by Sean Gibson
“I’ve never met a dragon who likes vegetables,” said Nadi thoughtfully.
“You’ve never met a dragon, you nitwit!” said Whiska. She pointed her staff at the dragon. “Are we going to sit here talking, or are we going to destroy this overgrown iguana and take its gold?” She cast her eyes over the piles of treasure and shivered with pleasure. “Gold!”
The dragon rolled its eyes. “The only reason you’re not a tiny stain on the floor is that I had a coughing fit. That happens once every few months. It’s over now. Do you really think you’re going to get that lucky again?” The dragon snorted a gout of flame. “Incidentally, I understand that getting burned alive really hurts.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Do you really want to fight us? Look, I’m not delusional—I know you’ll melt every single one of these jokers into candle butts. But, it’s possible that you could get hurt at least a little in the process, especially by the smelly, hairy one.”
“Heloise, what are you—” began Nadi, but I cut her off.
“You strike me as incredibly reasonable.”
“I am,” said the dragon, inclining its head forward.
“And smart,” I said.
“I am,” said the dragon, nodding again. “I’m also not gullible, susceptible to flattery, or easily fooled.”
“Right,” I said. So much for the subtle approach; oh well—I’ve always preferred the direct approach anyway. “Okay, you’re reasonable and smart, and you have a ton of treasure here—a hoard that we won’t contribute to if you kill us, incidentally, because, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re so hard up that we’re wearing poorly made magical muumuus that, I suspect, will just disappear at some point, and then you’ll have a naked Ratarian and whatever the heck Rummy is lying around your lair. And that’ll put you off your arugula for sure.” I think I winced. “Trust me about that—I’ve seen ‘em naked. It’s not pretty.”
“You noodle-haired lute plucker! I’ll have you know I’m considered a real catch back home.”
“We’ll take your word for that,” I said to Whiska by way of mollification. I turned back to the dragon. “All right, so in addition to all of those things I just mentioned, I’m going to suggest one more thing I think is true about you, but I need to ask you not to burn my head off for doing so.”
“I make no guarantees, but you may proceed,” rumbled the dragon.
“Hmmm. Well, that’s a little less surety than I’d like, Mr…you know, it occurs to me that we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Heloise the Bard—it’s okay if you haven’t heard of me, though I’d be surprised if that’s the case.”
“I haven’t heard of you.”
“I’m surprised.”
“I’m Melvin.”
“Melvin?”
“Melvin.”
“Hmmm. Are you sure it’s not ‘Dragonia’?”
“That’s a ridiculous name for a dragon.”
“It’s just a thing I’m toying with. Never mind. Melvin—so, here’s the thing I think is true about you, and I don’t mean this offensively, because it’s true of me, too, and I certainly don’t want to offend myself. See, the thing is, I think you’re lazy.”
The dragon narrowed its eyes. I knew I was playing with fire—literally. “Tread lightly, elf.”
“Half-elf, actually.”
“Hrrrm.”
“Is that a good ‘hrrrm’ or a bad ‘hrrrm’?”
“It’s an indifferent ‘hrrrm.’”
I nodded. “I’ll take that.” I glanced to the side to see Nadi looking at me with a combination of horror and admiration. I think she knew that she’d already be dead if I hadn’t been there—but, she could also sense that if I kept going, we were probably headed for the same outcome eventually. Ah, well—in for a fennig…
(A fennig, incidentally, is generally acknowledged as the smallest unit of money anywhere in Erithea—it takes a thousand fennigs to equal one Grinnarian ploufer, and it takes about ten ploufers to buy a loaf of bread. So, fennigs are pretty useless except when featured in outdated colloquialisms.)
“Maybe ‘lazy’ is too strong of a word—what I mean is that you like to accomplish as much as you can with as little effort as possible. It goes hand-in-hand—or maybe hand-in-claw, in your case—with being smart. Like I said, I’m the same way.”
“And so modest,” replied the dragon.
“She really is,” added Rummy.
“Let’s not forget beautiful. She’s stunningly beautiful,” I said. I looked at Rummy. “Are you done? I’m trying to save our lives here.”
“I’m done,” said Rummy agreeably. “You’re doing a great job so far. Keep it up. I feel like this thing could turn on us at any minute.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” said the dragon.
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Rummy, nodding. “It would be rude to whisper so that you couldn’t hear us.”
“My point is,” I cut in, trying to wrestle back control of the conversation, “you probably prefer when you can get things you want without trying too hard, right?”
“I think that’s true of anyone who’s reasonable,” replied the dragon.
“And you’re reasonable,” I said.
“I like to think so,” said Melvin. “The corpses of a lot of adventurers might disagree.” He gestured to the treasure pile on which he sat. I squinted to look at it more closely. It definitely contained the bleached bones of humanoid creatures. So many bones.
“Well, I’m not sure those corpses can actually disagree, technically,” I replied, “unless, of course, they’re undead, but that’s beside the point. The actual point is that you’re reasonable and we’re reasonable, and there’s probably some way we can reasonably help each other.”
“My way of helping you, I assume, being to not burn you to a crisp?” asked the dragon.
“That would be a good start,” I responded with a nod.
“And give us treasure!” shouted Whiska.
The dragon puffed out a bit of steam, which shut Whiska up, but didn’t deter her from repeatedly picking up the same handful of glinting gold coins and gleefully letting them run through her fingers.
“So, you like vegetables,” I said.
“Very much,” replied the dragon. “In fact, they’re all I eat. I’m a vegetabletarian.”
“You mean vegetarian,” said Rummy helpfully.
Melvin shook his head. “No, vegetarians don’t eat meat, but they do eat things other than vegetables. I only eat vegetables.”
“Seriously?” asked Nadi. “You must need to eat them by the wagonload if that’s all you eat.”
“How can you not like meat?” asked Whiska, seeming offended as she produced a piece of lizard jerky from somewhere (I don’t want to know where) and tore off a bite.
The dragon looked disgusted. “I just think it’s cruel to eat something that’s less intelligent than you, though I suppose that’s less of a problem for you.”
“So you would eat another dragon?” replied Whiska, unfazed.
“I…hmmm. Well, that’s a fair riposte. My statement was intended to simultaneously insult you and suggest how far beneath me you truly are, but you’ve trapped me with my own words. No, I would not eat another dragon. I’m a strict vegetabletarian. I will amend my statement: I think it’s cruel to eat something that’s less or equally intelligent.”
“What about something that’s more intelligent?” countered Whiska.
“Nothing is more intelligent than a dragon—and no, there are no dragons more intelligent than I.”
“So, you’re trying to tell me you’re the smartest being in the world?” Whiska’s tone was skeptical. I wanted to strangle her.
“It would be intellectually foolish for me to answer in the affirmative, as I haven’t met every creature in the world, but I am reasonably certain that’s the case, yes.”
“We believe you,” I cut in, giving Whiska a look that she returned by daintily pretending to brush something off her s
houlder, which I knew to be an obscene Ratarian gesture meant to suggest I stick my head someplace very uncomfortable.
“I am...the smartest…rock giant I…know,” said Borg.
“I believe it,” said Rummy, patting Borg on the arm. “You’ve got brainpower to spare.”
I cleared my throat, glared at Rummy and Borg, and continued. “Anyway, Melvin, you’re a smart guy and—”
“I’m not a ‘guy’ as you so informally put it. I am a female.”
“Named Melvin?” I responded without thinking.
“Yes.”
“Oh. I, uh, see. That’s…yeah. That’s interesting.” I’d lost my train of thought.
“It’s a common female dragon name.”
“I’m not saying it’s not,” I replied.
“It was also my mother’s name.”
“Well, that’s great—family names are a great tradition.”
“And her mother’s name before her.”
“Got it—so, sorry about that. You’re a smart, ah, a smart woman.”
“Melvin is a…boy’s name,” said Borg.
“Not in this case, big guy,” said Rummy. He handed Borg a coin from the mound of treasure at his feet. “Look—shiny.”
Borg took the coin and looked at it. I gave Rummy a grateful nod.
“I can’t imagine,” I resumed, “that it’s all that easy getting vegetables into this place, especially if you’re getting them all the way from Skendrick. First of all, it’s not really that close, even as fast as you can fly. Second, I’ve seen their farms—they’re not very impressive. And, they grow more grain than vegetables.”
“That’s true,” the dragon concurred.
“Sooner or later, they’re going to get competent adventurers to come after you.”
“Hey!” said Nadi.
I shrugged. “Just being honest—look, you guys have got potential, but you know that Ms. Melvin here would have consumed you all before you so much as cracked one of her scales, right? And that she still could?”
“Hey!” This time, it was Whiska. “That lightning bolt I hit him—it, her, whatever—with did some major damage. You know that hurt!”
“It did,” conceded the dragon. “It doesn’t now. It was akin to a bee sting for a human.” She smiled at Whiska. “Or perhaps a flea bite, in your case.”
“You dirty, stinking, slimy mountain of useless reptile flesh!” Whiska raised her staff. “I’m going to turn you into a puddle of red goop and then drink you!”
“That’s a really weird thing to say,” said Rummy. “And probably unwise.”
“I think,” I said, grabbing Whiska’s arm and pulling it down, “that we can all agree that it was unwise. And weird, yeah, come to think of it—did you just threaten to drink her?”
“It’s the ultimate sign of disrespect in Ratarian society.” Whiska looked at me as though I was the only one in the world who didn’t know that fact.
“Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea to go flinging around the ultimate sign of disrespect to a creature that could eat you.” I looked at the dragon, who was staring at Whiska. “And who looks very much like she wants to. Right now. So, shut up.”
Whiska started to speak, but I held up my hand. “Shut. Up.”
Whiska actually listened.
“Get to the point, half-elf,” said the dragon.
“My point is, we can make it easier on you than having to fly out of your lair, navigate tricky winds, attack a village, risk getting attacked in return, grab some vegetables—and probably not enough to actually fill you up—and then flying all the way back here, rinse, repeat.”
“‘Rinse, repeat’?” asked the dragon curiously.
“It’s just a thing people with long, flowing, silky, honey-golden hair say,” I replied, tossing long, flowing, silky, honey-golden hair over my shoulder.
“It’s a stupid saying,” said the dragon.
“Which is why I’ve decided I’m not going to say it anymore,” I replied.
“How are you going to get me more vegetables?”
“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?” Confession: I had absolutely no idea how to get the dragon more vegetables. This whole conversation was a play for time in the hopes that someone (ideally someone other than me) would come up with an idea to get us out of this situation. My companions, however, didn’t seem to have anything to contribute beyond insults that might get them eaten.
“Yes, it is,” said the dragon pointedly.
“Well, fortunately, we have one heck of a plan,” I said.
The dragon waited a moment before saying, “And your plan is?”
“Well, the plan, see…it’s complicated. It would take a while to explain, and we don’t want to waste your time. Why don’t you just let us head out and get to work, and, before you know it, you’ll be swimming in vegetables. Well, maybe not literally, because that would be hard, and you’re very big. But, the point is, we’ll have you loaded up in no time.”
“How?” The dragon narrowed its eyes, kind of like how mine do when some schlubby patron buys me a drink after a performance and spends the next twenty minutes stammering in an effort to try to get me to go home with him. (That almost never works, incidentally.)
“I’ll, uh, I’ll just…Nadi, why don’t you tell Melvin how we’re going to make sure she has a steady supply of vegetables so that she doesn’t immolate us?”
The look Nadi gave me suggested that, if we survived this encounter, I would feel considerable pain at a future date. “Well, Heloise, we’ve got a great plan to make sure that happens. It’s so good I’m almost afraid to share it—trade secrets, you know.” She laughed nervously.
“You have no plan,” said the dragon.
“No, no—that’s not true at all!” said Nadi. “We have a great plan. The best plan you’ve ever heard.” She looked at Whiska, then shook her head and turned to Rummy. “Why don’t you tell Melvin about it? You’re so much better at explaining the plan than I am.”
Rummy walked a gold coin across his knuckles for a moment before making it disappear with a flourish and then reaching into his right boot to make it reappear. I clapped. “Thank you, thank you.” He bowed. “Now, the way I see it,” he said, letting the coin dance across his hand again, this time putting both hands together and walking it back and forth, “your problem, Ms. Mel—may I call you Mel?”
“No.”
“Fine, fine. Now, your problem, Ms. Melvin, is that—”
“‘Ms.’ is considered an insulting form of address among dragonkind,” said Mel.
“Why’s that?” asked Nadi.
“It’s too human.”
“Ironic, then, that it came from a half-dwarf, half-halfling, no?” Rummy chuckled.
“Not really,” said Melvin.
“Tough crowd,” Rummy stage whispered. No one said anything. He cleared his throat. “Right. As I was saying, your problem, ah, dragon lady, is the very same problem this coin has—your vegetables keep disappearing.” He made the coin disappear again. “Only, in your case, they’re going into your stomach—and a svelte stomach it is, I might add, likely on account of having such a salubrious diet—instead of, say, Borg’s loin cloth.” Rummy reached over and appeared to pluck the coin from the depths of Borg’s garment, which prompted the rock giant to (very slowly) clap. “Now, the question we need to answer—for you, of course, since we clearly already know the answer, obviously—is how to make those vegetables reappear like this coin.” He pulled another coin from Borg’s loin cloth. “And this one.” He pulled out another, and another, and another still. “And this one, and this one, and so on and so forth.” Rummy paused. I clapped, knowing that if no one did, it would interrupt the rhythm of his patter and, right now, that patter was the only thing standing between us and a fire bath.
(On that note—if you’re ever in the Bastonia region of upper Cameral, I highly recommend the fire baths, which are magical mud springs that melt years off your skin. Why do they ca
ll them “fire baths” instead of “mud baths”? First and foremost, the thought of bathing in mud is just kind of gross, so it’s primarily a marketing thing. But, there are also occasional gouts of flame that spring forth from the baths. It’s incredibly rare and usually happens outside the area that’s roped off for bathing use, though every ten years or so, a bather gets torched. Staying beautiful isn’t easy for everyone, you know.)
“Of course,” continued Rummy, “vegetables, generally speaking, are much larger than coins.” He looked around at the treasure surrounding him, his brow furrowed in concentration. “They’re more like the size of that candlestick over there. Do you like carrots, Melvin?”
“They are, in fact, my favorite vegetable.”
“You, madam—assuming ‘madam’ is not offensive—have excellent taste in vegetables.”
“Madam is mildly offensive.”
“Ah, I certainly don’t mean to give offense, your dragonship! Is that offensive?”
“No, just ridiculous.”
“I’ll take ridiculous over offensive any day,” replied Rummy, smiling. Dear gods; he was actually enjoying himself. He was totally going to get eaten first.
“So, that candlestick over there—let’s say that’s our carrot. Much, much bigger than a coin, right? And much harder to move, especially in mass quantities. It’s almost…well, it’s almost like you’d need magic to do it. Maybe even a magic pack that was filled with candlestick carrots and would never run out!” He unslung his pack, reached inside, and pulled out a candlestick that looked very much like the one he had pointed to a moment before, which still remained in its place.
The dragon let out a low whistle. “Now that’s a pretty good trick.”
“As good as this one?” said Rummy, pulling another candlestick—identical to the first—out of his pack and setting it down on the ground behind him. “Or this one?” Another candlestick emerged, which he set down in the same spot as the first. “Or this one?” Yet another appeared.
