The Gift I Never Wanted

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, and I couldn’t imagine whose bright idea it had been to bring them here. No one in their right mind would appreciate their incessant shrieking or the foul smell of sulfur wafting from their dull scales. The creatures weren’t particularly smart, or strong, or pleasant in any way. Indeed, most days I equated them to nothing more than pests.

But alas, my opinion didn’t change a single thing. I was still the Valley’s resident Dragon Lady.

Looking back, I could only regret my decision to take care of that first dragon. The senseless creature seemed to have flown into a tree, and my foolish heart had rebelled at the thought of leaving it to die. When I carried it into my home, I had no concept of the havoc it would wreak upon my peaceful existence. Within two weeks, the thing had killed all my chickens - which was quite a feat, considering that the reptile was the same size as the birds - and burned down my lovely little cottage.

I named him ‘Tyrant’ and set to work building another house, this one quite flame retardant. He, in turn, decided to grace me with his presence for the rest of his life.

Lucky me.

After a while, my various suitors stopped coming by. Understandable, considering I was yet to meet a man who took kindly to being burned, bitten or smothered. A pity.

So I, like any reasonable female, responded to their rejection by accumulating a veritable hoard of dragons. My one goal in life became to ensure the dumb things were all potty trained, so they would cease wetting my floor. Though I didn’t keep the reptiles locked up, they never seemed to leave for more than a few hours at a time.

The one merit to keeping dragons - the silver lining, if you will, is the gifts they bring back from their forays into the great outdoors. Unfortunately, my dragons seemed totally uninterested in anything that wasn’t dead, stinky, or entirely useless.

Until one day, when Marbles flapped through my kitchen window and crash landed into the fireplace. Sparks flew everywhere, but quickly lost their glow when they hit the stone which made up the entirety of my house. He looked only slightly inconvenienced as he slithered out of the flames towards my feet. Then, he dropped a large, shiny object right onto my toe.

With a shriek, I yanked my foot away from him, reaching down to grab my smarting digit. Marbles cocked his head at me, one pupil managing to fix on my face while the other drifted listlessly around in its socket. “Marbles! That hurt!” I’d long since given up reprimanding myself about talking to the dragons. How else would I yell at them when they did something to make my life difficult?

I glared at him until he stumbled away, off to make trouble somewhere else. Then, my eyes dropped to the floor where Marbles had left his gift.

My breath caught.

I instantly recognized the item. I had personally never met anyone who had seen one of the Queen’s Riders, but I’d be hard-pressed to find a single person in the Valley who hadn’t heard of them. The golden medallions they wore to identify themselves were as famous as the Riders themselves.

And now, one such medallion was lying on my kitchen floor.

Groaning, I turned my face away, not wanting anything to do with the disc. I was certain the owner would come looking for it, but while most people would relish the opportunity to meet such a person, I only saw it for the hassle it was.

It didn’t take me long to make my decision. With intentional disinterest, I swiped the medallion from the floor and stood. Stepping towards the basket I kept on the mantle of the fireplace, I dropped the medallion inside, along with the other gifts my dragons had bestowed upon me. I could never find the heart to throw them away. After all, my pets were so earnest in their delivery of the finds, and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I did, however, draw the line at dead things. Those ‘gifts’ were hastily buried in the ever-expanding graveyard behind my house.

The medallion looked sadly out of place amongst the loose buttons, wooden pegs and odd rocks, but I refused to be swayed. I quickly closed the lid and spun away, casting the gift far from my mind.

I had quite succeeded in that goal as the sun reached its zenith and began the slow journey towards the western horizon.

The first indication I had that something was amiss was the sudden silence cloaking my home. As the reluctant carer of a collection of noisy dragons, I was completely unaccustomed to the quiet, and I wasted no time in setting aside my sewing. The silence was shattered by the dozens of slapping feet and whistling wings that preceded my pets as they rushed towards me. Apparently, something had frightened them.

Then, as I was swarmed by the cowards, I became aware of another sound.

Rhythmic gushing surrounded my house, coming closer from all directions, louder every second. It was a sound I was quite familiar with, though the wingbeats caused by my dragons were feeble and erratic compared to the steady, strong wings approaching us now.

Even as I fought off the grasping claws trying to cling to every part of me, I understood what was happening.

The Queen’s Riders had come for their medallion.