Just because one of your chicken eggs hatched a fire breathing dragon people think you’re evil. But you’re still just a regular farmer trying to make a living while dealing with an overprotective dragon, heroes that want to kill you and fanatics who want to worship you as the new Demon Lord.
The thing you need to know about all of this, the thing that got me into all this trouble in the first place, is that chickens will sit on anything when they get broody enough. Anything. Duck eggs, goose eggs, turkey eggs, lizard eggs, egg shaped rocks, anything. Chickens aren’t smart. If it looks vaguely like an egg, they’ll plant their feathery arses on it and wait.
I noticed that there was a bigger egg under one of the broody chickens, when I checked. Of course I noticed, it was twice the size of the others. But I have geese. I figured it was a goose egg she’d found and stolen. It was about the right size, and I didn’t take it out to check the colour because that particular chicken gets very protective of her eggs. I’ve already got a scar on one hand from trying to get eggs away from her. I didn’t want a matched set.
That was a decision I regretted the moment I went out to feed the chickens and found a little blue-and-silver dragonet’s head poking out from under a very confused-looking chicken. The poor thing kept shifting around and looking under herself in a bewildered way, like she didn’t know what to do next. This particular chicken is a good mother, and she’s raised clutches of ducks and geese without any trouble – she’s even resigned to some of her children swimming – but this was too much. She didn’t object when I carefully reached in and fished out the little dragon.
It was so tiny, then. It fitted in my hand, with its little head peeking out one side and its tail looping around my wrist. Cute, too, with its big eyes and little snout turned up towards me.
That was when I made my second mistake. I decided to feed it before releasing it. Dragons are innately wild creatures, everyone knows that. They can’t be tamed. People have tried. The eggs are abandoned as soon as they are laid, and the dragonets hatch able to hunt, so they don’t even bond with their mothers. So just feeding it a little shouldn’t have been a big deal. It should have gobbled the meat and fled as soon as I loosened my grip on it and it saw the open sky.
It didn’t. As soon as I’d fed it, it fluttered up to a sunny window ledge and went to sleep. I went about my work, figuring that it’d leave in its own time.
By noon, it was sitting on my boot, squeaking pathetically. I wondered if maybe it was confused by the farmyard – they usually hatch in mountains, if the stories are right – so I took it back to the farmhouse with me and fed it again when I ate, then took some time away from the fences I should have been mending to walk it up to the hills. I found it some nice rocks, with plenty of lizards and beetles and suitable prey for something that size. It pounced on a beetle almost as soon as I put it down, and when I left it was crunching happily.
I hadn’t walked a quarter of the way back before something hit the back of my boot. The little dragon was holding on with all four claws, and when I looked down it squeaked pathetically. If possible, its eyes got even rounder.
Listen, you don’t make it as a farmer if you just let orphaned baby animals die. We hand-raise calves and lambs and ponies, set chickens to sit on abandoned eggs, or put them under the kitchen stove or by a fireplace. You don’t make a success of farming if you don’t value every animal. A good shepherd will spend all night looking for one lost sheep. So despite what was said later, it wasn’t just sentiment that made me sigh and pick up the little thing and carry it back to the farm. I am a good farmer. I don’t let orphaned babies die just because they’re a little work.
Challenge #02438-F248: A Perfectly Normal Chip-shop Keeper
Too many of the one name so, Evans the milk, Evans the bread and Evans the dragon, nice man, doesn’t play Rugby though. – Anon Guest
There’s always an Evans family in any given village in Wales. Often, there’s more than one Evans family in any given location in Wales. It’s a very popular surname. In order to distinguish Evanses apart, there are associated eke names. Additional surnames, sur-surnames if you will. You get names like Evans the Milk - the Evans who works as a milkman; Evans the Brick - the Evans who works as a bricklayer; Evans the Spark - the Evans who works as an electrician; and Evans the Drive - the Evans who works as a taxi driver.
You get a lot of that in Wales.
In the little mountainside town of Cilfachgorsaf-ddefaid there are so many Evanses that they have an Evans the Dragon. He works in a chip shop and is one of those people who’ve been there forever. Well. Just about everyone who lives there has been there all their lives, but… Evans the Dragon has somehow been there longer.
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Challenge #01771-D310: Helper Dragon
This post: https://blue-shadow-fire-dragon.tumblr.com/post/139867120326/elfoftheforest-but-imagine-if-we-had-tiny – TheDragonsFlame
Eldarol Vale, the sign read. Here there be dragons. And it was amusing since Elderol Vale was the Pet Dragon capital of the world. The best breeders came from Elderol Vale. The best breeds came from there. The most sincere and severe show judges grew up there, and knew what was good for the animals. In smaller print, the sign boasted, Zero rapes since the Year of the Eternally Staring Owl.
Dragons may be small, but they were good guardians of their owners. They could go from soppy, half-asleep pet to whirling ball of sharpened and angry pain in instants if they felt their owner was threatened. Maidens trained them to sit on their shoulders. Mothers kept them next to their babies. The anxious or the fearful had little to be afraid of with a dragon clinging lovingly to their body heat.
Legends tell of enormous dragons. Bigger than cities. Sleeping on hoards of gold or gems. But those were laughable. Everyone knew that dragons never got larger than a housecat. And they would guard anyone and anything they got attached to. They also came in handy for lighting fires. A dragon was second only to dogs as being mankind’s best friend. They were also ideal for allergy sufferers, since they had no fur or dander. Something Faline was looking forward to.
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Challenge #01731-D270: They Call it Dragoncote
Why do dragons hoard wealth and guard it so jealously? Because for dragons, much like for kings, money is power.
With kings, such a phrase lies more in the metaphor of capitalism, but for dragons it is taken much more literally - the greater the amount of gold and jewels and other treasures a dragon can amass and claim as their own, the more magically potent and physically larger they become, and likewise the less riches they possess, the smaller and weaker they become. Thus can their kind span from colossal ancient beasts dwelling in caverns lined with gold and gems down to tiny bat-sized wyrmlings clinging to their first silver coin… – Anon Guest
They say money is power, and it’s a good thing that most dragons don’t get to hoard enormous amounts of gold. Most remain small, and hoard a single coin of negligible value. Their young are indistinguishable from geckoes, and the only way to truly tell is leave a coin in their line of sight.
Some infest bankers and trade-halls, where the people test money by seeing if the nearest dragon will try to snatch it. In towns that prosperous, it is bad luck to take off jewelry. Some dragons curl jealously around their first coin, and come along when it is spent. And rarely, very rarely, a dragon will find something more… valuable than a single coin.
Value is not the same as wealth.
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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.
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Challenge #01514-D053: One Miserable Evening in a Dragon’s Lair
http://toxixpumpkin.tumblr.com/post/100767877989
Pick one! – @callmegallifreya
Of all the experiences in the multiverse, there’s nothing like sprawling across the head of a friendly dragon. Alas, since _this_ dragon was fighting a bout of the ‘flu, it meant that Sam was doing the sprawling in a budgie-smuggler, and kept one hand on the fire extinguisher.
Dragons sneeze fire. And even though Bloodflight was comfy in his cave, there was still the risk of setting a few things on fire. It’s amazing what burns under a dragon’s flame. Sam had enough fire-resistance potions to keep him alive during the onslaught of plasma, but that didn’t mean he planned to push it.
“I hade this,” grumbled Bloodflight.
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Challenge #01371-C276: One Small Difference
Dragon: Tries to kidnap a princess
Dragon: Accidentally saves a Prince from a tower
Dragon: Isn’t sure what happened – OohLookShiny
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a young Dragon in possession of a good lair, must be in want of a Princess. So it was for Ginrauth, who had not only terrorised the local Dwarfs into submitting ‘donations’ to his hoard, but had also found an abundance of shiny gemstones within the cavern he dug. He knew all there was to know about setting up a great lair, and having goodly part of it being an enormous geode was just a bonus.
Ginrauth went looking for towers. Humans stored all sorts of valuables in towers. Gold, grain, armaments… and Princesses of the right age.
Sometimes, there was a sorcerer in them. That was a loss of sorts. The really good sorcerers had wards and protections to keep Dragons away. The bad kind were crunchy and tasted excellent once flame-roasted.
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Challenge #01354-C259: One Cheesy Dragon
This post, which lead to this art. Fic away! – @recklessprudence
Tara McCreedy looked down at the living sample. It stretched all six of its limbs and allowed its peculiar wings to flutter. “Okay,” she allowed. “I can see what it is, I just want to know why.”
“Er. This is more of a sketch,” the lead scientist of this lab wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “See, I thought it might be cool to have dragon cheese from real dragons, um… so I started with a monotreme? Because they’re neither lizards nor mammals, but they give milk? Um. In succeeding generations, I’ll -uh- make it look more like a dragon… and make it milk-able.”
The creature dove into the water. Its wings gave it better speed and control underwater, but would not lift it an inch into the air.
Challenge #01350-C255: The Tale of Sir George (No, the Other One)
Who says a young dragonling can’t grow up to be a wonderful knight? – OohLookShiny
All things begin small, but for some, small is relative. For the hero George, it began with an egg the size of a shorn sheep, and a merciful hero turned blacksmith who honoured a monster’s dying wish.
I cannot change, the beast had said. My baby is not hatched. Raise them… to… be good.
Sir Menkhol had obeyed. He took the egg to his home and forge and kept it warm on the coals as he worked. And when the young dragon hatched, he called it George. Perhaps it was wrong to name a dragon after a dragon-slayer, but it was a good and honest name nonetheless.