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

In Which He Gets a Name

She wakes up a few minutes after I do, and she scrambles about, eating a biscuit for breakfast and shoving her rolled-up bedroll back into her pack before kicking dirt over the fire pit and filling a canteen with water from the melted snow-stream. I settle for lapping up a good amount of water from the lake, watching her bustle around with just my eyes. Whatever she does, she does it with a purpose. Gwendolyn never walked like that.

"Well, I'm going to head south. Do you want to meander along with me or fly ahead, to the next mountain range?" Bellwyn asks, tying her long hair back with a length of cord, then patting my leg while I think. "You know where south is, right, Your Highness?"

Flicking the fins along my head in annoyance, I pull away from her touch. "Of course. That way," I tell her, gesturing with a wing. She nods grudgingly. Apparently she wanted to hold one up on me. "I'm not completely ignorant. Perhaps you should think of a name for a dragon that doesn't sound ridiculous or stuck-up, and I will catch you something for your dinner."

"Fine. It probably takes you less time to hunt than I do, anyways. I'll meet you at the next mountain range, but it's going to take me most of the day, just so you don't burn the forest down waiting for me," she informs me, already starting off through the trees even though the sun hasn't quite risen yet.

I follow along for a while, sliding between the trunks in a way that apparently surprises her. "Maybe I shall go sightseeing. The first time I've been outside of the castle walls with the freedom to roam in my life," I add, looking up at the sky that's just beginning to turn pink with the sunrise hidden behind the mountains above us.

She doesn't say anything, and I take wing at the next clearing she passes. Heading south, I can see where the mountain range on our side of the border ends, and the next range begins. Little rectangles and squares are the huge guardhouses that protect the borders, the buildings that I've only been in once. Flying up higher to avoid getting seen, I dip and weave through the tops of the mountains, up and down through clouds, spiraling through narrow passes between them. Out in the open of the small break between mountains for the Great River, I swoop down and snag a goat that had wandered too far into the open. Eating it on the wing, I search for a good place to settle down and wait for nightfall.

Perching on the peak of a mountain seems like too obvious of a place for a dragon to sit, surveying the land, so I curl myself further down the peak, burying my chin in the snow and watching the small rivulets of snow-water freeze as soon as it escapes my heated breath and body. Soon, I'm surrounded by a thin sheen of re-freezing ice, and I spot a small group of people on horses trotting up to one of the border bridges, where they meet another group of mounted soldiers. They chat, and then they're led to the other side of the bridge, and they disappear into one of the guardhouses. Their horses are led out to the pasture set aside for such a purpose, and I watch as they canter around, happy to be free of bridles and saddles.

It's extremely late when I see a lone figure scamper across the bridge closest to the mountains, and a single guard that looks confused when he doesn't see anyone where someone had just been there. She skids into the trees, and I lose sight of her beneath the canopy of leaves, and I decide it's time to slither down the mountain to meet her.

She almost screams when I stick my head out of the trees near her, but she covers her mouth and slaps herself for almost doing that. "Don't do that again, you great lug," she grumbles, walking forward. It isn't hard to see the clearing just ahead, and I curl up in the clearing to wait for her to catch up. Bellwyn unpacks, sets up her little campsite, and looks for something to sit on. I move a fallen tree from the edge of the clearing and settle it in the dirt next to her fire, where she can sit on it and still be close enough to be warmed by the flames. I receive no thanks.

"Did you think of a name?" I ask her, finally, after she had finished her supper and had started cleaning up her cooking.

The question stops her for a moment, and I turn my head to the side to watch her with a single eye. "Have you heard of the story of the wars far in the North, fought on the backs of dragons? My hometown was caught in the midst of some of the more southern skirmishes, and our lives had been saved by a couple of dragons. One of them was nearly as green as you are, but he was more green than black." I look back at my scales, and yes, they are a green so dark they look black, where the firelight isn't shining directly on them. "We called him the Guardian, but his name, the one we have engraved on the plaque of all our heroes, our saviors, is Verdant. Is that a good name?"

Verdant. It doesn't sound very flashy, and I doubt many people would know of the dragon named Verdant so far to the south of where the wars actually happened, so I nod. "I believe so. As long as nobody will start to ask if I'm the same Verdant that saved your town."

She shrugs as she ties closed her bag, spreading out her bedroll. "They shouldn't. I've heard of six different Malevolence dragons that did a load of things that contradicted each other. Celantris? I've heard tell of at least twenty. Dragons apparently think of names the same way humans do, naming their... hatchlings? after dragons they admired."

"That makes sense. Bellwyn, I am Verdant the Dragon, nothing more and nothing less," I tell her, rearranging myself so that I'm curled up on the other end of the fire from her, closer to the trees, this time. "Introduce me as such."

"Very well, Verdant the Not-Cursed-Human-Prince Dragon. A young dragon companion for a young questing companion. Fitting, isn't it?" she asks, rolling over to face the stump, the fire warming her back, now. She'll roll over a few more times in the night, to alternate the heating of the fire between her back and her front, even when the fire grows low and cools.

"Suppose so. Do you think my fiancee still loves me, after I abandoned her to run off and be a dragon?" I ask, hoping I catch Bellwyn before she falls asleep, or gets too drowsy in preparation to sleep.

She doesn't answer for long enough that I assume she's fallen asleep, but she hasn't. "I don't think so. From what I've heard she stormed out of the castle to her coach in an anger nobody had ever seen her in. You probably lost your only chance at romance, O Great Prince."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I mutter, burying my nose under wing and tail, hiding from the world.