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“Oh boy, Walmart!” Qibli shouted excitedly as he entered. “There were legends about this place in scrolls long, long ago. I can’t believe that the queens put their power together to construct this place in the Sky Kingdom!”
“From what I heard, it makes a great palace to shop and have fun with friends!” Moon giggled.
“I just can’t believe I let you two drag me into this place,” Winter scoffed.
Qibli grabbed a cart from the array of shopping carts in the front of the store. The carts operated as if they were built for scavengers. To operate the cart, Qibli would have to use his front talons to push it around and walk on his back talons. It felt weird to do so, but all the other dragons in Walmart were doing so, so it wasn’t like it was weird or anything for him.
“So, what are you looking to buy?” Winter asked as the three dragons paraded food aisles.
“I was going to invite the Jade Winglet to Queen Thorn’s palace for a taco party,” Qibli said to the IceWing prince. “Thorn approves of the idea and asked me to get ingredients.”
“But why did you have to invite us to get ingredients for your taco party?”
“Because I want to make sure that I get the Jade Winglet’s favorite condiments for their tacos! Tell me, do you know the favorite condiments of the Jade Winglet? I’m getting tortillas, meat, and cheese.” Qibli found tortillas and grabbed them with one of his talons, placing them in the cart.
“I like tomatoes. I think Kinkajou likes hers plain with the meat and cheese. I would imagine Turtle feels the same. I don’t know about Peril and Umber though.”
“I think that Umber is fine with anything, but we may want to get lettuce as well in case he likes it,” Moon said as Qibli continued to push the cart forward.
The three were in the middle of an aisle when they heard sounds of fire crackling. “What’s that?” Qibli asked, leaving his cart with Winter and Moon as he investigated outside the aisle. There, he found Peril near a shopping cart, which was on fire. Her right front talon was up in the air, making her look terribly shocked. “Peril!” he shouted. “What happened?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have come here,” Peril sighed. Looking closer at Peril, Qibli realized that she was wearing fireproof sock-like things to cover her talons. “I tried pushing around the cart with my mouth and everything, but then it turns out the glove on my front right talon broke, and I’m trying not to step on the flooring right now to prevent destruction.” She looked at the cart. “As if I haven’t caused enough destruction already.”
Moon and Winter came over. Winter sighed. “Peril, I’ll get you out of here. Moon, Qibli, you can do what you want with her groceries.”
Qibli looked at Peril’s cart and tried to rescue her groceries, where she noticed she was buying a lot of meat-based products. “Hey, Peril,” Qibli said as Winter began to get her outside to fix her talons. “I can buy your groceries for you. Mind if I take them to my taco party, though?”
“You’re hosting a taco party?” Peril asked.
“Yeah, and you’re invited! Care to come? It’s going to be at Queen Thorn’s palace stronghold next week, and the entire Jade Winglet is invited.”
“Of course! Do you think I could just take a few of my groceries with me, though? You can take the rest to your taco party.”
“Yeah, sure,” Qibli said. As Winter was escorting Peril out of the store, a SkyWing manager came over.
“What the hell happened here?” the SkyWing manager asked, looking at the cart on fire.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It was an accident by my firescales friend. I’ll pay for the groceries within the cart, and the cart itself if needed.”
“Nah, that’s fine. You wanna know something a little odd?”
“What?” Moon asked.
“We’re actually in surplus of these carts. Queen Ruby was afraid that some dragons would steal the carts because dragons are weird nowadays, so she ordered a surplus of the carts to be made. By surplus, not like ten extra, more like thousands extra. So it’s fine. Just help me clean this up though.”
Moon looked to Qibli. “I’ll help clean up this mess. You pay for the groceries.”
“Sure thing,” Qibli said, taking the groceries they saved from Peril’s shopping cart and putting them in his to be taken to the front. He had to wait forever in line because there was only one cashier available despite the many others (where according to the SkyWing manager, they were actually that broken to the point where they were never going to be fixed) and he grabbed too much stuff in his cart that he wasn’t eligible to use the self-checkout.
The four dragons met outside. Qibli gave Peril back some of her groceries as they all laughed about what happened.
“Thanks for helping me out, Qibli,” Peril said. “Honestly, ever since I hatched, my life has been as organized as the Walmart five-dollar movie bin. I appreciate your help.”
“It’s not a problem,” Qibli said, smiling.
“I’ll see you guys next week for the taco party.” Peril took flight, holding groceries in her mouth. “Take care!” she said to them, muffled, as she flew off.
“That was a little unexpected,” Moon said.
Silence ensued temporarily as the three dragons didn’t know what to say to each other. Winter finally spoke up to break the silence. “So like, you guys wanna go to Dave and Busters or something?”
“YEAH, DAVE AND BUSTERS!” Qibli and Moon shouted at the same time.
Winter sighed, remembering the time Qibli accidentally broke the Dollar Tree toy capsule vending machines because he didn’t get the right one he wanted, thinking something similar may happen at Dave and Busters considering they were full of machines. “Here we go again.”