dragon slurps ayurvedic plant bits.

the indecision over whether or not to continue traveling that had lately arisen between the miniature monster and his long-haired lady friend was for the moment submerged beneath the waves of their mutual love for adventure. a rainy plain stretched in front of them, alight with silvery branches of lightning, which the duo looked out on in both anticipation and consternation. neither had packed a raincoat.
"if we can make it to that cave ahead, i'm sure we can dry out there for the night," suggested the dragon. unlike the lady, he remained positive no matter what treacherous surroundings they found themselves in the midst of.
"i'm sure you're right, little one, but we must be wary of trolls. have you already forgotten the unfortunate incident with that bridge and those goats?" the lady reminded him, characteristically backward-looking and naysayerly.
"forgotten? never will i ever forget that smell - cabrito and troll dung. most awful." with that, the dragon bounded off slightly ahead of the lady, making sure to keep close enough that he could come to her aid if needed. although he knew she traveled with a rapier lashed to her dimpled yet muscular thigh, he also knew that she was likely to heart-slash first and ask questions later. it was just this sort of impulsive behavior that had forced them to flee from the now-incinerated town they had most recently passed through.

meanwhile the lady had taken her etched silver flask and was sipping slowly on a mucilaginous mixture of water and plant husks she and dragon had collected several leagues back. dragon's nose had assured them both of the non-toxic nature of these plants.  likewise, the lady was certain she recognized these horse-shaped seeds as having ayurvedic properties highly regarded by many wizards she'd come across in recent years.
shortly after indulging in several sips, dragon bounded back, sensing of course that the lady was consuming something that he had not been offered. feeling slightly slighted, he jammed his spiny front claws upon her leg, as he so often did, and looked imploring into her eyes until she lowered her flask and he extended his tongue, licking greedily at the water-logged, slippery seeds inside.
almost immediately the pair began floating several feet off the ground. not startled in the least by this apparent magic (both were used to this sort of thing by now), the lady and her tiny dragon smiled knowingly and enjoyed the view from the top.

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?

dragon slings ore in catan.



"portland's overrated," declared dragon decidedly, "but i'd still spend summers there once in awhile."
"maybe someday we'll return," said his traveling companion with a wistful sigh. like the furry beast at her side, she too wished they could stop wandering for awhile. it wasn't in the cards at the moment, though, and they pressed on, ever losing themselves in time while they searched for a reason to stop. they hadn't found one yet.

"you have sheep?"

presently they came upon an expanse of interlocked hexagonal patches of  land, and from afar, this land appeared to be agricultural. in fact, to the lady (who had spent her developmental years farming alfalfa and bottle-feeding lambs) the earth seemed to be covered by flocks of sheep, fields of wheat, ore mines, and sites of industrial brick manufacturing. here and there were small settlements, roads, and cities, though save the lady, not another human lingered about.

"with all these deserted, yet well-constructed buildings, this place is creepier than those bustling roads in portland," dragon observed as he pawed at a tiny piece of grayish ore supplanted beside a small stream.

"well, we're here for a reason. we might as well check it out."
the lady forged ahead into the quiet realm while the dragon followed, shooting stealthful looks over his shoulder every few paces.

gnomes (the friendly kind).

up ahead, the dragon heard a stirring in the brush, and he motioned the lady to get behind him. although he had seen the lady's ferocity in action many times, he knew his claws and fangs could outmatch her skillful maneuvers in bodily damage to enemies.

at first, all they could see was a flaxen beard, and while the beard appeared pleasant, the warriors stood their ground. a middle-parted spasm of gnarly raven hair became visible, but still, the dragon stayed rigid and ready for combat. finally from betwixt a tangle of greenery transcended a pair of gnomes, familiar but difficult to fully deduce as all gnomes look basically alike.

"lady!" the darker, apparently female gnome gasped, and stepped forward with a toothy smile. "you've been dead for so long that i thought you were really dead this time."

in an amusing moment of clarity, the lady realized she knew this fae-descended dyad. and also that she was in fact deceased, and from the looks of her friend's age lines, had been for nearly a century.
"remarkably cold aqueous mammal!" she cried, using an ostentatious though accurate nickname and darting forward to greet her long-time friend. to the dragon she begged, "retract your claws. these folk are friends. and if they're here, that means the fates have flung us into catan."

to be continued... 

dragon and the cast of portlandia listen to washed out at voodoo doughnut.

the brother of the lady, whom the dragon affectionately called "fur" in ironic reference to the boy's relative hairlessnes, accompanied the friends as far as the year 2012. previously they had been wandering in what can only be described as the fifth dimension, which everyone knows has space but no time, so it was quite a shock to all three when they found themselves in a precise time period. the twenty-first century seemed cluttered compared to the free-form of the fifth dimension, and fur, though remorseful, decided to bail.

"i just can't take all this junk," he said, referring to the speeding cars, populated paved roads, and steel structures ensconcing them. promising to meet up further down the road, the trio again decreased down to a duo, with the lady and the dragon continuing on their aimless journey.

"i know this place!" exclaimed the dragon with a joy he typically exhibited only while consuming a can of pumpkin. "i've seen it in digital form once before, but it is so much better-looking live."

"you're right," said the lady. "we're definitely somewhere in the pacific northwest, usa and i think i know where. if the olfactory improvements i've made since meeting you have any clout at all, we've got to get to voodoo doughnut before the line starts wrapping around the block!"

and off they dashed up a street know as burnside. although they were having difficulty being fully present in two-dimensional form, the pair ambled along and managed to arrive outside a magical domain of holey dough with very few falls at all. for once the actual world refrained from making their bones dissolve as it had in the past and both travelers were indeed surprised. the dragon's eyesight seemed more functional than the lady's which enabled him to quickly spot two familiar faces perched alongside the road. meanwhile his infallible ears were picking up the synthesized sound of washed out's dismissive anthem "call it off." he loved that one even though it reminded him of loss, and the perpetually occurring effects of nostalgia-induced nervous breakdowns.

"fred! carrie! over here!" the dragon waved a hairy paw as though he were flagging down an animated milkbone.

not one to be starstruck, the lady had already wandered inside and was binging on a baker's dozen of grape apes. she wondered aloud, "how the hell did i end up in portland? and how come the 90's are still so alive in this town?"

dragon falls to the sword.

 upon their departure from the seaside, the dragon and the lady, quite famished from having swum several leagues that morning, began hunting for a hearty meal. being opposed to the consumption of animal flesh, the pair were tantalized by mutual mind meanderings of legumes and root vegetables, but alas they could find neither. although they eventually foraged for truffles and were fully prepared to gorge themselves on the succulent green foliage nearby, the compañeros knew that without protein they would not be sustained for long, and plunged northward away from the sea to find more food.

after little success acquiring nutrition, the lady and the dragon ventured into a cave where they planned to spend the night. luckily neither feared the dark for they had only a small lump of paraffin for light. they heard bats chirping overhead as they explored the cave in the hopes of finding a comfortable wall to rest against.
just as they were settling in to the coziest spot - albeit dank and guano-soaked - a hulking, sinister-looking man stepped into view wearing what the lady and the dragon immediately recognized as the Wayne family crest. his face obscured by a black rubber mask, complete with pointy ears, the terribly tall figure brandished a shining silver sword. in a fury, he swung it at the dragon clipping tufts of the beast's luxuriant rust-colored locks as he brought the blade down.
"there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge... me," (1) growled the man.

"are you certain?" dragon called out to the shadowy figure. "because to me, you look like my lady, except male and disguised as a medievel Batman."

"you are so right, my clever bearded friend," asserted the lady. "it is my blessed and Batman-crazed younger brother!"

"frick and frack," shouted the figure, sinking to his rubber-padded knees. as he stepped into the candlelight, it became apparent that he was indeed the lady's brother, and not from another mother but from the very same flaxen-haired, agile-minded mother who birthed them both, the mother they continued to torment with echoing belches and other baffoonery whenever they could. "sorry i nipped your coat, dragon. and nice to meet you by the way."

"you're forgiven. got any snacks? i'd settle for a sock or two," said the dragon.

dragon hears mumia.

 well it turns out the wizard wasn't heading their way, but he used his glittery beard magic to make a secret tunnel go poof under the forest, and they crossed the distance to the sea easily. the dragon had never seen surf before, and was amazed at how many crabs he could terrify by simply setting one furry foot beneath the waves. the lady felt a transdimensional peace she only ever felt at the ocean. finally the road weariness caught up with her and she fell into an unshakable sleep.

“here and there

in the barrios and the favelas,

                                                   among those who have least,

                                                   beat hearts of hope,

                                                   fly sparks of Overcoming... ” (1) 

murmured a very distant voice. the dragon's hirsute hearing devices perked up instantly. he knew this voice. it belonged to a journalist he once met, and if his canine senses weren't mistaken, the voice shot straight from Greene, Pennsylvania's Death Row.

using his uncanny powers of perception, dragon ascertained that it was indeed the voice of Mumia Abu-Jamal. sensing that Mumia had been released from his overhanging death sentence, dragon thought, "i can't believe it took 30 years for those humans to wake up and smell the cruel-and-unusual punishment. now if only they could notice the not guilty seeping out of that man's pores."

Mumia can't be silenced.

dragon could relate to cases of mistaken identity. he was after all, a fire-breathing dragon at heart despite his puppy-like externalities - a feeling he knew he shared with Mumia, who oozed innocence no matter what a jury had declared.(2)

"free all political prisoners," screeched the dragon, as the bluest ocean waves blocked the setting sun from his view.

(1) exerpt from Mumia Abu-Jamal, Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience

meeting glitterbeard on the road to damascus.

an impenetrable forest seemed to twinkle ahead of them as they were walking to the sea. dragon had a craving for surfboard, while the lady only sought an escape from -10 degree windchill. the towering trees before them dazzled all four of their eyes to near blindness.

"is it a tautology to say the trees sparkle because the trees sparkle?" waxed the dragon.

suddenly a hooded figure burst out from the woody acres carrying with it the same sparkle that lay like a mist on the ominous tree trunks. it let out a terrifying xena-like war cry as it slowed to a gentle hover just above the pair's tawny heads.

"it is no tautology, puny dragon. it is i, the wizard glitterbeard who reigns ebullience upon my brother trees!" boomed the figure.

"uh...think you can you give us a lift?" asked the lady, emboldened despite the wizard's omniscient white light and obviously potent magics.

thinking ultimately of his rumbling belly, the dragon jumped up and called, "And do you happen to have any recently-worn socks?"