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The skies were a cerulean blue, dotted only by a handful of aesthetically pleasing fluffy clouds, while the sunlight, although still weak in the early morning, showed every sign of being delightfully warm by midday. Carmilla yawned, twisting and stretching to extend every vertebra in her back. Then she rolled lazily out of the cave where she lived and finally got to her feet. She’d recently perfected her favourite reading place by the local stream, extending the hollow and re-orienting the best back support rock she’d found yet. It was sure to be glorious on a day like today, when the sun would reach her favourite lying point until midday when the hottest rays would be blocked out by the branches of her favourite oak tree overhead.
She paused, then turned and went back into the cave. When she re-emerged from its cool, earthen depths, she carried her most recent book with her – a treatise on the roles and responsibilities of the monarchy, and techniques on acquiring and managing power. Apparently, it was better for a monarch to be feared than loved. Arguable, perhaps, but this was unlikely to be useful information any time soon.
She had just settled down into the ideal reading position – reclined on her side, the book propped neatly in front of her, the sun reflecting warmly onto her body but not into her eyes – when she heard the noise. Carmilla tilted her head in the direction it had come from, within the woods that surrounded her preferred cave, and hoped that she was wrong. Because she knew that sound.
But after a minute, it came again – the distinct sound of breaking twigs and a clumsy footstep, trying and failing to creep subtly through her woods.
She sighed. At least from the sound and size of them, the footfalls belonged to one of the local children, and not some new numbnut of a knight come to harass her. It would still interrupt her day, but she had a policy of not killing the children. It wasn’t their fault they had heard the local legends about her and had been subject to the kind of poor parenting that made her seem exciting rather than dangerous. They just didn’t tell fairy tales like they used to.
She draped a forearm over her eyes and waited, still lazing in the sun as the approaching footsteps grew closer. They were odd. It was definitely a light tread, but the squeak of the shoes sounded far more like the average knight’s boots than the local children’s sandals. She shrugged it off, perhaps this latest bright spark had the luck to be a cobbler’s son and could afford something to actually protect his feet when he went searching out nasty beasties in the woods. Whoever it was was clearly not adult sized, even if – wait.
She came to her feet at the sound of a sword sliding from a scabbard, the movement smooth and clearly practiced even if the owner was a pint sized little pipsqueak.
If swords were involved, all bets were off. Carmilla placed her feet and balanced her weight before taking on a casual air, buffing her nails and then inspecting them.
She didn’t look up when the footsteps reached her clearing. She wouldn’t usually let a child find her here, as the last thing she needed was a return visitor to interfere in her favourite relaxing area, but someone with a sword was not going to be bothering her more than once. She had rules about that kind of thing.
But she was taken wholly aback by the voice that hailed her from the woods.
“Avast, dragon! I have come to slay you and earn my shield as the greatest knight in all the land!”
Her head snapped up, forgetting in an instant her casual pose as she scanned the would-be knight from head to toe. Granted it was hard to tell in the plate armour, but between the way the waist tucked in, and the narrow shoulders, and those skinny arms holding that tiny sword…
It wasn’t a knight at all, it was a girl.
Carmilla relaxed back into her slouch, now not at all concerned about someone she’d thought was a threat just minutes earlier, and resumed checking her nail beds for cracks.
“Cutie, do you even know what avast means?” she asked after a minute, not deigning to look up. “I realise it’s peppered all over the adventure stories these days, but historically it’s a pirate-specific term and it means ‘cease and desist’, which doesn’t make a lot of sense in this particular context. If you’re trying to get my attention, ‘hello’ works perfectly well.”
Even from within the confines of the helmet, she actually heard the girl splutter. Helmets were echo chambers and not at all as useful for hiding one’s emotions as one would have thought.
“Besides which,” she continued, “how exactly do you plan on slaying me? You’d be knee high to a grasshopper on your best day and frankly I think you forgot to eat your weeties this morning. Might I suggest you add a heel to those boots? It certainly wouldn’t make you intimidating, but someone might conceivably mistake you for adult size.”
This time the sound of outrage that arose from the girl was unmistakeable, and would have been audible even to another human’s ears, let alone her delicate and exact senses. Carmilla held back her smile, trying to maintain her disaffected air, but this girl was hilarious. She hadn’t had a morning this entertaining in months.
“It won’t matter how big I am when I cut your head from your sho – neck!” the girl declared boldly, only slightly impacted by the brassy notes imparted by her helmet. She waved about her tiny sword, proportional to her stature but a slightly oversized toothpick from Carmilla’s perspective. “My father shall recognise my skill and I will be hailed as the greatest knight alive!”
Carmilla rolled her eyes and swung her weight to her hind legs. Then she stood up, lifting her long neck to its full extent and turning her body so her black scales gleamed smooth and perfect in the sun. Then she peered down on the girl from her full height.
“Good luck with that.” Carmilla said drily.
The sword wavered in the girl’s grip, the tip tracing an S in the air before the girl actually stamped her foot. Carmilla mentally downgraded her estimate of the girl’s age. She’d assumed she was a youth, somewhere around the sixteen range and sadly lacking in the growth spurt department, but not with that footstamp. Not unless she was an only child.
“My size does not matter! Only my skill with a blade and my determination! And anyway I thought you’d be bigger!” the girl said.
Carmilla did the closest reptilian approximation to raising an eyebrow that she could manage, largely consisting of tilting her head and cocking her brow ridges. Gods, she missed having skin sometimes. Sarcasm was so much harder to express with the limited mobility of a dragon’s facial features, even if she could literally roll her eyes all the way back in their sockets.
The girl apparently didn’t take the hint, because she took on a defensive stance, her pin of a sword held across her body and her feet evenly spaced.
“Enough talking! Foul fiend, prepare to be smited!”
Carmilla sighed. “Creampuff, that’s not a word.”
The girl stiffened, clearly insulted. “Then be smitten, foul beast from the pits of hell!” she retorted.
“I’m from two kingdoms over, and that word doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
She could have saved her breath. The girl lunged across the hollow, her footwork neat and her sword held high, clearly aiming for Carmilla’s underside and the soft creases where her lower legs met her belly. It was a good attack with a considered strategy and reasonable technique, and if she’d had a half dozen men and maybe a crossbow as backup, it could easily have succeeded.
Instead, Carmilla waited until the tiny knight got within arm’s reach, and then batted her clear across the hollow. The sword went flying, bouncing off Carmilla’s favourite rock before landing in the stream with a pleasant sounding ‘plink!’, while the girl hit the ground on her knees and elbows, badly denting her shiny armour.
“Are you ready to give up on this yet?” Carmilla asked pleasantly. She polished her nails against her belly then admired them in the sun.
“Never, beast!”
It would have sounded better if it hadn’t taken her several more moments to get up from her knees and if she hadn’t wobbled once she did. Still, when she was upright, the girl dug at her waist before pulling out a belt knife and returning to her defensive stance.
“I shall never give up on my quest!” She announced. “When you are slain, every man in the realm shall recognise my prowess and never again treat me as inferior!”
That actually gave Carmilla a moment’s pause, and when the girl darted in again, her technique still impeccable even though the knife she held was ridiculously tiny, Carmilla held back. If she’d been any other knight, Carmilla would have already been disposing of the body in her canyon of choice, but for this brave if ridiculous young woman…
She caught the girl mid-dash, checking her acceleration with her prehensile tail, and then clipped her neatly around the head with one foreleg.
When stripped of her armour, the girl was even tinier than Carmilla had thought was possible. Frankly, it was ridiculous.
She’d caught the girl when she fell, preventing her receiving any further injury from her unfortunate choice of escapade, and in the absence of any better option had opted to take her back to her cave. But Carmilla hadn’t survived for as long as she had by being foolish. So she’d taken the opportunity while the girl was unconscious to confiscate her armour, undoing the straps while the girl slept off the blow.
Thankfully, the girl was wearing light pants and a shirt under all the metal and padding. Carmilla knew what her reputation was, or had been, and she was in in no hurry to encourage misunderstandings. Particularly when the girl underneath all the metal had turned out to be exceptionally pretty, even with the swelling bruise now taking up the left side of her face. Carmilla was particularly pleased with that decision now that the girl seemed to be waking up.
She had been twitching for a little while, seemingly nearing consciousness, and had just rolled onto her side within the soft sand of the cave floor. Carmilla watched anxiously, her tail swinging tensely back and forth where she crouched between the girl and the entrance, before she wrapped it firmly along her side. The girl seemed to be a heavy sleeper, because it took stretching and pressing her bruised cheek into the floor of the cave before she jerked awake.
“Yow-OWW!” she yelped, bolting upright. Upon seeing Carmilla, her voice went high pitched and piercing with the scream. Carmilla winced, but the girl leapt up and into a crouching position before she could respond. “Close enough, monster! You may have brought me into your lair, but I won’t be easy prey!”
“Oh, for gods’ sakes, cupcake. Calm down. Preferably, lie down before you hurt yourself.” Carmilla said, eying the way even the girl’s fighting crouch was wavering. “If I was going to eat you or something similarly tedious, I would have done it already without having to listen to your yapping, don’t you think?”
“I do not yap,” the girl retorted. “And I’m fine.”
The words were undercut by the way her legs immediately wobbled. Carmilla rolled her eyes - she seemed to be doing that a lot today - and rose to all fours. She didn’t move any closer but darted her tail across to nudge the girl until she fell back into a sitting position in a singularly ungraceful motion.
“That’s better,” Carmilla allowed. “Now, there’s water against the wall to your right - not poisoned, I might add, because what exactly would be the point? - and when your brain is a little less rattled, you and I are going to have a chat.”
The girl scowled, but with her long hair and soft features, it came across more like a pout.
“There’s nothing wrong with my brain,” she muttered. Regardless, the girl edged across until she could reach the bowl of water Carmilla had brought for her.
“You tried to fight a dragon eight times your size on three separate occasions today,” Carmilla said flatly. “I’d go with your brain is rattled.”
The girl huffed. “You’re not even twice as tall as me!” she protested, but when Carmilla tilted her head to give her a meaningful look, the girl backed down. She picked up the bowl and drank deeply.
“Good.” Carmilla said. “Now, are you about ready to listen to reason, or would you prefer to start another fight you can’t possibly win? Maybe make a run for it?”
The girl jerked her gaze away from where it had clearly been directed beyond Carmilla, evaluating the odds of making it past her. Even allowing for the fact that Carmilla found herself strangely unwilling to flame her, they weren’t good.
“I’m listening.” The girl begrudged, clearly coming to the same conclusion.
“Good.” Carmilla said again. It was funny, now that she had the girl actually listening to her and her deep brown eyes fixed on her own face, Carmilla couldn’t quite remember what it was she’d planned on saying or the lesson she’d planned on giving. “Alright. Now, as little as I intend on letting you kill me in order to prove a point, it sounds like there was a story behind you interrupting my reading. What exactly possessed you that fighting a renowned dragon struck you as a practical idea?”
The girl sat bolt upright at the deliberately dry and insulting tone Carmilla had used, her mouth opening to argue. Then she winced, her hand coming to her jaw, and she seemed to think better of it.
“Come on, cutie,” Carmilla encouraged when it became clear that she was stumbling now she’d lost hold of her outrage. “I rather doubt it’s a tale I haven’t heard before.”
The girl shot her a sceptical glance, eying the dark length of her lithe form, and Carmilla couldn’t blame her for her doubts. Sometimes, she had trouble remembering she’d had a life before she was tall and strong and scaled. It wasn’t surprising that local tales tended to leave that detail out.
The girl bit her lip, hand still to her cheek, then let it go. She exhaled, leaning back against the wall, and seeming to make a decision.
“My father wants me to get married,” she said after a long moment, her voice flat. “He wants a man to prove himself worthy of me before we get married, so he’s been setting them challenges to prove they’re worthy - quests and all that. The men are keen at first - my father’s wealthy - but when they learn they have to complete a quest, most of them back out. A few have tried, but so far no one has succeeded in their quest.”
Carmilla nodded along, her tail rising to wave slowly side to side behind her. “And you so very much want to get married that you thought you’d fulfil a quest yourself?”
“No.” The girl scoffed. “No. None of the quests involved you. But people always talked about the dragon in the woods, and I thought if I could slay you, it would prove I was better than any man. That I didn’t need any of them. Because I’m not… I don’t…”
“You’re otherwise inclined,” Carmilla interpreted for her, and the girl nodded gratefully.
Well, that explained more than it didn’t. Still, she had a few nagging questions, because there were one or two things that didn’t quite add up. Starting with exactly what type of father in law expected healthy young men to doom themselves in pursuit of his daughter.
“Cupcake, who is your father?” she asked, giving in to those niggling thoughts.
She wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t been looking for it but the girl stiffened the tiniest bit before she answered softly.
“A wealthy man. I’m his only daughter.”
It was a good lie because it was true. But Carmilla was overly familiar with local legend, being the subject of much of it, and she had a concerningly strong hypothesis.
“Your father is King Hollis, isn’t he?”
The girl slumped against the wall like Carmilla had cut her strings and that was all the answer needed.
“You’re Princess Laura.” It wasn’t a question. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Laura - Princess Laura - shrugged, a particularly inelegant gesture with the way she was slouched against the cave wall. “You got me. Although I don’t know why a dragon would care.”
“Oh, for Gods’ sakes,” Carmilla huffed. Maybe it was the interruption to what could have been a personally pleasant day, maybe she was out of sorts because she’d spent more time than she wanted de-armouring a headstrong young woman who’d tried to kill her, or maybe she was just pissed off that local storytellers apparently weren’t even bothering to use her name anymore when they tried to scare little children with fairytales.
Whatever the case, she was about to set this beautiful, self pitying woman straight.
“Do you really think you’re the only princess who’s ever been gay, cupcake? The only person who tried to run away from an arranged marriage?”
The girl stirred and lifted herself stiffly up from where she was lying, clearly pained by her bruises. “No, but I had a plan! It would have worked out if you - “ she broke off, flushing.
“If I’d just stood still long enough to be murdered? Thanks, but no thanks, cutie.” Carmilla sneered, the ruff that normally sat flat behind her eye ridges flaring up. “Just because you’re deluded enough to think you could fight a fire-breathing dragon with a godsdamned toothpick doesn’t mean I’m obliged to play along!”
“I didn’t have a choice!” Laura shouted back at her, coming to her knees. “They would have made me marry one of those men just to push out a couple of heirs to inherit the kingdom and I don’t even want children! They’d make me stay inside and sew needlepoint and bake instead of going outside and ever learning anything! I’d never get to travel anywhere and no one would ever listen when I talked, just because I’m a woman!”
She was on her knees in the sand, her face half swollen, bruised, weaponless, and lacking any adornment. She was brave and foolish and willing to fight a dragon for what she believed in and Carmilla found she didn’t want to look away.
“Alright, creampuff,” she said softly. She couldn’t control her ruff but she could feel it settling down against her neck as she calmed. “Alright, I understand. I just don’t think killing people is a good method for escaping pre established gender roles.“
"But you’re not -”
Carmilla rolled her eyes in a 360, giving Laura the full experience this time. “Not people? Maybe not now, but I used to be. I don’t suppose any of your stories covered that? My name is Carmilla.”
The girl gasped, her hands coming up to cover her mouth.
“Gods, you are from two kingdoms over! My nursemaids used to tell me stories about you, willful Princess Carmilla who came to a bad -” She broke off, staring. “You’re meant to be dead!”
Carmilla snarled, not meaning to, but the girl shrank back against the wall of the cave, showing some sense for once. She shook her head roughly, but she couldn’t let it go.
“Is that what dear Maman is saying now?” she asked, but she didn’t let Laura answer. “Of course it is, that’s exactly her style. How convenient for her.”
She dropped her head to the sand, curling her long neck to tuck it against her side, and closed her eyes like it would make this latest tragic component of her life go away. Bad enough that her mother would do this to her and send her away, but to tell people she was dead… but then it had been so long. What else were people meant to believe?
She heard Laura get to her feet, taking timid steps along the sand, but Carmilla couldn’t bring herself to raise her head. What did it even matter if the girl took this opportunity to sneak by her and escape? She’d already lost almost everything she cared about.
But the footsteps didn’t pass her. Instead, they paused at the closest point Laura would have to come to her to make a daring escape, and then stopped. Laura was close enough that Carmilla could sense the heat rising off her warm human skin in waves and yet she was still surprised when a tiny hand landed on her head and stroked, very cautiously, just behind her eye ridges.
She opened her eyes to see the tiny knight crouched in front of her, clearly nervous but controlling it to offer what comfort she could. Of course, because the kind of girl who would try to murder a dragon on her own would have no hesitation about patting it a handful of hours later.
“Sure you want to get this close to the ferocious dragon?” she asked.
Laura shrugged, her hand no longer really moving but still sitting softly on her head. “You’ve pointed out a couple times that you’re more than capable of killing me if you want, I can’t see it makes that much of a difference if I’m here or against the wall.”
Carmilla snorted, a hot exhalation of air that made Laura’s clothes and hair ripple in the gust. She wrinkled her nose but didn’t move anything other than the handthat started idly scratching at the fine scales on her brow.
“Am I right in guessing that your mother has something to do with your being all… dragonly?” she asked cautiously after a moment.
Carmilla wrinkled her snout, but didn’t shrug away from Laura’s hand. There was a spot on her right cheek that was really hard to scratch without cutting herself and if she just waited a second, Laura might just get it.
“Got it in one,” she answered. “Mother wanted me to marry a prince, combine both our lands and probably get access to the magic well that was meant to lie within their palace walls. She wasn’t pleased when I declined the prince’s company in favour of his younger sister, and when she tried to force the issue, I ran away. Ell was meant to meet me on the roads, but instead I ran into a witch, and then… “ she shrugged. “When I woke up, I was all ‘dragonly’, and being chased by half the palace guard. I learned later that both Ell and her brother went missing the same day I did, and I was the presumed culprit - dragon me, that is, not the princess. I suppose it makes sense that mother says the dragon killed me too, that would make it all very tidy.”
Laura was scratching that awkward spot on her cheek now but she found she no longer cared.
“I heard later that in the absence of a direct heir, mother managed to negotiate to marry the King herself. I doubt he lasted long after that, she has a way of working things out to suit herself.” Carmilla finished bitterly.
Laura’s patting had slowed through her story, coming to a stop, and when Carmilla looked up, she found the girl was scowling fiercely.
“That’s terrible! Are you sure your mother wasn’t a witch herself? She sure sounds like a real - witch!”
Carmilla laughed, the dry gust making Laura’s hair swing again.
“That she is, princess.”
Laura took her hand back and Carmilla found herself missing it immediately. Pathetic, really, that she’d been so long deprived of human contact that she found herself wanting the girl to start it again.
“I guess I don’t really see what all this has to do with me, though,” Laura said cautiously.
Carmilla sighed and stood up onto all fours. She was careful not to knock Laura as she did so, the girl barely came up to her shoulder even in her boots and it would be easy to knock her sprawling. Laura scrambled to her feet and backed away several steps anyway.
Carmilla ducked her head to meet her cautious gaze. “Come with me,” she instructed.
When she turned her back this time, she had no fear that Laura would take the opportunity to duck out the cave entrance. Instead, she paced her steps so that Laura could keep up easily, remembering the way her knees had wobbled after she’d woken up. She took the main tunnel beyond the opening where she’d waited for Laura to wake up, then took the first two left turns.
When she turned again, Laura had followed her into the largest cavern of the cave system, and was staring around her in awe. As well she might; Carmilla had had years to turn this hidey hole into a home, and she’d lined it with stolen tapestries and books and any pretty thing that had taken her fancy. Thick carpets softened the hardened dirt at the back of the cave, while she’d raked the soft sand at the front daily to keep it clean and fresh. A freshwater spring leaked down one wall to bubble in a pool at the join of the floor before seeping away, and she’d happened to have brought in sweet smelling boughs to freshen her bed the week before.
“Wow,” Laura breathed. She looked around her slowly, taking in all of her surroundings, and then up to Carmilla, her head cocked to one side.
Carmilla looked away and swallowed, awkwardly raising a forearm to scratch at that annoying spot on her cheek.
“Well, cupcake. Awkward beginnings aside, I have some sympathy for your situation. And if you want…” she shrugged her long neck. “You’re more than welcome to hide out here for a while.”