running from the ashes.

"its unfortunate the gnomes turned out to be so unreliable," commented dragon, as he and the lady tried to put some distance between them and the town they'd just torched.
"agreed," she said. "but you know, we don't live in the best of possible worlds, contrary to what some might think."

though she'd never admit it to the dragon, the lady was beginning to miss human companionship, including all its many insipid moments. it wasn't that time spent with the dragon wasn't rewarding, but ever since coming across her former gnome friends and realizing she'd been dead for more than a hundred years, she had been overcome by remorseful feelings concerning her misanthropy. thus, she'd decided that the next mostly human settlement they came across would be the last one, and they'd finally settle down to an agrarian life. she'd even knit the dragon a great hoard of woolen socks.

oblivious woman. how easy it was for her to overlook the dragon's well-honed ability to read her mind. after all, the two had crossed the boundaries of space and time more than once, and he was of course a superior being. he knew how she missed humanity despite her avowed dislike of that insensitive and predatory species. the poor bewhiskered beast knew not what to do except follow her until the end of everything, which upon her admonition that she'd died some time ago, could potentially happen sooner than later. on the subject of her mysterious death, it was quite strange to him how well the lady had taken her gnome friend's revelation that she was in fact deceased and had apparently misplaced dozens of years. he couldn't understand how this was possible, since he often compared the lady's mental capacity to his own, and he rarely forgot a moment. this was both a blessing and a curse being that he'd been witness to the extinction of the unicorn, griffin and dodo; the human's lost access to their third eye on account of some foresight-lacking colorado springs man's insistence that everyone take fluoride; a flood and an ice age - he'd been there for all of these historic events and yet had been unable to undermine the outcome of any. oh well.

as the wood and straw shacks smoldered behind them, the lady and the dragon looked forlorn. was this really the end of all their travels, or simply a conflagration-fueled coffee break?