The Green Dragon

Kosha was lying on the lake bank and admiring her reflection. She has just shed her skin last night and she came here to get a full image of her new guise: the new skin was perfectly green which meant she was fully mature dragon now. Kosha tried to see reflection of each the scale, she really enjoyed her new look and new feelings. She was thinking about staying at this place for a night: to check the reflection with different light, when she was disturbed by some strange sound in the forest. First she just ignored it - anyway no one could harm her here, and it was not worth her attention. But as the sound repeated something alarmed inside of her. The dragon decided to have a look, what was happening there, and what she saw was the last thing she was expected to see so deep in the forest: it was a girl! A little girl, maybe two or three (or four) years old (Kosha never knew how to specify human's child's age). She worn very nice emerald cloth, which made her hardly noticeable in the woods. And she was totally alone. No trace of adults were around.

The dragon was totally confused. The lake was in the very share of the forest. The toddler could not come there by herself. Additionally her outfit was perfectly new and clean, just like Kosha's new skin. So someone had to bring her there. Someone brought her there and left. But why? Was she just lost? Unlikely, there was not any sound of human's presence here since Kosha came, so the girl must had been there already, probably she was just sleeping, and Kosha was too busy with her own reflection to notice it. Was the child dropped there by purpose? Maybe, but there were no note, or any other hint about the reason, or who the girl was. Additionally humans came to the lake very rarely as it required several hours of walking through the forest to get here (of course it was much easier if you could fly like a dragon), so whoever left the child there they could only hope it would be found by Kosha herself. So someone wanted her to find the child. And what? To take care of it? To eat it? (it was just a joke in her head). Anyway there was no reason to bring the girl to one of her villages (she had three of them) as peasants did not come to her directly and always waited for her to visit them..

So Kosha slowly moved her head closer to the child, not wanting to scare it. The girl turned around, saw the creature, and with word "Do-Do!!" hugged her nose. Well enough, at least she was not afraid of dragons, and even was glad to see one. Kosha carefully put one of her paws forward with her opened palm upward, and the child climbed it instantaneous. Exactly what she needed! She carefully squeezed her fingers around the baby and started directly home.

The dragon lived in a large cave, or better to say in a set of caves, in the nearby mountain. She used to live alone long time ago. But now she had three princesses living with her. They were not prisoners or hostages, they all could leave any time they would like, but all three decided to stay with her for now. All three girls had different and unhappy story behind. Dora - she came first, simply ran away from home when her father remarried after her mother death, and step-mother just hated her and was obsessed with idea to give a birth to a boy who could become a hire over Dora. Kyla was the second. She was escorted to marry the old king of other kingdom when robbers attacked procession. Luckily for her, they had no idea who was in the carriage and were more interested in money, fabrics and other goods from her trousseau than in a girl (who was wearing just road suite at that moment and did not look too pretty after hours of crying) so she managed to escape. And Melissa was the last to come. She also had problems because of her father, even though was not directly involved in it. He father started a war with another king and was defeated, so that second king killed him and conquered their kingdom. But he did not want to kill a young girl who had nothing to do with that war. At the same time he did not want to let her stay there fearing that one day she would try to get revenge. Thus he just exiled her from the kingdom. So all three princess literally did not have anywhere to go. And they had quite calm and comfortable life in dragon's caves. So they did not have reasons to leave. Well, sometimes they tried to find love in one village or another or to make friends with peasants, but never succeeded in it. The problem was they were real princesses. Which meant they got really good education: they have read tones of books, could play different musical instruments, draw, knew sciences, politics, economics, fashion... and they just got boring very quickly when communicated with people from villages. Girls really liked those people and they valued their hard work, but they just did not have topics to discuss. Even when they tried to talk about harvest and agriculture it ended with several improvements princesses proposed and which appeared to be really valuable and increase harvest significantly, but there was nothing else to discuss after it.

So, there were three princess and three villages. And Kosha cared about them all to everyone's pleasure. Of course each dragon is free to decide how to treat its villages or even town if it is lucky to have one. Some of them prefer to hold people in fear, some like to be worshiped, some just abandon everything. But Kosha was yet very young dragon when she realized that it is much more profitable to care about her people. As they started to care about her back (and later about her princesses as well). For example she loved fresh milk very much, but of course she could not milk the cow by herself even if still one. However she could bring large fallen trees from the forest to the village or catch wolf which started to steel sheep. And get milk from grateful peasants. And so on, and so on. Last several years they usually had exchange once a week: princesses wrote a list of needs, Kosha brought the baskets with it to one or several villages and took away prepared stuff, which also included list of items with which people needed help. She brought trees and water, helped with constructions, with roads cleanings, with huntings and a lot of other things whether they were needed. Usually it did not take a lot of her time but saved much more time for humans.

Of course there is always some idiot who want to fight a dragon. Well, when such guy came to one of the villages last time and declared that he is going to defeat the dragon and make them and princesses free, villagers just got him drunk, disarmed him during the night and sent him back nearly barefoot next morning. Kosha had a long laugh at this when found out what happened. But now she was going home holding carefully a child in her paw.

Princesses were shocked with her finding of course. They tried to get some food and water to the child at first place, but she was not so much interested in food as in princesses themself. With loud "Pees!!" the girl started to run from one young lady to another laughing. Everyone was confused, and was not sure what to do with the child.

After some time of play and joy Kyla started. "We can not just bring her to the village. If someone tried to get rid of her, they can try to do it again." Dora looked puzzled, "But we would have known if there is so nice girl in one of the villages." Kosha listened to them but did not interfere at this point. "You are right, it must have been someone from outside villages. Othervise they would come for our advise if had any trouble with this child.", said Melissa. "It is still might be dangerous to leave the child in a village", insisted Kyla, "that person who left the poor girl in the forest can find out that she lives in the village now and kidnap her. We do not know the reason why they did it. If the goal was to just rid of additional mouth in the family, it is one thing, they would not care about her future in this case as long as she does not come home. But if there is a question of inheritance or something like this, it may be worse and more dangerous for the child." Dora threw up her hands, "But we need to do something!"

"What we are going to do is to have this baby with us for several weeks and see if someone looks for her. If there is any news or even rumors, whatever. Right?", asked Melissa looking at Kosha. "Right. And it was exactly I was thinking about. So I like your discussion. But here is the question: how are we going to hide her presence here? We will need more food. Do you know by the way what child of such age can eat? We will need some cloths for her, some toys and beddings. If we ask for any of these and if someone is looking for a child they will immediately guess that we have a little guest here.", the dragon was incredibly serious. Everyone was silent for several minutes, then Dora proposed, "About the food. I was going to try some new dishes from the last book of recipes. So we can request for some new ingredients in additional to our usual set. As we do not know how it will go, we definitely still need the whole set of our usual food as well. And it will not look suspicious." "Great idea.", Kosha approved. "About beddings. We still have our old pillows and blankets after last year's refreshment. We can organize additional sleeping place using them.", Kyla proposed. The dragon nodded. Melissa started slowly, "We actually have some toys, if we do not afraid that the girl will break them: my large doll, some stuffed animals as presents from village boys. We have enough dresses and I can sew some cloths for the child from old ones. Additionally it is possible that some dress from the doll mentioned before can fit her. We have everything we may need in next several weeks to hide the baby." The dragon was very pleased, "Excellent! I'm proud of you girls. In this case you can prepare a place to sleep for the child and help help her change her cloths to something more simple, as her outfit looks quite expensive."

As princesses went to their "rooms" and took the child with them, Kosha hoped to have some rest and think all this over. She just closed her eyes when princesses screamed. What's the hell? What could happen to that child in just 10 minutes? Melissa ran in screaming, "It's a boy!". "What?", Kosha dropped hew jaw. "It's a boy. Not a girl. We were changing her, his, cloths to the doll's ones and... It's a boy!"