Every culture has their own proverbs, but some are universal. Some like, “don’t wake the sleeping dragon.” Imagine my surprise when someone did so on purpose. Then imagine my amusement when I saw who it was. Such a trifling thing was never worth remembering.
It happened thusly.
I yawn and work my jaw about, raising my tail and smacking it against my side where some insect is gnawing at me. Pieces of villagers dislodge from my teeth as I slowly swing my head around, only to still, focusing one eye on the offender.
“What’ss thiss? A little mouse?” I say softly, running my gaze over the inconsiderable creature. It has fallen over onto its hindquarters and is staring up at me with wide, scared eyes, as most of its kind are want to do when I’m near. Evidently my tail failed to strike it. “Did I misss one?”
It doesn’t say anything. Its holding a dismembered arm of a human adult close to its chest. In the other hand it holds something small and sharp which, to my surprise, it raises and drives into my side between my scales. It doesn’t say a word as it does.
I rumble out a low chortle. “Ssso brave. Are you trying to cut your parents out?”
It drives its knife into my side again.
“Or maybe…” I slither my head down next to it. My eye is nearly as big as its body. “…you’d like to join them?”
It trembles as I near, holding its knife out to me while clutching the arm tighter to its chest.
“I’m already so very full. But I can make room for one more.”
It shakes so violently that it trips and flails for balance. It amuses me, and I laugh all the louder.
Until it drives its knife into my eye.
I yank my head back with a roar, lurching up to stand and dragging my foreclaw along my snout. “Wretch! Worm!” I stomp my feet where it had been standing and slam my tail into the ground. Becoming my meal is too great an honor for something so contemptible, so beneath me—instead I’ll crush it flat.
When my eye stops watering, I turn my gaze back to the insect with flames licking at my teeth, but I’m unable to discern its corpse from the rest surrounding me. Still feeling the sting of its insult, that it would dare strike my magnificent self in such a craven manner, I unleash my hellfire across the earth so that the remains of it and its brethren won’t even have the honor of fertilizing what comes after. They and their accomplishments will be ash, and I will scatter what remains of their essence to the four winds.
It only takes one flap of my wings to destroy what remains of their village. I leave it a blazing inferno and take to the sky towards my den, satisfied with my work and the fullness of my belly.
That should have been the end of it. Another dirty den of livestock—one of many. But as I stare down the armies of man assembled against me with all manner of dragon-killing weapons and magiks, I smell a familiar scent on the wind coming from a figure standing at the host’s head and can’t help but remember.
The little mouse lifts her sword towards me in challenge. I chortle. Fate, it seems, is not without its sense of humor.
When I destroy these worms, I’ll eat her last. I want her to watch again.
ns 15.158.61.54da2
