The Princess and the Dragon

This site is offering $60 for super-short stories, so I thought I would write this one.  It is 1592 words, according to 750words.com.  Ironically, I have been asked on more than one occasion by one or more people who are not children to tell them some form of bedtime story.  Most of the stories I've told sucked...I forget where this train of though was going...oh right, so it will be nice to have stories to tell other adults the next time I am asked.  I should really add a sex scene somewhere, though.




The Princess and the Dragon

During medieval times there was a far away kingdom called Eris.  The princess of Eris was a little girl named Faye.    As a child Faye was notorious for accessing places where she was not allowed to be.  She was often forgiving because of her beauty:  she had stunning black hair then fell all the way to her waist, and a killer smile.  To the chagrin of her tutors, Faye would often escape her lessons and be found playing in the treasury, or crawling about the crates in the storehouses, or climbing the castle walls, or slipping into the armory.  She had an eye for swords and plate armor.

Faye's mother, the queen, chided her often but her scoldings were ineffective.  Then the King stepped in with a different idea.  He told Faye stories of the ancient times, when dark, red dragons roamed the skies, breathing fire and death, and swooping down to lift entire cows from the pasture, which they could eat in two bites.  But they didn't just eat cows, no.  They also ate women who cheated on their husbands, and little girls who misbehaved.  Then the King overdid it a bit and told his daughter that dragons could smell bad girls.

That did the trick.  From then on Faye had a serious fear of dragons.  She stopped climbing and fooling around and attended her lessons and learned her languages.  Once she saw a great winged shadow fly across the ground towards her.  Faye screamed and fell to the ground to hide from what she thought was a dragon, but her brothers and sisters laughed at her.  When Faye looked up, she saw that it was just a great eagle.

Then Faye grew older and fell in love with a young prince named Jacob.  Jacob was tall, dark and handsome and Faye was never afraid of dragons when he was around.  Jacob was a prince himself, of a nearby small kingdom.  Faye rode often to meet Jacob, and the passed time in a grove of cherry trees near a lake.  Jacob tried many times to kiss Faye but Faye had been told that kissing would make her pregnant, and was more interested in sword fighting.

Faye was blissfully happy, but it did not last forever.  An evil sorceror kidnapped Jacob and locked him away in a dark tower in the mountains.  Many knights left to rescue the prince, but none of them came back.  Some time passed, and the people stopped trying.  They said the tower was a dark castle ruled by an evil sorcerer and guarded by a fiery dragon.  No mortal could defeat them.

Faye took it upon herself to rescue Jacob.  She dressed herself in a soldiers clothes and stole a sword and a horse named Ceres and rode for the mountains.  The King was angry when he realized what she had done and sent him men after her, but Faye eluded them.

She reached the mountains and found the dark tower easily.  The outline of its dreary battlements stood out clearly in front of the full moon.  It was a castle, with a thick outer wall and an inner keep, and one tower rose from that keep which was taller than all the others.  Faye approached slowly.  When she saw the gatehouse and the iron portcullis that barred her way, she realize that there was no way she could storm the castle by herself.  Somewhere, far above her, a pair of green eyes watched.  Faye could feel that she was being watched.  She turned around and retread at a full gallop.  When the view of the castle was blocked by rock and stone, she stopped and sent her horse away.   Ceres was a good horse and knew the way home.

Then Faye doubled back and approached the side of the castle with stealth.  This required her to both descend and climb sheer rock faces, but Faye had spent her entire childhood climbing, and it was a piece of cake.  She reached the castle wall, at a place where no one watched, because whatever person or mysterious creature was in charge of watching, thought that no man could ever get there.  No man ever would.  Faye scaled the castle wall.  It was difficult, because there were few hand-holds and she hand to support her weight using the thinest of cracks between stone, but it was not impossible.  The people who built that wall meant to keep out large men waiting heavy armor, not teenage girls in leather.

Faye reached the top of the wall and quickly climbed down the other side.  She drew her sword, ready for danger.  Then she saw the dragon.  It was an enormous monster.  Long, thick body.  Terrible wings.  Horns.  Black scales.  And piercing cat eyes that stared directly at her.  Faye backed up against the castle wall, shivering.  The dragon snorted like a horse.  Thick steam poured out of its nostrils.  It rose to its feet with care.  A great clinking sound echoed throughout the courtyard.  Faye saw the source:  a large chain that was attached to a collar at the beasts neck.  She thought it a strange way for someone to keep a pet that can fly.  The beast opened its wings, which spread so wide that they blocked out the moon and covered Faye in shadow.  Faye dropped her sword and ran.  She heard an explosion behind her, and felt the heat at her back.  She continued running until she was out of breath and collapsed onto the ground.

She cowered there for what seemed like an age.  Faye cried.  She had failed to rescue her dear Jake.  She had disobeyed her father and would die here in the strange castle, and she was too scared to think about how that death would come.  Faye was too scared to move, so she stayed were she was with her hands over her head, crying.  Then the tears ran out.  She shivered instead, waiting, gathering the courage to open her eyes.

Faye finally did so, and saw only grass, and stone behind it.  She rose to her feet once again, and with the quietest of steps, found her way back to the dragon.  Now believing that her life was forfeit, a strange peace had filled her mind, and she was far less afraid of the incredible beast.  When Faye crept upon it, it was sleeping.  She found its great tail, and with her eyes, followed lines of beautiful ridges that ran all the way from the tail, up its back, between two mounds of folded wings, all the way to its neck, and probably to the head, which was out of view.  Faye could hear the beast snoring.  It snored like a horse.

Suddenly Faye got an incredible idea.  The dragon couldn't burn itself...and it probably couldn't scratch its own back.  Faye acted before she could talk herself out of it:  she leapt onto the great tail, and scrambled up the creatures back.  The creature was awake before she passed the wings, but it was too late; she was firmly entrenched in the monsters back.

The horned head twisted around and those scary cat eyes stared her down.  Streams of smoke appeared in the air.  "What are you doing?"

"You can talk?" asked Faye.

"Of course I can talk, you little insect, I am a dragon!"  The dragon's voice did not sound like a man's, but it did not sound the way Faye imagined that various forest animals would sound, if they could talk.

Faye crawled up closer.

"It feels good to have someone on my back again."

"You mean people rode you?" asked Faye with wonder.

"With my permission.  A long time ago, when my scales were red.  Before I was...captured."  The dragon then told her many things, and they talked for some time, until Faye felt safe enough to climb down off of his back.  The dragon's name was Veston.  Faye offered to pick the lock of his collar.  Veston watched her approach his neck on jittery knees.  The lock around his collar was enormous.  The key must have been as large as a mans arm.  But that only made it easier to pick.

When Veston's collar fell to the ground, he rose up and stretched his neck.  Then he offered to help her rescue Jacob.  "You cannot hope to defeat the sorcerer.  He is too powerful.  But if you ride on my back, I can climb around him and reach the tower while he sleeps."

Faye climbed on Veston's back and Veston climbed the keep, and all the way up the tower, gaining Faye access to the room at the top.  When she found Jacob she was overjoyed and kissed him without fear.  Then they both rode on Veston's back.  Veston was too old and injured to fly, but he could still glide, which great effort, and took them a great distance away, out of the mountains.

When they landed, Veston collapsed, and was soon dead, but in his last moments he thanked Faye for rescuing him, so that he could die a free dragon.  Then he breathed fire one last time, and the fire consumed him, until nothing was left but bones and ash.

Later, a band of knights would ride to the dark castle and find its keep and walls broken down and ruined without an obvious cause, or a clue as to what happened to the evil sorcerer.

Faye and Jacob returned home and were married in the finest ballroom in Eris.