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My weight caused my talons to sink deep into the soft turf as I flapped my wings madly. It was a difficult task to land without using one's front legs. Still flapping to keep my body upright, I lowered the young man with a single hand to the ground, where he promptly tumbled down onto his side. For my part, the burden released, I sank down heavily to the side. The shock of my impact knocked the boy down again as he was struggling to rise. The human was already lodging complaints against the rough treatment, but I paid them no mind. I was testing the wind again with my wings in preparation for flight.

Finally the human realized what I was doing. "Wait! Are you just going to leave me here, Dragon?" the boy shouted and I found the evaporation of his former fear amusing.

"Stay here." I boomed, using my usual voice over the sound of my wings. "Or I may not be able to find you again."

"Maybe I don't want you to find me!" yelled the young man.

I snorted, emitting a plume of smoke that was quickly dispersed by the breeze from my wings. "Suit yourself." I said, "But remember you are very far from home, and also, I'll have fresh meat here when I get back."

I didn't wait to observe the boy's respond and I launched myself into the sky. This was to be the boy's first true test. On the ledge, there were clearly no options for the human but here there was at least the appearance of a choice, however illusory it actually was. I knew little of human ways, but I knew they relied heavily upon tools they fashioned and wielded with their hands. With nothing here for the boy but the clothes on his back, I surmised that surviving long enough to make the journey back to the village on foot would be next to impossible. I needed to know that the human would prefer to rely on myself rather than attempt to make it on his own.

It took a while for me to locate potential game. It always did when I was new to a territory. I spent several hours trying to find evidence of passing deer - I knew they were here from the scent I'd caught in the clearing and elsewhere - but to no avail. As dusk settled, I turned my efforts to more exposed prey on the rocky feet of the mountains, not because the failing light bothered me, but because I was concerned about how long the human would wait. I searched the rocks and crevices with my powerful vision soaring high all the while. At long last I spied a mountain goat, muscular and fat with long spring grazing. He was walking in the open; clearly the game around here was not used to dragon predation. I was willing to take swift advantage of that fact. I dove and grabbed the bleeting ram with my claws, easily snapping his neck between my long finger and my short rudimentary thumb in a simple, practiced motion. I was careful, however not to accidently disembowel the creature with my talons; nothing irked me more than wasted entrails. I was sorely tempted to begin eating on the way back, but I didn't know how the human would react to a partially devoured carcass, in fact, I realized I knew nothing of human eating habits save that they did, in fact, subsist on meat as well as grains, vegetables and other plant-things they grew in the dirt. So despite arriving here across the vast plain on the other side of the mountains on an empty belly, I decided to carry the ram whole back to the clearing.

I was ravenous by the time I arrived. Landing was easier considering I could simply toss down the carcass as I landed. I looked around, the trees surrounding me were as clear as they were during the day, but everything was very quiet. Perhaps I would have to find a different candidate after all. With a non-committal snort, I lowered my head to begin eating, but heard movement behind me. My tail moved reflexively, but I changed its direction enough to avoid killing the young man, instead cleaving a sapling beside him in twain with the serrated arrowhead at the end of my tail. The boy jumped far too late to have mattered if I'd wanted to kill him, landing on his belly where he lay panting for several moments. Turning my head around on my neck, I said, "Don't sneak up on me."

The young man looked from me to the ruins of the twelve-foot high sapling and said nothing. I waited for him to get to his feet and wander over to the fresh kill. "Mountain goat?" he asked stupidly.

Rather than answer the obvious and assuming that the human would not have the presumption nor the gall to actually question what I was able to catch, I said, "You may pick what you like, but the liver is mine."

With his teeth clenched, the boy was still staring down at the goat with its head twisted about the wrong way as if it might at any time come to life and attack him. "But... I..." the boy muttered.

Even my patience was wearing thin. "You are hungry, no?" I asked, again trying to prompt the human to some sense. When he 'nodded' with his head in the strange gesture I'd since learned to associate with the affirmative, I added, "Then eat your fill and I shall have the rest."

The boy looked from the dead goat's clouded eyes back to me, "But... I h-have no knife, nor any fire to cook with."

I growled at the human's helplessness. "Fine. Let me help you." I said and, with a single sharp talon, gutted the goat releasing the sweet smelling entrails. I spat a small glob of sulfurous mucous from the twin sacs at the base of my neck and it ignited upon contact with the air. When it was burning with dense, oily light on the ground, I said, "There: fire and fresh meat. Help yourself..." But when I turned my head, the boy was collapsed in a heap on the grass, in a dead faint. I covered my face with a paw and realized that this was going to take longer than I thought.