"Are you not hungry?" it said after a long time.
"A little," Avalee said with a shrug. In truth she was ravenous, but she didn't know where Elisa kept the food. She'd seen no oven or stove, or any store of food.
"Then you should eat. I do not want you to suffer."
Avalee stood and turned only to step back involuntarily. The dragon had come close while she'd faced away from it. It was within arm's reach and seemed to be moving still. She had no room to back up any further, not with the fire right at her heels as it was. Still it approached, and then its nose brushed against her and she stood stock still as it drew in her scent.
"I know where you have been," it said and moved back again. Avalee took a deep breath, realizing she'd been holding it while the dragon was so close.
"Where?" she managed.
"The clearing in the forest. I know it." The dragon turned away and slowly crossed to the other side of the cavern before settling down again; though she still caught the glow of its eyes as it watched her. "Prepare food for yourself. I will not disturb you again tonight."
Avalee nodded and began the task of locating what she'd need, the whole time wondering at the strange behavior of the dragon.
~~~
Chapter 10
Avalee spent following days exploring the caves and tunnels linked to the main cavern in which the dragon waited. She'd found new use for the table leg as a torch, at least until she found a set of proper ones deeper on into the tunnel past where she slept. She also found a small room, frigid, which held meats and other perishable foods, like cheeses, and nearby another one where a stone oven of sorts sat. A medium sized bench hunched nearby, and by the scattering of flour across its surface, Avalee assumed that this was where Elisa would have made her rolls and breads. Wondering where Elisa would have stored flour, Avalee searched the room until she found a sack of it, along with several lidded canisters of various sizes lined up along the wall on the floor beside it. She opened a few and quickly figured out the contents of each one. Avalee wondered where Elisa had come by all of these things.
As for the source of the meats, that became obvious on the fifth day when the dragon brought her a large buck and expected her to know what to do with it. It had chuckled in amusement when it realized she really had no clue, and eventually it had talked her through the process, based upon having observed Elisa perform the feat so many times over the years. Avalee wished it had started with something a bit more manageable, like one of those squirrels or rabbits she'd seen in the forest, but she had to admit that for a dragon, this was probably more than manageable.
Together, the two worked out the basics, and when Avalee tossed aside the innards, the dragon caught them up and swallowed them whole, a satisfied rumble following its snack. In turn, Avalee wasn't sure whether to be amused or disgusted, so she settled on an odd mixture of the two, half gagging, half giggling, which then set the dragon off on its own brand of laughter, which left Avalee's ears ringing and ended conversation for several minutes while she recovered.
The flour and vegetables, among the other foods that couldn't be caught, remained a mystery for some time longer. She was nervous to ask about them because, deep down, she assumed that the dragon must take them from someone, somewhere. She felt it would be selfish to ask the dragon to bring her more, as she assumed it would do, but eventually, she began to run out of things, and the dragon was an observant beast.
The dragon waited for her to speak up about it, but several days after she’d exhausted most of her supplies, the look on Avalee's face as she forced down another all-meat dinner convinced it that she would not.
"You need supplies," it said, matter-of-factly, "for bread and other things."
It cocked its head to the side while it awaited her nod. When it came without any other word, the dragon was puzzled. Thinking they were on rather good terms, it couldn't understand why she wouldn't tell it what she needed. Unable to stand the silent treatment, the dragon spoke again, "Why did you not tell me sooner? I do not wish to starve you."
"You would only steal it." Avalee clasped her hand to her mouth as soon as the words tumbled out. She was shocked she'd said that aloud, particularly when she'd meant to ask the beast a tactful question instead, hoping to alleviate her worries without revealing them. But, instead, she'd blurted out exactly what she'd been thinking.
The dragon stared at her with an expression she'd come to recognize as incredulity—not that she could understand how it could be surprised at her assumption. How else would it gather such things? It certainly couldn't grow its own crops, or maintain an orchard, or grind the wheat.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that."
"Hmm," the dragon grumbled, "I think that perhaps you did."
"Will you forgive me for saying it, just the same?" she asked, looking it in the eye despite the hurt look she thought she saw there.
The dragon blinked and a small dragonish smile revealed its fangs, a sight that still sent a shiver of fear down Avalee's spine, no matter how well-spoken or careful the dragon was around her. "Yes, always." It paused again to consider her, and she waited for it to speak again, guessing correctly that it had more to say.
"I do not steal such things, though it takes no small effort to obtain them. Perhaps you would like to accompany me?"
Avalee didn't know what to say to that, and only belatedly did she realize her mouth hung wide open in shock at the offer.
"Well, young one?"
"Avalee, not young one," she retorted automatically, a cycle the two repeated many times a day, which no longer registered on her mind. In fact, she spoke next as if she hadn't corrected the dragon, "Out among people?"
"Where else?" This time the dragon paused, its smile even wider, before adding her proper name, "Avalee." She didn't notice, but the dragon found the unconscious wordplay on her part highly amusing.
"I'll get ready." She didn't say yes, didn't need to. Avalee was aware of the dragon as it settled back to watch her leave the cavern to go change in her room.
There she dug through the drawers she had found in the room where Elisa had stayed until she found a suitable well-kept gown, nothing fancy, just plain and practical. Avalee had no idea what kind of humans would deal with a dragon, but she had to admit that she trusted him when he said he didn't steal the supplies.
Trust. A fickle thing, easily betrayed, easily lost. It went both ways. Avalee knew that it was as hard for the dragon to trust her as it was for her to trust it, perhaps even harder if she was honest with herself. She hadn't given it much cause for trust. Her attempts at escape, her defiance, the wound she'd inflicted when it first took her, none of these really built her up as someone it could trust, yet it was willing to bring her with it, among people. Willing to trust her not to try to take shelter with them or rile them against it. And, yes, she was certain these were things the dragon had considered before making the offer.
As for her own trust, she had to admit that she felt it growing within her. The dragon spoke its mind, for the most part, and she hadn't found it to be false, though sometimes she detected an air of sullenness about it that made her wonder at its past—a past it never spoke of. It didn't even seem to like talking about her predecessors. That didn't stop the dragon from asking about her past, though, and Avalee wearied of dodging the questions. If it wouldn't open up about itself, she certainly wasn't going to do so either. So perhaps trust grew, but it was not yet full grown. Each had secrets the other didn't know, and each was hesitant to share them.
Still, ten years was a long time. Perhaps by then she would know all there was to know. Avalee finished up on that thought, putting away the brush and tying her hair back in a tight braid, since she assumed they would be traveling to whatever human settlement supplied him by way of dragon flight.
~~~
Chapter 11
Avalee had guessed correctly, but this flight was much different than previous ones. The dragon asked her to follow it up to the ledge above the c
ave entrance, and there, it instructed her to climb onto its back, guiding her to the safest spot by feel, telling her how to position herself and where to hang on.
"I didn't want to do this inside the cave," he explained, "because I have no way to tie you in place, and the trip out of the cave is too dangerous for you to be on my back anyway. There, yes, that's the spot, wriggle in there and press your legs in under those ridges."
Avalee did as instructed and found that the ridges hugged her tightly and kept her more secure than she would have guessed possible. The one just before her curved up and away from her just slightly, providing an excellent hand hold. All was fine and good until the dragon leapt off of the cliff and into a dive designed to build up to flying speed.
Avalee was too shocked to scream, but her body shot her full of adrenaline, and her blood rushed into her ears, which in turn popped from the change in pressure when the dragon's wings caught the updraft along the cliff side and swept up in the other direction, almost vertically. It was several seconds before Avalee could bring herself to relax her grip in the slightest, and nearly the whole trip passed before she could bring herself to look over the dragon's back to catch a glimpse of the land rushing beneath its shadow.
The flight lasted much longer than Avalee would have liked, leaving her shaky and disoriented long after the two had landed and she had disembarked. The dragon watched her with amused worry until she finally managed to stand back up and not grasp on to the nearest tree for support.
"Are you alright?" It grinned at her.
If it had laughed, she would have shouted, but it had not. "I'm fine," she managed at long last. "That was, interesting."
"Indeed," the dragon agreed. "You are a fine passenger."
"What makes you say that?" she asked, eyeing him closely, looking for the glint of humor that would reveal it was teasing her, a pastime it seemed to enjoy. But nothing of the sort was revealed.
"You didn't scream once, you held on, and I didn't have to rescue you at all."
At that Avalee began to laugh, and the dragon smiled down at her, not quite understanding what was funny this time. It had been serious. But soon, she calmed and said, "Thank you, then, for the compliment. I hope I can manage the same on the way back."
The dragon nodded in agreement and then turned to the business at hand. "The town is this way. They, uh…" It paused and looked back at her, its serpentine neck wrapping around several trees to manage the feat. "…know me as someone else. Come."
Avalee followed along quietly. The dragon hadn't landed them anywhere near a town, as far as she'd seen from its back, and she had no idea what it meant by that last comment. Who would the people think it was? A dragon was hard to mistake for anything else, and there couldn’t be that many of them around for someone to mistake one for another.
They continued on in silence, the dragon surprisingly nimble in its maneuvering of the woodlands through which they now traveled. Avalee finally worked up her courage to ask the question.
"Just who do they know you as?"
The dragon sighed, a deep rumble of breath that shook the nearby trees and dislodged those few leaves that had managed to hang on this far into the season. Then it glanced over its bulk at her and beckoned for her to move past it so they could face each other when it spoke. While it was managing the trees rather well for such a large beast, turning around would have been quite a trial.
Avalee obeyed and took a seat on a stump, any opportunity for a break was welcome. They'd been on the move in one way or the other since shortly after breakfast, and her muscles were screaming for rest.
The dragon seemed to have the same idea because it settled down into a position that Avalee guessed was equivalent to her own. Kind of like a dog settling down in front of a fire, its head rested upon its forefeet, and its tail curled around its body, and a few trees that were in the way.
"You may be angry to learn it," the dragon said.
"Why would I be angry? Do you scare them into giving you the supplies? That's the same as stealing in my book." She frowned at it.
"No," the dragon closed its eyes, obviously it would have preferred to look away, but such a thing was not practical in such tight quarters.
"Then what?" Avalee pressed.
"I will have to show you. You won't like it." It sounded like a promise when the dragon put it that way.
"You shouldn't assume I will be angry. Why can't you just tell me?" If anything, the dragon's dodges were getting on her nerves much more than anything she could possibly imagine the dragon doing that didn't involve stealing or intimidating people for supplies.
"Because," the dragon groaned out. Then its eyes were open again, staring into hers earnestly, begging her to stop asking.
"You have to tell me," she reasoned. "When we reach the town, I'll find out anyway. Right?"
The eyes closed again, and this time the dragon's tail slipped up and around its snout, hiding them from her entirely. It was such a human gesture, like someone covering their eyes in frustration or embarrassment. Avalee grew concerned despite herself.
"Listen, I don't understand. You won't tell me, but we are traveling there now, so I'm going to find out. Wouldn't you prefer to tell me before we reach the town?" She reasoned aloud, hoping the dragon was listening. "If I am to be angry, wouldn't you rather I were angry here, in the middle of nowhere, instead of around others?"
The tail slid back and the dragon lifted its head, cocking it to the side thoughtfully. "I suppose," it admitted. "Are you sure it wouldn't be better to turn back?"
Now Avalee was getting angry.
"No," she said in a low voice, but not one she used often. Just that word, just no. There was no way the dragon was going to weasel out of this trip at this point. She'd seen no one but Elisa for nearly a month. She'd been stuck in the cave and nearby it for way too long. She was bored, to put it plainly. Bored with the same old place, the same boring activities. Making food, mending clothes, straightening things up, dusting things off, and not even the mercurial company of the dragon was enough, not now that it seemed willing to take her around people. Besides, the dragon was often gone, hunting or flying about, whatever dragons tended to do when they weren't in caves annoying young women they were holding captive.
Angry was too mild of a word for the emotion Avalee had managed to work herself up into, and the fact of the matter was not lost on the dragon. It drew back from her and took to its feet in alarm, knocking down several of the smaller saplings that happened to be behind it.
Avalee stood now, too. Her fists were clenched at her sides, and she felt like yelling and screaming at the beast, and only the deepest instinct of self-preservation kept that urge in check. Her skin flashed hot, but she shivered as she drew breaths in deep shuddering heaves, eyes closed tightly, and focused on relaxing, calming herself, trying to remember the point of today's trip. Not to fight or argue, but to experience a welcome break to the monotony.
"Avalee?" the voice came, softly, not exactly near. Not exactly recognizable.
Avalee's eyes shot open and she was shocked to find herself alone. The dragon was gone. But where? She didn't think her temper was so frightening that the dragon would have left her; besides, who else would call to her out here, by name? Who else but her reptilian companion?
"Where are you?" she asked, her voice catching slightly.
"Over here. Please don't be angry with me."
The voice was not the dragon's voice. It was too, well, human. She still couldn't see it, though. So she started to move in the direction from which it had called to her. Avalee was beginning to have an inkling of just why the dragon feared she would be angry. She was beginning to agree with it. And then, he stepped out from behind one of the larger trees, not a dragon, but a man.
~~~
Chapter 12
At the unexpected appearance of a fellow human, and a rather bare human at that, Avalee took several involuntary steps backwards, stopping only when a gnarly root caught her foo
t and nearly sent her sprawling.
The man took a similarly clumsy path forward, hand outstretched, at first, and then withdrawn when Avalee regained her balance. But as Avalee watched him straighten, as she watched him begin to approach her once more, she noticed the hesitation, the cautious movements as one who was drunken or otherwise impaired might take. She watched, but said nothing, as he came near and finally stopped no more than a pace away from her. He stood watching her face carefully for expression while she examined the changes.
He was taller than her, though of average height for a man. His skin was slightly odd, and Avalee had trouble deciding exactly why at first. Perhaps the absence of laugh or frown wrinkles, a face utterly smooth, like a newborn's. Or maybe the color, pale and untouched by the sun. If she had to describe it, she would call it overly soft. But that was not to say the man himself was soft. Abundant muscles rippled beneath that shroud of flesh. Even awkwardly activated as they seemed to be, they made an intimidating spectacle.
But it was the eyes that convinced her, ultimately, of the identity of this man standing before her. The eyes were those of the dragon, not of any man. The pupils were vertically slit, catlike, as were the dragon's. The unnatural green was shot through with red and orange, as though the eyes were lit with a flame of their own. Avalee almost expected them to dance as would the flames of an actual fire, and by the way they shimmered at the intermittent light filtering through the boughs above him, she wasn't quite sure that they weren't.
"The pack," he said, and Avalee realized she'd been staring way too long.
"What?"
"Give me the pack."
She shrugged it off and handed it to him. He reached for it, his aim slightly off, brushing the offered strap with the back of his hand before finally grabbing hold and taking it from her. She watched him warily until she realized what he was pulling out of it. Then she turned abruptly away.
The rustle of cloth and then the sound of feet stomping into boots met her ears, and she felt her face heating in embarrassment. He must have put those things in the pack they'd brought when she wasn't watching, perhaps while she'd been sleeping the night before. Knowing that seemed to make it worse, somehow. Having stared at him so long before he asked for the clothing definitely did.
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