“Please”, said the girl, struggling against the implacable grip of the scaly beast that held her. “Not like this”. The fight was going out of her now. The screaming turning to a surprising calmness now that there seemed to be no way out. She would never see him again, and the burning inferno of that loss had dulled to aching ashes at her core. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if the dragon could hear here anyway. Its eyes were pitted and scarred, and clearly quite unsighted. Its ears might be similarly destroyed. It had offered no reaction to her pleas, loud or increasingly soft. Perhaps she would be better to remain silent and save her energy in case a chance of escape presented itself, she thought.
Presently, she lost even that hope, as the dragon returned to the great fortress it had occupied in the hills to the north of the kingdom, and she saw the grim reality of the charred and shattered corpses of previous captives, and their would-be rescuers strewn around the outside of the main keep. There was to be no escape. Her only hope was that she would die before he had a chance to follow her and do something foolish that would cost him his life alongside hers.
The dragon set her down in the main chamber of the keep, in what would have been the banquet hall. Still was the banquet hall, she supposed. She looked at the door, and thought about trying to run, but the dragon has just covered many miles faster than the fleetest horse in the Kings stud, and her father was very proud of the speed of his horses. Prouder even than of his daughter, it sometimes felt to her. There was no point running, so she sat on the ground and tried to center her mind. It was a trick that her beloved, Ser Harrod, had taught her. He did it himself before battle, to calm his mind and allow his instincts and reflexes to take center stage. Somehow it felt appropriate now, even though there was no battle ahead. A clear mind sounded like a good state in which to meet her end.
“You have finally shut up, Princess Perseon”, said the Dragon. “It's very hard on my ears, all that yammering.”
Perseon opened her eyes with a start and looked about her.
“There is no-one else here, child”, said the Dragon. “It is frequently surprising to your kind to find I can talk. A lot more lance first, ask questions later, as a species than I would like.”
“Why have you taken me, oh mighty dragon? If it was food you wanted, the kingdom could have provided livestock in considerable quantities.”
The Dragon laughed, booming in the cold chamber like distant thunder. “Mighty dragon am I? Flattery will get you everywhere my dear. And your flea-bitten kingdom can barely cobble together enough food to feed itself, thanks to your feckless parents. The only animals with any meat on them are his precious bloody horses! It’s not food I seek, child. I seek….stimulation.”
Perseon had heard the tales of the fate that befell the women captured by opposing forces in war, and she shuddered. “What do you mean by stimulation, beast?”
“Your kind took one of my senses, and with it the enjoyment my kind has for beauty in the physical world. Now I try and find beauty in other realms. Touch is not easy with claws like mine as an interface with the world, and the hapless percussive mess you call music has no value. Taste and smell are my only remaining options.”
At the word, ‘taste’ Perseon shuddered again. “I’m sure I don’t taste different. Princesses are just like normal people.”
“Yes, I’m painfully aware of that fact about royalty, my dear! It’s not you that I want. It’s the potions and flavours that your mother lavished on you that hold my interest. I wish you to take me on a tour of what you have.”
Perseon thought for a moment. She had very little on her. Her daily ablutions would be conducted in her chamber, with a pair of servants for help. She had a small vial of rosewater in her bodice, but really that was it. “I…. am not sure what I ca-“
The Dragon cut her off by depositing the contents of its other arm on the floor in front of her. It was her dressing table.
“I can’t pick out the individual scents, but I think this has some interesting items.” Gingerly, Perseon walked to the scratched and battered, but still intact cabinet of perfumes and lotions and creams that she used to catch Ser Harrod. “What do you want me to do exactly?”
“I want you to separate the items. I want to be entertained with a variation of scent. And taste where they have flavor. I want to experience them and their beauty. One by one, until they are exhausted.”
Perseon was a smart girl, much more so than her parents, and she knew what would happen when they were exhausted. But she also knew a lot about herbs, and how the combination of herbs could have different effects. She began to plan a recipe, even as she opened the door of the cabinet and began: “So, mighty dragon. I think we should begin with simplicity itself, lavender.”
Perseon was a great storyteller, and with grace, humour and creativity she managed to draw the exhibition out for many hours. Long enough that the dragon asked for a break to mull over what it had experienced, so it could remember them better. It was all the time she needed to complete the sleeping draft from the various bottles, pots and bags of her dressing cabinet. It was also enough time for Ser Harrod, armed with the speedy horses of her father, to find his way to the fortress of the dragon, and throw her whole plan into disarray.
