Cabin Pressure Fic: Dragon Douglas
Title: Dragon Douglas
Series: Cabin Pressure (AU)
Rating: gen
Warnings: none
Word count: about 4200
Summary: In which Martin is desperate to fly and Douglas is a dragon. He might just be the answer to Martin’s dream - or not.
Author's Note: Originally written for the prompt meme, now with minor embellishments.
Martin peered cautiously through the undergrowth towards the dragon's lair. He had learnt through bitter experience to approach the giant creatures with care, given that they were not known for their sunny temperaments. He crawled carefully through the brush, trying not to give himself away by making too much noise. It was not very dignified, but to be honest, he’d given up on dignity several dragons ago. Now pure pig-headed pride kept him going, that and the dread of having to return to the family farm and admit he’d failed, just like everyone had predicted.
Finally he was at the edge of the clearing in front of the cave mouth and he was able to see that the dreaded dragon was.... lounging on his back on the grass, sunning a substantial tummy. That was a little unexpected.
Martin was used to dragons being curled up possessively on top of their hoards of treasure, protecting it with flame and claw, and occasionally launching forth on giant wings to indiscriminately ravish villages and wenches. Lying on his back like this seemed very undignified, as if he was letting the side down somehow. Martin had been through a great deal in the proceeding months, dealing with bloody dragons and their bloody attitudes, and he was not impressed that what was probably his absolute last chance should be so lackadaisical.
Impulsively, Martin burst out from behind the bushes, a little lecture about proper behaviour by monstrous beasts on the tip of his tongue.
"And what do you want, titchy one?" rumbled the dragon, stretching casually in a way that demonstrated that if his belly was a bit on the large side, the rest of him was in fact sized to match. He casually extended his talons, while lifting a lip to show off substantial incisors.
Martin screeched to a halt, horrified at his own impetuosity. After all this time, he should know better than this. A dozen different pleas jostled together in his mouth, competing to be the first out, all variations on oh gods, wait, have mercy, please don't eat me, I've something to say and besides I really wouldn’t be very tasty, I’m much too scrawny. But the comment that came dashing up on the outside and beat everything else in the final sprint out of his mouth was, "I'm not titchy! I’ll have you know that I am a perfectly normally sized adult male!"
"That sounds like fighting talk, little man," replied the dragon, sounding amused as he rolled onto his chest and casually sent forth a spurt of flame that burnt a cinder path right up to the tip of Martin's workman's boots. "What do you want?"
Martin, taken aback by such a forthright question and more shaken than he was prepared to admit by the whole flame-throwing thing, blurted out, "I just, um, you know, I just want to fly!"
"And why are you telling me this?" inquired the dragon sardonically. "I'm not one of those ridiculous little worms with wings kept under harness in your baron’s army.” The dragon rose majestically onto his haunches and spread his vast wings, his long scaled tail whipping behind him. "I am Δράκων drákōn, in the lineage of the ancients, one of the lords of dragon kind." A fountain of flame shot forth from his giant nostrils as a forked tongue flickered below.
Martin dropped to his knees in the shadow of the dragon, frantically mumbling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh great lord dragon, I didn't mean it like that!"
"Hmmm." The dragon retracted his wings, rolled onto his side and lounged out on the grass once again. "Such hard work, all that posturing. I don't know how some dragons manage to do it day in and day out. You can call me Douglas. So why should I take you flying?"
Martin's knees gave way, even though they were already on the ground and he ended up in an ungainly heap on the grass. "Douglas?" he exclaimed. "That's not very--"
"Not very what?" enquired Douglas, nostrils flaring in a flame-throwing sort of way.
"Oh, nothing, nothing." Martin tried to gather his flustered thoughts, but could still think of nothing better than just blurting out the sorry truth. "Look, I really don't have anything to offer you. I've tried before, seven times and they all chased me off. I tried to fight the smallest one but all I had was the second best hoe that I'd nicked from dad's farm and he just bit it in two. I offered the second one mum's gold and diamond jewellery but he said it was all just brass and paste. I said I'd do any work he wanted to the third one, but he said that's what virgin girls were for and I wasn't much of a looker in that department. I tried offering the next one my virginity but he just laughed himself sick. And the other ones chased me away before I could even talk to them."
Martin sighed, discouraged by his own tale of woe. "I just want to fly. Please, I always have. I had it all planned about how I was going to grow up to be a bird until I was about six and my brother beat it into me that I didn't have any choice about growing up human. Just one time. I’m begging you. I'll do anything."
The dragon regarded him, looking dubious. "Well, you do show dogged determination," he mused, "although combined with an alarming lack of common sense. Can you read and write?"
"Yes, I can," Martin burst out eagerly. "Dad hated the idea, thought it was the work of the devil and all that, but Mum taught me on the sly."
"Well, I'll consider taking you flying after you've sorted and inventoried my treasure pile." Douglas waved a languid tail in the direction of the cave behind him, where a vast dusty heap was barely visible in the darkness.
Martin peered cautiously into the gloom. "But, don't you.. I mean... Isn't that what dragons spend their days doing?" he asked. "When not ravishing... you know... things. Don't you obsessively count your gold?"
"Good lord, no," replied Douglas, while scratching thoughtfully at an itchy spot on his belly with a hind leg. "That sounds much too much like work. I don't think anyone's sorted in there for at least a decade. Well, what do you say?"
* * *
"I'm a great admirer of work. I could watch it for hours," commented Douglas from where he was lounging in a patch of sun by the entrance to the cave.
Martin glared at him from the darker depths, where he was on his knees, trying to sweep up the dust and cobwebs and dead flies that obscured the greater part of the dragon's treasure pile.
"Where did you get all this from?" Martin asked, his heart sinking as he realised just how deep the heap was. It was going to take him weeks rather than just days to get this lot cleaned and inventoried.
"I inherited some of it," said the dragon, "and won the rest."
"You won all this in battles?" Hearing the incredulous squeak in his voice, he hurriedly went on, "Sorry, sorry... I'm sure you did, a big, brave dragon like you." He still wasn't sure when he stood with Douglas, the dragon was ridiculously laid-back for a ravenous beast and it make Martin nervous. He liked things clear and simple, fathers were loud and brutal, brothers lazy and snide, dragons aggressive and territorial.
When thunder rumbled ominously and streaks of lighting rent through the grey cloud that lay low over the settlements on the valley floor, the villagers said that the dragons that lived in caves high on the mountainside were battling each other for control of their gold. Douglas was certainly a large dragon, but Martin couldn't quite imagine him fighting viciously with tooth and claw.
"Routs rather than battles, if we're being honest," said Douglas casually, sounding smug. "And not battles exactly, more like poker games."
"You won all this at poker?" exclaimed Martin.
"Yes, largely at poker, and other things like that. Most dragons don't count all that well, when it comes to their gold they largely go for a lot and then more of a lot. They like gambling games but they lose track of their cards. And they do anger so easily, all that prickly pride. Once that's happened, they can't bluff to save their lives, it's all in the way the nostrils twitch, you see."
Martin regarded him warily, adding a new layer of respect to his assessment of Douglas. "You don't seem to have added any recently," he commented curiously.
"Oh well, kind of lost interest in the whole thing," replied Doulas with a full-body shrug and a casual stare away from Martin, seeming curiously evasive given how chatty he was the rest of the time.
"So if you don't do the battles, do you do the whole... you know..." Martin hesitated.
"I know many things," replied Douglas, apparently firmly reestablished in smugness. "Which thing is this, little one?"
"The whole ravishing virgins thing," snapped Martin, who did so hate being called little one. Leaving a comely virgin tied to a stake outside the village once a year was generally believed to be the best way to bribe the local dragon to go and bother some other settlement for the next twelve months. Although Martin had noticed it also seemed like a good way to get rid of any young woman who had offended the chieftain's wife by attracting too much attention from her husband.
"Virgins!" sighed Douglas, sounding martyred. "So much bloody trouble, you wouldn't believe it. I seriously tried, you know, I tried three times. But they all just gave me a headache."
"Um.... right," said Martin tentatively, who was beginning to wonder if this dragon wasn't just a little off in the head. "How did that work?"
"All the screeching. The tears, the hysterics, the endless wailing. All I wanted was for them to do what you're doing. A bit of light housework, keep me company occasionally. Is that too much to ask?" Douglas seemed genuinely hurt by the failure of his virgins to cooperate.
"Light housework?" Martin looked around at the foot of dirt he was kneeling in. "What about the whole, um... you know... ravishing bit?"
Douglas looked perplexed for a moment and then abruptly offended. "Bestiality? What do you take me for? We're not even the same species. That's just..." he waved his paws in the air, looking horrified. "That's just disgusting. Our bits wouldn't even fit with your bits. Eeeew!"
"So why do they need to be virgins?" demanded Martin.
"To be sure they aren't accidentally going to produce any squawking brats of course. One full-size human is bad enough to manage. The noisy little ones are awful and constantly out of control."
"Okay.... so what did you do with your unwanted virgins?" Martin asked cautiously. He knew dragons lived by hunting, mostly choosing large antelope, but of course they were reputed to feast on human flesh too. Martin was rather hoping that being small and scrawny might be an advantage for once, if Douglas tended to turn his unwanted household assistants into a snack.
Douglas sighed heavily. "Gave each one some gold jewellery and dropped them off on a road near a market town. I gave up on the whole thing after getting rid of Helena. I was quietly minding my own business until you came along."
* * *
Martin and Douglas settled into something of a routine over the weeks. Douglas refused to wake up until the sun had reached the cave entrance, and apparently didn't expect Martin to do so either. After a lifetime of pre-dawn farmyard chores, it was an unexpected luxury for the boy.
Then Martin would get to work cleaning and inventorying the treasure pile, while Douglas would stretch and potter and make unhelpful remarks, before finally flying off to hunt and pillage. Martin had had to point out, finally, that the little bit of food he'd brought with him was exhausted, and he couldn't really inventory treasure and scavenge for food at the same time.
After that Douglas took to bringing back an eclectic collection of things for his pet human. The woollen blankets and random assortment of foodstuffs were very welcome, although the dragon did appear to have a peculiar liking for walnuts. The household cleaning products were useful, given the state of the cave. The china cups and ladies' hair ornaments were just odd.
Douglas had shrugged when asked. "They looked pretty. I liked them so I took them."
Martin had eyed him suspiciously. "You raid market stalls, don't you?"
"I don't raid," Douglas had protested. "I just fly casually by, for some inexplicable reason everyone runs off screaming and I help myself to interesting things that they've left behind. If anyone actually stood their ground and tried to sell the stuff to me, of course I'd pay for it. It's not as if I'm short on gold."
Martin had sensed a certain sophistry behind this justification, but he'd given up on trying to out-argue the silver-tongued dragon. Once the 'shopping' was done, Douglas would lounge on the grass, cheerfully watching Martin work. Martin found that if he uncovered a particularly unusual coin or piece of jewellery, Douglas could normally be flattered into telling the tale behind it.
The story inevitably turned into how Douglas had tricked some other dragon, beleaguered by minimal intelligence, into parting with it and the tales always ended up proving the greater glory of Douglas, but Martin didn't mind. Having never left his own valley, he was fascinated by all the strange lands the dragon had visited.
They would end up lounging on the grass, talking in the heat of the afternoon sun. "Will you show me one day?" he would ask every time. "Will you let me fly with you?"
Every time Douglas seemed curiously evasive. "Maybe," he promised. "We'll see. One day. You've the treasure to finish first." And then he would roll over and ignore Martin, as if sulking. There was something Martin was missing in all of this, but he didn't know what. Perplexed and unsure, he'd turn back to his work with a heavy heart.
It wasn't just that he wanted to fly. He found that he cared now about hurting Douglas, but he just didn't know what he was doing wrong.
* * *
"I'll be finished this morning," Martin announced cheerfully one day. "I've just that last small pile to go."
Douglas nodded, uncharacteristically silent, and then abruptly flew off, with Martin watching longingly from the cave entrance. The dragon returned several hours later with a very large cauldron in one claw and some shopping bags in the other. Martin had been waiting for him, almost hopping on the spot with excitement. "I'm done! It’s finished! It only took me nearly the whole summer! Can we go flying now?"
Douglas ignored him while he filled the cauldron with water from the nearby waterfall, heated it up by breathing flame at it, and then poured in some kind of powder. Finally he carefully picked Martin up by the collar of his shirt and unceremoniously dumped him in the pot. Martin was too shocked to protest and then too furious to be properly frightened.
This was his reward for seven weeks of work grovelling through a decade of dirt? He was going to be turned into Martin stew lightly seasoned with thyme as a lunchtime snack for an ungrateful dragon. "This isn't fair," he wailed. "After all I've done for you! You bastard. I hope some over-achieving knight in shining armour runs you through with a really sharp sword."
Sadly Martin had little hope that this would really happen. He knew he wasn't the kind of virgin that knights in shining armour were all that concerned with rescuing. And the few knights he'd met had been as pompous as they were intellectually challenged. He'd no doubt Douglas would outwit them easily. He felt horribly betrayed. He liked Douglas and he'd thought the dragon liked him too. He didn't understand why this was happening.
Douglas calmly stuck his snout into the cauldron and blew out through his two enormous nostrils. Martin jumped as bubbles of air erupted around him and the mysterious thyme-scented granules began to froth. "It's bubble-bath, you ridiculous human," said Douglas, his dignity somewhat diminished by having a ring of foam half-way down his snout. "Now you've cleaned the cave and the treasure, I thought the time had come to clean you."
Oh. Martin felt rather foolish. Bathing was something largely avoided back home on the farm as the layers of dirt were considered just one more protection against the cold. "Well then, that goes for both of us." He bravely gathered up a load of foam and dumped it over Douglas's ears. After that it all went to hell, with warm water and foam ending up all over both of them.
Once they'd splashed the cauldron nearly empty, Douglas insisted on being patted dry by Martin with one of the large fluffy towels he'd mysteriously acquired. "You are ridiculously high maintenance," grumbled Martin, as Douglas suggested Martin put some rose petal hand cream on certain itchy bits Douglas couldn't quite reach itself.
The chance to touch the dragon was too good to resist. Martin carefully cleaned and dried the iridescent scales until they were gleaming in the sun. He moisturised the dry patches behind Douglas's ears and under the shoulder joints, trembling with excitement when the dragon obligingly spread open his vast wings. Once they were done and both smelling of roses, Martin daringly lent his face against Douglas's neck. "Please take me flying. I'll do anything for you."
"Do we have to?" said Douglas, sounding unhappy. "Aren't you content here in the sun by my cave? Why does anything have to change?"
"You promised," Martin whispered.
"Oh all right. Tomorrow then. One last afternoon in the sun first."
* * *
"Get up, we're going flying."
Martin peered out of his cocoon of blankets at the thick grey mist that filled the cave entrance. "In this? But--"
"Now or never, I thought you wanted this." Douglas sounded very pissy about it and Martin quickly decided it was best not to argue. He wrapped himself up in every piece of clothing he had and carefully scrambled up onto Douglas's back, seating himself at the base of the neck, just in front of the wing joints. "Now don't blame me for this," grumbled Douglas as he shuffled out onto the damp grass and then abruptly launched.
Martin, feeling as if his stomach had been forgotten on the ground, grabbed at Douglas's neck and tried not to throw up. He’d always hated the cold grey mist that covered the valley floor through much of the autumn and winter. It was damp and depressing when he had both feet on the ground. Up in the air it was utterly disorientating - there was no horizon to centre himself on, no landmark visible to tell him where the earth was. This was nothing like he'd imagined flying to be, this was all he'd ever dreamed of and the dream was proving to be a nightmare.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and buried his face against Douglas's neck, trying to contain his rolling nausea. A faint hint of rose petals and thyme overlay the deep musk that was the dragon's natural scent. Martin thought about bubbles and splashing water and lying in the sun to dry off, laughing together. He thought about tall tales of distant lands and arguing over how many walnuts one man could be expected to eat. It struck him that flying wasn't actually the only fantasy he'd ever had.
He'd also dreamt of having a friend. Someone who genuinely liked him, someone who saw him as more than just cheap farm labour or yet another unwanted mouth to feed. But that had always felt a bit pathetic. Wanting to fly was a big bold dream and he'd focused on the latter and quietly tried to pretend he didn't also want the former. It occurred to him now that without even looking he'd found a friend, a bright, funny, loyal friend who brought him gifts and looked after him and played with him. Even if the flying didn't work out, he gained more than he’d ever hoped for.
Sucking in a deep breath, surrounding himself with the scent of his dragon, he focused on letting Douglas's broad back be his earth, his foundation in this grey world of swirling mist. He cautiously opened his eyes, using Douglas's ears to give him an illusion of a fixed point, and concentrated on the sensations of flying.
He felt the flex of the dragon's powerful muscles under his thighs, the ebb and flow of wind with each flap of the broad wings, the effortless movement combined with the reassuring solidity of Douglas. His nausea subsided and his excitement began to rise again. He was flying! Really, truly flying and it was wonderful.
"This is brilliant!" he shouted into Douglas's ear.
"Really? You like this?" Douglas sounded incredulous.
"The take-off was alarming but now it's amazing. I love it!"
"Huh. Okay then." Douglas bore down with his wings, changing the angle so they began to climb rapidly and suddenly they broke through the cloud. The mist lay below them like a vast fluffy blanket, obscuring the miserable valley, the miserable farm, the whole of Martin's miserable life before he'd met Douglas. Around them was a landscape he'd never seen before. Vast granite rock spires rose to dizzying heights, golden-brown in the sunshine. Gigantic glaciers tumbled down between them like frozen rapids, an exotic chaos of huge blue blocks of ice. Green alpine meadows perched above precipitous cliffs, as tiny as bird nests from Martin’s elevated perch. And over them a vast blue dome of sky stretched out further than he’d ever seen before.
Douglas spread his wings and they glided over the magnificent landscape, the only sound the rush of air around them and the thump of Martin’s pulse pounding with elation. "Oh gods, it's incredible. It's unbelievable. Thank you!" Martin hugged tightly around Douglas’s neck.
The dragon eventually brought them in to land on a small meadow high on the mountainside, at the edge of a clear blue lake that reflected the needle-like rock pinnacles around them. "So you actually liked that?" he asked, sounding puzzled.
"Why on earth did you think I wouldn't?" replied Martin, who was still so high adrenaline he was almost bouncing on the spot.
"Every other human I've ever met hated flying. No matter what they thought standing on the ground, when they got airborne they all got violently sick. Do you know how hard it is to get vomit out from under one's scales? The smell lingers for weeks!" Douglas paused, and then continued hesitantly. "And then I thought once you found out you hated it, well, you'd have no reason to stay any longer."
"I love it!" declared Martin. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me!"
Douglas rolled on his back to sun his capacious belly, as usual. "You are a very strange human."
"And you are a disgrace of a dragon," teased Martin. "Do you know how undignified that is?"
"Hmm, come here." Douglas patted his tummy.
Martin paused briefly to consider whether he minded being treated like some kind of overgrown house cat by an entitled dragon and decided that he didn't. He clambered up onto Douglas's substantial belly and stretched out, chin resting on his folded arms on the dragon's chest, enjoying the warm sun above him and the warm scales below.
"So can I come flying every time?" asked Martin.
"We might need to do some manoeuvrability training before I take you on a hunt, but otherwise, yes. It's a good thing you're so titchy, I barely notice your weight."
Martin was too full of beaming happiness to object to the titchy thing.
"Of course I expect you to take very good care of me in return," continued Douglas.
"Yeah, yeah. High maintenance, I know," sighed Martin.
Douglas reached out with a large paw and grabbed some stems laden with autumn berries and golden leaves from a nearby plant. He deftly twisted them into a wreath and then put it on top of Martin's wind-blown curls. "I hereby pronounce you captain of Dragon Douglas, from hereon you are supreme commander of my welfare."
Martin grinned back at him. "Does that mean you'll follow my orders?"
"Good lord, no," replied Douglas cheerfully. "But you can have fun trying."
- THE END -
Series: Cabin Pressure (AU)
Rating: gen
Warnings: none
Word count: about 4200
Summary: In which Martin is desperate to fly and Douglas is a dragon. He might just be the answer to Martin’s dream - or not.
Author's Note: Originally written for the prompt meme, now with minor embellishments.
Martin peered cautiously through the undergrowth towards the dragon's lair. He had learnt through bitter experience to approach the giant creatures with care, given that they were not known for their sunny temperaments. He crawled carefully through the brush, trying not to give himself away by making too much noise. It was not very dignified, but to be honest, he’d given up on dignity several dragons ago. Now pure pig-headed pride kept him going, that and the dread of having to return to the family farm and admit he’d failed, just like everyone had predicted.
Finally he was at the edge of the clearing in front of the cave mouth and he was able to see that the dreaded dragon was.... lounging on his back on the grass, sunning a substantial tummy. That was a little unexpected.
Martin was used to dragons being curled up possessively on top of their hoards of treasure, protecting it with flame and claw, and occasionally launching forth on giant wings to indiscriminately ravish villages and wenches. Lying on his back like this seemed very undignified, as if he was letting the side down somehow. Martin had been through a great deal in the proceeding months, dealing with bloody dragons and their bloody attitudes, and he was not impressed that what was probably his absolute last chance should be so lackadaisical.
Impulsively, Martin burst out from behind the bushes, a little lecture about proper behaviour by monstrous beasts on the tip of his tongue.
"And what do you want, titchy one?" rumbled the dragon, stretching casually in a way that demonstrated that if his belly was a bit on the large side, the rest of him was in fact sized to match. He casually extended his talons, while lifting a lip to show off substantial incisors.
Martin screeched to a halt, horrified at his own impetuosity. After all this time, he should know better than this. A dozen different pleas jostled together in his mouth, competing to be the first out, all variations on oh gods, wait, have mercy, please don't eat me, I've something to say and besides I really wouldn’t be very tasty, I’m much too scrawny. But the comment that came dashing up on the outside and beat everything else in the final sprint out of his mouth was, "I'm not titchy! I’ll have you know that I am a perfectly normally sized adult male!"
"That sounds like fighting talk, little man," replied the dragon, sounding amused as he rolled onto his chest and casually sent forth a spurt of flame that burnt a cinder path right up to the tip of Martin's workman's boots. "What do you want?"
Martin, taken aback by such a forthright question and more shaken than he was prepared to admit by the whole flame-throwing thing, blurted out, "I just, um, you know, I just want to fly!"
"And why are you telling me this?" inquired the dragon sardonically. "I'm not one of those ridiculous little worms with wings kept under harness in your baron’s army.” The dragon rose majestically onto his haunches and spread his vast wings, his long scaled tail whipping behind him. "I am Δράκων drákōn, in the lineage of the ancients, one of the lords of dragon kind." A fountain of flame shot forth from his giant nostrils as a forked tongue flickered below.
Martin dropped to his knees in the shadow of the dragon, frantically mumbling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh great lord dragon, I didn't mean it like that!"
"Hmmm." The dragon retracted his wings, rolled onto his side and lounged out on the grass once again. "Such hard work, all that posturing. I don't know how some dragons manage to do it day in and day out. You can call me Douglas. So why should I take you flying?"
Martin's knees gave way, even though they were already on the ground and he ended up in an ungainly heap on the grass. "Douglas?" he exclaimed. "That's not very--"
"Not very what?" enquired Douglas, nostrils flaring in a flame-throwing sort of way.
"Oh, nothing, nothing." Martin tried to gather his flustered thoughts, but could still think of nothing better than just blurting out the sorry truth. "Look, I really don't have anything to offer you. I've tried before, seven times and they all chased me off. I tried to fight the smallest one but all I had was the second best hoe that I'd nicked from dad's farm and he just bit it in two. I offered the second one mum's gold and diamond jewellery but he said it was all just brass and paste. I said I'd do any work he wanted to the third one, but he said that's what virgin girls were for and I wasn't much of a looker in that department. I tried offering the next one my virginity but he just laughed himself sick. And the other ones chased me away before I could even talk to them."
Martin sighed, discouraged by his own tale of woe. "I just want to fly. Please, I always have. I had it all planned about how I was going to grow up to be a bird until I was about six and my brother beat it into me that I didn't have any choice about growing up human. Just one time. I’m begging you. I'll do anything."
The dragon regarded him, looking dubious. "Well, you do show dogged determination," he mused, "although combined with an alarming lack of common sense. Can you read and write?"
"Yes, I can," Martin burst out eagerly. "Dad hated the idea, thought it was the work of the devil and all that, but Mum taught me on the sly."
"Well, I'll consider taking you flying after you've sorted and inventoried my treasure pile." Douglas waved a languid tail in the direction of the cave behind him, where a vast dusty heap was barely visible in the darkness.
Martin peered cautiously into the gloom. "But, don't you.. I mean... Isn't that what dragons spend their days doing?" he asked. "When not ravishing... you know... things. Don't you obsessively count your gold?"
"Good lord, no," replied Douglas, while scratching thoughtfully at an itchy spot on his belly with a hind leg. "That sounds much too much like work. I don't think anyone's sorted in there for at least a decade. Well, what do you say?"
* * *
"I'm a great admirer of work. I could watch it for hours," commented Douglas from where he was lounging in a patch of sun by the entrance to the cave.
Martin glared at him from the darker depths, where he was on his knees, trying to sweep up the dust and cobwebs and dead flies that obscured the greater part of the dragon's treasure pile.
"Where did you get all this from?" Martin asked, his heart sinking as he realised just how deep the heap was. It was going to take him weeks rather than just days to get this lot cleaned and inventoried.
"I inherited some of it," said the dragon, "and won the rest."
"You won all this in battles?" Hearing the incredulous squeak in his voice, he hurriedly went on, "Sorry, sorry... I'm sure you did, a big, brave dragon like you." He still wasn't sure when he stood with Douglas, the dragon was ridiculously laid-back for a ravenous beast and it make Martin nervous. He liked things clear and simple, fathers were loud and brutal, brothers lazy and snide, dragons aggressive and territorial.
When thunder rumbled ominously and streaks of lighting rent through the grey cloud that lay low over the settlements on the valley floor, the villagers said that the dragons that lived in caves high on the mountainside were battling each other for control of their gold. Douglas was certainly a large dragon, but Martin couldn't quite imagine him fighting viciously with tooth and claw.
"Routs rather than battles, if we're being honest," said Douglas casually, sounding smug. "And not battles exactly, more like poker games."
"You won all this at poker?" exclaimed Martin.
"Yes, largely at poker, and other things like that. Most dragons don't count all that well, when it comes to their gold they largely go for a lot and then more of a lot. They like gambling games but they lose track of their cards. And they do anger so easily, all that prickly pride. Once that's happened, they can't bluff to save their lives, it's all in the way the nostrils twitch, you see."
Martin regarded him warily, adding a new layer of respect to his assessment of Douglas. "You don't seem to have added any recently," he commented curiously.
"Oh well, kind of lost interest in the whole thing," replied Doulas with a full-body shrug and a casual stare away from Martin, seeming curiously evasive given how chatty he was the rest of the time.
"So if you don't do the battles, do you do the whole... you know..." Martin hesitated.
"I know many things," replied Douglas, apparently firmly reestablished in smugness. "Which thing is this, little one?"
"The whole ravishing virgins thing," snapped Martin, who did so hate being called little one. Leaving a comely virgin tied to a stake outside the village once a year was generally believed to be the best way to bribe the local dragon to go and bother some other settlement for the next twelve months. Although Martin had noticed it also seemed like a good way to get rid of any young woman who had offended the chieftain's wife by attracting too much attention from her husband.
"Virgins!" sighed Douglas, sounding martyred. "So much bloody trouble, you wouldn't believe it. I seriously tried, you know, I tried three times. But they all just gave me a headache."
"Um.... right," said Martin tentatively, who was beginning to wonder if this dragon wasn't just a little off in the head. "How did that work?"
"All the screeching. The tears, the hysterics, the endless wailing. All I wanted was for them to do what you're doing. A bit of light housework, keep me company occasionally. Is that too much to ask?" Douglas seemed genuinely hurt by the failure of his virgins to cooperate.
"Light housework?" Martin looked around at the foot of dirt he was kneeling in. "What about the whole, um... you know... ravishing bit?"
Douglas looked perplexed for a moment and then abruptly offended. "Bestiality? What do you take me for? We're not even the same species. That's just..." he waved his paws in the air, looking horrified. "That's just disgusting. Our bits wouldn't even fit with your bits. Eeeew!"
"So why do they need to be virgins?" demanded Martin.
"To be sure they aren't accidentally going to produce any squawking brats of course. One full-size human is bad enough to manage. The noisy little ones are awful and constantly out of control."
"Okay.... so what did you do with your unwanted virgins?" Martin asked cautiously. He knew dragons lived by hunting, mostly choosing large antelope, but of course they were reputed to feast on human flesh too. Martin was rather hoping that being small and scrawny might be an advantage for once, if Douglas tended to turn his unwanted household assistants into a snack.
Douglas sighed heavily. "Gave each one some gold jewellery and dropped them off on a road near a market town. I gave up on the whole thing after getting rid of Helena. I was quietly minding my own business until you came along."
* * *
Martin and Douglas settled into something of a routine over the weeks. Douglas refused to wake up until the sun had reached the cave entrance, and apparently didn't expect Martin to do so either. After a lifetime of pre-dawn farmyard chores, it was an unexpected luxury for the boy.
Then Martin would get to work cleaning and inventorying the treasure pile, while Douglas would stretch and potter and make unhelpful remarks, before finally flying off to hunt and pillage. Martin had had to point out, finally, that the little bit of food he'd brought with him was exhausted, and he couldn't really inventory treasure and scavenge for food at the same time.
After that Douglas took to bringing back an eclectic collection of things for his pet human. The woollen blankets and random assortment of foodstuffs were very welcome, although the dragon did appear to have a peculiar liking for walnuts. The household cleaning products were useful, given the state of the cave. The china cups and ladies' hair ornaments were just odd.
Douglas had shrugged when asked. "They looked pretty. I liked them so I took them."
Martin had eyed him suspiciously. "You raid market stalls, don't you?"
"I don't raid," Douglas had protested. "I just fly casually by, for some inexplicable reason everyone runs off screaming and I help myself to interesting things that they've left behind. If anyone actually stood their ground and tried to sell the stuff to me, of course I'd pay for it. It's not as if I'm short on gold."
Martin had sensed a certain sophistry behind this justification, but he'd given up on trying to out-argue the silver-tongued dragon. Once the 'shopping' was done, Douglas would lounge on the grass, cheerfully watching Martin work. Martin found that if he uncovered a particularly unusual coin or piece of jewellery, Douglas could normally be flattered into telling the tale behind it.
The story inevitably turned into how Douglas had tricked some other dragon, beleaguered by minimal intelligence, into parting with it and the tales always ended up proving the greater glory of Douglas, but Martin didn't mind. Having never left his own valley, he was fascinated by all the strange lands the dragon had visited.
They would end up lounging on the grass, talking in the heat of the afternoon sun. "Will you show me one day?" he would ask every time. "Will you let me fly with you?"
Every time Douglas seemed curiously evasive. "Maybe," he promised. "We'll see. One day. You've the treasure to finish first." And then he would roll over and ignore Martin, as if sulking. There was something Martin was missing in all of this, but he didn't know what. Perplexed and unsure, he'd turn back to his work with a heavy heart.
It wasn't just that he wanted to fly. He found that he cared now about hurting Douglas, but he just didn't know what he was doing wrong.
* * *
"I'll be finished this morning," Martin announced cheerfully one day. "I've just that last small pile to go."
Douglas nodded, uncharacteristically silent, and then abruptly flew off, with Martin watching longingly from the cave entrance. The dragon returned several hours later with a very large cauldron in one claw and some shopping bags in the other. Martin had been waiting for him, almost hopping on the spot with excitement. "I'm done! It’s finished! It only took me nearly the whole summer! Can we go flying now?"
Douglas ignored him while he filled the cauldron with water from the nearby waterfall, heated it up by breathing flame at it, and then poured in some kind of powder. Finally he carefully picked Martin up by the collar of his shirt and unceremoniously dumped him in the pot. Martin was too shocked to protest and then too furious to be properly frightened.
This was his reward for seven weeks of work grovelling through a decade of dirt? He was going to be turned into Martin stew lightly seasoned with thyme as a lunchtime snack for an ungrateful dragon. "This isn't fair," he wailed. "After all I've done for you! You bastard. I hope some over-achieving knight in shining armour runs you through with a really sharp sword."
Sadly Martin had little hope that this would really happen. He knew he wasn't the kind of virgin that knights in shining armour were all that concerned with rescuing. And the few knights he'd met had been as pompous as they were intellectually challenged. He'd no doubt Douglas would outwit them easily. He felt horribly betrayed. He liked Douglas and he'd thought the dragon liked him too. He didn't understand why this was happening.
Douglas calmly stuck his snout into the cauldron and blew out through his two enormous nostrils. Martin jumped as bubbles of air erupted around him and the mysterious thyme-scented granules began to froth. "It's bubble-bath, you ridiculous human," said Douglas, his dignity somewhat diminished by having a ring of foam half-way down his snout. "Now you've cleaned the cave and the treasure, I thought the time had come to clean you."
Oh. Martin felt rather foolish. Bathing was something largely avoided back home on the farm as the layers of dirt were considered just one more protection against the cold. "Well then, that goes for both of us." He bravely gathered up a load of foam and dumped it over Douglas's ears. After that it all went to hell, with warm water and foam ending up all over both of them.
Once they'd splashed the cauldron nearly empty, Douglas insisted on being patted dry by Martin with one of the large fluffy towels he'd mysteriously acquired. "You are ridiculously high maintenance," grumbled Martin, as Douglas suggested Martin put some rose petal hand cream on certain itchy bits Douglas couldn't quite reach itself.
The chance to touch the dragon was too good to resist. Martin carefully cleaned and dried the iridescent scales until they were gleaming in the sun. He moisturised the dry patches behind Douglas's ears and under the shoulder joints, trembling with excitement when the dragon obligingly spread open his vast wings. Once they were done and both smelling of roses, Martin daringly lent his face against Douglas's neck. "Please take me flying. I'll do anything for you."
"Do we have to?" said Douglas, sounding unhappy. "Aren't you content here in the sun by my cave? Why does anything have to change?"
"You promised," Martin whispered.
"Oh all right. Tomorrow then. One last afternoon in the sun first."
* * *
"Get up, we're going flying."
Martin peered out of his cocoon of blankets at the thick grey mist that filled the cave entrance. "In this? But--"
"Now or never, I thought you wanted this." Douglas sounded very pissy about it and Martin quickly decided it was best not to argue. He wrapped himself up in every piece of clothing he had and carefully scrambled up onto Douglas's back, seating himself at the base of the neck, just in front of the wing joints. "Now don't blame me for this," grumbled Douglas as he shuffled out onto the damp grass and then abruptly launched.
Martin, feeling as if his stomach had been forgotten on the ground, grabbed at Douglas's neck and tried not to throw up. He’d always hated the cold grey mist that covered the valley floor through much of the autumn and winter. It was damp and depressing when he had both feet on the ground. Up in the air it was utterly disorientating - there was no horizon to centre himself on, no landmark visible to tell him where the earth was. This was nothing like he'd imagined flying to be, this was all he'd ever dreamed of and the dream was proving to be a nightmare.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and buried his face against Douglas's neck, trying to contain his rolling nausea. A faint hint of rose petals and thyme overlay the deep musk that was the dragon's natural scent. Martin thought about bubbles and splashing water and lying in the sun to dry off, laughing together. He thought about tall tales of distant lands and arguing over how many walnuts one man could be expected to eat. It struck him that flying wasn't actually the only fantasy he'd ever had.
He'd also dreamt of having a friend. Someone who genuinely liked him, someone who saw him as more than just cheap farm labour or yet another unwanted mouth to feed. But that had always felt a bit pathetic. Wanting to fly was a big bold dream and he'd focused on the latter and quietly tried to pretend he didn't also want the former. It occurred to him now that without even looking he'd found a friend, a bright, funny, loyal friend who brought him gifts and looked after him and played with him. Even if the flying didn't work out, he gained more than he’d ever hoped for.
Sucking in a deep breath, surrounding himself with the scent of his dragon, he focused on letting Douglas's broad back be his earth, his foundation in this grey world of swirling mist. He cautiously opened his eyes, using Douglas's ears to give him an illusion of a fixed point, and concentrated on the sensations of flying.
He felt the flex of the dragon's powerful muscles under his thighs, the ebb and flow of wind with each flap of the broad wings, the effortless movement combined with the reassuring solidity of Douglas. His nausea subsided and his excitement began to rise again. He was flying! Really, truly flying and it was wonderful.
"This is brilliant!" he shouted into Douglas's ear.
"Really? You like this?" Douglas sounded incredulous.
"The take-off was alarming but now it's amazing. I love it!"
"Huh. Okay then." Douglas bore down with his wings, changing the angle so they began to climb rapidly and suddenly they broke through the cloud. The mist lay below them like a vast fluffy blanket, obscuring the miserable valley, the miserable farm, the whole of Martin's miserable life before he'd met Douglas. Around them was a landscape he'd never seen before. Vast granite rock spires rose to dizzying heights, golden-brown in the sunshine. Gigantic glaciers tumbled down between them like frozen rapids, an exotic chaos of huge blue blocks of ice. Green alpine meadows perched above precipitous cliffs, as tiny as bird nests from Martin’s elevated perch. And over them a vast blue dome of sky stretched out further than he’d ever seen before.
Douglas spread his wings and they glided over the magnificent landscape, the only sound the rush of air around them and the thump of Martin’s pulse pounding with elation. "Oh gods, it's incredible. It's unbelievable. Thank you!" Martin hugged tightly around Douglas’s neck.
The dragon eventually brought them in to land on a small meadow high on the mountainside, at the edge of a clear blue lake that reflected the needle-like rock pinnacles around them. "So you actually liked that?" he asked, sounding puzzled.
"Why on earth did you think I wouldn't?" replied Martin, who was still so high adrenaline he was almost bouncing on the spot.
"Every other human I've ever met hated flying. No matter what they thought standing on the ground, when they got airborne they all got violently sick. Do you know how hard it is to get vomit out from under one's scales? The smell lingers for weeks!" Douglas paused, and then continued hesitantly. "And then I thought once you found out you hated it, well, you'd have no reason to stay any longer."
"I love it!" declared Martin. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me!"
Douglas rolled on his back to sun his capacious belly, as usual. "You are a very strange human."
"And you are a disgrace of a dragon," teased Martin. "Do you know how undignified that is?"
"Hmm, come here." Douglas patted his tummy.
Martin paused briefly to consider whether he minded being treated like some kind of overgrown house cat by an entitled dragon and decided that he didn't. He clambered up onto Douglas's substantial belly and stretched out, chin resting on his folded arms on the dragon's chest, enjoying the warm sun above him and the warm scales below.
"So can I come flying every time?" asked Martin.
"We might need to do some manoeuvrability training before I take you on a hunt, but otherwise, yes. It's a good thing you're so titchy, I barely notice your weight."
Martin was too full of beaming happiness to object to the titchy thing.
"Of course I expect you to take very good care of me in return," continued Douglas.
"Yeah, yeah. High maintenance, I know," sighed Martin.
Douglas reached out with a large paw and grabbed some stems laden with autumn berries and golden leaves from a nearby plant. He deftly twisted them into a wreath and then put it on top of Martin's wind-blown curls. "I hereby pronounce you captain of Dragon Douglas, from hereon you are supreme commander of my welfare."
Martin grinned back at him. "Does that mean you'll follow my orders?"
"Good lord, no," replied Douglas cheerfully. "But you can have fun trying."
- THE END -