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This one's a gift for Big-Red, who's here and also on FA. I'm thinking of making it a series, depending on the feedback I get. Apologies for the formatting. The Java editor's being retarded. Enjoy.

• * * Tales abound in the history of mankind of dragons--fearsome creatures, clad in scale that bites at blades and clatters arrows harmlessly aside, sometimes possessed of breath that scorches the fields to ash and immolates men in mere moments. For whatever reason, these beasts were always portrayed as being zealous hoarders of treasure, and as connoisseurs of the flesh of maidens fair. As treasure and maidens certainly pose tempting rewards for nearly any knight, save perhaps the ones of ascetic monastic orders (rare though they certainly be amongst the belted ranks), slaying a dragon was considered one of the utmost achievements knight could aspire to--the veritable piece de resistance of any career. What history often fails to mention is that very few knights actually claimed to slay any dragons--and those that did tended to do so in faraway places, where the villagers were ostensibly spared the sight of man and beast locked in epic, bloody struggle, with the hint of the fearsome beast's sulfurous breath heavy and choking upon the air--certainly something that would make a peasant's heart quail in fear. The few bards who might have discovered the truth behind such tales would be unlikely to expose it--as what kind of story is it if the knight didn't really kill the dragon of Vale Cair? The bard who tells the boring stories lacks the coin to feed the truthful mouth--better to embellish for the crowd and deal with the truth as a surprise if it comes to confront you later...let the jesters tell the truth, for no one listens to them anyway. The town of Lithescoast had quite the secret, however: there was a dragon living near them, in the burial mound of an ancient king. The whole village had seen it, save the children too young to have been around whenever the dragon periodically flew by. When the elders had first discovered the dragon's presence, it had been flying high above, a deer grasped in its foreclaws. It had been one of those strange clarion days of winter, where the air is piercing cold even as the frost is melting, where the sun seems almost sharp in the empty, vaporless air--certainly not the right kind of day, let alone time of year, for adventuring. Of course, it wasn't merely the village elders who'd seen the beast sailing by on his curious wings--no, some of them hadn't, and there were villagers instead who'd also beheld the great reptile. But one of the elders, recently appointed, and who was a wise one for his young age--his name was Paul, after the apostle renowned for his faithful writings to many nations--had done something the others would later recognize as quite keen, in that he quickly herded everyone who'd seen the beast into the nearest hovel before they could spread the word. Once inside, he'd sworn them all to secrecy. "This," he said, "is perhaps one of the most grave, and yet most exciting things to happen to our town in a long time. But if our village goes all awry simply because there's a dragon that lives somewhere in the area, all will be lost, and one by one, we may lose our tribe to madness about this strange new beast." An older gentleman, one of the oldest of the elders who'd not yet succumbed to the madness of age or the uncaring cold of winter, spoke up: "But what of our livestock? And our maidens? A dragon surely has a greater appetite than a man--our food and our people may be in danger!" Paul answered him with respect in his tone, full aware that he was the younger of the two. "Perhaps, Alek, but that dragon was very far above our village with that deer. He seems to be hunting somewhere -past- our village--very unusual behavior, if he is indeed a savage beast driven mad by hunger and scarcity. And right now is not the time to attempt to do anything to him, either...in the middle of winter, any questing party would already be at half its strength before even meeting the creature. No, best to wait until summer, when he is fat with the ripeness of the land, if we are to be killing him at all. Better yet, we can decide, if the need comes, to tell other villages, and we will be the toast of the nation for having a real dragon with which a knight can earn his honor. But for now, let us bide our time...we will defend ourselves if he comes to us, but so far he has done us no harm. Do we attempt to chase down every wolf in the country for fear they might eat our cattle? No; we hunt when they have already struck, and leave them be at other times. Thus the deer are kept from eating our crops by merit of too many of their kind." Even the simpler herders in the hovel could see the simple wisdom of Paul's words; it had been moments like these that had given Paul his respect from the people of their village. He wasn't always quick to speak, but when he determined to be heard, his words were always important, and only rarely did someone find a valid flaw in them. There were a few quiet moments as his words settled in, and then another elder, named Lukas, responded: "So, what exactly would you have us do? What if he flies overhead again?" Paul ruminated briefly. "...hmm. If he comes again, then we find those who have seen him, and tell them what I have told you. For now, we must keep the dragon--if that is indeed what he is--a secret within our village. He may be simply another part of nature in this realm, or perhaps he is as scared of us as most would be of him. Better not to draw any more attention to it than we must, and to keep it something of a legend. If we ever do discover where he lives, we'll bill the place as haunted by the spirit of a long-dead pagan king, and say that it only ever curses those who disturb its rest--so we leave it be, and so should they. The truth can be revealed if and when we decide it should be, and not a moment sooner." He watched the eyes of the townsfolk, and one by one, each set glittered with the delight of this arrangement. Already the prospect of a delicious secret was teasing at their heartstrings, and he suspected each and every one of them would go home and immediately tell their families about the secret of the dragon. Then the village would abide content in the knowledge that each and every house was the only one that knew about the dragon, while the other villagers lived in contented ignorance...People could be petty sometimes, but the important part was knowing how to use this and other foibles of the common man to the overall good of all. The means might be dubious, but their ends were indisputable. Winter yielded to spring with every ounce of bitterness that it could muster, leaving spring a feeble warmth at best. But it was enough: the cold had broken and new life came to the lands. A few villagers came to Paul then, in secret, confiding concern that they might be harmed in the fields. But he sent them back out, telling them that they were at more danger from the many wolves that lived in the woods, or perhaps by bandits on the roads, than they were from one dragon. Though some objected to his reasoning, he in time made them see that it was true--and his words rang further true as week after week unfolded with not a man or beast in the village butchered by anything other than the village butcher himself. Some even commented, in quiet corners, that even the wolves seemed to be in hiding, as it was considered almost a given that a lamb or a calf would have succumbed to a hungry lupine straggler by then, crazed with hunger by scarcity--particularly with a winter as bitter as the last had been. Spring slowly unfurled into summer, and with it came the season for combat. Travelers who came through the village, now that the roads had dried from mud and wet, spoke of warring barbarian tribes to the south. The tales, as all such were, described the men as nine-foot-tall savages, each one never falling no matter how many wounds they took, and the women as stilted wenches with the screams and cackles of banshees, scouring the dead with cleavers, seeking to prepare a meal of the fallen for their demonic offspring. The elders caught wind of this in time, and it was hard not to, as the village gained a certain degree of tension. True, their village was small, scarcely of any importance whatsoever--but if the unseen enemies to the south were as barbaric as they were said to be, it would be the perfect target: a small township, scarcely worth putting on a map, full of people who have never used anything sharper than a reaping scythe or a carving knife, and their lovingly-tended crops and herds. The elders convened a meeting, which they did every new moon. There were a few brief formalities, but the elephant in the room was zealously introduced by Alek: "And what to do about these savages to the south? It seems not a soul in the village isn't fearing of their arrival!" "Yes," said James, an older gentleman who'd once been an itinerant monk, and had given up celibacy and settled down to a life as a farmer upon meeting the woman who'd become his wife soon thereafter. "We don't have an army, but we have been fortunate to live in a place out of the way and of little value, so even when the nobles have their petty wars, we have never been involved. Yet there comes this new foe, this horde of unsaved brutes who, word has it, eat the dead, God rest their souls." Lukas seemed hesitant as he answered: "Well...we've heard tell of such things in the past, and it has never come to anything. Perhaps our continued piety and diligence will continue to be rewarded with peace by God?" Alek, whom the elders all knew to be far less concerned with religious matters than most--having grown up at a time when the village had largely been untouched by the growing sphere of influence of Christendom--thudded his fist upon the table, though it scarcely made any noise, what with age robbing him of his strength as he grew ever older. "I've lived through many battles, and the pious and blasphemous alike have their days in the sun. We must be ready if this foe decides to show itself!" James had noticed that Paul appeared to be deep in thought. His training at the monastery, brief though it had been, had long convinced him of the value of a man of wisdom--and that was before he'd even met Paul. He decided that it might be quickest to solicit the young elder's thoughts before the discussion could become more fevered: "Paul--what do you think?" All eyes at the table turned to Paul, who slowly looked up from the table and gazed around the room, almost as though he was mentally taking roll of who was present. "I think...that now is the time to determine what our dragon friend is up to." The elders goggled at him. "What kind of foolishness is this, Paul?!" keened Alek. "Do you wish to pierce our town between the blades of the barbarians and the teeth of the dragon?" James made a shushing noise; it might earn him temporary contempt, but he had a feeling it would all be forgotten in a few moments, if Paul indeed had a plan in mind--and it was rare indeed that the fellow lacked a plan. "Let him explain himself, Alek; we can decide then how preposterous it is or is not." Alek let out an impatient sigh, but kept his eyes fastened on Paul. "Fine--the sooner we can return to discussing something useful." Paul unfolded his hands--it was his habit to rest his chin upon them when he was deep in thought--and set them upon the table. "Perhaps it has escaped our notice, as it has been quiet, but our village has enjoyed a strange kind of prosperity since the dragon has arrived. Not a single one of our livestock has been slaughtered by beasts, and there have been no reports of bandits as far as the next town to the north or south. Our hunters report that they have no more difficulty now than ever in hunting game, and yet the deer have been nibbling on our fields much less than usual. Something strange is occurring, and while we don't know why, it could perhaps be that dragon. Now that we know where he lives--" a young herding boy had happened across the area where the dragon lived from afar, and with his keen eyes had espied the dragon returning to his lair by night-- "we can see if there is perhaps a way to appease him. Legends tell of dragons who can speak human tongues, who are wise but curmudgeonly--perhaps if we appease this one, we can convince him to protect our lands. Surely a barbarian tribe who eats all that lives and burns all else would ruin the bounty of nature in this region--no meat-eater with understanding would want such a thing." More than one set of eyes gazed at him with strange mixtures of confusion, reproach, and bewilderment. "You mean to say that you think our dragon has the mind of a man, Paul?" asked Lukas, uncertainty playing more than a small role in the tone of his voice. Paul audibly drew in, then exhaled a breath. "I don't know. But he's not like most dragons of legend. We never see him with treasure--we never had any to begin with--and he doesn't attack our cattle or our people. So he's either a dragon of a different kind of legend, or the legends do not speak truly. Either way, he demands a different approach than sending in knights on gallant steeds--and I suspect all such heroes are already fighting the barbarians." Alek scoffed aloud. "Preposterous! A dragon is not wise like one of us, and the legends say that only a maiden will appease a dragon! If we wish to curry its favor--even if it is the sort who would do something as noble as protect us from roving barbarians--we must appease it according to form! If we go in there, poking our noses about, all we'll do is enrage it!" There was a bit of a stilled silence at the table. It was well-known that Alek's grand-daughter had been caught tupping the son of a visiting nobleman the previous year. She was gracious of figure but homely of visage, and the fact that she was "used goods" further decreased the chances that she'd ever marry--and the noble would have nothing of her, claiming she must have drugged his drink, as he'd never grace such an ugly wench with his company of his own will. Alek had all but disowned her, but because it was a family matter, the other elders didn't feel comfortable passing judgment on the matter. Now that there was an issue on the table that might require something messy, like selecting a young woman to potentially be eaten alive by a dragon, well--it was beginning to look somewhat tempting. They all knew that the girl was prone to outbursts of weeping since that fateful night, and that she'd taken to a certain kind of frailty, so she did little to help out around the village... Paul could see that the matter wasn't going to go away, and he had a feeling that a "see-I-told-you-so" moment might arise in the future where Alek would attempt to turn the tables, claiming that they should have sacrificed his grand-daughter sooner. And then they would, and nothing might come of it, but no one would notice then... "Alek has a point. We should send a maiden--whether as a sacrifice or an envoy, it matters not. Better one person to die--if she dies at all--and our village to be protected, than for our entire village to fall at the hands of ruthless barbarians." He couldn't be sure that the plan would work, but then, he could always say that it was Alek's idea if something went awry, and he knew that no one would miss the maiden Alek had in mind. There were gruff, terse sounds of approval around the table--slightly reserved-sounding, as a matter of course, but nonetheless affirmative. It was a strange occurrence that Alek proposed something odd and that Paul agreed to it promptly--surely these two were onto something. "But that begs the question," said James, "who would we sacrifice?" Paul noted the momentary flicker that passed across Alek's eyes, but at first the elder said nothing, clearly waiting for the proper moment. At last one of the quieter elders, Braeburn, spoke: "I--I will send my daughter, Elise." A wave of shock passed through those assembled, and Paul rode it as though he'd not expected it. "Elise?" said Lukas. "She is but so young! She would be not more than a faint morsel in the mouth of a hungry meat-eater--no, it must be someone older." Paul's eyes flashed over to Alek, because he knew the old man would leap for this little trick. "Lukas is absolutely right," he said, pausing for a moment to build up the necessary gravitas. "I will send...I will send Jana. She is my only grand-daughter who is still with us, but she is of the right age and she is no meager morsel. She will understand, when I explain to her what must be done..." More of the gruff assent. Those who knew the game was headed this way were relieved it was over, and those who did not saw the seeming wisdom in the old man's judgment. Jana was fortunate to have been spared a worse fate; the fact that her mother interceded, saying that she would be responsible for what might happen as a result of her daughter's indiscretion, may have been the only thing that saved her from exile or execution on the spot. Unlike Elise, who was a charming flower of a lass and as sweet and helpful as could be, Jana now seemed like a spectre of a person, a mere shell about to break, like a fragile, unadorned vase teetering on a shelftop. There was some debate about how it should be done, but Paul remained quiet for most of it. It mattered not what they did; if the dragon really did want a maiden--and Paul seriously doubted that--it was unlikely that any other articles would make it more or less likely to defend them, even if a maiden would help at all. The elders settled on sending her in a white shift that she would make herself--her last task in the village--and they would send it with a drawing of their hopes; that is, a picture depicting the villagers as kind and obsequious to the dragon, while the barbarians as terrible foes that the dragon would crush effortlessly. Paul had a feeling it would be either insulting to the dragon or useless, but one could never say, for matters such as these. Also, a roll of bread, in case the dragon had never tried it, and some choice fruits, served with a white cloth of peace--a big one, that the dragon could use as a napkin, if he was that civil. No one bothered to mention that it would never be big enough to clean up after feeding upon an entire person. It took two weeks for Jana to finish making her shift, and while paying a visit to her home under the guise of village business with her mother, Paul could see that she was weaving a fair number of her tears into the shift as well. The basket was one her mother had made alongside her during the many hours of weaving and sewing, with handles in the sides rather on top, in case the dragon had large claws (no one had seen it quite up close, so its scale remained a matter of debate amongst the opinionated villagers). Jana's mother had baked the bread, too, and of the finer grade flour from the miller in the next town over--expensive, but a delight to the mouth. Some of the season's earliest cherries were added, and some early-ripened plums, but that was all that had grown to a fullness of taste, and they didn't want to give anything under-ripe. The drawing was done by Braeburn's son, Rahl. The boy was kind of spirit, like his younger sister, and though he helped out diligently, his skills at drawing were surprising for a village boy, and he intended to become an architect when he was older--or, failing in that, an illuminator for the monasteries. His style was unusual, for the times, but he'd always said that people didn't look as flat as most pictures of the day showed, nor as pale, so he shaded them dutifully, using various charcoals he roasted himself from woods he selected by hand... Then the day came--the day when it was all ready, all of the things to be delivered to the dragon, for better or for worse. A paltry caravan formed--the plot, though long surreptitiously passed to all the villagers, was something of a somber one, and no one -really- wanted to see Jana eaten alive--and took Jana much of the way to the place the herding boy had said the dragon made his lair. They nearly crested the small ridge that separated them from viewing it, and said their farewells to Jana, her mother tearful but silently so in the way of one who knows there is no other way. She had brought a small tent, and she and Jana's younger brother would wait there for a day, in case she returned, in whatever state she might. The young woman would walk the rest of the way alone, like a true sacrifice, in case it came to that, with the herding boy being the only one to breach that summit with her so as to show her where to go before himself turning back. The rest of the caravan turned around and departed, as the journey had taken nearly two hours, and though the day was overcast, the heat of the sun said that it was quite nearly afternoon already. Paul noted, in the subtle way that all carefully-plotting men walk of necessity, that Alek was wearing a mask of grief that winked away briefly each time he feigned wiping away tears, his sleeve hiding a small smile. The aged man was riding in a cart, as the journey would have been slow were they to wait for his old bones to make it, while Paul, the remaining villagers, and some of the younger elders walked alongside. It came as a certain alarm when Jana's mother and brother returned with Jana in tow later that day, completely unharmed, but dress somewhat smudged and face clearly swollen from tears. Paul again decided that the entire village didn't need to know what happened just yet, and he called them to whisk the tear-streaked young woman and her immediate kin inside so that the story could be controlled--though his cover was that of making sure the girl was safe, indoors, and allowed to rest from what had to have been a traumatic experience. Not all of the elders were even there, but of course Alek was, and Lukas and James had made it as well, and Jana's father had returned from working in the fields; he seemed relieved, albeit wordlessly, that his daughter, soiled as she was, had not come to harm. Jana's voice was fragile, as though the dam would again burst at any moment, but after waiting for a minute or two Paul gently asked her to recount what had come to pass. "Well," she said, drawing in a shaky breath, "I--I went to his lair, and it took me a while and I nearly dropped the basket, but I determined I'd go there, as I'd been told to do--I wasn't afraid of dying, but I--I didn't want it to hurt--" She paused, reaching for a rag her mother had likely provided her on the trail, as it was already glistening as she blew her nose on it before continuing. "So then I...I finally came to his lair, and--" "Was he there, Jana? What was the shape of his cave?" cut in Alek. But everyone seemed to glare at him; someone--Paul suspected it was James, quietly said "Let the girl continue her story, Alek." The unspoken consensus of the room seemed to concur, and she did:"I walked in...it was very dark; I couldn't see much of anything because it was light outside, but I realized that this was probably the best, so that I wouldn't see the dragon before I died--it would be over quicker that way--but then, as I turned a corner, it was becoming light again--" She paused for a moment, seeming to realize suddenly that everyone was listening to her more intently than they probably ever had. She seemed a bit cowed by this, but still continued. "And--and then I came into what I think was the antechamber for the burial mound, and there were small braziers there, that was what was making the light, and then--then I heard a voice..." He lower lip trembled and she wrung at the rag a bit; another quiet voice--this time Paul thought it was Lukas--asked "And then?" "And...it said to me--I'll never forget the sound of that voice--'Why are you here, girl?' And I said, 'I am here on behalf of my village, to appease the dragon who is said to live here.' I don't know how I said it without falling, but my knees were shaking the whole time...and the voice said 'The dragon lives here, but he does not need appeasing...he lives his own life. He has not harmed you.' And I said, 'Well...our elders say that there are barbarians who seek to kill us and pillage this land, and burn it...and they hope that the dragon will help defend us against them...' and the voice said, 'Then tell your elders to speak to the dragon themselves. You may leave your gifts here, but you must go...even if you were a sacrifice--" she paused, suddenly seeming to lose heart as her voice wavered immensely, but abruptly started again-- "even if you were a sacrifice for me--you're far too ugly!" Her voice rose to a keen at "ugly," and she broke into wailing tears. Her mother swooped in to console her, and her father laid supporting hands on her shoulders; Paul decided he'd heard enough. He tapped the shoulders of each of the elders and motioned that they should leave. They left for the room where they habitually met, discussing darkly along the way. "Blast," said Alek, "That good-for-nothing wench couldn't even be worthy of a sacrifice! We'll have to get another maiden, but who?" "Elise is still too young, and while she is charming, she has yet to develop into the beauty of womanhood," said Lukas quietly. "So she still will not do. And I doubt that any fathers of more beautiful girls would so easily let them be offered, after one has already been rebuffed..." Paul had been turning the girl's words over in his mind, and no matter how he looked at it, he kept coming to the same conclusion. "Gentlemen, I don't think we'll have to send another sacrifice at all. But no more of this until we are in private, please." And they walked in stony silence, though Alek seemed to be making more groans and grunts of age than usual in his walking... They sat at their table, weathered and ancient as it was, and Alek was, unsurprisingly, the first to speak: "Well, Paul, let's hear it--let's hear your grand scheme for appeasing the dragon without a prettier maiden." In an unusual turn of events, Paul stood and began to slowly pace around the table as he spoke, rather than remaining seated, as was de rigeur for elders at their meetings. "From what we have heard, either the dragon itself has a voice and mind like that of a man, or he has a servant who is similarly gifted. But from the girl's last words, I believe she spoke with the dragon himself--as he did not say "even if you were a sacrifice for the dragon," but rather, "even if you were a sacrifice for -me.-" "That's preposterous!" thundered Alek. "You saw how hysteric she was--she could have misheard or even misspoken!" "Indeed, which is why I'm suggesting that rather than putting it forth as absolute fact. All the same, saying "even if you were a sacrifice" suggests that he is not looking for sacrifices per se, either. But the one thing that is clear is that he--or his servant, either way--wants one of us to speak with him instead of one of our village girls. He sent Jana away without detaining her--either for his own food or that of his master, whoever he was--and that says that the dragon definitely is not looking for a meal out of any of us. If the dragon has the mind of a human, then we can attempt to reason with him; if he has a servant who can somehow communicate with him, then we speak to the servant. Either way, we can speak our needs to him and hope he sees fit to grant them." Even Alek seemed at a loss as to how to respond to this reasoning. Paul continued pacing unhurriedly, and finally Lukas spoke up: "Well...how do we intend to do that?" "Yes," said Alek, finally seeming to scrabble at an idea, "what if it's a trap to kill all of us?" Paul mentally awarded the senior elder for having brought up a subject his younger counterpart was about to use as a persuasive point. "It is possible that this is the case. It is also possible that it's not a trap. However, since Alek and I came up with the idea to try to bargain with the dragon with Jana, and that failed, yet Alek is too old to make the journey alone, I will go to the dragon and see if it must be all of us, or if merely one of us may suffice. And indeed, unlike the rest of you, I have no family to perhaps leave behind, save those I board with, who are not my blood. If he takes my life, so be it--I am, after all, a newcomer to this village." He knew they saw him as something of an oddity, and for good reason--he'd been a young man, not strapping nor waifish, with a tailor's kit in his pack and a curious talent for the art. He'd been an itinerant mender, but upon coming to Lithescoast he took to the local seamstress' family and asked to board with them. He'd since become ingratiated to the community--and who couldn't like that affable, wise soul? He seemed to have kind and insightful words for anyone, and though he could find faults, he was gentle in his criticism--an approach that tended to win more success than a sharp tongue. This wasn't to say that he was effeminate--certainly not; he was known to have a night of zealous merrymaking over the first autumn's ale as much as any fellow in the village--but rather that he found a way to be somewhat fatherly to all--even fathers in the village--without being overbearing, harsh, or controlling. His work didn't prevent him from speaking, either, and as such villagers sometimes came to chat with him while he sewed or mended, sharing their cares with him and coming away feeling lighter for their trouble. But in tense times like these, the charming outsider often metamorphosed, in the panicked eye, into a smooth talker with ulterior motives on the table, three meals a day. It wouldn't be entirely untrue to say that he didn't occasionally manipulate people into doing things, but he did so knowing what aim he had for doing so, and those aims were always benevolent, at least as he saw it--and often, he was so subtle in doing so that the people involved never knew they'd little choice in the matter. As such, he wasn't surprised when the reluctant nods at the table answered his proposition. He watched as Alek sized up the others before answering aloud, ensuring that he wouldn't seem overly enthusiastic to put his younger foil in danger's way. "That's very responsible, lad. I'd go myself if these bones weren't so ancient--you know I would!..." Yes, old man, Paul thought to himself, assure them you'd do it for some other reason than to spite me. "I'm certain of it, Alek. But do not worry yourself...if we can prepare another helping of gifts, as the dragon seemed to like that, I can be off as early as tomorrow; the sun has nearly set, and there will be no hope of finding him in the night." The men at the table straightened up--it seemed the object of the impromptu meeting had now been found and settled, and action would soon follow. "Do we need another drawing?" asked Braeburn. "No," said Paul, "as he already possesses the first, whoever -he- is, and whomever we speak to should be able to inform the dragon of our needs--even if perhaps it is the dragon himself. Words should suffice, but food fills the stomach as words never can do." "I'll speak to Martin, then," said James; Martin was his brother-in-law: the baker. "Can we get more fruit?" "I don't think anyone would mind if we pluck some tomorrow, given our purposes," rumbled Alek. "I will pay a visit to the Wilkers and tell them to expect us." The Wilkers were one of several farming families in the village; their specialty was in tending the fruit trees, but they helped in all of the fields. "And I'm sure I can find something to use as a satchel from around our home," finished Paul. "The dragon already has a basket, and I don't think we'll need another one. An old one would likely be insulting, and we don't have time to make one afresh." "But something you find around your home works better?" asked Alek in a mildly mocking fashion. "I don't think so." "Rest assured," said Paul, "it is easy to fashion something to carry things with. Have you ever made a satchel? No? Well, leave it to me." He'd actually mended a cloth tote not long ago, but the damage was so severe that he'd practically recreated it from scratch. The owner, however, had traded for something leather during the wait, and decided to let Paul keep it in trade for the work done. He had, after all, remade most of it...It would look so different that no one would suspect it was the same article. They departed, each to his own affairs. Paul knew he'd have to explain everything to the family with whom he boarded, considering that he might never return...but for now, he'd need to prepare for the chance to return to his village all the good they'd done him, albeit slowly, over his years as part of it. He got no caravan, but to his surprise, the head of the family with whom he boarded, a shepherd who provided his seamstress wife with much of the material for her spinning, came with him, intending to serve as the person in waiting, much as Jana's mother had done for the homely girl. Paul realized that there was likely little point to it; were he rebuffed much as Jana had been, he'd leave soon after he arrived, as would likely be the case if he were to present his case and be heard amicably; were the dragon to eat him instead, that would be the end, and the waiting would have been in vain. But it touched his heart, all the same, to see that this family that he'd once simply boarded with as a matter of necessity had become like a second family to him, such that his business became shared with that of the seamstress, and the two often worked together on larger projects. No one else had came--perhaps fearing of the trap that Alek had so darkly predicted, or perhaps because there was something far less noteworthy about a lone soul going to negotiate with a poorly-understood, possibly-hazardous party, compared to the austere notion of a maiden in white going to become a sacrifice to an ostensibly-wrathsome beast. Unlike Jana, who'd spent most of her life firmly within the village's borders, Paul had seen the burial mound once before, and though he'd not had cause to return, his sense of direction and memory were both good enough to allow him to find it again, once he breached that ridge of no return. And true, it was slightly hard to miss; the mound, though long covered in sparse sod, broke up the craggy hillside like pulp on a grater. His eyes were better than most, as he'd not spent as much time under the sun's direct rays as those who toiled outside, and they were used to finding the small details in cloth and leather. It was true, yes, that it was rather dark inside the burial mound's long entrance tunnel, but there was enough light from outside that he could see the turn in it that Jana had described, and then the light again, and then-- A figure stepped in front of him just as he passed into the room itself. It was like a man, but taller, wider, and there were pointy prominences over the shoulders. That was about all he could tell in those first reflexive seconds, what with the dim glow of the braziers, and he flinched a bit, out of sheer startle rather than fear. "Are you an elder?" asked the figure. It was a deep voice, but there was a faint hit of rasp to it...almost like one accustomed to a smoky environment. It was, as Jana said, a hard voice to forget. "Yes, I am," said Paul, becoming much more resolute upon learning that this figure, dragon or not, spoke in human tongues. "I am Paul, an elder of Lithescoast." He noted that there were two golden flickers set in where the figure's head should be. Eyes, perhaps? His own were still adjusting to the dimness, so details eluded him... "I didn't ask you for your name..." said the voice, its tone impossible to read, "but that is all well and good. Leave your gifts by the entrance, Paul, and come with me." The figure turned, and in his peripheral vision Paul realized that the prominences seemingly behind the figure were, in fact, wings. His heart raced as the repercussions of this fact settled in his mind--either this was the dragon, or the dragon had a demon for a servant! To his surprise, the dragon led him through what appeared to be a caved-in and excavated wall of the mound's original design to a large open space. This, he reasoned, was likely the dome of the mound itself, but, strangely, the king's sarcophagus was not here. Perhaps it had been moved out by the dragon...? Then again, he'd heard that some kings built tombs with misleading designs to foil would-be grave-robbers...There was a curious odor on the air, and as he saw the pinpoints of light around the room, Paul realized that the smell was that of tallow candles--evidently this dragon was either a would-be chandler, or knew someone who did it in earnest. And as his host came to a halt and revolved in place, Paul noted behind him what was perhaps the largest pile of pelts he'd ever laid eyes upon, nestled into a shape that resembled, well...a nest. "These are my quarters," said the dragon. "I have had little sleep since your maiden surprised me in my lair, as I expected you or one of your fellow elders might come, and I did not wish to be asleep for it. You will excuse me for lying here." The dragon stepped into the pile of pelts and reclined--his figure not unlike that of the Romans upon their opulent couches. Paul began to realize that the dragon was built not unlike a man, despite being winged and much stockier than a man, and indeed several hands taller. "Now, state your business. I believe I heard from your maiden the situation, but I do not trust the words of frightened, misinformed younglings." The dragon's tone remained implacably smooth, rendering Paul's talents at reading people quite useless. "Rumors have come to us from other villages that a barbaric tribe comes this way from the south. Their habits are likely to be exaggerated--some say they eat the human dead--but it is indeed likely that, if they exist and should they come to our village, they will not hesitate to destroy all that we have and are--and they will likely kill and burn everything that remains in their wake. Such I do know to be the way of barbarians..." "And you want me to help defend you against them. Is that it?" said the dragon, the inflection of his inquiry so slight that Paul had to strain to catch it. "Yes. We believe that they will stand little chance against a beast of a race immortalized in the legends of our people." He regretted having to say this, as it made it sound like they considered the beast a weapon--something no person would like to hear, were it spoken of them. "It is true that it would be an inconvenience for me should they burn the land and kill the prey. But I, unlike you, have wings; I can move if I must. To not even know if these barbarians will arrive makes me even less likely to care. Do you have something else in mind which can sweeten the deal?" "I cannot speak for them as one, but I expect that the farmers and herders would be willing to tithe to you for your protection, should you wish it," Paul replied. It was quite likely true; even a careful tithe would be a pittance compared to how successful their fields and herds were doing since the dragon had arrived. The dragon gave an audible puff of air through his nose--perhaps this was the equivalent of a derisive snort. "While fat cows are an easy kill, they are heavy to carry. And while your crops are tasty, I know you have little of them to spare for even outsiders, let alone someone like me. I have no need of tithes from your fields. But tell me, little man--the thing that you brought my gifts to me in--what do you call it?" The question caught Paul completely off-guard. "It is--we call it a tote. It fits over one shoulder, or can be carried in the hand. We decorate them, as they are not meant for long trips in the wilderness so much as bringing goods from place to place." "Did you make it yourself?" asked the dragon. "Yes," said Paul. It was a bit of a stretch, but he decided that since he -could- have made it from scratch, the answer was about accurate. "I am interested in the crafts of your people. Many of them--like these "candles" of yours--are quite useful. A man like you, who is talented in the ways of craftsmanship, could be of use, or at least of entertainment to me. So I will make you this offer: be my attendant, and I will defend your village should the barbarians attack." Though it caught him less off-guard than being asked if he made a tote bag, the question again left Paul off-balance. "Your attendant? What would I do for you, pray tell? You seem to already have quite an accumulation for yourself..." "It frightens humans to see me up close, and I do not have the time or patience to gain their acceptance first-hand. You will go to the village and trade some of my pelts or other things for such things as I wish for, or such things as you need to entertain me. You will teach me of your lore and of your ways, as I am curious, if only from boredom, to know of them. You will, in effect, be my emissary and my servant, my representative and my fool. And--there is one other thing..." "What would that be?" He heard rustling and could see shifting in the nest as he answered, but he couldn't see exactly what the dragon was doing. The dragon had arisen, and now strode back over to Paul, coming quite close--well into his personal space, which was quite an imposition, as it showed him how very much larger than him the dragon really was. "You will allow me to know and use your body as it pleases me, inside and out. I never wanted a female of your kind, let alone the sow of a maiden you sent me yesterday, but a male, that I wish to see. It is clear that males are more important in your race, and so I want to explore you, to see what pleases you and how it can please me." He cringed inwardly at hearing the remark about the inequality amongst sexes in humans--it was a fact of the times, but one he lamented--but the remainder seemed more surprising than repulsive to him. "Am I to understand that you would seek to lie with me, dragon?" Paul felt rather awkward at having to address the massive beast by his species, but he had no name and the honorifics of humans might mean nothing to him... "Yes, among other things," the dragon responded. "I do not wish to turn you simply into an idle plaything or concubine, to be tossed aside when I am not engrossed by your doings, but rather to build a bridge to the ways of your race, with you as the guide. I know not how you normally do this as humans, but I decided that I can be straightforward with you now and determine the details later." The thought sent chills through Paul's body. He'd longed for such attention, sometimes, in the quiet of lonely nights in his corner of his host family's home, the company of a muscular body aside his, sleek strength beneath his fingertips, no matter which side of him it was on--but he couldn't act on it, no, not with the teachings of Christendom declaring it mortal sin, despite the heresies of some of its priests, and the village didn't care for it, either. It was in part for that reason that he'd quietly declined seeking to start a family of his own, and instead nestled himself within the company of another, becoming as unto a relative to them. Now this specimen of legend was offering him an opportunity to make it real, to fulfill those hidden longings, in a way no human alive would ever experience...he couldn't say no. "I am willing to do this for you," he said simply, his ability to remain tactically reserved shining perhaps brighter than it ever had in that one moment. "Good," said the dragon. "You are not a sun-dried oaf, nor an ancient, wizened greybeard. You will likely not outlive me as you are, but that is of no matter; you're not about to die soon, and you're not tanned like leather. Of those I've seen in the town in which you live, you were the one I'd hoped might come, but I did not know that you were an elder of your people." "Master dragon," he said, unable to postpone using some kind of address due to the extreme awkwardness it was imposing upon his social habits, "what may I call you? I do not know your name..." "Dragon? Is that your peoples' name for my kind?" said the dragon. "Hm...it is a good name. I like the sound of it as it comes from my mouth. But as it is the name of our kind, so it is not my own name. My own name is--" He made a sound of roars and growls, ending in a keening note-- "but this is beyond the ability of men to produce well, I think. So you may call me Corr, instead. You need not call me master; by your service I will know that you see me as such." Paul felt relieved on two counts--the first that he now knew the dragon's name, and the second that the dragon did not intend to make an utter slave out of him, even if he would likely become something of a manservant. "Thank you, Corr. How shall I inform the people of our decision?" He framed it carefully, intending to curry favor in the dragon's sight by making the two of them an "us," but it was a gamble, as he wasn't sure how well linguistic connotations of humans carried over to the dragon, despite the fact that Corr seemed reasonably fluent in Paul's own tongue. "Ah...I'd not thought that far forward of this time. I had expected one or more of your elders to arrive, and then I would have had to pick one and send the rest back--but you are just you, only one, and without wings. I will send you back to your village. Tell them of our arrangement, and when you return, I would like you to bring back one of the things the barbarians in the picture you left me are wielding...they seem interesting implements, and I do not know what they are." Paul had seen the picture; the barbarians had been wielding swords and axes. As the dragon had likely seen the village primarily from the air, he might have missed the foresters at work under the trees with their axes--and they looked a mite different from the battleaxes in Rahl's faithful depiction. There were a few swords in the village, but they were generally kept out of use; the dragon would have been more likely to see a wooden one in the hands of a youth than a live, sharp weapon. "As you wish, Corr. Shall I leave now so as to return sooner?" "Yes, I think that would be best," said Corr, whose scaled body was gradually coming into clearer and clearer focus as Paul's vision continued to adapt to the darkness. He could see that it was somewhat taut upon the underlying muscles, and that the dragon was built like a hunter in every sense of the word--tension ready to spring, yet graceful in all of the menace it could promise. "And bring back any other things that you think will be of use to you. I will soon excavate more space for you so that you will have a place to sleep, but at least tonight, or tomorrow night if you take longer to fetch what you need, you will sleep with me, here." Another shiver of excitement coursed along Paul's spine; he tried not to let imaginings of what might soon come to him distract him from his even-tempered resolve and analytical strength. "I understand. I will leave now, then, and return as soon as the light and my supplies allow me to do so." Corr nodded, then stepped back and turned as he returned to his nest. "Then I will be here. I will take a brief rest now; if I am sleeping when you return, do not wake me, in case you should startle me. Stay back from my nest and I will not have the chance to harm you from where I sleep." The prospect of accidentally waking a friendly-yet-twitchy dragon did not exactly excite Paul, but he'd known some people in the past who were almost as deadly upon waking... "I will do as you have said." He gave a formal bow--not a subservient one, a stiff and tense gesture of a servant hoping not to be punished on whimsy, but rather a fluid, graceful one--the bow of one noble to another, despite the fact that neither of these two laid claim to fief nor following. "What is this gesture you have just made?" asked the dragon, in the midst of Paul's movement. "I know it is called a 'bow', but I do not know what it means to your people." "It has a few possible meanings, depending on when it is used," Paul responded, "but as I have used it now, it is a gesture of respect and acknowledgement. In such cases it is often used for greetings and departures." "I see," said the dragon. "I will practice it with you at another time," he finished, before nestling into the pelts and becoming silent. Paul took the opportunity to take his leave promptly, in case the dragon had already fallen asleep. He ran, rather than walked, all the way back to where Doran, the shepherd, was waiting for him. It seemed that the sound of hastened footfalls upon the path had reached the waiting fellow's ears, and he'd come to the top of the ridge just in time to meet Paul there. "Paul!" he exclaimed, in his simple baritone. "You're alive!" "And unharmed," answered Paul between breaths, "but I must get back to the village. You--for coming here, and waiting, I will see to it, that the elders let you hear, what it is I have to say." He wasn't out of shape, per se, but the distance he'd run was not brief, either, and the weather was warm. Paul nodded his assent. "I didn't set up the tent in case you were as quick in returning as Jana was. Let me gather it and we will return in all due haste." The man was simple, but he could tell when matters were beyond his immediate need to know. He was dutiful to a fault, making him an excellent tender of the sheep and a loyal father to the two children the family had been blessed to have. His warm smile was honest; he knew no other sort. Paul took the opportunity to catch his breath; while they certainly wouldn't run the entire way back home, a brisk walk would certainly be called for. They returned to town a full half-hour earlier than usual, by Doran's reckoning of the sun, for their effort. Paul immediately went to summon Lukas, Braeburn, and James, leaving Alek and the others for Doran to collect. It was not unheard of to have villagers attending a meeting of the elders, but it was still a rarity, and for this Doran zealously went at his task. They assembled in silence, more or less, each elder trickling in to the appointed seat and casting glances at Paul, as though wanting him to divulge his secret recounting immediately. But finally Alek arrived, looking as curmudgeonly as ever, and Paul began to speak before letting him get in a crass remark. "As you can see, I have weathered my encounter with the dragon quite well, gentlemen." "You met the dragon himself?" said Lukas with a start. "You're quite sure it was him?" "Indeed. I beheld his scales and his wings, and heard words pass from his mouth. He seems both wise and naïve--capable of reason and thought, but new to the ways of man. But he finds us interesting, and he has asked me to teach him of our kind." "It's quite a fancy to teach to the animals, Paul, but what of our negotiations?" retorted Alek. "Yes...he has asked that I will be his attendant and representative, to entertain and teach him, and to get things from town in trade for his amusement and use. This in exchange for helping to defend us, should the barbarians arrive. I have accepted his offer; I imagine that in my trips between here and there I can pick up and deliver tailor's work that is unhurried, to work on while he hunts, so I will not be completely useless even then." Upon his mention that he'd already accepted the offer, murmurs had broken out at the table. "But--Paul, you're one of the elders!" exclaimed Braeburn, his expression somewhat worried. "We cannot simply...exile you like this!" "No, my friend, you could not exile me...but this is not an exile. This is a choice that I am making, for the good of all. I will still be here frequently, even if most of my nights and many of my days will be spent in that cave. But I have never truly deserved to be an elder of this village, as I was not born here; it is with gratitude that I have served, but now my position may pass on to a more rightful holder." With Alek at the table, it was hard for the others to say that he was all that wise; though it was tacitly known to them all, Alek tended to ridicule such commentary, asking how such a youngling could possibly be wise. A lucky guesser, perhaps, or a cunning fool, but still not -wise-, the old man would say. Give him twenty more years and then we'll see. "Can't we send someone else?" said James quietly. "The dragon told me that he'd hoped I'd be the one to answer, as he'd already set his eyes upon me. He said that I am not too old nor too dried by the sun to suit his needs, and what's more, I can make things that he enjoys. The tote that I used to bring him our gifts today--he was fond of it and asked if I could fashion more. And I am young, and capable of making the many trips here and back again without difficulty--nor will I die soon, necessitating the selection of another. It must be me, James. That is all." He leaned into the table, adopting a posture of one giving orders--one he only rarely used, but which generally tended to command action, and promptly, when he showed it. "Gentlemen, he wishes us to bring him a sword or an axe, as he saw them in Rahl's drawing and wishes to examine one closely. I will also be bringing him a few other things--send with me anything you think may amuse him. Doran, I will have to ask Meena if she can spare any fabric, as I suspect that he will wish me to make him things soon..." Discussion spread like the withheld-waters of snowmelt , overflowing their bounds like spring issues forth from winter's tomb. It did Paul's heart good to see them moving away from the topic of losing him and towards something more benign--how best to amuse the dragon. When people were thinking about something unpleasant, a well-placed diversion would be gladly taken up--the trick was making it the right kind of diversion, and making that diversion as tempting as possible. Succeed in that, and they would gladly eat from the palms of one's hands even with the wolf growling aside them. A mere tote would never hold the assortment of things they sent with him, so Doran loaned him an old pack--one scarcely sound enough to hold its heaped contents, but, he reasoned, this pack wasn't a gift to the dragon so much as the things inside it, not to mention the person carrying it, so it should be alright. It was the unpolished reasoning of a man who spent many hours in fields with sheep to keep him company, and while not at all elegant, it was quite right. Paul couldn't exactly hurry back, not with so many things in the pack bearing him down, but he kept his step as agile as he could. The pack jostled and clanked; somehow the villagers had scrounged up a sword -and- an axe, both metal (though the sword was mercifully shorter than some), and the blacksmith had given him some old tongs and a hammer, claiming that if perhaps the dragon breathed fire, there would be some metalworking to do--and besides, he'd been putting off making a new set for a while. Paul's tailoring supplies, or at least the bulk of them, were also inside, and he'd taken some bolts of cloth, too, since he'd need a lot of cloth if the dragon wanted a tote sized to his larger frame. Chances were, something that big wanted to carry rather heavy things... Doran, being such a kind soul, and having already anticipated spending the day in waiting since the morning's original turn of events, joined Paul again for the return trip. He was a spartan man, in word and needs, so their conversations were concise and sporadic on the way, but he radiated a sense of kindness and security--perhaps a result of protecting sheep for so many years. Paul hadn't been feeling scared or worried, but having the hale fellow as a traveling companion made the trip more pleasant, all the same. They'd nearly reached the ridge that overlooked the dragon's lair when Doran spoke up: "I have something for you, Paul." Paul's initial internal response was that of annoyance, as the prospect of adding to the heavy load of things he was already carrying didn't appeal to him, but he quelled it before it could be seen. "Yes, Doran?" The shepherd reached into his cloak and withdrew something in a fist; a short cord looped out from within the closed hand as he offered it towards Paul. "Here." Paul accepted it, and found that it was a small necklace of sorts, bearing a charm made of leather and wool cords, with a shiny stone in the center, tied into place with intricate knotwork. "This must have taken hours to make, Doran--it's beautiful." And it was, in a masculine sort of way; rather than being showy, it was somewhat earthy in color, but its intricacy hinted at its worth. "My father showed me how to make ones like it when I was a youth. I made this one some time ago, thinking to give it to my son, but he has yet some time before he will be a man...so instead I chose to give this one to you. It is a charm of protection, said to rely upon the favor we accumulate by looking after the animals that our village needs to survive, and also one of blessing, from a father to a son. You have been like family to us, and though you are scarcely young enough to have been a son of mine, you have still been akin to a son to me." It was one of the longest continuous blocks of speech that Paul had ever heard from the laconic Doran, save the occasional times he was cajoled into telling stories, and it was certainly the most heartwarming. "Thank you, Doran--I'll treasure it always." He stepped in and embraced the shepherd, despite the unbalancing load upon his back, then tied the charm around his neck as he stepped back. "Well, Paul...we'll see you the next time you come to the village. Your space in the house will always be ready for you if you need rest," said Doran, smiling in his typical reserved way. "Aye," said Paul, "I hope the opportunities to come stay in it are not far between. But only time will tell." "See you, then," said Doran, waving with one weathered hand as though Paul would be back within the week. "See you," answered Paul, waving as he turned to continue towards the dragon's lair. How long, Paul wondered, would it be until he got to return? That much was uncertain...he'd always be able to negotiate with the dragon if he played his cards right, but Corr had unusually apt methods of reasoning that might catch Paul off guard--he couldn't be certain of anything. When he returned to the lair, he found the front hall of it somewhat brighter-lit--it appeared that the dragon had spread a few of the tallow candles about the room in addition to the sullen glow of the braziers. He took this as a sign that the dragon had likely awoken from his nap. He moved as silently as possible towards the room where the dragon made his nest, in case the dragon sleepwalked like no other, and discovered Corr lighting a candle with a second one, having apparently already done so a number of times--the room was now easy to observe, with the greater amount of light at hand. "Welcome back, Paul," the dragon greeted him without looking up. "I see you've brought more things with you." This statement caught Paul slightly off guard, as it didn't seem the dragon had looked at him at all--but perhaps the faint clanking of shifting items had made it to the dragon's ears, which, for all Paul knew, could be quite sensitive. "Ah, yes, just as you asked," Paul answered. It occurred to him without a conscious thought that he could now see the dragon fairly clearly, and the result was everything he'd imagined, and more. Corr was perhaps 7 and a half feet tall, a large fellow if anything, and stood on his hind legs rather than walking on all fours, his wings splayed out behind him. His color was somewhere between maroon and tan, a dusky gold mingled with hints of red, perhaps; a hue one might see in sunsets, only less bright, in part because he wasn't radiantly incandescent. Save his eyes, that is--his eyes were a topaz tone that seemed preternaturally light-catching, to the point that they indeed seemed to glow. There were horns upon his head, pointed and sturdy, and short spikes protruding from the angle of his jaw. But his scales were less like the armor of the same name that Paul had seen; while in some places they resembled it, only more pointily so, in others (particularly the front of his torso), he was swathed in wide bands of the material of each individual scale--an arrangement that would likely compromise between freedom of movement and protection. His previous perception of the dragon's body as one of feral might was not disappointed by the increased clarity the better lighting afforded; to the contrary, it brought into sharper relief the contours of the dragon's body, causing Paul's eyes to widen slightly as he began to realize just how muscular this beast was. It was a surprise, too, albeit a pleasant one, to see that the dragon had a muscle structure quite similar to humans; he had pectoral and abdominal muscles just like any well-defined man, instead of whatever a lizard or other typical reptile might look like in such a case. The dragon had a tail, as well, but it was not exorbitantly long; it curled upwards at the tip, residing several inches above the ground while Corr was standing. He was unclothed, as Paul began to realize, which struck him as more and more odd as his mind drew correlations between the dragon's body and that of a human. This might have embarrassed him if he were in the village, but here, in this secluded tomb of a lair, he didn't seem to mind overmuch that his eyes rested unabashedly for a while upon the heavy testicles that lay suspended between the dragon's legs, verifying beyond a doubt that this specimen was male. Above them was a receptacle somewhere between a sheath--like one might see on a bull or dog--and a simple vent into the male's body between the scales; he had a feeling that vestibule contained something equally grandiose of scale as the dragon himself. All this in a few mere moments, as Corr finished lighting the candle and turned to look at Paul. The human raised his eyes instinctively, as one would do to another human in such a circumstance, and for a fleeting time he simply watched the topaz eyes of the dragon, marveling at the way the buttery lighting of the room made them seem to glisten from within. They were the eyes of an animal, yes, but sharpened with sentience; they were not wild-seeming or dull in the slightest, despite holding an intensity that seemed worthy of such a magnificent creature. "So--how did your people respond to my terms and your decision?" asked the dragon, gaze unwavering. So little did he move while doing so, in fact, that it took a split second for Paul to realize the larger male had spoken. "Ah--well, they seemed a little surprised, and some didn't exactly seem to like it, but they all did realize that it was a suitable effort and a reasonable exchange--as well as something of my own choice to make. I'm something of a strangeling to them, so they probably took it better than they might have had I been a long-dwelling native of the town." In particular he was speaking of Alek, but the statement was certainly true--if perhaps less strongly so--of the other villagers. Corr gave a slow nod, his eyes still locked upon Paul's face. "I will keep my bargain with them so long as their portion is also upheld. With you as my emissary, I believe they will have no reason to renege upon the terms. However, in all of my time here, near this settlement in which you live, I have seen no sign of the barbarians of which you have spoken for leagues around--I suspect my aid will never be required." Paul filed away this fact for future reference; apparently the dragon was something of a shrewd negotiator, as he'd apparently knowingly agreed to a bargain that, unbeknownst to the people, would likely require little to no effort on his part to fulfill. "Let us hope so, all the same. War is an ugly thing, and it is best if the most lives can be spared its touch." Corr glanced away in that moment, gaining a distant look in his eyes, and accordingly surprising Paul somewhat--the gesture was one he'd thought more human than the dragon was wont to make. "...yes," said the larger beast at last, "that is best." There intervened a few moments of somewhat awkward silence; Paul found himself wondering what the dragon was revisiting in the distant planes of his mind, but he decided not to pry just yet--by the looks of things, he'd have plenty of time to coax more information from the dragon whom he would henceforth serve. So his silver-tongued skills goaded him into changing the subject: "So--would you like to see any of the things I brought?" Corr returned his gaze to the smaller male smoothly, as though he'd chosen to change the course of his thoughts voluntarily rather than, say, being jarred from them by Paul's suggestion. "Yes--I think I'd like to see that thing from the picture, that one the barbarians held. What is it called?" Paul shrugged off the pack, deftly reaching into it before it had even hit the ground. It took some rummaging, what with the number of items within and the size of the axe, but he finagled it from the tangle of objects and held it up for a brief moment before offering it to the dragon. "Careful--the edge of the metal is sharp," he said, unsure if perhaps the dragon was able to tell by looking at it if this was the case. "We call this an 'axe;' it is used for cleaving things, whether for practical uses or in battle. With certain mindsets, one can see limbs as a sort of log..." The dragon took it smoothly, the movement of his grasping it scarcely palpable to Paul as he held it out. Corr turned over the weapon slowly, the spots of light around the room dancing mistily across its surface as it revolved. To Paul's initial surprise, the dragon then tested its edge against the more ridged, spinous scales along the outside of its forearm. The legendary hardness of dragon scales proved true before Paul's eyes: the blade cleaved no more into Corr's limb than it would into an anvil. "It doesn't seem very effective," remarked the dragon evenly. Paul had to fight a sudden urge to squirm uncomfortably. "Well, we generally swing it, rather than using it to cut directly...and against human flesh, it is much more effective. We are not armored, like your kind." Corr angled his head obliquely to gaze aside at the human. "I have often wondered that about your kind. From the air I can only see so much; are you tough like cattle, or soft like the deer? Have you nails like wolves or claws like the lynx? And your teeth--I can see already that they are not as sharp as mine, but neither are they straight, made for plants, like those of a horse or squirrel...such strange creatures you humans continue to prove to be." He set the axe in a niche in the rock and advanced towards Paul. "Now that you've come to stay, I shall see of what you are made, man..." The word "man" had a curious ring to it as spoken, as though Corr saw Paul as the epitome of humankind, the archetype incarnate. Paul stood stolidly, doing his best to avoid becoming stiff, watching the dragon with eyes as tempered as he could muster against the reflexive widening they wished to betray a sense of worry with. He had no real idea exactly what the dragon planned to do, though the possibilities whirled in his mind, the somewhat alien expressivity of the beast unreadable in Paul's eyes. The dragon held out a hand as he came near. "Come, give me your hand," he said, coming somewhat closer than the distance that would be necessary to take Paul's hand in his. Paul held it forward, unafraid inside, despite instincts screaming at him to hesitate, to ask what the dragon planned, to figure things out first. But no, this was not a human, who could be manipulated easily with petty concerns--this was something else, something he didn't yet understand, something that rang in his higher senses as noble, as though the dragon was the emissary of his race--and Paul the ambassador of his own. The dragon's hand was somewhat rough around Paul's flesh, but warm, and still flexible; it held Paul's appendage lightly at first, as though uncertain of its sturdiness. But upon seeing that it held up just fine, Corr's grasp firmed, and he ran his larger fingers and palm over the smaller, scale-less echo of its shape. "So soft," he said. "It's a wonder everything you touch doesn't cut your flesh to ribbons. And yet it feels like the caress of a breeze to run my scales over it--to touch another of my race this way is brittle, like handling a stone." Paul filed away in his mind this tidbit about there being others like Corr, but said nothing. Corr's hand slid upward, carrying along the sleeve cuff of Paul's tunic. It bunched as it furled, and jammed near the elbow, but for the moment Corr was satisfied: he now compared with touch the inside and outside of Paul's forearm. "And here and here you are quite the same. It seems you do not use these parts to block what might be turned against you, unlike our kind..." He turned his own forearm over, showing the ridge-like formations of scales on its outside that contrasted the smooth waves of them along the limb's inner surface. And now Corr sized up the tailor's tunic; though he was familiar with the notion that humans wore clothing, he knew little of how it functioned. "How can I remove this covering from you?" he asked, not wanting to rip one of the fascinating examples of human handiwork he'd only recently gotten to see up close. "I'll show you," said Paul, his heartbeat quickening somewhat. Even in that day and age, it was rare for genteel folk to disrobe in each other's company; even married folk commonly consummated their marriages while mostly clothed, to prevent carnal lust that in the mind of much of Christendom constituted a sin, despite the unquestionable good of the new life it could produce. This dragon knew nothing of that custom, it seemed, but he could deal with that later; already the experience was proving tantalizingly novel, and Paul suspected it would only become more so. He rolled his sleeve back down, so that he could later remove it, then lifted his tunic from the shoulders, bunching it above his head before sliding his arms out as well. He at first hesitated when the light undershirt he wore beneath it was caught up as well, as he'd normally have intended to leave it in place, but it occurred to him that this wasn't a "normally" sort of moment--so he flowed with the moment and slid it off in unison, exposing his torso to the dragon. Corr's hand returned to Paul's body just above the elbow it had previously reached, and slid along the inside of the tailor's biceps, then across the front of his shoulder and diagonally across Paul's pectoral prominence. "How curious that you and I might have such similar shapes," said Corr, a slight change in his tone that Paul guessed was his means of expressing curiosity, interest, or perhaps even wonder. "To think we have so little in common, yet the same places for the skin to rise and fall...the Universe is a stranger place than I knew." Paul looked up at the dragon, his social habits again flogging him for being topless in front of a being whose favor he definitely intended to curry. "So 'tis, Corr--but then, for many years, our people considered your kind a legend, the stuff of heroic myth..." He was about to append a comment about how they were generally considered a bad thing to have around, unless a knight needed to earn some honor (or a valorous demise) in a hurry, but somehow that seemed entirely inappropriate. The dragon drew his hand downward, amidst Paul's abdominals and obliques; he was careful to only use the palmar side, as he wasn't sure how well the tailor's skin would hold up to the more ruggedized backsides of his hands. "Despite the similarities between our races, it is true...we scarcely ever meet. And I suspect the encounters will only grow rarer, rather than more common." He reached up and pulled lightly on the back edge of the tailor's shoulder, and Paul, being quite used to the gesture by merit of his trade, turned around on the spot, showing his back to Corr. "Ah, I already knew your race was without wings--but there is nothing here where they would be...just the muscles that lie beneath, and nothing else." He traced the outline of the tailor's shoulder blade and then back along the latissimus dorsi to Paul's spine, his finger tripping over the vertebral spines just under the human's skin. Paul wasn't sure what to make of this comment, so he opted for faint agreement: "To our race, we consider it unusual that other species can fly. We commonly wonder what it would be like to have wings..." He was startled when he felt a slight breeze just behind his left shoulder, and he turned his head to see Corr there, sniffing from a rather close range. Suddenly he felt mortified: in that day and age, bathing was a custom that was considered exceptionally common if done monthly...a quarterly bath was more the norm. Though Paul wasn't the filthiest of men, he was aware that he probably smelled rather distinctly and strongly to the dragon's carnivorous olfaction... To his surprise, Corr straightened up smoothly. "I could tell you had a smell, but it seems to be concentrated here. It is...I have no word to describe it. It is unique, yes, and I do not dislike it. Do all of you smell this way?" "...we each smell a little differently, but we do each have our own scents, I suppose...they tend to get washed away when we bathe, which we consider to perhaps be a problem, as we think these scents keep the bad airs at bay." It had always seemed kind of odd to Paul, though; there were a lot of people he'd run across that smelled as though "bad airs" was the only way to describe them. "I see," said Corr, again becoming unreadable. "And now for these 'pants' of yours--how are they undone?" Another palpable flare of Paul's heartbeat. "I--will show you," he said, turning back around to demonstrate. As a tailor, Paul generally was expected to wear clothing utilizing the latest in garment technology, and so his pants were closed at the waist with a button in addition to the more commonplace drawstring. He undid the paired closures, then slowly slipped them off, a pair of linen undershorts and his shoes the only things keeping him decent. His shoes! Blast, he thought to himself, his trousers pooling around his ankles as he undid the lacings on the leather articles. Finally, they were off, and the pants with them, and he stood. Corr had been watching the whole thing, and now the great dragon crouched, examining the tailor's legs more closely. "Now here I find a difference," he said, his hands running down each side of Paul's thigh, slowing at the knee and upper calf. "We stand largely upon our toes, but you," he said, one hand continuing down to the human's heel, "are flat-footed, quite unlike us. I'd never known if perhaps this was something concealed by those pants your kind wears...how different it must be for you to spring and lunge!" Paul said nothing to this, uncertain as to how one might respond to such commentary. It occurred to him in that moment that he was standing nearly-naked in the burial mound of an ancient king, in the company of a dragon considerably larger than himself, and yet he strangely felt no fear; only his sense of social norms, and perhaps his usual ways of carefully observing and planning, seemed to be at unease. Corr spent a few extra moments examining Paul's knee. In the draconian organism, the knee was of a slightly different construction, but after thinking about it for a few moments, he decided that it was due to the difference in foot posture as well. He inclined his back slightly, noting the only article that remained upon the human's person. It seemed like the pants, only looser; he thought he understood how they worked now, so he raised a hand to the tailor's waist and asked, "May I try?" It was all Paul could do to prevent a shiver of anticipation from palpably passing through his body. He merely nodded his assent; there was little else for him to do. He felt the dragon's fingers carefully work the knot out of the silk lacings of his undershorts, their rougher backs occasionally grazing the sensitive skin of his lower torso, but only just--they brought him no pain in so doing--and then he felt the waistband go slack, and the dragon's hands slowly pulling away the last shred of clothing that remained. Strangely, however, he found himself staring not at what the dragon was doing, but at the dragon's face, trying to read that angular visage. What was Corr thinking as he peeled that last article away? Had he already made a judgment about his new attendant that Paul might never reverse? The dragon removed the article from Paul's legs one at a time and then placed it aside, with the other things Paul had doffed. Then he gazed full at the tailor's loins, and when he spoke, again his tone had changed. Surprise, was it? "Ah, your maleness--" said Corr, "How does it not stretch forever, to the ground, without a receptacle?" It took Paul a few moments to sort out what the dragon meant, but then he recalled the structure of the dragon's own genitalia. "This is the way all of our kind are. There must be some reason, but never once have I heard of someone's...'maleness' stretching as you say. And believe me," he said, adopting a drier tone, "if there was such a person, we'd likely have heard of it." "There is a legend among our people," said the dragon, a hand gently reaching in to feel the shaft and paired orbs as he spoke, "that long ago our males lacked the vessel in which we keep our masculinity, and had to do many comical things to prevent them from sagging ever lower to the earth. It is said that one of our elders finally appealed to the gods, and they gave us our sheaths to save us that trouble and that risk and that is where they came from. Many other animals have these as well, so we thought that perhaps all did." He paused for a moment, plying the sac between his fingertips. "Again you humans surprise me," he said simply. Paul was in a strange state of agony and ecstasy; on the one hand, the dragon seemed to have an intuitive touch with that one massive hand, and was ministering to the tailor's loins in a way Paul had never anticipated possible; on the other hand, he wasn't sure what the dragon would think if he sprouted an erection, and was trying to prevent it. Physiology, however, was winning out--Paul didn't exactly have any skill in suppressing such a reaction, as he only rarely might have had a use for such a talent--and he could feel the flesh firming up. To his chagrin, Corr failed to overlook it. "But here we do have a similarity...See how the flesh warms and hardens when touched gently, when fondled kindly. Without a sheath to conceal it, it becomes so much more apparent how it changes in size..." He continued to deftly manipulate the burgeoning flesh, which by now was almost painfully erect, as it had never received such treatment before. Paul for once couldn't think of something to say that wouldn't sound feeble or trite; he'd thought he was to be this dragon's attendant, and yet here Corr was attending to the tailor's loins, and with such skill that Paul could scarcely believe the sensations pervading his mind from the simple touch of the dragon's hand. Then the dragon leaned inward... Corr gave a gentle inhalation. "This smell is more complex than the one above...I do not know the characteristic scents of your race's cues to one another, but amidst our people, it is easy to smell the need on another male..." Then, his mouth opened towards that turgid shaft, and to Paul's surprise and yet relief, the dragon's tongue snaked outward. The deft, moist appendage wasn't forked, though it was more angled towards its tip--likely due to the muzzle shape of the dragon--and it was warm and wet as its surprising length ensnared the gently throbbing spire before it. Paul gave a gasp in spite of himself, though it was quiet, as he felt Corr's tongue spiral around his sensitive pride like a streamer on a maypole. There was strength in that slender ribbon of muscle, and it enfolded his member firmly, tugging it somewhat towards the opened mouth from which it issued. Then it unwound, slowly, before taking a long lick from outer base to tip, then returning to Corr's muzzle. "Your taste is savory," said the dragon, "and your body assures me that you are enjoying this. I shall continue," and continue he did--this time using his tongue to ensnare the shaft and pull it into his cavernous maw, carefully guiding it away from his sharp, carnivorous teeth and instead guiding it to his soft tongue and palate. The feeling of that heated, damp enclosure enveloping his shaft caused Paul to moan gently, his head tilting back reflexively as his torso flexed forward. The dragon was moving his erection in and out of his mouth with an unhurried grace that felt like a sparkling of stars dancing across that sensitive, blood-hardened flesh; Paul felt as though the dragon either must have done this countless times in the past, or had instinctive knowledge of the act, as no novice could ever be expected to render such potent delight. Corr continued for some time, noting that after a bit, the clear, gossamer pre-ejaculate, further betraying the depth of his attendant's arousal, began to flow into his mouth, adding its decadent flavor to that of the flesh in his mouth, already nestled within a cornucopia of aromas. One of his hands, resting upon Paul's outer thigh, could feel tremulous wavers within the muscles of the tailor, showing the dragon how very capable his ministrations were. It felt good to him to know that even this foreign race, this strange, wingless, soft-fleshed creature, could be pleasured in ways familiar to his kind. It was all Paul could do to remain standing before long; this massive, muscled beast before him was a fantasy in and of itself, but its capabilities in this carnal act were awe-inspiring, leading him to wonder what other talents the dragon concealed, in what fickle parts of thought remained accessible to him. "Corr...in the name of all that is holy, your mouth is like heaven to me..." The dragon heard these words, and after a few moments, slowly drew his mouth away from the tailor's shaft. He began to stand, and he could see what he would later learn to be slight confusion on the tailor's face, but as he rose, he gently placed his muzzle against the tailor's mouth. Though the lips of a dragon, such as they were, were clumsier than the soft, red mouth of a human, his race knew what a kiss was, and he gave what best he could muster of one to Paul. The tailor's eyes widened in surprise, unsure at first if the dragon perhaps planned to eat him now, but his mind flew into a tempest as he suddenly recognized the unanticipated gesture as a kiss. The comment he'd spoken a few moments before echoed in his mind, and he wondered if perhaps the dragon had taken it too literally...but within a few moments, as his softer mouth opened to take his new master's a bit into it, he realized that he'd unknowingly spoke truth that applied here, too. The flavor of his own arousal could be sampled there, yes, and there were also other notes--that of venison, and of other exotic meats, but also that of plums...Paul suspected that Corr had availed himself of the villager's gifts of fruit earlier in the day. Rich, musky, complex...somehow it was a flavor that seemed fitting for a creature of such nobility as this dragon. Corr anticipated the gesture being somewhat alien to the tailor and didn't push; when he soon felt the human's tongue tentatively touch his own, he invited it in, using his longer, stronger one. He was greeted with a light, heady mixture of tastes--he could tell that the human ate meat at times, yes, but there were other notes present, such as that of the airy bread he'd tried earlier, and of fruits and leafy things--foods the dragon rarely ate. And there was the native taste of his mouth, which was new to Corr, as those of his race generally had a much different diet--to say nothing of mouth fluid compositions. Paul let his tongue do some tentative exploring, cascading lightly over the sharp fangs of the dragon so as not to accidentally be hurt by them--though Corr was holding his head rather still, perhaps aware of the risk his hunting-specialized maw could pose to the smaller, softer human. He realized only as they touched the dragon's back that his arms had risen to embrace and feel Corr's body, and he hoped that the dragon wouldn't mind. His hopes were realized quite rapidly, as the dragon's hands descended around him, echoing the gesture. Corr's race was more keen to embrace with the arms and hands than to explore the body of the other at the same time, so he held mostly still, even as Paul's smaller hands gently roamed his rugged back. The scales there he knew to be more protective in nature than those of his supple front side, but they still retained flexibility, and those soft fingertips seemed to be plying the dragon's muscular contours, much as Corr had sampled the much more lithe physique of the tailor not long before. The kiss died away naturally, with a slowness that made it poetic, and though Paul's eyes held a mixture of hope and unsureness as he drew back and gazed into those of the dragon, Corr was not yet sure what to make of them. "You hold such passion in that mouth of yours, my friend," said the tailor. "Fire or no, from the mouths of dragons comes something not of this world." Corr leaned his head back slightly; his facial expression, though foreign to Paul, was one his race used to express gratitude. "Thank you, friend." The word sounded odd to him; he was used to the tonal language of his kin, but somehow the meaning carried through well in this other tongue. "Those of our race couple freely to enjoy one another's bodies, and consider young thus born as a sign that the relationship is blessed; yet, we are both males, so such fruit will not come forth. You have a foreign body that nonetheless sparks desire to know it from the inside as well; as a thinking being I cannot simply force myself upon you without shame. Would you lie with me?" he asked, applying the sound of intonation he'd learned from the humans already to indicate a question. There it was: the offering of what Paul had been inadvertently anticipating for all of his life. In this seclusion, his one deepest wish was about to come true in ways he'd never dreamed before this dragon had changed Lithescoast with its appearing. "...yes," he said, his pause out of the gravity of the moment, rather than any hesitation. "But I ask that you be as gentle as you can, for you are larger than I..." The dragon had been nothing if not careful thus far, but Paul knew that amidst more primal indulgences, even nobility could lose sight of its normal ideals... The dragon wordlessly pressed inward and upward with his hands, supporting Paul's body against gravity with the strength applied through his massive forelimbs. His steps were purposeful but not hasty as he turned and approached the accumulation of pelts where he habitually slept; the animal smell of the tanned furs was impossible to go wholly unnoticed by even Paul's less-sensitive human nose as they approached. They were piled into something like a bowl shape, albeit a somewhat lumpy one, and Corr moved to the back side of the cavity, leaning forward to gently deposit Paul in the rising brim. The tailor felt his unclothed back and legs caressed by the pelts and hides, each one velvety leather or plush fur against his skin. For a moment, he felt as though this is what it would probably be like to be a barbarian prince, holed away in a cave of riches--but the strangely tender beast above him kept him tethered to the reality of the situation. The dragon knelt closer to the bowl of the nest, his knees straddling Paul's calves, his head held at an angle that allowed Paul to gaze at him without lifting his head from the inclined pile of pelts. He drew his arms back slowly, not wanting his scales to perhaps mar his new attendant's back as he removed his arms from behind the armor-less human. One of his hands braced him as he leaned in just a fraction, while the other reached up to the tailor's shoulder. "You likely do not understand what you mean to my kind, friend," the curiously apt word slipping again from his scaled lips. "What do you mean?" asked Paul, his expression one of honest and meek curiosity. "Look around you," said Corr, his eyes slipping to one side, then the other. "We are dragons. We live amidst the rocks, the caves, the high places of the world. Trees are not ours, for they do not support us. Nor are fields, for we would scare all the game anywhere near it. All we know are hardnesses, and the rending, bloody meals we must feed ourselves. This pile of pelts--this alone would be a fortune of legend to any of our kind. They are, to us, one of the most comforting things to sleep on in the world." He drew his hand slowly downward, along the side of Paul's torso as he continued. "Our home is one where the animals are much harder to eat, much harder to kill. And we have not the tools and tonics of the tanner. Sometimes a hide, mummified by the elements, comes into our possession, and then it becomes a treasure of honor, given to those amongst us whose merit earns it, for them to savor." His massive hand came to rest at the side of Paul's buttock, its fingers running along it to the tailor's lower back. "But you--you are yet alive, and your softness is warm, with a wise mind inhabiting it. You are the greatest treasure here to our kind--and here I am, the only one of my kind here to have it. I once thought I was the one cursed by fate amongst us, but I see now that I have been unduly blessed." Paul couldn't restrain his curiosity further. "You say you're the only one here, yet that there are others of your kind. How can this be?" He hoped that the dragon wouldn't think poorly of his asking, but it couldn't be helped. The words hung in the air for a few moments. "...the truth is something we do not yet understand. In our native home, there is still something in the world we do not know. There is no word for it in your tongue. It might be alive, but it has no body of anything we know. Once a year, it comes and claims one of our kind. It was thought that it devoured them, and that it was merely another rung on the ladder of eating to live, much as we would otherwise be on the top of that ladder. But now I know the truth: those it claims are taken elsewhere, and I, upon arriving, spent ages roaming the lands looking for those who might have been brought here by it." The dragon's expression moved into something unreadable, which Paul assumed was distant wistfulness. "Did you find any?" asked Paul, feeling rather sure he already knew the answer. "No," said the dragon. "I crossed what felt an ocean to a land of sands and sun, and back again. Perhaps the world is too large for me to examine entirely, but I cannot travel freely as you humans do. I learned early that you fear our kind. I eventually settled here, where the air is most like that of my home." His hand idly smoothed over Paul's abdominal muscles. "I found a tanner and kidnapped him, briefly, under cover of night, as he staggered from the house of merriment, drunk on that strange-smelling liquid you make from that 'wheat' plant. We negotiated a treaty where I would bring him animals, killed instantly with a blow to the head, their pelts intact and free of blood, and he would keep the meat and the lower-grade or smaller pelts. I also hunt the animals he needs to fill specific orders. He, in turn, would give me the largest and best pelts to keep. He lives more than a day's travel away on foot, but to my wings it is a simple matter to tend to his needs. His trade has increased to the point that he sends his wares with merchants to faraway towns, and his work is praised for the completeness of the pelts. They wonder how he manages to kill every animal so cleanly, but he keeps his secrets well, knowing that no one would believe the truth." He drew a clawtip in circles around Paul's navel, his touch featherlight, leaving tingles in its wake. "He is tanned and old, like leather from a cow died of age, and though skilled, his mind is simple. He treats me with fear, even with his respect. He is not like you, and he would never consent to what you have, I think," said the dragon. His voice seemed to have become more level as he spoke, or at least that was all Paul could determine. Tentatively, Paul reached up to the chest of the dragon above him, his fingertips seeking the armored prominences of muscle. "Perhaps that tanner is not the only fortunate human, either," he said. "No longer will I have to play petty games with the townspeople to keep them from ending themselves. With Alek's plan broken and peace from my seeming martyrdom, they will no longer fear the growls of an old dog, and I can live here, in peace, seeing them when I please and teaching a noble visitor to our lands our ways. And, truth be told...the form of your body is like none I have ever seen." His hand, which by now rested lightly against the dragon's chest, palm to the striated surface, now roamed slowly much as Corr's had done while the dragon had spoke. "When the king's men or the knights come through, they are crude, crass, full of thoughts of the superiority of their armor and weapons. Many are fat and burly, but here you are, a lean pinnacle of the hunter's strength. Were it that I could remember one such dream and not doubt it to my happy imagination, I would swear I'd seen you in one of them." His hand reversed course, rising to the dragon's jaw line, his fingertips resting on the roots of the spikes protruding there. Corr's free hand ascended to meet it, resting atop and blanketing the human's smaller one. "I...do not understand, I think. I am not of your species, nor even of your land--how can this be?" Paul's brow furrowed in the slightest as he strove to find words to express the strange feeling, knowing he'd never quite do it justice. "...suffice to say that I do not know, but seeing you now in light that my eyes can make out, I feel like you've been resting in a quiet corner of my imagination, waiting to be let out. Yet rather than manifesting as a daydream, the reality of your touch, your flesh, it persuades me that this is no idle musing." Corr turned his head aside slightly, the gesture strangely accurate across their cultures for suggesting slight uncertainty. "It may be that I understand, but it is of little consequence. There is a saying amidst my people: the mysteries of life free us from the chains of living. Your words seem to say that you feel so freed." He blinked gently, then leaned in slowly, tentatively, for another kiss. But it was Paul who took the initiative this time, rising somewhat from his reclining position to meet the dragon's mouth, his hand upon the dragon's jaw clasping it gratefully as they entered the embrace of varied mouths again. Now that he knew what to expect, he found it even better than the first, and he took the opportunity to invite the dragon's tongue into his own mouth. Only a relatively small portion could fit, due to their differences in size, but he treasured the sensation of that lively muscle dancing lightly over his lips like a spring brook, feeling his palate gently, almost as though for reassurance. This kiss was shorter than the other two, but it was meant to be a punctuation to their exchange of heartfelt words, rather than an end unto itself--and this was not to say that it lacked depth or zeal. "Please," said Paul as he came away breathlessly, "let me return for you the favor you did me not long ago." Though Corr wasn't sure what Paul was asking for, he had no reason to object, and nodded wordlessly. The tailor rolled forward, that gloriously soft and pliable body moving towards the dragon's own loins. He felt the dexterous human fingers, slightly cooled by the air, come to rest upon his sensitive nethers, and he drew a quiet breath. True, the touch wasn't especially strong, but it was more delicate, more precise than anything the dragon or any of his kind could manage. One hand was already nestled around the heavy orbs resting in the loosely-skinned sac suspended below the dragon's hips, while the other was gently palpating the borders of the dragon's loin receptacle, seeking to determine the place and shape of its contents. Again the smoothness no creature had ever afforded him flowed gently to his mind on rising tides of bliss, and he could feel his lifeblood beginning to flood into his loins, quickening the flesh that nestled within the scales of his groin. Paul could feel it, too, as the marginal degree of difference between the resilience of general tissue and that which lay atop the dragon's shaft became accentuated as the flesh within became more and more turgid. There it was, under the skin--the prize for his efforts. He massaged it with enthusiasm, not knowing what the dragon would like best, mixing up his approach every so often to see if anything elicited a reaction. He knew that he wanted to bring his new, noble master pleasure, but he wasn't sure just yet how best to do that...the comments about the softness of his flesh reminded him of that advantage, and he made sure to keep as much of his hands in continuous contact as possible. An idea occurred to him, and he brought his head in, resting his cheek upon Corr's inner thigh. There was a belt of the smoother, more flexible and skin-like scaling along that face of the limb, and while not as smooth as his face, it didn't abrade his skin as he slowly rubbed his cheek up and down. The dragon, as a form of reptile, didn't sweat, leaving very little odor naturally present upon his loins--but as Paul's nose drew closer with proximity, he realized he could detect a faintly musky smell coming from the larger male's slit itself. He'd heard that some animals gave off smells when in heat--perhaps this was the smell of the dragon's arousal? The aperture widened; he could feel the buried flesh slowly shifting under his fingers as the burgeoning shaft within forced its way out. The tailor's eyes were locked upon it, sizing up the member as it swelled outward, his hands performing their ministrations without his conscious intent--a valuable skill for any tailor, in general, though this particular application was a bit different than most...He couldn't be sure now how thick it would eventually be, but the wrinkling on its surface betrayed the fact that it had a considerable amount of growing, in both length and girth, to perform. But he could tell that his actions were working: that sponge-like flesh was filling in with alacrity. It was hypnotic, watching it grow, and the delicate aroma that wafted from it, piquant upon his nostrils, drew him in. He took that flesh into his mouth hesitantly, having never placed another male's manhood into his mouth before, being careful not to let his teeth abrade it (though he had no idea if perhaps it was nearly as resilient as the rest of the dragon). It had a savory note to it, perhaps from being tucked away from the environment most of the time. It was like no flavor Paul had ever experienced, but there was nothing undesirable in it. He explored it with his mouth, approaching the flesh from one angle, feeling it with lips and tongue, familiarizing himself with its features, its flexures, each little detail. He knew he wanted to please the dragon, but that came second to his interest in this new experience, this way of learning intimately the pride of another male. He realized distantly that he could never have found a human who could have provided a better first experience of this sort--feeling the blood pulse into that shaft as it rested upon his tongue or lips, testing it with suction and feeling the skin covering it slide back and forth with the motions of his head...it was something primordial, yet something entirely satisfying. Corr had never had an erection come on so fiercely before. The warm, firm softness of the human's mouth, the lack of fangs tracing along his sensitive flesh, the unique roundness of the tailor's oropharynx that contrasted with the more angular draconic maw...it was like no dragon he'd ever been with--no, like no dragon he ever could have been with--and though on a rational level he would later be thankful that he was the first and perhaps only dragon to ever experience this, for the moment, he was entranced by the carnal delight provided him. In his culture, lovemaking tended to be a quieter affair, with guttural noises of enjoyment tending to be produced more by surprise or climax than by ongoing satisfaction, even if that satisfaction was unnervingly deep, much like this one. But appreciation of the other's performance, often rendered poetically, was a praiseworthy behavior, so he spoke: "Ahh, friend, already you repay me more than I have provided you..." Paul said nothing; hearing the words encouraged him to continue, but that was becoming difficult to do, as the dragon's thickness was becoming something of an issue. Flexibility of jaw wasn't exactly a job qualification of tailors, and he was brand new to this means of pleasuring another male, to boot. He could feel a tingle developing in the muscle of his jaw, and though he was hesitant to let the beautiful spire go, he wouldn't be able to keep it up forever. He kept it up until the discomfort grew to the point where it was taking the enjoyment out of the moment, and then withdrew, noting with satisfaction that the shaft appeared to be fully plumped for his efforts. He leaned back a bit, a tentative smile on his face as he looked up at Corr. "I would continue if I could, but your size is so great that my mouth will need rest before it can go on..." He gave a somewhat sheepish look, though he had a feeling Corr wouldn't recognize its meaning. The dragon felt a twinge of wistfulness as the human drew away, but he could understand the matter--there was definitely a size dynamic at work. "That is alright, friend...take your rest." Paul leaned back, but he scooted in his feet as he did so, tilting up his hips. "No, no, it may be a while. Then your arousal may have passed--please, Corr, take me now. I have felt that masculinity with my lips and tongue, and I long to feel it more deeply inside me. Just--just be careful as you do so, for again, you are so very large..." He did his best to sound brave, but his voice shook a bit, as he only now was beginning to realize what he was asking for. Corr leaned in towards his new attendant. "Then I will, just as you have asked. I confess I wish to feel you intimately, to learn what your kind is like inside and out. More than curiosity spurs me on--this is a strange and beautiful desire of many causes." He braced himself against the inclined side of the nest, his hips angling forward, bringing that lance of throbbing midnight flesh towards that delicate opening Paul had turned towards him. The very tip of his shaft met with the soft buttocks of the tailor, and he reflexively withdrew a mite, having misgauged the distance. But then he continued forward with renewed resoluteness, and in no time, his tip was there at the tailor's entrance, glistening with the human's own saliva. Corr hesitated, not wanting to bring pain to this new jewel in his personal fortune, but knowing that even he had winced in agony when a male friend of his had penetrated him, he realized there was no other way. He leaned in for a gentle kiss as he slowly breached that tense sphincter, hoping that the action would help the tailor relax. There was a moment in which the stretching seemed foreign but manageable, in which Paul momentarily wondered if he could perhaps handle this with no trouble. But it was only a moment; the pain began promptly thereafter. He moaned into the kiss, his voice betraying his pain. He tried to keep it at bay, tried his best to relax, but this was definitely a kind of pain he'd never experienced. He was no stranger to pain, as the implements of a medieval tailor were not especially refined and carried a definite risk of accidents in the course of everyday work; elementary first aid was among his necessary repertoire of skills. But this pain was different--he felt no discernible damage, and didn't expect to be bleeding (though there was no way to tell); it was more like a combination of a sore throat and a muscle cramp, misplaced and magnified, a pain of tissues unhappy with what was being done to them, rather than being torn apart. But the level of the pain was intense, searing, impossible to deny, and on par with real wounds he'd experienced. It was all he could do to focus on holding up the gentle kiss Corr was offering him, and he held onto it with all the gratefulness he could muster in the situation, hoping it would serve its palliative intent. Corr stopped when somewhere past halfway along his shaft disappeared into the tailor. The plaintive noises the human was making didn't seem to be subsiding, and he didn't want to push his fortune so soon. He waited there, letting their shared kiss lapse so that he could speak: "I am sorry that this hurts you, friend. Tell me when I may continue." He balanced his weight on one arm, and ran his other hand over the torso of the tailor below him, heaving with tense breathing as it was. "Your tightness is a delight to me, and you are doing well for one who has not done this before." It was true that the pain waned as the dragon stopped pressing inward. It became a dull ache--present, but certainly manageable, and now of a different quality than it had been on initial penetration, in a way he couldn't exactly pinpoint. Paul did his best to focus on relaxing--tensing up wasn't going to help any part of this process along. Doing so reduced the pain another notch or two, but it was far from gone. Eventually he decided that further improvement was wishful thinking at best, and he nodded his assent to the dragon. Catching himself for using a gesture that might not be certain to the dragon, he spoke up as well, strain evident in his voice. "Alright, try to continue. I'll...let you know if it becomes too much." Corr nodded simply and leaned his torso forward, his hips lagging behind and slowly pushing inward afterwards. He could see Paul's face clench in the pain and tension of the moment, and inwardly he felt pity for his new attendant--the tailor was clearly suffering. But where once Corr had anticipated this being almost solely for his own benefit, now he found himself empathizing greatly with the smaller, softer being below him. This wasn't merely a new possession--this was a being, a living, breathing, thinking entity, here of his own consent and will. Awareness of that fact bore a gravitas that led to respect for the tailor, and for his strength and perseverance in light of this trial. And that was without counting the incredible feeling of being implanted well (and progressively deeper) into this being. There came a certain point in the spectrum of sensations of tightness where it was hard to compare them well, so it was hard to say if another dragon could be this tight--but it was certainly true that a dragon, whose digestive passages were more resilient from eating a diverse array of animal parts, wasn't nearly as soft and comforting as well. Paul had nearly consigned himself to this evening being one of continuous suffering when a strange twinge went off in his loins. His eyes and face contorted as this occurred, and he tensed up briefly in reflex before the nature of the stimulus revealed itself: something in him had suddenly decided that this was intensely pleasurable. In the blink of an eye, an experience that seemed virtually wholly comprised of pain suddenly became a tug-of-war between delight and suffering. Had he any of the rudimentary anatomical knowledge of that age, he might have deduced that it was the area of his prostate that had served to crack the floodgates of delight, but ignorance in this case certainly didn't detract from bliss. Corr could see and feel the tailor's brief jerk, and immediately stopped pushing inward--unsure if he'd suddenly harmed the tailor or if something else was at hand. "Are you alright, friend?" He asked, again testing the upward inflection of the inquiries of the human tongue. "Ugh, yes...you are still so large inside of me, but--you've hit something and it--ooh--it feels such a delight, like nothing I've ever felt..." The tailor braced his arms as best he could against the pelts around him, trying to find a stable position in the event that either sensation--pleasure or pain--might make such an effort difficult. "Ah," said Corr. "I remember feeling a similar thing the first time I invited a friend inside myself...it was as though my insides had come alive with a delight never known to exist, unspeakable, yet unmatched." He slowly added just a bit of inward pushing as he was speaking, intending to slide himself further in by degrees to see if the human would perhaps do better with such a distraction. Even that slow movement teased at the unseen nerve endings inside the tailor's body, and he found that the pain seemed to pass slowly away as the pleasure stormed through his mind. It wasn't about to disappear, oh no, not by a long shot, but it gradually became almost like an ache of the neck during a long day of fine stitchwork--one knew it was there, but could ignore it if one tried by focusing on other things. And that gesture was not itself difficult as he embraced this new sort of pleasure. He found his hips beginning to move seemingly of their own volition, this way and that, seeking ways to draw more of that intense wonder into his senses. But there came a point when the dragon's shaft merely stopped. The two of them could both feel it--it was almost like if the dragon had pushed against Paul's buttocks while he was seated, or Paul had pushed against Corr's anchored thighs: flesh met flesh and went no further with a feeling of definite solidity. "I think," said Corr slowly, "that I've found your limits, my friend." He gave a tiny experimental jostle inward of his hips, but doing so merely transferred that jostle into the entirety of Paul's lower body, where it vanished. "It seems you have," said Paul, looking dishearteningly down at the slight segment of exposed turgid flesh between his own loins and the dragon. It felt so amazing, the amount already within him, and he wanted to feel more of it, even if it meant more pain, but it seemed there was no way past this sudden barrier. "But know that I will gladly accept all that is in my strength to receive," he added, not wanting to sound pessimistic or ungrateful. Corr wordlessly began to withdraw, leaving Paul with a feeling of evacuation and constriction that was almost alarmingly foreign. There was an element of pleasure to it as well, but the feeling of his body closing back down as the spire within it was slid outward was not the satisfaction of being filled and pleasured so solidly. It came as an incredible relief when Corr halted and then reversed direction, delving into the tailor's body yet again, bringing that intense, amazing bliss as he went. Paul felt a moan he never intended to vocalize pass through his throat--a quiet one, utterly genuine in its indication of his delight. The decadent tightness surrounding Corr's shaft enveloped his mind with ecstasy, and his more primal instincts clawed at his sense of self-restraint, demanding that he rut this body and plant his seed deep within it, emptying the testicles which had so long been without a willing recipient. But he held them back, knowing that the fervent intensity of a male dragon in rut could leave wounds on his partner even if that recipient was a dragon--a human, with his smaller size and soft body, would be fortunate even to survive it. His breathing slowed as he focused on enjoying it calmly, reaching out for the serenity his kind knew could be found when seeking a meditative state. Doing so coaxed into light a set of new emotions--ones of bonding, ones of affection and of a sort of possession. It wasn't that he saw this sentient being with whom he was entwined as an object, but he felt instincts to preserve and protect this life as his own...instincts usually reserved for a mate or a hatchling. All of these were muddled together into a tangle of sentiment he'd never felt before--yet he felt at home and at peace amidst them in a way he'd never experienced. There they were, a tangle of limbs and pelts, scales and skin, enmeshed as never before--both caught in the throes of pleasure, willingly ensnared by delight that only rose, buoying them up in each other's arms. Save for quiet moans from Paul, and the sounds of breathing toyed at by bliss, it was nearly silent, there in the ancient burial mound--a tomb, a palace, a lovers' sanctum. Dreams never known yet somehow true and close to heart found their fruition in the bond that was forming between them. The slow rhythm of their bodies escalated gently, with Paul clinging to the dragon's sculpted body as though for safety, and using his leverage to pull in against the dragon's thrusts. Corr did his best to keep his impetus steady, to ensure that he didn't harm his new companion, but he couldn't resist the impulse entirely, and little by little the intensity crescendoed. Paul's mind spurred him to seek the company of the dragon's mouth, and he drew Corr into kisses that persisted and spawned further ones in succession as their bodies came together again and again. Overshadowed by the dragon's strong body, surrounding by his limbs, filled by his masculinity and supported by the fruits of his hunting prowess, Paul felt almost as though enveloped with the nobility and magnitude of the rare beast above him, ensconced in security and delight that he'd never truly known. He didn't know if he could ever be without it again. Corr soon felt his loins beginning to pulse with the tension of imminent climax; it was a wonder in itself that they hadn't released already, with the utter euphoria in which the moment was drowning his senses. As a kiss with the smaller male lapsed, he drew his mouth back to speak: "I--I will reach my climax soon, Paul..." His body gave a shudder as a pre-climactic wave of stimulation surged through it--a harbinger of what was so soon to come. Paul was yet a virgin, and though he knew of the way to pleasure himself with his hands, this was so far removed from such an experience that he had no idea how much of his own capacity remained. All he could sense was the dragon moving over, in, around him, and the pleasure which now seemed to consume his being, the pain so distant that it felt a long-passed memory. The words the dragon spoke seeped into his mind like water through cracks in mortarwork, and touched off something he never identified but felt like an explosion of saltpeter--suddenly his body tensed without his intent, suddenly he saw stars from the pleasure which enveloped his senses, suddenly his loins were clenching, his erection spitting his essence onto his torso and the golden scales of the male above him, the continued thrusts sending vibrato notes of ecstasy through the roaring symphony of his climax. The feeling of those involuntary muscles clenching about Corr's erection touched off the mating instincts of his kind: it was time to leave his legacy deep inside that tight passageway. His already tenuous restraint at the brink of orgasm was torn from him, and he gave a roar that would have left any female of his kind quavering in desire as his seed, searing hot, pulsed forth mightily into the soft, smooth body of the one who had somehow drawn so strangely near to his heart so quickly. He could feel the muscles in his loins clench and release, driving the pearlescent liquid into that tight flesh as deeply as he could. Paul was dimly aware that his limbs were writhing as this climax--no, the only real climax he'd ever known--thundered over, through, into him, but it mattered not: preserving this moment, blazing it into his memory and savoring the delight for as long as it could last...that was the only thing truly on his mind, the only thing that held any import to him now. He could feel something dense and hot entering his body and judged it rightly to be the dragon's seed--it left a satisfying warmth, like a good, rich soup on a cold day, but enhanced a hundred times over by the countless other sensations of the moment. But despite his attempts to hold to the moment as long and as tightly as he could, it soon began to ebb, the exhaustion of the utterly racking orgasm draining away his strength even as the warm afterglow rose to take its place. Corr, too, had a longer orgasm than nearly any man, but it still had its end in due time, and it slowly passed from him, leaving him panting over the soft paleness of the tailor. His kind was not one for post-coital kisses, but as the tailor weakly drew those tender palms to the back of the dragon's head, Corr was not unhappy to oblige, the breathlessness of the moment forcing them to make them small, quick encounters of lips and tongues as they strove to recover. The afterglow was taking hold of him, too, and when mixed with that newfound desire to preserve, protect, and yes, to love, he could think of nowhere else he'd rather be. He slowly let himself down against the pile, leaning onto his side so that he would not perhaps crush the tailor beneath his weight. But as he did, he drew in his arms, sliding the tailor over pelts and furs to embrace him warmly. "My friend...you have given me such a gift this night--I should not ever know if I can repay it," he said, not knowing how to inflect the gravity and heartfelt nature of his words. "No," said Paul, blearily, finding it difficult to articulate words in this emotion-laden, drained state, "it is I who has been truly blessed...if I can ever experience the pleasure again that you made me feel this night...it would be more than I could ever deserve..." He was fighting his body's fatigue in a battle for consciousness, and it felt as though he'd be losing that battle soon. Corr's hands slowly slipped up and down along that soft body, his mind still in a state of disbelief shunned by contentedness. "Then I think," he said slowly, "that we shall do this many times in the future, as well...if you will have it. I would like that...very much." "Good," said Paul languidly, his eyelids fluttering like doves with broken wings, "...and so...would I..." His head dropped limply against the pelts, and his breathing became slow, steady. Corr, seeing his new attendant unconscious, said no more, and rode his own afterglow into peaceful slumber--but his sensitive ears were ready to alert him should any try and steal from him this new addition to the hoard of his heart.