“Mommy! Mommy! Look at this shell I found!”
‘Mommy’ opened her eyes and lifted her head, scanning the ground below for the source of the voice. When she located her daughter, she smiled, and craned her neck down so that her eyes were close enough to see the shell. She smiled, eyes sparkling with mirth, and blew a playful puff of smoke from her nose. The little girl giggled and coughed, before pocketing the shell, and climbing onto The Dragon’s arm. She had become proficient at climbing scales in the two years she had spent being raised by a Dragon.
Her daughter had been incredibly attached to her since the day they met. The Dragon had been terrorizing a village that had started farming close to her cave, clearing land for livestock that The Dragon enjoyed snacking on, so she didn’t mind sharing land with the humans. They, however, did mind, and sent parties to kill her on more than one occasion, though she always managed to fight them off with ease. When she found out where the slaying parties were coming from, she decided to solve the problem at the source, and became a menace to the village for many generations. However, what she burnt down and destroyed, they rebuilt.
She began to respect the tenacity and the ‘never give up’ nature of the humans. She even grew to be fond of them as a species, and so stopped attacking the village and their animals, and she noticed that the number of slaying attempts also decreased, and when they did happen, it was usually one lone fool.
One rainy night, The Dragon noticed that there was a light at the mouth of her cave. Growling, she moved cautiously to the entrance, but to her surprise there was one lone girl holding a torch. She had no weapons, and was dressed in wet rags which she was wringing out with one hand while she sat down at the entrance of the cave. The Dragon had never had a human visitor that hadn’t tried to slay her before, so she was puzzled why this girl was making no move to attack. She watched her for a little longer, before retreating back into the cave and curling up to sleep, feeling fairly safe, and sure that the human would leave.
She awoke, and immediately felt something pressing against her back. She craned her long neck round to identify this strange feeling. It was the little human from the night, sleeping soundly, propped up against her back. There was no sign of the torch. The Dragon growled, and nudged her awake. The girl, opened her eyes, and as soon as her brain registered what she was seeing, she screamed and retreated until she backed into a wall.
The Dragon didn’t try to kill or eat the little girl, though. She was far more curious than she was hungry. She just stayed where she was and observed the girl. The girl, after a very tense five minutes of no movement, gathered up the courage to get to her feet, and spoke.
“I’m sorry that I, uh, slept in your cave, but they kicked me out of the village for stealing. Could I stay here? It’s dry and warm in here, and I don’t have anywhere else to go. Also, my torch went out.”
The Dragon could not understand human speech, but lowered her head to the ground and relaxed, watching the human intently, greatly interested and amused by the sounds it made. The little girl, getting no answer but sensing the Dragon’s relaxation and seeing in its eyes that it wasn’t angry, took that for a yes. She smiled, and sat down against the back of the wall.
“I’m Agnes, by the way. I’ve heard of you but nobody believes you exist anymore. You haven’t been seen in a hundred years. You must be really old!”
The Dragon snorted. Something about the noises she had just heard had agitated her in a way she didn’t truly understand.
“Oh. Sorry…” the little girl stammered nervously. “I’ll just stay over here and be quiet.”
The Dragon watched the little girl stop making those sounds, and understood that she had stopped because of her own show of annoyance. She felt sad now, and missed the noises. Despite having no concept of guilt or regret, these were in fact what she was feeling right now. She moved her head closer to the little girl, and brushed her nose against the girl’s face delicately in the only way she knew to show affection.
The girl was startled, by this, but then smiled, and hugged the Dragon’s neck. Shows of affection differ from species to species and culture to culture, but they can never been mistaken, and the Dragon, content, went back to sleep. The little girl just watched her for a while, before noticing how hungry she was and heading out of the cave to try and acquire some food.
She climbed and clambered her way barefoot up the rocky terrain, before finding a stream teeming with fish. After an hour of trying to catch one with her bare hands, she eventually managed to catch one. She impaled it on a branch of a nearby dying tree, and used some other pieces of said tree to start a small fire, which she cooked the fish on. However, she was so engrossed in this that she hadn’t noticed the large mountain lion stalking this easy and helpless prey.
The Dragon woke up soon after, and immediately looked around for the little human. Noticing that it had left, she felt a deep sadness such as she had never felt before. Dragons do not know or practice the concept of mourning, however, and it was quickly out of the cave, soaring through the skies looking for prey to breakfast with.
She heard a scream, which it would have usually ignored as the sound of nature taking its course below her, but she remembered this scream. It was the scream of the little human, and screams usually meant that two creatures were in an encounter that would end badly for one of them. She soared with all her haste towards the source of the worrying sound.
The little girl was staring death itself in the face, in the form of a large, hungry lion slowly and menacingly padding its way towards her, secure in the knowledge that this little human was no threat. Just as it was about to pounce, however, the Dragon roared, and swooped in before the lion could flee, taking it down with her large, sharp claws, and immediately beginning to feast on it before it was dead.
The little girl did not look away, but ate her fish as the Dragon at her lion. Seeing how small the human’s meal was, the Dragon nudged a chunk of raw, bloody meat over to her. The girl beamed with happiness, and held the rest of her fish up to the Dragon’s mouth. The Dragon found humor in this exchange, and ate the fish from the stick the girl was holding up. She then skewered the meat and started to cook it while the Dragon continued its feast.
After they had both eaten, the human girl climbed onto the Dragon’s back, and she flew them back to the cave. From then on, the Dragon always physically barred the human from leaving the cave by herself, partly because the Dragon didn’t want her to leave for good, and partly to protect her. However, she would always let the girl climb onto her back whenever she left the cave, and they would share whatever the Dragon hunted.
After several weeks of this living arrangement, the little girl started to address the Dragon as Mommy. The Dragon didn’t mind this at all.
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