Okay, fine.
The dragon found me.
Desert. Blazing sun. Sand in places that still haven't forgiven me. Lips cracked. Feet bleeding. Hair matted into dreadlocks of spite and regret. And yes — maybe passed out. Maybe not. Maybe just lying dramatically on a rock and contemplating death via dehydration on principle.
And then he appeared.
Wings out. Shadow like a thundercloud. That familiar roar-turned-sigh as he circled once — twice — landed like a dramatic old aunt with opinions.
At first I thought it was a hallucination. I mean, let's be fair, the desert had been getting weird. I passed a burning bush that smelled suspiciously like armpits and desperation. A talking black cat winked at me, said something cryptic about taxes, then trotted off. I'm still not sure if I dreamed that or if it was some minor trickster spirit with a hairball problem. Honestly, I don't care. Point is — when I saw him, I might have whispered: "Not this mirage again."
But no. He was real.
Real, cranky, dust-covered, and radiating the kind of disapproval usually reserved for children caught shoplifting or priests who lost their holy books.
We argued, obviously.
Because of course we did.
Because I was half-dead and feral and he showed up with that look — the one that says "I told you not to get caught" and "What in the seven flaming layers of fuckery have you done now" — and I snapped.
I called him a coward.
I called him a traitor.
I might've kicked him in the shin. Not hard. Just symbolically.
And he growled, and I yelled, and then I cried, which was so annoying, and then he huffed like the old furnace he is and nudged me with his muzzle like I was something small and breakable and mine.
And then I knew.
He came back.
He actually came back for me.
Gods, he really did.
That scaly, wheezing, sarcastic pile of ancient baggage came all the way into the wasteland — over dunes, past madness-bushes and probably bandits and bureaucrats — to find me.
And maybe I curled up next to him that night.
And maybe I buried my fingers in his old cracked scales and whispered thanks I'll never repeat.
And maybe, just maybe — and don't you dare tell him this — I love that stubborn, arrogant, judgmental, loyal, slightly gouty bastard more than anything in this godsdamned world.
But again.
Don't tell him.
He'll get smug.