"It Won´t Be Dull (II)" by Joy Adele Dalton

Siobaughn sighed and threw the armlet she was holding across the cavern. Grumbling, she laid her golden head on her foreclaws. Stuck inside the hole in the wall known as her new home, again! Of all the rotten—the sound of strong wingbeats brought her head off of her arms.

Looking out of the entrance, she watched as Therandil executed yet another perfect landing and strolled inside. Her eyes narrowed as he preened and posed before her, obviously pleased about something—though it might just be his landing. Not bothering to raise her head, she waited with slitted eyes for the other golden dragon to speak.

Therandil’s glowing good humor evaporated as his mate’s stony silence penetrated. "Oh for the love of the Egg!" he grumbled, glaring at her. "What could possibly be the matter now?"

"As if you didn’t already know!" Siobaughn snapped back, as incensed as he was. "I can’t believe you are so selfish!"

The male dragon reared his head back in surprise. "I’M selfish? As much as I’ve done for you and you have the gall to call ME selfish?"

Siobaughn heaved her egg-heavy self to her feet and paced back and forth across the lair. Her long tail whipped back and forth like an angry cat’s and sent showers of golden trinkets into the air. Her baleful eyes fixed Therandil to the spot like twin death rays. "As much as you’ve done for me?" she hissed in a dangerously calm voice. "As much as you’ve done for me?! How dare you! What have you ever done for me except trap me in this horrid cave and get me so heavy with eggs that I can’t even fly? I wish to the Goddess that I had never even met you! I could be back at home now, tending the house and waiting for my husband to return after a day in the fields! But nooooo! I had to come along that day and rescue you, and then you had to cart me off to this goddess-forsaken wilderness! And to top matters off, you just had to make me your mate! Well forgive me if I sound less than grateful!" She flung her girth onto a nearby pile of gold ingots and waited for Therandil to apologize.

She was gravely disappointed. Therandil drew himself to his full, impressive height and glared down upon his mate. "And all of this is my fault? You could have just walked away that day; you didn’t even have to open your mouth! And if you had been any good at running, those drunken louts wouldn’t have caught you after I flew off. And need I remind you that you called me back? And, oh yes, your wonderful idea of a human mate. Dare I mention that most of the available men your age were well on their way to becoming alcoholic wife-beaters? In from the field? More like in from the bar to beat you within an inch of consciousness! And you conveniently forgot the fact that if you had returned to your village, you would have been burned as a witch for calling me down to fry those idiots in the hollow." He turned back toward the cave’s mouth and spread his wings. Leaping into the air, he turned his head back for a parting shot, "And it’s hardly my fault you came into season and I was the only one around!"

Siobaughn watched as Therandil's golden form melted into the sunlight streaming into the valley below. As soon as he was totally gone from sight (and presumably hearing), she dropped all pretense of anger and sobbed within the comforting and concealing folds of her wings. Oh why couldn't he understand her? Why was he constantly being so cruel and uncaring? Couldn't he just try to see it from her side for once? Just once?

Great, hot, acidic tears dropped onto the gold beneath her, melting it into interesting swirls. She didn't care. She was a human trapped in this horrid dragon's body…and she was pregnant! And the dragon claiming to be her oh-so-caring mate had absolutely no idea what she was going through. She could just bet that if she had been a true dragoness, he would not be treating her like this. It was all so unfair!

Unfolding her wings and sniffling in self-pity, she listlessly moved to the lair's entrance and stared down at the valley floor. It wasn't that she was ungrateful to Therandil for everything he had done for her, after all, she didn't know of too many other dragons that would have taken in a human female and made her his mate for protection. But, well, he was just so sure that she should be fine. He was convinced that making her his mate, and a golden dragon, should have handled all problems. And she was equally as sure that it hadn't. Moving back from the opening, she coiled herself into as small of a ball as she could manage and tried to get some rest.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Therandil pulled out of his dive just in time to prevent his rather handsome gold snout from plowing into the ground. Landing heavily, he began to pace back and forth across the clearing, tearing great hunks of sod up with every step. How dare that ungrateful little—human--try to blame him for everything wrong in her life? She wouldn't even be alive if he had not flown back in and saved her from those hooligans that had caught him!

Settling onto his haunches, he stared off in the direction of the cave. It was so damnably hard to live with a human-turned-dragon! If he had known what he was letting himself in for, he might have made some other arrangement when he brought her to his lair that day. She was just so moody and hard to deal with! Doubly so now that she was carrying eggs. Human behavior baffled him under the best of circumstances, but her mood swings made his head spin. What in the world did she want out of him?

Sighing gustily, he lowered his foreparts to the ground and laid his large head on his foreclaws. How in the world was he going to figure her out? Staring at the clouds above him didn't exactly help, but they did calm his mind enough to allow him to think. How exactly did one try to figure out a human? A sudden thought caused him to sit up so fast he banged his head into a tree branch that he had not noticed overhead. Wincing at the pain, his face nonetheless split into a large, draconic smile. It was all so simple! In order to understand humans, he had to be one and live among them! Of course, this would take time, but Siobaughn seemed much happier with him gone anyway. And if it worked, he would be able to go back and finally make her happy!

With a final, long look back at his lair, he leapt into the air and was soon winging his way toward a human settlement on the other side of the ridge. There he would transform and try to blend in among them, hopefully learning what it is that made them so intractable. With any luck, he would be back in his cave and making Siobaughn happy before the next darkmoon. After all, how hard could it be to understand them?