Visitors
Written for Kain & Kitten's Yiff challenge. Setting: fantasy. Species: dragon, unicorn, cat (with oddly colored fur). Genders: M, F, choice. Bonus: rainbow, scroll, melon.
There is an old dragon saying that goes something like, "He who does not expect a visitor must still be prepared to receive one."
Now, the above is a very mammalian thing to say. For one thing, that saying would be more properly described as a very brief summary of an old dragon saying. And the term 'old dragon saying' itself is redundant, because to be considered a 'dragon saying,' the phrase in question must have been passed down from one mother to her nestlings, and from each of those nestlings to their families, a process which even in the youngest dragon families takes somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred years. So saying "there is an old dragon saying" is rather like saying, "there is a long dragon saying." One might as well save one's breath and just say, "there is a dragon saying."
This particular aphorism is older than most, however, dating back to the time known as "Second Flight" (another mammalian abbreviation). In its entirety, it includes not only the above instruction, but three separate stories of particular dragons and their unfortunate encounters with visitors, as well as an exhaustive listing of all the possible conditions of dragon-readiness.
The one most relevant to the young dragon sprawled atop the immense boulder at the foot of Peritop Hill would be, "He who has established a precedent of being sought out, though he may not be expecting a specific visit, must nonetheless keep himself keenly aware of all approaching travelers." Though the dragon was young, he had heard this saying many times in his life, and unfortunately, at this particular moment, his mind was more occupied with the delicious warmth of the sun on his scales and wings, which he had stretched out to either side of him, and the small patch of golden scales on his shoulder, which glittered and gleamed in his otherwise greenish-brown scaly coat.
He was so entranced by the scales, which had appeared only the previous week, that it took the young beaver the better part of an hour to gain his attention. Finally, the dragon became aware of a rhythmic vibration in the boulder he was sprawled upon, and craned his snaky neck around to see the beaver standing at the base.
He was hitting the boulder with a thick branch he had apparently gnawed off of a nearby tree, but as the dragon's head slid over the curve of the boulder, he dropped the branch and took a step back. For a moment, he and the dragon stared at each other, and then he drew himself up and said, with only a little shaking to his voice, "Are you the dragon Zachen?"
Zachen was quite accustomed to the mammalian shortening of his name, which would have taken well over an hour to speak, even for a young dragon like himself who tended to rush through things. He contented himself with nodding, keeping his golden eyes fixed on the creature below him.
"I-I am here from...that is, Mistress Solluna sends her regards and regrets that she could not visit personally this time. She requests safe passage into your cave to collect the ingredients within."
"Why," the dragon spoke for the first time, "did she not come herself?" His voice annoyed him. Too high to command respect. He grew another ten feet as he slithered down off the boulder, his shoulder now twice as high as the beaver, who backed up another step.
"She is...she is busy."
"In the past, she has always made time to come visit herself." Zachen flicked his tail.
"I'm her apprentice and I guess she thought I could make the trip now. It's a long journey and she's getting old." The beaver rocked back on his flat tail.
Zachen sighed, letting a puff of smoke loose. "Very well," he said. "I suppose you have no interest in discussing polyflammation conversions? I have learned some interesting aspects in the past year, and...no, I suppose not." The beaver was staring blankly at him. "Well, what is your name?"
"I'm D-Daffyd," the beaver said.
"You've brought the payment, of course?"
Silently, the beaver held out a leather sack. Zachen took it between two claws and brought it to his nose, inhaling sharply. "Oh... very nice. A royal cup, and some gold, and a magical scroll, too!" He twitched his tail and smiled. "Most excellent. Yes, this is very nice. Tell Solluna she is forgiven for not visiting me in person."
Daffyd let out a long breath that whistled through his prominent front teeth. Zachen nudged the beaver with a large, scaly foot. "You should step back a few paces."
When Daffyd had done so, Zachen grew until he was as tall as the immense boulder, then grew larger just to impress the beaver. Judging from the distance Daffyd had retreated when Zachen moved the boulder away from the entrance to his cave, he'd succeeded. He swept a paw towards the small, dark hole he'd revealed in the hillside wall. "Go on in," he boomed.
Daffyd glanced at the hole and then up at Zachen. He took one tentative step forward and then looked up again.
Zachen shrugged. "If you want to return without the items your mistress sent you for..."
Daffyd shook his head quickly and ran forward into the cave.
Zachen rolled the boulder back into place and then perched on top of it, shrinking himself down until he was no longer than an earthworm. He slid through an abandoned mouse tunnel and emerged inside the hill, in his private bedroom. Shaking the dirt from his wings and scales, he restored himself to an appropriate size and dropped through the hole in the floor, wings beating powerfully in the chill air.
Daffyd was standing in the pitch black of the entrance hall. As he touched down on the stone floor, Zachan could see him trembling in the dark, turning blindly towards the source of the noise. He raised his neck to its fifteen-foot height and casually puffed fire into each of six alcoves in the wall. The magical fire stayed there, glowing orange with flickers of green through it, sending shadows dancing through the hall and letting Daffyd see where he was.
He stood in front of a crude archway in a large, round room carved out of the dirt of the hill, though it was so large that one might think the room had been built first and the hill grown over it. Zachan watched the beaver's eyes scan the bare stone of the walls, dull and grey in the firelight, passing over the hole in the ceiling and the iron-braced wooden door at the far end to rest on the large figure of Zachan himself.
"I thought dragons were supposed to have lots of gold," he said.
Zachan laughed, filling the air around him with smoke. "You think I would leave my gold out like this? Go. What you want is through that door. I've unlocked it for you."
Daffyd winced at the booming laugh echoing through the empty room, and scurried towards the door. Zachan watched him slow as he neared the wood, looking up at the archway with the small triangular hole above the keystone, then down at the handle. He put a paw on it and pulled, and the door swung open easily. Daffyd glanced quickly back at the dragon, and stepped through.
Zachan closed the door after him with a loud thunk, then hooked a claw in the hole over the keystone and shrunk himself until he was a tiny lizard hanging from a stone ledge. He pulled himself up, tucked his wings against his body, and wriggled through the hole to the other side, staying back in the dark as he got close enough to see what was going on in the other room.
He saw the beaver step into the silvery light of the room and stop. No magical fire lit the walls; the light came from the spiraling rainbow horn of the unicorn lying against the far wall.
When standing, he would be an imposing seven feet tall. Even seated against the wall, knees drawn up and arms folded over them, he was able to look the beaver in the eye when he raised his head. Muscles rippled under his silvery-white fur, even with the smallest movement. His mane and fetlocks rustled as though there were a breeze, even though the air in the cave was still. He wore no clothing, and the shaggy hair at his groin was hardly sufficient to hide his ample white sheath, which is where the beaver's attention was initially drawn, Zachan noted.
The second place the beaver looked was up the stomach and ribs to the unicorn's neck, and the iron collar that kept him shackled to the wall.
The unicorn smiled as the beaver stepped closer. "Yes?" His voice was soft and musical.
"Uh..." Daffyd's voice was shaky with a different kind of awe, now. "My mistress...Solluna..." He held out a waterskin.
The unicorn reached out a hand and took it, nodding. "I remember Solluna," he said. "You're her apprentice, right? She spoke of you often." He opened the waterskin and carefully lowered his head to dip his horn into it. It shimmered as he did. "She thinks you have a great deal of potential. I'm delighted to meet you. Daffyd, right?"
He capped the skin and handed it back. The beaver took it reverently. "That's all?"
The unicorn nodded. "Unless you want something else for yourself?"
"Oh, no." Daffyd smiled. "I've already found my mate."
"I can see that. Then take the unicorn water back to Mistress Solluna and give her my regards. And come back to see me some time."
"I will," the beaver said, and then pitched his voice lower. "Is there anything I can do to...help you?"
"No, no," the unicorn said. "I was trapped here by ancient magic, and I must serve out my term."
"I know some magic," Daffyd said hesitantly. "What magic trapped you?"
"A binding on magical creatures. It stretches back to when our species were first born. You know that we were not born of the earth, as you are, but of the sky? We have a special connection to the firmament in which the sun, moon, and stars are set. Unicorns draw their power from the moon; dragons from the sun. In some cases, if our connection to the firmament is lost or broken, we can fall under the control of others until it is mended. It's too old a magic for even Solluna to break," the unicorn said with a laugh. "But thank you for your courage, Daffyd. I'm certain that Solluna is right about you."
"All right," Daffyd said. "Good luck. I hope your connection is restored soon."
"Thank you." The unicorn smiled and leaned forward, brushing Daffyd with his horn as he did. "A little something for you and your mate."
The beaver jumped slightly, and as he turned to face the door and the dragon hidden above it, Zachan saw that his eyes bore the telltale rainbow sparkles of unicorn magic. Enhancing his next lovemaking, most likely. Zachan forever wondered why the unicorn didn't grow tired of people coming to him for magic, asking him to improve their sex or help them find a mate or enlarge various parts of their body (that, he could not do, but it didn't stop them asking). Zachan only tolerated them because they brought him gold and treasure, and gold was his second favorite thing in all the world. But they didn't bring anything to the unicorn. They only took, and Zachan didn't understand that.
He extinguished the lights and let Daffyd wait in the black entrance hall while he flew silently up to his bedroom and squirmed outside, then grew large and shifted the boulder again. The beaver emerged into the sunlight, shielding his eyes. Zachan had positioned himself so that he stood just below the sinking sun, from the beaver's viewpoint. "Get what you came for?" he said.
"Yes," Daffyd replied, walking forward a few steps, trying to put the dragon between him and the sun. Zachan drew his head back, lowering his silhouette as the beaver approached it. Finally, Daffyd gave up, probably not wanting to come closer to the dragon. "I...I may go, mayn't I?"
Zachan let out a puff of smoke and a chuckle. "Of course."
"Only... you're standing in the path."
Daffyd had moved out of the way of the boulder. Zachan reached out and rolled it back in place with a loud crash, making the beaver jump. He climbed up its sunny surface and spread out, his wings trailing on the ground. "Come back soon," he yawned, and stretched out in the sun again.
As the sun dipped below the horizon and the air began to cool, Zachan shrunk himself down and slithered back into his cave. He flew down into the entrance hall and grew just large enough to drop the sack the beaver had brought into a hole concealed behind one of the magical fire alcoves. He listened to it fall, then shrunk himself down and swooped after it.
Half an hour later, he flew out and coasted down directly to the hole above the keystone in the doorway, worked his way through it, and dropped to his feet in the unicorn's cave, about the unicorn's size as he strolled up to him.
His prisoner's silver eyes followed him. "Hello, Zachan," he said. "How's the treasure?"
"Oh, it's doing very well," he said. "I sorted the coins by country and then by age, because it was getting so tedious trying to match up the different coins when they were just all sorted by age." He stroked the gold patch of scales on his shoulder. "I might have to sort them again next week, though. I tried sorting them by age within country, but then the ones of different sizes are all next to each other and that is really bothersome. But I have more now. The porcupine who was here last week from Zerbia brought me two coppers, which I didn't have, and now I have a full set of those." He grinned at the unicorn. "He was a pretty silly one, wasn't he?"
"He just wanted to be happy," the unicorn said placidly. "That's all anybody wants."
"I suppose," the dragon said. "Just some of us are better at it than others." The thought of his sparkling treasure had made him quite happy, and now he leered at the naked unicorn. "You know how to make me happy," he said.
"Of course." The unicorn reached up and unhooked his collar.
Zachan watched him, golden eyes bright. "That beaver was so eager to help," he said. "How do you think he would have felt if he knew you could unhook yourself at any time? You could walk out of here whenever you want to. You just don't want to."
"It's not his to understand," the unicorn said softly, smiling as he knelt in front of the dragon. "Nor is it his to understand why you enjoy the things you enjoy."
Zachan nodded, his eyes fixed between the unicorn's legs. His tongue flicked out in anticipation. "I'm only sorry you don't last as long as a dragon," he said, and caressed each of the unicorn's thick calves in turn with slow, delicate licks of the slender tongue. While his tongue licked, his claws groomed the shaggy fetlocks. "You've gotten so messy," he said, "and in just a day, too. Why, my mother used to say that good grooming is one of the essential features that a respectable magical person should have...especially with all this fur to take care of, flopping all over the place." He proceeded to begin the entire dragon saying, taking advantage of all the pauses to lick further up the silvery-white body, claws following his tongue as he did.
He brushed every inch of the powerful white legs, skirted the dangling sac and swelling sheath, and proceeded up the unicorn's rippled stomach. "...Now, Vindin Kellemet was a dragon who never seemed to have the time to take care of his scales..." he murmured as he traced the muscular chest and paid special attention to the silvery-grey nipple.
For the first time, the unicorn lost some of his composure. His hands pressed to the floor, he arched his back gently into the licking and drew in a deep breath. Zachan grinned, and kept on reciting the saying as he traced the unicorn's collarbone. He emphasized his favorite phrases and words with particular strokes of his claws, and followed others with warm licks in certain places.
By the time he made it to the other side of the broad chest and his tongue was curling around the other nipple, the unicorn was panting heavily. The dragon brought both sets of claws between the thick white thighs to cup the sac, his thumbs rubbing at the base of the sheath and feeling the hardness inside. He glanced down with one golden eye and saw that the unicorn's slick, silvery member was already halfway out.
The silver eyes met his when he looked back up, urgency starting to build in them. "Not yet," he said, breaking into his story. "You know the rules."
"Finish your saying," the unicorn said, and smiled. "You couldn't have picked one of the short ones this time?"
Zachan smiled, showing all his teeth. "You love it and you know it." He brought his claws up and dragged them down the chest in rows as he moved on to the arm, circling the bicep and licking the crease at the inside of the elbow. He spent a lot of time on the sensitive hand, because it made the unicorn's large body shiver, and then moved to the other arm as his claws groomed the one he'd just left.
Finally, he brought his claws up to groom the long, shaggy mane, and touched his nose to the unicorn's soft muzzle. He felt warm breath on his scales and blew warm air back. "...the absolute apex of any self-respecting dragon's, or indeed any magical creature's, deportment is therefore clearly and undeniably the manner in which he or she presents his or her outward appearance."
The unicorn nodded, his horn shimmering in the dark air. "And how do I look now?"
Zachan grinned an evil grin. "Do you really want me to describe it as a dragon would?"
"No," the unicorn said softly, and parted his lips to accept the dragon's tongue.
Though the unicorn's breath was warm, his mouth and tongue were always cool to Zachan's touch. The dragon's tongue slid in easily, and he left one claw brushing the long mane while the other slipped downward and drew a single claw along the silvery-grey erection, bringing it to full hardness and drawing a soft sigh of pleasure from the white muzzle.
He drank in the cool taste and savored the light tingling that made him shiver. His hind claws flexed and his tail smacked the back wall. He'd grown larger without realizing it, his tongue filling more of the unicorn's muzzle as it grew with the rest of him. Something in that body, the taste of it was just intoxicating. He pulled the white head further against him, trying to work his tongue in deeper, feeling the tingling spread all through him. His tail doubled back on itself against the wall of the cave, reminding him that he couldn't grow much larger.
The unicorn was starting to rub back and forth against him, and his own long erection was rubbing into the stone floor as they kissed. Zachan knew better than to take too long to decide what to do; several sticky messes on his belly had finally taught him that. He didn't want to stop kissing the unicorn, and so, as sweet as he knew the silvery seed would taste in his mouth, he shrank himself back down and climbed up the perfectly-groomed body, positioning his tail just above the waiting shaft.
Against his tongue, he heard a low moan of anticipation. He held himself there, just letting the tip of the shaft brush his entrance, teasing with a slow back and forth as his tail curled down to wrap around the thick white base. He held himself to the muscular white form with all four claws and then lowered himself quickly, pressing the hard shaft deep into him.
"You're so hot," the unicorn moaned muffledly, and Zachan panted himself, closing his eyes to feel the length inside him. It felt almost cool against his hot insides, but rigid and smooth like silver, or gold. Slowly he drew himself up, and lowered himself again. The light of the horn flickered in the cave as the unicorn shuddered. Not given to exclamations himself, Zachan nonetheless enjoyed hearing them from his captive. He rocked back and forth, his own pleasure building from the movements inside him and from the squirming of the body he held, as well as from the muffled pants and moans and fragments of words that only seemed to heighten the tingling he got from kissing the unicorn. "Oh...Zach...you..."
He grinned, curving his sinuous body around and keeping the up and down motion. His tail squeezed more tightly at the base of the shaft as he rode its length, and after a few moments he allowed the unicorn to reach in and grasp his own long erection, pressed into the taut white stomach.
The unicorn would finish first; he always did. Zachan shrank himself a little more, the better to feel the full length push into him and slide back out, and the increased pressure on his hardness soon had the unicorn bucking and moaning, his other arm around the dragon while his hand pumped frantically. Finally, with a loud moan, the unicorn's whole body thrust upwards, making Zachan grunt and then sigh in pleasure as he felt the cool spurts inside him and the tingling in his body grew from another source. At the same time, the light in the unicorn's horn went out.
The only sound in the cave was the rough panting through the unicorn's nostrils. A few moments passed, still in darkness, and finally the hard body below Zachan relaxed. Only then did the dragon let the tingling take over him, squeezing the shaft inside him while the soft white paw stroked him up and down. He let himself be carried away on the arousal, keeping his tongue firmly in the unicorn's muzzle as he pressed closer, not bucking like the horse had, but writhing in greater and greater pleasure.
His climax, when it came, was announced with a hiss and a long exhalation of smoke from his nostrils. In the unicorn's hand, his shaft shuddered and released spurts of seed which steamed in the cave's air, even though it was not particularly cool.
"Mmmm," he said, withdrawing his muzzle and licking at the air, letting out another sigh. "Messed up your grooming already."
"So I did." The words were accompanied by a flicker of light from the horn. "And you as clean as ever."
"Scales are particularly easy to clean," Zachan said. "My mother had a saying about that, if you're interested in hearing it."
He grinned through the dim light at the white hand waving as the unicorn said, "Some other time, perhaps."
"All right then. Put your collar on and go to sleep. Sun's up soon and maybe there'll be more people with gold coming to see us."
"You should clean me up," the unicorn said with a huge yawn.
"I will. Just go to sleep."
He didn't particularly mind the taste of his own seed, but he didn't love it, either, so after he'd cleaned it all up, he turned his tongue to the unicorn's shaft. The clean, salty taste of the unicorn washed his own taste out of his mouth, and left his tongue tingling pleasantly. He flew out under the moonlight, feeling the unicorn's connection to the moon faintly as he spread his wings under it. It wasn't as strong as his connection to the sun, but it was different and exotic, and he luxuriated in it, soaring along on the chill air until the feeling wore off, and he was simply tired.
Back at his cave, he retreated to his treasure room, curled up on a pile of gold, and sighed happily as he drifted off to sleep.
If Zachan had taken the time to sniff the cat who arrived the next morning, or if he'd registered the unearthly silver sheen of her coat rather than assuming his tired eyes were putting sparkles into standard white fur, or if he'd just looked closely at her eyes, or if he'd followed what he called his "golden" rule and turned her away because she didn't have any gold; in other words, had he been prepared to receive visitors, that day might have turned out differently. As it was, it took a great deal of time for her knocking on the boulder to penetrate his treasure room and his slumber, and even when it did, it took him another hour to roust himself from the bed of golden lockets he had curled up on. He yawned and was half-inclined to go back to sleep, but the lure of further gold drew him up eventually to the mouth of the cave.
Rather than fly outside, he took the lazy approach and grew large enough in the entrance hall that he could push the boulder outside, giving it one warning rock before rolling it away from the small passage. When nobody entered, he thought at first that the visitor had been crushed, which on the one hand would make it easier to retrieve the gold they'd brought, but on the other would require a good deal of cleaning up. The first time that had happened, Zachan hadn't cleaned up, and he'd not gotten any visitors until the corpse had been picked clean by crows. The second time, he'd thought he'd learned his lesson, and had scorched the corpse away with magical fire. The sight of a blackened patch of grass with a discernible body outline in the middle of it proved to be an even greater deterrent than a decomposing body, and again he hadn't received any visitors, and therefore any gold, for several weeks. Finally, he had learned to spend an afternoon cleaning up the corpse and removing not only all visible traces, but all scent marks from the area. He was putting together quite a useful saying about this that he thought he might one day pass along to his children, if he ever worked out how to have any.
"Hello?" he called impatiently, and then he saw the cat--white, he thought--poke her head around the corner. She carried a sack over her shoulder that she was having trouble lifting, and at first he thought greedily that it must surely contain quite a large amount of gold. As she approached, however, it didn't jingle like gold, and it didn't smell like gold. It smelled more like food.
Curious, he sniffed the bag as she dropped it in front of him, only registering her cool scent in passing. "Gold only," he said sharply.
"Please," she said, "I've come all this way." She reached into the bag and drew out a melon as large as her head. "These victuals are worth a good price at the market. My family will go hungry this winter because I've taken the best from our harvest to bring here. Please."
Her eyes held a familiar sparkle, but he only saw it briefly before she stepped into the shadows of the cave. He sniffed at the melon. It did smell quite good: ripe, juicy, with a light musky tang to it. "What else is in there?" he asked.
"Fresh vegetables," she said. "Meat..."
"Dried, or fresh?" He could smell the blood now. "Never mind. All right, all right, go." He took the sack from her and unlocked the door with a wave. When she'd gone through, he shrank down to a little smaller than her size and bit through the melon, savoring its sweetness as the juices ran down his snout.
It wasn't until he'd devoured a large portion of the meat that he realized something was wrong. She should've come out by now. The business they had with the unicorn never took more than a few minutes. He stared at the door, then dropped the bone he'd been stripping the meat from and arrowed towards the door, shrinking as he went and flying through the hole atop the keystone.
He didn't stop, just shot straight through and hovered in the air, watching as the unicorn arched his back and let out an immense groan, his maleness buried between the legs of the cat. Her eyes were closed and her face was beaming with ecstasy, and in the rainbow brilliance of the horn, Zachan could see that her fur was not white, but opalescent silver, catching and amplifying the rainbow and shimmering beautifully.
"No!!" he screamed, growing as big as he dared. He tried to spread his wings, and found them cramped against the stone walls and roof. The air grew warm in the room as he hyperventilated, smoke pouring out of his mouth.
The cat opened her eyes and shrieked. She tried to lift herself off the unicorn, but he reached out with one strong arm and held her down. "Hello, Zachan," he said, panting. The only light on him was the flickering nascent fire coming from the dragon's mouth, but his eyes gathered the light and reflected it back in silver with a rainbow sheen. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" Zachan howled. "SORRY??" The fire was building up in his belly and there was no way he was going to be able to hold it in, and when the fire started, he couldn't shrink. There were at least seven different dragon sayings about how to handle fire, and none of them could even be started in the time he had before the fire came boiling out of him.
He arched his head up to the ceiling, then in a split second rammed it against the thick wooden door. It flew open, smashed against the stone wall, and he ignored the pain in his head as he released a huge ball of fire into the entrance hall.
Panting hard, he let his head rest on the stone floor. It occurred to him that as long as he was blocking the exit, they couldn't leave. He closed his eyes and tried his hardest to fall asleep.
It didn't work. He could still hear the unicorn's voice. "Zachan. Please move." That he could resist, but the smooth stroke of the hand over his scales, that unbearable tenderness, the coolness of the moon on his hot skin, made him tremble and shrink, stepping back into the room at the unicorn's size.
He looked into the silver eyes again. Never had he felt so powerless, or so alone. "You can't go," he said, trying to sound firm. "You can't leave. She's not your mate, she's not even a unicorn."
With a chiming like bells, the unicorn laughed softly. "Don't you have a dragon saying about unicorns, Zachan? There are no female unicorns." He put his arm around the cat. "She will bear two children, one a cat who will always be lucky in all his or her romantic adventures, and the other will be my son. A unicorn."
The cat looked somewhat flustered, her eyes darting to the smoke still trickling from the dragon's mouth. But she kept her ears up and her smile fixed, and she nestled closer to the unicorn's side.
"No female..." Zachan growled. "You never told me that! It's not fair! I was watching for female unicorns!"
"I'm sorry," the unicorn repeated. "But I do appreciate you keeping me here. I found my mate much more easily. Good-bye, Zachan."
He leaned forward to kiss the dragon on the nose. Zachan grabbed the long muzzle and pressed his snout to it, forcing his tongue past the unicorn's lips and drinking in that magical, silvery taste one more time. He closed his eyes, feeling himself shiver at the chilly, tingling sensations, and finally pulled his muzzle back.
The silver eyes were soft and dreamy, and he thought for a moment that he might have convinced the unicorn to stay. "Well?" he demanded. "Well?"
One white hand touched the golden scales on his shoulder. "Good-bye," the unicorn said again.
Zachan slumped back against the wall of the small room. The unicorn gathered the cat to his side, and the two of them hurried out.
It might have been hours or days or weeks before he finally roused himself and ventured back into the main cave. The oak door creaked as Zachan brushed past it; looking back, he saw that it hung from the top hinge, and that the bottom corner rested on the stone floor. Light filtered into the hall from the entrance, and he realized dully that he had never rolled the boulder back into place. His treasure!
He scrambled to the hidden hole, shrank to fit, and dropped onto the pile of coins, scattering his neatly sorted stacks. Looking around, he counted them three times to be sure they were all there, then inspected the rest of his hoard. Nothing had been taken.
He sighed and burrowed into the pile of coins. The gold around him comforted him; its weight against his wings and body was reassuringly solid. It wouldn't vanish or leave him.
He would stay down here, he decided. Gold would be his constant companion. He would only emerge to eat. With that resolved, he flew back up to his entrance hall to retrieve the sack of food, which was still mostly good.
Outside the cave, a voice called, "Dragon?"
For a moment, he thought he heard silver in the voice, and he hurried to the entrance, peering out into the sunlight. But when the voice spoke again, it was plain and coarse, just a bear holding a sack.
The bear jumped when Zachan stomped out of his hole. "What?" the dragon snarled, smoke puffing from his nostrils.
"I, uh, brought gold..." The bear held out the sack with some difficulty.
"Hm." Zachan smelled the gold in it. "Thank you," he said, and grabbed the bag. Without another look at the bear, he stalked back into the cave, added the sack of food to his load, and dropped them both into his treasure room.
"Can I come in?" the bear called from the entrance. Zachan ignored him, shrank down, and dropped into his treasure room.
He didn't care if people wandered into his cave any more. He didn't care about anything except his treasure. The bear's gold joined the rest of his wealth, and he ignored the bear's angry calls until they faded away.
By staying small, the food lasted him for weeks, or maybe it was months. He felt the pull of the sun as it rose, but ignored that too. The patch of gold scales on his shoulder remained the same size. He slept, counted his treasure, arranged it in different ways, ate, and slept again. Voices came and went above him, but he only listened long enough to make sure none had the timbre of the moon before ignoring them again.
By the time he was down to the last melon in the bag, it had definitely fermented. The alcohol in the sweet flesh gave him a momentary bout of dizziness, but his metabolism burned it up too quickly for him to get drunk. He chewed it and sighed, not looking forward to the prospect of having to go find food again.
Another voice sounded in his hall above. He raised his head, but there was no silver in it. He had begun to lower his head again when he realized that there were two things distinctly odd about the voice. First, though it did not resonate with the gentle shimmering of the moon, it did contain a magical quality. There was some power behind it that seemed familiar. Secondly, and almost more oddly than that, it was calling him by name. Not the mammalian shortening of his name, but the full dragon version of his name. For an hour, he listened as the voice called his name the first time, and at the end of the hour, when it had finished, it started again.
There was only one explanation. Some other dragon was after his treasure.
He burst out of his treasure cave and swelled as large as he dared in the entrance hall. "Here I am!" he bellowed. "So there's no treasure here for you!"
The dragon who'd called his name had shrunk to get into the cave, and with Zachan crowding the hall, he had no room to expand himself. His scaly green body--devoid of visible gold patches, Zachan noted smugly--backpedaled into the entrance, leaving only his head showing.
"I d-didn't come for treasure!" he called.
"Why would you come, then?" Zachan sneered.
"I...I had to."
That answer didn't make any sense. Zachan searched his mind for dragon sayings about compulsions and geises, but none sprang to mind. "What do you mean, you had to?"
The smaller dragon took a breath. "Well, my mother used to say that dragons seeking something should find out where to look..." He launched into a saying that Zachan hadn't heard before, and then segued into his own story, which an impatient mammal might summarize thus:
"I had been walking in the moonlight, because all my life I'd flown about during the day, so if I wanted to find something but didn't know what, I thought it would be best to start on the ground at night. And I'd done this for seven nights, and on the seventh night the moon was full. I'd found a clearing in the woods, and there was a unicorn there."
At this point in his story, Zachan caught his breath, but did not interrupt. "I couldn't seem to look away from him," the dragon continued. "I wanted to hold on to him and take him back to my cave, but he said I couldn't. Then he touched me with his horn and I felt like...like I'd just taken a long drink of frozen water. And my head felt all funny. And he said, 'Now go, and tell Zachan that my debt is paid.'"
He didn't just say "Zachan," of course; he repeated the full name. And Zachan, peering down, saw for the first time that the dragon's golden eyes shimmered with a rainbow sheen, as though they were coins brushed with mother-of-pearl. He shrank himself to match the other dragon's size and stood snout-to-snout with him.
"What is your name?" he whispered.
Mammals would call the other dragon Erach, but for Zachan he recited his full name. "And what were you looking for, Erach," Zachan said, "out in the moonlight for seven nights?"
Erach looked back at him, and Zachan saw the upward curve of his mouth as he smiled. "Why, I suppose I was looking for you," he said. "Only I had to follow the path of the moon to find you, back here in the sunlight."
Zachan touched his snout to the other's and was met with a soft kiss and the lightest flicker of a fiery tongue. He drew back and smiled. "Follow me, then, wanderer of the moon."
Outside the cave, he grew large enough to roll the boulder back into place, and Erach matched his size and pushed along with him. He led the younger dragon over the top of the boulder, and together they shrank and wiggled through his winding tunnel to his bedroom. And there they stayed for many passages of the sun and moon, sharing the joyous union of those two celestial powers. And perhaps they might have left to seek out food, but there is an ancient dragon saying which an impatient mammal might summarize as "love is the richest of foods." So perhaps they are there still.