Challenge #01659-D198: Kind and Dangerous Stranger

Never annoy a sleeping dragon, for you are fat and crunchy, and taste good with BBQ sauce! -- Fliss

At first, she thought it was a lava flow. One of those ones where the lava ran under a relatively whole, cooler skin. It was warm enough to be one. Then she noticed the way it flexed rhythmically, and realised that, in fact, this was a sleeping dragon. Fire was their element and this black-scaled beauty was no different. Their skin luminesced as they breathed in.

Which would have been fascinating if she wasn't so hopelessly lost. Or that this was the third time she had come across the same sleeping dragon. Or that her food hadn't run out a long time ago and she didn't know what was edible down here[1]. In fact, Blase had lots of reasons to not be fascinated and none of them were remotely happy.

At least this time, she had found the dragon on a level where she could approach them. Their skin was warm, but not burning. Slightly uncomfortably warm, in fact, which was a welcome change from cold, dank caves full of slippery moss. Blase could feel her toes thawing, and tried not to make a noise as she crept over the dragon's hide to their massive head.

That head was as big as her house. The dragon could swallow her in one bite if it so wanted. And dragons were reputed to wake only when they were hungry. Blase tried not to think about it as a choice between instant death and slow death by exposure and starvation. Either option was not her preferred choice. But this was a desperate time indeed, and this was a desperate measure.

She stood in front of the dragon's nostrils. Let them smell her. After three breaths, she began to sing.

Blase was never a good singer. She never charmed a bird out of a tree. She never enraptured a unicorn. She couldn't even call the cows in. At church, she was always told to sing along, but not sing to be heard. But she also knew that music had charms to tame a savage beast. Or breast. She never was quite certain.

And at any rate, she had little left to lose.

And little skill at rhyming.

"Awake and be kind, have the presence of mind, to consider this poor lonely wretch," she sang. "I only fell down, deep here underground, an exit's all I want to fetch..." her voice died in her throat as the dragon's head moved. An eye as big as a pig was staring at her.

"You're too scrawny to eat," the dragon decided.

Blase curtseyed, "Please forgive me," she said, getting her begging done first. "Only I can't any way out of these caverns and I'm fair starving and I don't think there's any other chance save for asking directions and this is the fifth time I found my way to you but not a way out." The last sentence came out as one word. "And I'm very sorry for waking you up but you're the only creature I've seen that I know can talk and please don't eat me."

The dragon yawned. A mouth wider than the nearest city's gates, teeth taller than some trees she knew. The forked tongue was bigger than the family bed back home. But the mouth closed and the dragon blinked muzzily at her. "Ah. A lost soul. Never fear. Climb my head and hang on to it. I shall take you outside.

She had heard the story of the snake and the wasp, but Blase had little to lose. The dragon was warm and her clothes were thin. There were spikes that made a decent post to cling to. Beyond that, it was a blur of motion and yelping after the stalactites had passed.

There was sunshine. And fresh air. And a warm breeze. And a few sheep grazing nearby.

She slid off the dragon's head onto the firm grass around her. She wanted to weep. "Thank you," she said. "I don't know how to repay you." This was nowhere near her home, but she didn't care. She would find someone charitable enough to give her a bowl of stew. And maybe a job.

"If you can, when you can, send a sheep or a cow down this hole. And do put some markers up so that others don't fall down by accident. I do like my sleep."

There is a little village where they say the shepherd's wife came out of nowhere and swore she had ridden on the head of a dragon. It was later revealed that she came from a village miles distant, on the other side of the mountains. There, she had vanished without a trace. She was not special. Nor enchanted. She was quite boringly ordinary. Except that she had ridden on a dragon and lived to tell the tale.

[1]: Some schools of philosophy state that everything is edible, it's just that lots of things are edible only once. This is most definitely not helpful to anyone who is as lost as our hero.

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