dragon

The story goes she encountered a dragon in the valley and awakened her powers there, which is of course nonsense. I heard she made a fool of herself trying to outsmart a swamp witch--she certainly came home seething, and when I asked what happened her face turned red and then when I asked why she was blushing she told me to fuck off. To be fair, she didn't start the rumor about the dragon. Every time she heard it she squirmed and blushed and tried to change the topic, but that wasn't enough to make it go away. She became kind of a legend after that, as if she wasn't enough of one already. A destined hero.

I went to the swamp to find out what actually happened down there, because stories about dragons don't just materialize, and I found the witch there, waiting for me. "You're late," she told me, and I told her that pretending to be all mysterious prescient wasn't going to impress me so she should drop the act.

She raised her hand and what I had taken to just be a fallen tree in the swampwater behind her shifted and splashed and there before me stood a dragon, all covered in moss and lichen and mushrooms, its eyes the color of algae, its scales the same brown as a decaying tree stump. "I summoned a dragon and it took you two months to come investigate," she told me. "You're late."

I shrugged an indifferent apology at her. "You should have sent a letter," I told her, and she didn't argue because she knew I had a point.

"So," I said. "You wanted me here. What did you want to tell me?"

"Your friend. She's waking things up. I don't think she knows it yet, but this fellow here," she indicated the dragon, "shouldn't be. Or rather, wouldn't be, if she hadn't paid us a visit."

I watched the dragon for a while. "Makes sense," I said. "Anything else?"

"You're very irritating," she told me. "Do you know that?"

I did know that.

I probably should have been worried about that, or wondered what it meant, but there's always a looming calamity somewhere, and the spirits can be very melodramatic about it all. Mostly I found it amusing that the story that made my friend into a legend was more or less the exact opposite of the truth. She had gone into the valley and awakened the dragon's power, and who knows what else besides.

The whole trip home I debated whether or not I should tell her. In the end I decided to, which in retrospect was probably a mistake, but I believe in letting people make their own decisions. Besides, she'd have found out eventually, and maybe things would have been much worse if she found out from someone besides me.