Time for another excerpt from my work in progress:

I finally got it mostly right.

“A chicken?”

I admired my handiwork. “A chicken,” I agreed with a firm nod.

Pi tilted her head as she peered down at it. “Not… bad.”

I was mildly offended. “Not bad? It’s a chicken. You recognized it as a chicken. You could pluck and cook it, this illusory chicken is so good.”

Pi nodded slowly. “Evan, are chickens in San Antonio shaped like watermelons?”

I examined my fowl creation with a critical eye. It wasn’t melon-shaped, not really. Okay, well, maybe from a certain angle. I mean, chickens were kind of round anyway, right? Roundish with legs and wings tacked on…

Well, dog doo. I picked up my feathered basketball and held it aloft. “I dub thee melocken.”

“What?”

“Chickelon?”

“Are you losing your mind?”

“No, I’m losing my rind.” I raised an eyebrow at the dragon.

She rolled her eyes. “Hey, are you holding that picture?” asked Pi.

I held up the melocken. “Yes?”

The dragon poked at it with a claw. Because it amused me, I cause the melocken to squawk.

“It’s solid,” she pointed out.

“Yes. You told me to try to make the image as solid as possible. You said that if people could see through it would be bad.”

“It shouldn’t… but it…” Pi poked melocken again. “How come I can touch your pictures.”

I shrugged, “because?”

Pi called up an image of a sheep then waved a claw through it. “See. Can’t touch this. But I can touch yours. Just how solid is it?”

“I don’t know. Hammer time?”

Pi stuck her claw into the Melocken. It popped like a balloon, covering me with feathers.

She giggled like a little girl.

I blew the feathers off my mouth and narrowed my eyes at the dragon. “Just so you know, this means war.” I made a popping noise with my mouth.

Feathers exploded into being right in front of the dragon, covering her from head to scaly paw in downy white.

“Ah!” she squeaked. “Oh, you’re gonna regret that. Mess with the dragon, get the feathers.”

Poof! Poof! Poof! Three white explosions rained feathers in a ten-foot radius. They couldn’t touch me, but that didn’t matter, the gauntlet had been thrown.

It was on. I shot finger guns at Pi as she raced around the room trying to avoid my feather bombs. The pony-sized dragon sent waves of feathers at me and even managed to breathe a cloud of plumage at me when she got close.

“What’s going on up here?” Gemma appeared in the doorway with a confused look and wearing an apron that said, “License to grill.”

For several heartbeats, Pi and I froze. Tufts of down drifted lazily to the feather-covered ground.

“Ah,” I held up a finger, then pointed it at the troll. Pop!

Gemma grabbed a handful of feathers and chased after me and it was on again.