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There’s a dragon terrorizing the countryside. It’s been destroying crops, bringing droughts and storms, and devouring livestock. Everyone knows most dragons are benevolent, but this one is clearly malicious. Two hundred sacks of grain for the hero who will capture the dragon.
“What a load of bullshit,” Zoey moans. “I don’t need divination to tell me they’ve been neglecting crop rotation. What do they even mean, bringing droughts and storms? Can’t they pick a struggle?”
“Clearly not.”
“I hope they never catch it,” Zoey says, and Mira privately agrees.
But of course, they do.
.
.
When Mira was a child she would often run away from home, when the consequences of being in there surpassed the consequences of being caught. And sometimes also just whenever.
On one of these excursions, when her family had been visiting the countryside, she’d stumbled upon a lake at night.
She remembers how still and enticing the lake had looked, like a perfect dark mirror. It seemed almost as though stepping onto the water's surface, she would not sink through, but be able to walk across it instead.
Of course, she did sink. The water was deceptively deep. Mira could swim, but not well, and the water seemed equally dark in every direction, and she couldn't tell which way was up, and she was scared. She was scared to die like this, in such an embarrassing way, nothing that her brother would think was impressive.
She was sorry that she ran away. She was sorry she was such a problem child. She was sorry.
Then, something huge and bright and terrifying was emerging from the dark, inhumanly quick, and headed right for her. Mira floundered. She was running out of strength. A long enormous maw opened, revealing rows of luminous white teeth. No, no, no. Not like this, please, not like this.
The mouth closed around her. Mira could feel dozens of pressure points bearing against her skin, a moment before sinking into flesh.
But they… didn't. Water rushed around them as the beast plowed through the lake, carrying Mira harmlessly in its mouth. Only as they reached the shore, they came to a juddering stop, and Mira’s arms and thighs were nicked, snagged on the sharp fangs. But the creature didn't go into a frenzy at the smell of blood; it simply parted its jaws and deposited her gently on the ground.
Mira promptly rolled over and threw up a mouthful of water. She coughed and gagged, shivering and panting and bleeding, and the monster laid its head on the ground next to her and regarded her with one enormous brown eye.
She could only glance at it askance, terrified of facing it directly. It was impossibly big. Its head as large as an ox and its body probably longer than the lake was deep. It was white and shone with a pearlescent, otherworldly light, and it had horns and whiskers and a scraggly purple beard.
A dragon. Mira was kneeling next to a dragon.
The dragon turned its head to nudge its nose into Mira’s flank, and Mira scrambled away, trembling.
The dragon… rolled its eyes. And then it rolled its entire body until it was lying on its back, stumpy little legs in the air and underbelly exposed, and looked at Mira again.
Its eyes were brown and intelligent and shockingly human, despite the slitted pupil. Mira felt a little bit like she was being judged.
“You're not that scary,” she lied.
The dragon blinked and turned its head in invitation. Mira hesitantly reached out, and when it didn't move, touched her fingertips lightly to the ends of its whiskers. It closed its eyes.
Mira shuffled closer. She pressed her hand to the dragon’s cheek. Its scales were smooth and cool. It turned its head into the touch.
Mira traced over the prominent snout, sifted through the thick beard. It was as rough as it looked. The dragon stretched its long body and nudged closer.
When Mira ran her fingers up the long graceful arch of the dragon’s neck, it tilted its head back to give her better access. When she dug her fingertips into the skin between the largest scales and scratched lightly, it shivered. It was hypnotizing, addictive. She wanted to keep touching it forever.
But nothing lasts. She’d always known. When the first red and orange hint of sunrise creeped over the horizon, the dragon stirred. It nudged its wet nose into Mira’s thigh, gave her a last gleaming brown-eyed look, and turned away.
It slid back into the water and disappeared without so much as a splash.
.
.
Mira is assigned guard duty four nights after the capture.
She has a bad feeling, of course. She's been having a bad feeling for most of her life.
The granary hastily converted into a holding cell is the largest she’s ever seen. She idly wonders where all the grain had gone. To the great warrior who had defeated the dragon, probably. The wooden plank walls are reinforced with strips of metal, and a fortress gate has been affixed to the opening. She reaches the gates and she can hear the scrape of a large scaly body rubbing against the rough cobbled floor. They open with an awful creak, and the space inside has been further bisected by another stone and metal gate, and behind that, the dragon.
She'd be afraid to look if she was afraid of anything, but she isn't, so she does.
And, fuck. Of course, of course. Of course it's her fucking dragon.
.
.
“We’re breaking it out, right?”
“Zoey, this is my job. I swore an oath.”
“Like you give a shit about that.”
Mira can't exactly deny that, although she should. “We gotta eat.”
“Or,” Zoey says, reaching up to drape her arms over Mira’s shoulders, “we could ride a dragon.”
Mira feels herself weakening by the second. This is dire. “I’ll get caught.”
“Don't worry, I have a plan.”
That restores some of Mira’s resolve. “Fuck no. No Zoey plans. Absolutely no Zoey plans.”
“Hmm.”
“Zoey. I'm so serious. I will divorce you.”
But the little shit just stretches on her tiptoes and leans in for a kiss.
.
.
In the beginning, the dragon had tried to ram its cell door open, bite through the bars. Mira remembers the broken scales scattered across the floor, dull and lifeless, no longer shining. It had bitten the arms of two guards, one of them almost all the way through. That was when Mira had been assigned exclusive feeding duty.
It's been almost two months now, and the dragon doesn't do much at all anymore.
Mira knows the guard schedule by heart. She knows where the keys to the main door are, though it’d take some finesse to get them. She might be able to do it, but what then? What will happen to Zoey?
There is no pool in the room but the floor is uneven, and a shallow puddle collects on one side. The dragon has curled as much of its body into it as it can. The water is barely deep enough to cover the span of a single scale. As Mira watches, it rolls around, rubbing its long glittering body in the moisture.
“I've got dinner,” Mira says, clipped.
The dragon rumbles deep in its chest in answer.
“Gonna try to bite off my arm today?”
The dragon twists its neck so that it's looking at Mira upside down from the floor, its ridged forehead pressed to the wet tiles. It lets out a gust of air that ruffles Mira’s baji all the way from across the room.
Mira takes a measured breath, opens the feeding door, and slides the pig carcass inside.
The dragon unwinds, unfairly elegant, and snaps its jaws from its safe distance on the other side of the cell.
“Sooo scary,” Mira drawls, perfunctory. She feels like pure shit.
She hates seeing this. She hates doing this. It's almost worse, when it's being playful.
She watches as the dragon tears through the pig in two vicious bites. It could rip a person in half if it wanted. It might even be easier than not biting all the way through. It would certainly take less careful control. The brutalized pig drips blood and fat and viscera across the dungeon floor, which the dragon laps up unselfconsciously. Mira remembers a monumental presence cutting through dark water without a single ripple.
Finished with its meal, the dragon shivers and wriggles back into its puddle, closing its eyes in momentary contentment. It opens them to look directly at Mira, demanding.
Mira sighs. “Yes, okay,” she says, “I brought it.”
She pulls out her daegeum. The dragon’s eyes flutter closed as she starts playing.
At least like this, she doesn’t have to think, she doesn’t have to speak. She can let the music do the talking.
.
.
Zoey’s stupid fucking plan comes to fruition in the worst fucking way; Mira is on duty when they bring her right past Mira’s fucking face in cuffs.
“What the fuck? What happened?”
“She’s been caught casting curses on the crops,” the guard holding her says. Mira exerts all her earthly and spiritual power into not punching him in the face.
“Witchcraft, right?” Zoey grins and rolls her eyes. “Gotta go get fed to a dragon now, see you later!”
“No, wait! No, no, no! Zoey!”
But Zoey only winks at her over her shoulder with the most grotesquely winsome little smile.
.
.
Mira knows with all the blood pumping through her heart that Zoey is safe. That the dragon wouldn’t hurt her. That it isn’t the vicious, mindless monster they say it is. But what if. What if they’re right. What if she’s wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
They take her off feeding duty indefinitely and put her on patrol that day. The next day she manages to wiggle her way into night guard, but she’s partnered. The third night she just says fuck it and elbows her partner in the back of the neck.
She sneaks past Taesun and Paek, the bums, and uses the trick Zoey had taught her to lockpick the storeroom, and grabs the keys to the cell.
Then all it takes is offering Su-an to take over feeding duty tonight, to which she gratefully agrees, and then Mira is in.
And there is Zoey, safe and sound, curled up nice and snug in the muscled coils of the dragon’s body.
Mira could have burst out crying then and there, but she pulls out the keys instead. She has a job to do.
Zoey rouses as she hears the creaking of the door. “Oh, my dashing hero!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Mira snaps. “This is your worst plan yet. What the fuck did it even accomplish?”
“Hmm.” Zoey taps her chin. “I got to pet a dragon?” She shoots Mira a brilliant smile.
Mira has to shield her eyes. “Asshole. Idiot. I fucking hate you.”
The dragon stirs, wrapping around Zoey protectively.
Zoey giggles. “Somebody had to kick your ass into action.”
“Okay. Consider my ass kicked. Come on already.”
Zoey presses a kiss to the dragon’s scales as she climbs down. She stumbles out of the cell and directly into Mira’s arms. She feels obscenely delicate against the hard leather scales of Mira’s armor, and Mira urgently wants out, she wants it off, she wants Zoey safe and warm and soft in the cradle of her naked arms.
Zoey tugs on her hair, hard. “Ow! What!”
“Your dragon.”
Mira doesn't let her go, simply angles their bodies slightly so she can watch the dragon's snout poke out the open cell door. Its tongue flickers out, tasting the air. Its scaly cheeks rub against each edge of the opening. Not even its full head can fit through the doorway.
“How the fuck did they even get it in there?” Mira mutters.
Zoey's fist tightens in her hair. “Maybe they built the cell around it?”
The dragon bumps its face into the doorway twice more, a bit like a puppy that doesn't know its own size. It feels unseemly, embarrassing, to see something awkward and almost pathetic in a being so powerful and deadly and majestic.
The dragon nudges the bars again and Mira contemplates what it would take to level the whole cell wall.
“Gunpowder?” Zoey suggests, easily reading Mira’s mind. The dragon snaps to face them, giving Zoey such a judgemental, quelling look that Mira is immediately reassured.
The dragon slithers away from the doorway. It undulates, coiling and uncoiling in a captivating, slightly disconcerting dance. Its white scales shimmer opalescent blue and purple in the low light. And then it—seizes, its strong muscles clenching in apparent agony, and they release in a shivery glimmering ripple that seems to consume it like a flame, and then it's gone—gone and in its place, a shivering, glimmering, naked, stumbling girl—
Zoey wrenches out of Mira's arms with a last parting vicious tug to her hair. Mira is left holding empty air. And Zoey, Zoey is holding an armful of soft fleshy squishy glowing purple-haired human.
“The fuck,” Mira mutters, with feeling.
“I've got you, you're okay,” Zoey is murmuring to the girl, who is bigger and bulkier than Zoey and draped over her shoulder like perfect dead weight.
Zoey shoots Mira a clear come and help, lazy ass look. So Mira comes, and helps.
The girl is heavier and harder than she looks, packed full of muscle. And she's warm. Mira can feel her through the armor, and she remembers—hot animal breath on her skin, deadly sharp fangs encasing her, pressing just enough to hold but not to hurt. She squeezes the vulnerable naked waist in her gloved hand.
They stumble together out of the cell, an uncoordinated six legged beast. Mira leads them haltingly down the passageway. The girl-who-was-a-dragon is clearly out of practice with bipedalism. When had she last been human? Has she ever? Is this her first time? Would it be rude to ask?
A ruthlessly tousled head rolls onto Mira’s shoulder. “Heh. Payback.” Her voice is gravelly and musical and incongruously sweet. Mira gives her a sideways glance; she has a goofy, lopsided smile. “Now you gotta carry me.”
Mira has to look away so she doesn't fall down on the spot.
“Do you have a name?” Zoey asks eagerly from the other side. “Can you pronounce it with a human mouth? Can we pronounce it?”
“You can try,” the girl says with a devastating, huffy laugh. “It’s Rumi.”
“Rumi!” Zoey exclaims immediately. “Rumi, Rumi, Rumi!”
“Rumi,” Mira murmurs softly, rolling it on her tongue.
“I guess you can, then,” says Rumi.
“How did you learn to speak Korean? Were you friends with any other humans? How old are you? Should we call you unnie? Do you like being a person or a dragon better? Dragon, right?”
Rumi laughs and flops her head over to rub her face into the side of Zoey’s neck instead.
They make it to the forest and Mira can finally breathe. She strips down to her inner tunic. She helps Rumi into the chal-gap. It's long on her but tight in the shoulders. It makes her seem strangely more vulnerable, knowing she's naked under the leather.
“Hehe, back in scales,” Rumi says with a soft smile, running her delicate human hand over the borrowed armor, and Mira has to look away again.
“So, we all agree we're fugitives now, yes? Are we going to become sexy outlaws? Rob the rich, feed the poor? Terrorize the terrible?”
“We have to go to my lake,” Rumi says firmly. “I need to see my lake.”
The lake. The lake Mira had almost drowned in as a child. The lake where the fish have been mysteriously dying and the fishermen growing desperate since last season. Rumi’s lake.
Zoey looks at Mira. “Sexy lake outlaws?”
Mira looks back. Zoey is grimy and disheveled from three nights in a cell, and she's beaming brighter than the full moon above them. Rumi is equally disheveled but strangely pristine, glowing faintly from beneath Mira’s borrowed armor like she'd swallowed a few dozen moons, still unsteady on her feet and leaning heavily on Zoey. They look like shit. They couldn't bully a fleck of garbage off a fly. They’re in desperate need of an outfit change. They're perfect.
Mira sighs. “Sexy lake outlaws,” she confirms.
Rumi reaches out and tugs on Mira's ear. Mira yelps. Rumi's eyes on her are intense. "And you have to pet me a lot," she says seriously. "Okay?"
Mira struggles to breathe as Zoey absolutely loses it beside her. Wrestling her voice under her command, she says, "Okay."
Rumi looks quietly pleased. Zoey is still laughing. "Trials and tribulations and lots of pets, let's go!"
And Mira has a kind of good feeling, for once.