[Abandoned] The Dragon That Is Most Certainly Not a Prince

In Which A Friendship Begins

She's waiting at the lake when I go down to hunt. A little campfire tells me she's been here, waiting. There's a couple of freshly-killed deer off the side, and she points at them for me. I use my wings to help block what I know is messy eating, and she turns away. Once I've licked the blood from my snout she sits down on a log that used to be a tree before I started galumphing around. I can see the marks in the bark from where my scales had knocked into it, and then the claw marks where I had pushed off of it mistakenly to take off. I lay down on the other side of the fire, dipping the tip of my tail into the lake.

"If you don't want anyone to find you, why are you in a cave on a mountain barely two day's travel from your parents?" she finally asks, poking at the fire she started a few moments ago.

Shrugging causes a tree on my left to groan, so I shift a little further away from the forest. "For one, I didn't know how far I could fly before I exhausted myself. Two, I'm not sure where else I could go regardless."

"Why don't you go back? Everyone's talking about how the prince had lost his mind when he was cursed, and flew away to become one of those nuisance dragons we're always hearing about. How as soon as the cure was brought up he just flew off and didn't say anything about it." She sticks a pot over the fire, boiling water.

I glance up at the mountain, at the sky where the stars are beginning to appear from the darkness. "They were going to force me to take the cure. Honestly, I don't really want to be a human, even though I have more to do then."

"What do you do now, then? Take lots of naps?" she asks, putting small cubes of meat into her water. So she's cooking something. What?

"Yes, actually. Terribly boring. It's better than sitting through meetings with lords and captains that seem to only want to see who can waste more of my time, though. What are you doing?"

"Making a stew. Have you never cooked?"

"I was served by a cook from the East, and now I eat my food raw."

"You have a point. Yes, I'm cooking a stew of deer meat and a few vegetables I acquired from the village."

"I see."

I watch her cook, and then I watch her eat. She has all of her supplies in a small bag on the ground next to her, and as she pulls one thing after another out of the bag, I have to watch in awe as she even pulls out a bow and quiver of arrows from the bag. "Is that magic?"

"I'm an adventurer. We all have enchanted bags to hold what we need. It's incredibly useful. Speaking of, well, adventuring, would you perhaps like to come along? You wouldn't be able to go into towns with me, but maybe you'd like to see more of the world instead of moping about in that cave of yours."

Remembering her sword, and her frantic waving of the weapon, I feel as though she'll need more protection than companionship. "Have you ever actually fought anyone with a sword? Your swordsmanship is terrible."

"Well, maybe it's because I was never taught how to fight a dragon. What are you supposed to do when faced with a dragon?" she asks haughtily, turning partially so she can put her things away, the bow and quiver over her shoulder and waiting patiently on her back. That had been what she'd used to down the deer.

Shrugging, I point at my throat. "This is rather soft. Perhaps you stand your ground and don't wave a sword around as if you were a child with a wooden pole for a sword. Wait for the dragon to strike, then duck and stab."

"You... thought about this, haven't you?" She seems a little shocked that I would tell her this.

"I was a human prince once. Princes dream of slaying dragons, and speak often to knights that have. I took my swordplay lessons from one such knight, and he would tell me all about how he won his late wife from a dragon's clutches." Without mentioning the fact that he had been a bit addled and everyone was sure his wife, one of my former nannies, had never met a dragon.

"Well, I suppose you would know, O Prince Arthur Pennwinn the Dragon." Her muttering seems a bit upset, but I don't know why. "Are you going to accompany me, though? I'm going to head out and go to the neighboring kingdoms to see if I can't find someone to hire me."

Neighboring kingdoms. I might as well. There isn't anything here for me, anyways, except that cave and a cure that I really don't want to take until I get tired of the power and freedom this form gives me. Actually, no, I've gotten tired of the majesty of the whole thing, already. I want to experience the rush of being a dragon, not just pretending to be one while sitting around a cave in a mountain and thinking about the dinners I'm missing at home. "Sure. I'll join you. Maybe I'll let you ride me, sometime," I tell her, watching as she climbs into a bedroll, similar to ones I would use on hunting trips that ended up taking a little longer than we thought they would. Thinking back on it, I haven't really seen cooking, in my life. We would always eat hard biscuits and jerky on those hunting trips, and I wasn't allowed in the kitchens. Maybe this adventurer can teach me things. "Can I have your name, now?"

"Bellwyn. Just Bellwyn. My parents abandoned me as a child and I took up the role of adventurer and quester when I was six. I don't suppose you would like to introduce yourself to me, Your Highness?" she asks, slightly muffled between her blankets. She sounds a bit cynical. I like that. Gwendolyn was never cynical, not really.

"Well, Bellwyn, you may call me Arthur, though I doubt anyone would believe you if you told them that was my name."

"Whadda we call ya, then?" she mumbles, probably already almost asleep.

I think back on the stories of dragons I'd heard throughout my life. Dragons with elegant names such as Celantris and Velicera, or dragons with the names of things dark and foreboding, like Mangle and Plague, or dragons from silly little children's books with names like Tinkle and Bluebell (those dragons were never males, and I would never respond to Tinkle ever in my life). "Perhaps you should think of a name. It seems it would be a little self-centered to name myself."

"Yeah. Alright. Don't sleep until noon, Arthur."

"I never have," I tell her, laying down on the ground, curling up tightly to take up less space and probably just look like a large boulder that appeared from nowhere.