Promised to the Dragon King

Chapter 5

Quickly closing the makeshift door again. She put her head down on her front feet. Best to leave him alone until morning. On the other hand, it was his fault that she was awake, and she did have a load of questions…

And the books were next to his bed…

She opened the makeshift door a bit wider this time. If she could just grab a book with her one toe…

She stretched inside, trying not to let his walls come down around him. The books were right there.

If he was still alive…

She didn’t want to crush him. The gap was too small, and she couldn’t reach it, so she took the door away and tried again. Still, too far. Why did she build this? Why did she want to see the damn books in the first place?!

She took the piece of wall and planted it back in its place with a bit more force than she meant to. Still, there was silence from inside. He couldn’t be that deaf…

He had to be dead! She slowly took the roof off his house and looked at him. He looked pale. Not that she knew what colour humans should be, but weren’t they meant to be a bit more cream-ish or something.

He had a big nose for a human. He must have a good sense of smell, and no wonder he didn’t listen to her most of the time! He had such tiny ears that he probably didn’t hear her! He wasn’t dead…

He just couldn’t hear the noise! Pffft.

She almost dropped the roof down on his house, swiping the air in front of her at the fact that she thought he was dead, when he was only deaf. She didn’t know why she was so worried in the first place…

The book…

“Ugh.” She picked up the roof again, and tried to pick up the book with her other paw…

But her two claws didn’t fit, and she couldn’t grab it…

Why did she have to make his house so small?!

“Ugh, guess I will have to leave it till the morning.” She put his roof back and looked up at the stars as the clouds cleared.

It was a windy night, and it would probably be a cloudy, cold morning. She wondered if all the stories about vampires and the moon goddess and werewolves were true. If monsters like her could really change into humans and find love.

Stupid dragon! She didn’t know why she even thought about it…

She had been a dragon forever. She should know better! She should pick him up right then and go drop him in the middle of town!

“Now you are just being cruel, Kaida!” She thought to herself, got up and turned around with her head looking the other way; she wondered what life would be like if she had a dragon mate…

Seeing images of a male… Telling her to make dinner, bring him ale, and babies crying. Nope! Nope, nope, she was happy with the way things were.

Getting up, she turned around again. At this rate, she was going to be just as drunk as he was, but she just couldn’t seem to find the right position to sleep in. The wind was getting in everywhere! Sometimes she wished she was furry and fluffy and cute, just so the cold wouldn’t be so cold.

She opened the make-shift door again and a gust of wind blew into his house making him shout.

“Close the damn door!”

Okay, so he wasn’t dead. She just wanted to check if he was awake yet. She gave up and put her head down, falling asleep due to utter boredom.

***

She was woken by a screaming Phillipe.

“KAIDA! KAIDA, WHAT THE HELL! Open up! We had a deal, and you can’t keep me, prisoner, here!”

She took away the door, and he took a stumble, correcting himself just before he hit the ground.

“If you think locking me in a stone prison is going to keep us from proving you are a princess, you are mistaken!” He stood there, waiving his index finger at her.

“Are you done screaming at me?”

He stood still, looking at her as if she had gone mad.

“I mean, I did just open the door for you.”

“That wasn’t a door! That’s a wall.” He pointed at the block of rock she was pinching between her long claws.

“It’s a door.” She looked at it and then at him.

“I’m telling you it’s a wall. Look at it, there is no handle.” He pointed at the piece of wall, and she saw his point.

“Okay, fine, it’s a wall, but in my defence, it was meant to be a door, and I put it up last night to keep the cold out while you were sleeping.”

“Oh. You didn’t put it there to keep me inside?”

“No, I put it there to keep the cold out, because I killed your fire.”

“Then why didn’t you open it this morning when I called you the first time? I’ve been calling you forever!”

“You can’t have been calling me forever because you can’t live that long, and I didn’t hear you because all your talk, last night had me up all night, so I was too tired to wake up early.” She stopped for a moment, putting up her paw in the air: “Are we having our first official honest-to-goodness fight?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

Why on earth did she have to defend herself against this puny drunk human?

“I don’t know why I’m even defending myself or explaining myself. You are the intruder on my mountain. You are the one who started all this princess business.”

There she said it… He looked at her, his hands on his hips, then he turned to his house and disappeared for a while. When he reappeared, everything he had, except for the bed, was neatly packed in a bundle and swung over his shoulder. Rum bottles included.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“Leaving, goodbye, Kaida. I won’t intrude on your precious mountain ever again.” He took a couple of steps away, and turned back around.

“I’m leaving! Forever this time. Enjoy living alooone.”

Watching him leave, she realized he was leaving with her stuff.

“Hey! That’s my stuff you are taking with you!”

“Finders’ keepers, losers’ weepers.”

He said, not looking back. The problem here was that if she lets him go, she would never find out what kept her up all night. If she told him to stay…

He would never let go of it, and she would have to deal with him until the day he died…

Uhm, what to do, what to do…

“Get back here with my stuff!!”

She grabbed him by the strap he had over his shoulder.

“You can stay.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.” He said sarcastically.

“I’m sure.” She said, trying to keep calm and not be her normal sarcastic self.

He grabbed hold of her snout, hugging her.

“I knew you cared!! What shall we do first? Fly to the next town to find Celeste or have breakfast?”

She just knew she was going to regret this.

“That’s easy, I have breakfast, then I don’t have to fly anywhere.”

“Great, what are we having for breakfast?”

“Phillipe.” She grinned.

“Yes?”

“No, I mean, you are breakfast.”

“WHAT?! No, no Kaida, that won’t do. I can’t eat myself; you will have to find something else.”

“It was worth a try.” She giggled, watching him re-pack the same stuff he did earlier, and sling the strap over his shoulder.

“Ready?”

“For what?” She didn’t remember agreeing to go somewhere.

“To go and look for Celeste, remember.” He sighed.

“Now? Today?”

“Yes, of course, when were you thinking of going?”

“Oh, I don’t know, never?”

“Kaida, we made a deal.” He stood looking at her with one hand on his hip again.

“If I had known we would be leaving so soon, I wouldn’t have agreed. Look, I don’t even have anything to wear. And who is going to look after my castle huh? What if ruffians take over and steal my stuff?” She waved her hand over the castle and accidentally hit another wall, making it crumble and made her grin at him.

“None of that bothered you before. Stop making excuses!” He almost stomped his foot like a young one.

UGH… Okay, so maybe they would leave today and hopefully not find this Celeste in the next town, she could scare a couple of people, and they could come back when he was drunk, that shouldn’t be too bad.

“Okay, fine.” She picked him up by the bag strap again, and dropped him behind her ears.

“But then we are flying. I’m not going to wait forever for you to walk.”

“AAHHHH Not this again!! I was going to go get a horse in town!!!” He did not take into account, that pretending to be human would probably mean he would have to ride on her back.

“Horses are for eating, not riding. If you want, we can always stay… I won’t mind.”

“You aren’t getting out of this one, even if I die of a heart attack, we are going!” Phillipe sounded out of breath again.

She lifted her wings, feeling him roll down her neck onto her back, catching him with her tail, she rolled him back to her neck and giggled. Taking off, she dived down the mountainside, while a screaming Phillipe grabbed onto one of her scales, holding on for dear life.

“Being a human on the back of a dragon is NOT the same as being the actual dragon!” He thought to himself, wondering if it was such a good idea to try and win her over.

“See… Fun.” She grinned at him.

They flew over the kingdom, following the road from their town to the next one where she landed in a clearing close to the town, leaving Phillipe to go to the town and ask some questions in the tavern while she waited. After a while, she got tired of sitting around, and decided to make herself comfortable, lying down, giving her the advantage of looking through underneath the trees where she saw none other than the Knight who had a lot of… Let’s just say problems the other day.

She thought it took them all this time to clean it off his armour.

“There it is!!! Chaaaarge!!!” He shouted.

Wasn’t the Knight supposed to fight her on his own? A regiment of around twenty-four men came charging towards her, while he sat waiting. They were probably on their way to the castle…

Oh, what fun… bleh.

She sighed, nearly blowing most of them off their horses. Some turned around, wanting to retreat when they got another order to attack. This time they tried to surround her, and, unfortunately, that last cow didn’t agree too well with her. So, she let out a bit of wind, just so she could feel better.

It didn’t take them long to charge the other way… Knight or not. She was lying there, giggling when Phillipe returned, pinching his nose.

“What died??!”

“A Knight and his regiment. What did you find out?”

“No man, Kaida! Princesses don’t fart like this!!! That’s disgusting!!” He waved his other arm around in front of him, sounding like a duck.

“I can’t help it if he was the one who created the problem!!” She pointed into a direction that had nothing to show for her attempt at defence.

“Fine, Celeste was here.”

“You sound like a duck talking with your nose pinched like that. Where is she now?”

“Bleh, I almost can’t breathe through my mouth! Wow, you stink! What did you eat?!”

“It’s a pleasure… Now, where is she? I want to go back home.”

“Oh, that’s the good news.” He let go of his nose, waved some of the smell in front of his nose away, and started talking normal again.

“She died here. The story goes that the tavern owner was a real brute, grabbing at the girls and you know… Doing bad deeds. Then she arrived. Two weeks later, he was found dead in the pigsty with a black rose on his chest. She had a little girl years later. Emerald, who left the town in search of her father, who was a merchant.”

“How convenient. Where’s your proof?”

“Celeste took over the tavern. It’s called the Black Rose. You can go and look for yourself if you don’t believe me, just don’t eat anything on the way…”

“Ugh, okay fine! Now can we go home? If this Emerald went looking for her merchant father, there is no way we will ever find where she went.”

“The next town, actually. She went to the next town as any normal person would. That’s where we are going next. C’mon, lemme up.” He held out his hand, clearly not going to let her get out of this so fast.