Pink Dandelion Quarterly_Winter 2019

07. | A DAME AND A DRAGON by Domi Sotto

FLASH FICTION

The Dame chained to the Sacred Oak was plump, clad in white and woozy.

Her head lolled to one side, letting the rose crown slip from her flowing locks to the ground. There it teetered at the edge of the sheer drop.The torrent roared below, throwing itself against the stone, but its fury was mewling when the dragon's call shook the rock, the oak, and the maiden. The roses took the plunge.

The rock, the oak, and the maiden shook again when the dragon crashed from the sky. His long claws stroke sparks from the stone, his wings buffeted pebbles up in the air, as he broke his momentum.

"Dame Elvira!" he cried and poked the Dame's tummy with a claw.

"You! Answer my charges!" Elvira snapped out of her slouch. "You've ruined the countryside!"

"That was the baron's lie to get tax relief, I swear!" The dragon backed away a stride.

"You've abducted three maidens in a fortnight!" She ripped the chains out of the tree and swirled them above her head.

"They wanted a joyride. All returned back, all unspoiled, as certified by respectable crones," the dragon insisted.

"You've devoured noble Ferrante!" Elvira lunged forward slashing at the great wing with her chains.The lace gown parted in a thousand places, revealing a cuirass underneath, pearls came flying off it like stones from a sling.

The dragon flapped his wings, sending Elvira crashing into her tree.

"Oh, no! Dreadfully sorry! Are you—"

With a determined grimace Elvira climbed back to her feet.

"I didn't eat Ferrante!" the dragon screamed before she could charge then coughed out a puff of smoke. "Stay your attack, Dame Elvira, I plead the right to speak and clear my name. You cannot slay me without listening."

She grunted. "Speak if you must, but no dragon foolery. I am impervious to your glamour, beast."

"Do you vow to hear what I may say in my defense?"

"Yes, I so vow! Just go on with it already."

The dragon suffered another fit of coughing. "Verily, having a fireplace in one's chest is an idiotic thing. The fumes irritate the throat and the heartburn is a torment."

"What. Did. You. Do. To. My. Sworn. Knight?"

The dragon lifted his paw in a pacifying gesture, backing away another step. Smoke erupted out of his nostrils, mouth, and other orifices, covering him in a thickening gray cloud.

"Coward!" Elvira yelled and surged forward again into the smoke, only to crawl out of the poisonous cloud, tears-eyed and coughing.

"Breathe normally, Dame Elvira, the toxin wears off fast. Bloody unpleasant, but it does no permanent harm, and with your awe-inspiring constitution—"

"I will crush—" Elvira willed her shaking hands to grip the chains, her stinging eyes to open—

The dragon was gone, but he left a surprise in his wake, a wide-shouldered knight with a familiar tangle of dark hair, now smoldering at the edges.

"Ferrante! Where is the dragon? We must give chase!"

"Oh no, we mustn't." Ferrante said, going on one knee. "Dragon-shift runs in my family, Dame, an embarrassing little secret of House Ornati... and you've vowed to hear me out."

She sat up and wiped her face. "You are the dragon? The one that burned the countryside, abducted maidens and devoured... yourself? Why, Ferrante, why? You are the most loyal, honorable man I had ever had in my service."

"From the moment I saw you, I wanted to tell you that I am in love with you. This was the only way I could get you alone."

"What do you mean? We spent a week in the Poisoned Glade!"

"Chopping down screaming goblins!"

"And marched through the Hissing Desert for three days!"

"I marched, You were chasing bandits through the cactuses... cactaes... cacti... oh, bother! The thorny desert flora."

"Fine, in the Roiling Seas—"

"First they roiled... then pirates. Elvira, before the next peasant comes running with a story about a monster or an injustice, do you love me?"

She pushed the tangled mess of hair out of her eyes and muttered, "I don't charge dragons for just anyone's sake."

Ferrante tsk'd. "You do. Or would, given a chance."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. I do. I loved you at first sight."

Are you dead-tired from work? Then Domi aka DomiSotto is writing for you. She makes her home in Calgary with her husband and her just-turned-teen daughter. She has a life-long love of video games, writing and a day job. Day job is the reason why she walks on the lighter side in her off hours. Her thing is telling tongue-in-cheek stories about feisty self-reliant leading ladies and clever leading men. Her debut story, Crimson Qi, has been added to the Wattpad's Featured list in the One Small Step category in November 2019. The Winners Don't Have Bad Days contemporary romance is not too shabby either.