It could be said that for a dragon to raise a human was not quite as common as the opposite. Not when the practice began as a means to tame the fire and rage of the winged beasts. But, then again, it could be said that the white dragon had no better choice. His human had passed, and he had no desire but to follow him, as promised long, long ago when she hatched his egg.
The baby in the forest, too, had no choice but to cry. There, where blizzards swirled and the wolves howled, the tiny bundle shivered like a candle flickering before the wind put it out.
Now, that the white dragon heard the call was not the only coincidence that night, though from the moment he did be knew he could not ignore it. His human had been kind, too kind, and now she wasn’t there anymore, just as he shouldn’t be, really, when he was so, so alone. No, the other coincidence - or perhaps not so much a coincidence as an explanation - was that the baby was magic.
She, for it she was a girl, had red eyes like glowing embers, from which wisps of pure flame danced before fizzling away into the cold. Because of that, she understood the dragon’s words and lullabies, as he flew her to the safety of the mountains which had become his refuge.
Because time is a fickle yet capricious thing, and a dragonkind’s time is even more so than that of humankind, the baby might as well have grown in a single heartbeat, maybe not even that. Soon, she learned words, many of them, which she would rearrange into stories so wild and adventures so unprecedented that those of the dragon’s own life paled in comparison. Often, she spoke of fairies - though, it must be said, unlike dragons, griffins and werewolves, fairies weren’t real -, until she insisted she must be as pretty as one, and cried at the tattered dresses the dragon had salvaged for her.
Thus, the dragon descended onto the valleys, scanning the spring-green fields and the swaying pines at the forest’s edge. The town he found hadn’t been there the last time he flew this far. What he did there wasn’t precisely stealing, but only because he left a single of his precious white scales wherever he stopped: first, the tailor, then, the bard, for his books. Needless to say he only did so with the cover of darkness on his side.
Either way, the girl was happy, and, in another heartbeat, she was a kind, smart and well-read young woman. The latter hadn’t been easy at first, so used had she grown to the dragon’s particular way of speech, but determination and many nights spent under the stars, book in her lap, had done wonders. But perhaps this time it hadn’t been a heartbeat, but a blink of the dragon’s eyes, for, when he opened them, she was gone.
What hasn’t yet been said is that there was a boy in the village. He wasn’t magic in the way the girl was, although one always found him with a golden puppy-sized dragon perched on his shoulder. The creature chipped happily at every one of his jokes. When the girl asked her if she understood them, the tiny dragon nodded enthusiastically, much to the boy’s confusion.
There is an explanation as to why the two - three, technically - met, and it is the dragon. The villagers wanted nothing but to be spared the sight of her. This wasn’t one of the great cities, and the boy wasn’t even dragon tamer stock, much less a trained one. Such a monster, they said, could only bring danger.
The boy ran away. The girl didn’t, because she returned that night to the white dragon’s lair. The scolding she received was as great as his worries. She could have been lost, she could have been hurt, she could have been killed - by the wolves, or, worse, by the very humans who had left her to die as a baby. She took it still as a statue, pale as ice and lips pulled as thin as a line.
When his rage subsided, she said two things. One, that she was no longer a child, which was true. Two, that the boy was a villager, but didn’t recoil the frames she could conjure in her palms. This she only knew when she did conjure them, then and there, but the dragon didn’t need to know that part.
The day of rest that followed was too silent and too long. Little did they know that they would have preferred that relative calm to what they would face the following day.
As dawn broke, the boy was the first to hear the roar. It came from a dragon and from the village. That was enough for him to spring to his feet and rush towards the certain death that was one of those wild beasts. He had friends and he had family, even if they had cast him out. In his defense, he warned the girl, and he didn’t notice she was too lost in her dreams to hear.
She woke to the frantic pleas of the tiny golden dragon. The creature nudged her towards her traveling clothes and gave her all the information she needed to make sense of the noise. However, as she headed outside their cave, the white dragon bared her way.
For the eternity of a few seconds, their eyes met. Then, the dragon lowered his, and asked if she loved the boy. When she nodded, he kneeled, wing spread over the ground so she could climb onto his back. They flew so fast the little golden one soon fell behind.
Meanwhile, the village was aflame. Not completely, but soon it would be. People screamed as the wild beast whipped his tail or opened his mouth. The boy walked up to him at a loss. When a plan involves dying, one must consider whether or not it is, in fact, a good plan. For lack of alternatives only, the boy held the sword behind his back, and braced for the worst.
Only to find that the flames parted around him. The girl’s magic had saved him, he could tell. She was running towards him then, despite the dragon and the chaos he had caused. A battlefield was not an ideal place for a kiss, but it would have to do.
The enraged dragon readied a second attack, which the girl avoided with as much ease. He let out a deafening shriek.
Words. The one thing about wild dragons was that they had no need for them. They were hard to argue with, for the only language that could reach past the whirlwind of its thoughts and desires was those of another being. Should such being not be matched in strength, it would be consumed.
The girl had to take the risk. She thought of the calm of a spring morning, she thought of the blue of the skies and the thrill of speeding through them. She thought of the mountains which were her home and the echo of her voice if she angled it just right. She thought of her stories and the faraway lands she read about in books.
When she opened her eyes the dragon was gone. Still, the work was not yet done. There were fires to put out, wounded to tend to and houses to rebuild. Some of it wouldn’t have been possible without the white dragon’s aid. It was he who collected fallen logs from the forests and carried water from a nearby lake. He hunted, and for many weeks the villagers feasted on boars and deers, accompanied by berries they had taught the dragon to seek.
When the village was restored, there was no question of sending that dragon or his human friends back to the mountains. As they had built a new church and a new watchtower, they had built a perching-house for him, just as the girl’s books showed.
This was a happy ending of sorts: many humans to watch over, and save him from the loneliness of the ones he had lost, or would soon leave him. Because, truly, his story ends with a goodbye and a promise. As she rode away at her now husband’s side, the girl - woman - he raised swore she would keep herself safe, out there in the cities she had so often wished she would one day see.
