sometimes being revered was useful. "Alright, if there's any other questions, come up with them at the next meeting and I may address them then, I must now depart."

  "If I may be so bold," the eldest of the elders, the very same Fairhair, whose hair was more silver than white, stepped towards me, "may I request one thing?"

  "Shoot," I said. "I mean, ask away," I rephrased, wondering what the translation might've been considering his face when I said that.

  "Certainly, Great One!" he cleared his throat, "the slide - may we request an even bigger one for the adults? It looks really fun but a bit small."

  "You know what, you got it," I said, shooting a zappy beam from my tail, landing it near the first slide I built, and raising the earth, shifting it and turning the dirt and soil and the minerals within into what I wanted, shaping it, three... three and a half meters tall, a bit of a harsher incline, wider and with a more banked and pronounced turn at the end to bleed off the speed. "That should do. And now, I must go."

  I pushed myself up into the air, unfurled my wings, and then I flew away.

  Now, you might be wondering, what was I going to do that was so important?

  Well.

  The turtle interrupted me last time, but, I have business left incomplete.

  This time, we're going to a place down south, where there are no mountains for giant turtles to hide around. We're going to finish our date properly this time, and who knows, maybe we'll even succeed at making another dragon this time.

  I'm still not sure if I'm ready to be a dad but... well, won't know until I try.

  And besides, I have Kobolds now, and soon, I'll have even more Kobolds, worst case scenario I can always rely on human wisdom and inventiveness to get me out of the mess I'm about to create.

  Right?