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"Tell me more about this... what did you call it? 'Funckin'?"

"No, it's pronounced Pumpkin, Puh." The human lad explained about his staple crop. The human syllables were difficult on my thin, scaly lips, particularly, "p's" and "m's." "And they are large, round... well pumpkins. We plant them this time of year and they are ready to eat by harvest. We make the sweetest pumpkin pies you'll ever eat..."

The boy waxed at great length about the virtue of pumpkins and how their soil and secret growing techniques ensured that they produced the highest quality gourds year after year. It was so interesting, I felt like curling up and reminiscing on it quietly, perhaps for a decade or so. Despite the human's dull conversation, I listened attentively, partly because I knew that it was one of the few areas in which this "farmer's son" was exceedingly proficient and also because he had already given me heaps of valuable information about the village and how the humans organized themselves in their 'society'.

The trickiest part of the whole affair had been keeping the tiny little beast alive. It was extraordinarily picky when it came to food, to the point where I believed it would sooner starve to death than rip into a nice, fresh carcass; bizarre creature. The boy did eventually eat, suggesting that I "fillet" a large "steak" off the hindquarters of the food-beast. My talon proved to be too thick for the task, however, and I only managed to further tear up the carcass and traumatize the lad. In the end, I was forced to relinquish my favorite part of the animal, the liver which the boy roasted on a stick over a fire he built out of branches piled over my fiery Phlegm.

I then assisted the boy in crafting a crude "shelter" by bending over a small tree while he secured some of the branches. I'd heard enough tales of unwary dragons murdered in their sleep by their tiny servants so I had no intention of sleeping with the human. Before I took flight from the clearing, however, the boy expressed his concern about wild predators. I tried to assuage his concerns by lifting my leg on a nearby tree. After nearly losing his liver at the apparent "dragon stink" I assured the boy that my musk would keep smaller predators at bay. Considering the odiferous nature of my mark, he seemed content to believe me. Thus I flew off to find a safe roost, not really knowing if my boast of protection were true or not. Certainly a smaller dragon would not approach my mark, but a bear or a wolf? I honestly didn't know. Surely they would sense that something large and dangerous was in the area, but then again, dragons did not visit these parts often as evidenced by the lack of caution of the local prey. That night I tucked my head under my wing and slept like a stone.

I went hunting again first thing in the morning as a single goat, even one that was muscular and fat, was but a mouthful to me. I was able to return to the clearing before midday, another ram lodged between my jaws and a mother with her calf in each of my front paws. I was content to see my companion had not, in fact, been eaten by wild animals.

The human ate again, this time able to retrieve his "steak" with a stone knife he had fashioned in the time I'd been gone. As I was wondering where the strange object in his hand had come from, I realized that the boy had also managed to clean and organize his sleeping area of debris and also weaved the branches together in a certain way that he explained was to make the roof more resistant to water as well as keep in more warmth. And more, the young man had collected a small supply of roots and mushrooms - I learned the names for these as he pointed to them - as well as a supply of firewood. His clothing was even more ragged than the previous day, and his legs stained to the knee with mud, but strangely he seemed almost cheery. It was a very distinct transformation. Perhaps there was more to a human than first met the eye. After eating, we talked until the sun had set.

It was during those first few hours of conversation that I realized that I had not picked perhaps the best person to educate me about human society. The boy said that he only went to town about once a month with his "Pa" on his "wagon" pulled by "Ol'Daisy." However, as I prodded, he revealed an adequate supply of information for my purposes. Over the course of that second day as well as the next, I gathered from the boy the structure of power in the village as well as the general shape of the feudal system which dominated the entire region. Apparently the village was just a tiny offshoot of a large human nation the boy referred to as Lyrond. "We don't even have a proper lord." The boy said, "We just have Sir Ronald." Sir Ronald was what the boy referred to as a "knight" and that he was a "vassal" of a more important human named "Lord Dominic" whom the human peasant had never even seen before in his life and yet explained he was forced to give 10% of his pumpkins to each year. "That's the tithe. We pay it in return for the lord's protection."

"And yet you say that dragons come over the mountains and take people away every couple years or so?" I grumbled in response.

The human had scratched the back of his head, "Well, there's nothing you can do about dragons really..."

I grinned without letting the boy see.

By the third day now, the novelty of this "adventure" as he called it had apparently begun to wear thin. After his long lecture about the pumpkins and the "delicious" things that one can make with them, he asked, "If you don't mind me asking, Sir Dragon, I have been a-wonderin when you're going to be takin' me home."

I'd been drifting into a light doze, but the boy's question aroused me. I moved the side of my head closer to him and looked at him with one wide, slit-pupiled eye. When I'd determined that he was sufficiently cowed, I said, "Soon, perhaps tomorrow. I have much to think about..."

There was silence for a long time. The camp fire burned low, but the boy did not move to put more wood on it. The trees swayed gently in the breeze around us. The human boy broke the quiet, "Will you be killing a lot of people when you return?"

I turned my head back towards him. Never once in the past three days had he asked a question of my motives or my purpose here. He'd been compliant and forth coming in my interrogation and satisfied with small talk about the weather on the plains beyond the mountains and the nature of the beasts who lived there to fill the small hours. I didn't know what to think about the question, but I answered truthfully, "I may, but I would rather not."

The boy twisted his hands like snakes in his lap and looked down at the ground, "Do you think you might not kill my family or burn down my Pa's house or the barn?"

I sighed at the wretched state of the human beside me. "I promise not to kill your family or destroy your funckin farn."

The human snorted at my mangling of his speech and relaxed at last. He tore into the last of his steak on his stick and I spread my wings to depart for one last night. Tomorrow, I was sure, would be an exciting day for the both of us.