“Don’t worry, I’ll save you!” My guardian and I turned to watch the well-meaning villager attempt to charge uphill on the rocky path in ill-fitting armor. “Her foul magics won’t work on me!” My guardian and I looked at each other. There was no one here but us.
“Begone, evil beast!” Out of curiosity, we waited for him to get closer. He underestimated both his distance and his speed. I’m surprised his clumsy swing didn’t snap his wrists from the bad grip. However it was clear who he was trying to attack.
He pitched forward and fell harshly on the rocks at my feet. My guardian turned her head to hide her chuckling. Huffing and puffing, he used the long sword as a cane to help himself back up. The poorly hung pieces of armor swung wildly, eating up the momentum he was trying to build to take another swing at me.
“So… I’m the evil beast?”
“Your weasel words won’t infect my mind, demon! I will send you back to hell in pieces!” He ran out of breath then, and had to lean on the sword to recover.
“Brave, Sir… Wherefore have you concluded that she is not only an unclean thing, but that I am in danger from her?” My guardian spoke and motes of light danced about her head. She gestured and in her shadow, moss formed on the barren rock. Her skin radiated to make the full moon envious and her long waves of golden hair appeared to have been spun from the moping sunlight over us. Even her voice carried harmonies that are not physically possible. To anyone without a preconceived notion, it should have been clear that my guardian was the magical one. Not me with a travel-dusted cloak and sweaty brow from the uphill excursion.
He looked at her and fell in love again. I rolled my eyes in obvious annoyance. She giggled again and butterflies crowned her. “Oh, Maiden! Fairest Maiden! This creature is stained with filth that her skin cannot hide, and when in your revealing light, it is clear to all that you only stand here because this ugly thing is forcing you! But I will free you!”
My guardian grabbed my shoulder and pulled me uphill closer to her. Equating my brown skin with immorality and subhumanity has always been an instant-rage trigger for me. I thought I had better control of that dropkick emotion. My guardian knew better. Unfortunately the villager interpreted the action as me claiming dominion over my “captive”.
“There was a dragon sighted nearly every night, and it has been getting closer. I was told there were magics at work upon the hill, and see what I have found! That filthy and ill-formed body is the dragon pretending to be human, but I shall carve out its heart and restore you!”
I was vibrating with the conflicting desires of rendering this man into unrecognizable pieces and continuing on with my mission. It would not be much of delay to visit upon him the culmination of his fears. But at the same time, I would be justifying his fears and I refuse to give him even that.
My guardian’s hand lifted off my shoulder. I was free to act as I please.
I turned around to face the summit. Taking her hand, I said, “Enough games. There’s work to be done.” She smiled and songbirds announced the easiest path to take going forward.
“NO!” He had recovered enough to make another attempt at charging me. This time, he was close enough to actually harm me if I did nothing.
And nothing is precisely what I did.
Because my guardian acted faster than I could.
Dropping her humanoid form, she quickly transformed into the massive dragon that had been spotted nearly every night as she did her midnight reconnaissance. “YES!” Drips of inflamed spittle blew from her massive maw as the just warm enough burst of hot air made the armor and sword too uncomfortable to touch.
He screamed in fright as he tore the armor off in blind instinct. He realized his mission and looked up into the eye of a very annoyed guardian dragon. “Are you done, boy?” Her voice rattled the very cracks in the bedrock. “Oh look, my hide is now darker than the skin of my charge, does that make me the evil one now? Are you going to save her from me, now? Go wash yourself in the river between here and your home, boy. Human piss never ages well.”
The dragon turned her head (there was no room to turn her body), and in a blink, became once more the young ‘fair maiden’. She laughed as she ran back up to me and took my hand. The trees around us burst into sudden blooms.
“Oh, that never gets old.”
I rolled my eyes at her and started walking up the path. “What never gets old?”
“Literally scaring the piss out of people!” She laughed again, and the pebbles under our feet turned to gold.
I just shook my head, sighed deeply at her mirth and the quieting sobs of the man far downhill from us, and continued towards the summit.