The Assistant

Acereces preferred it when The Mistress Of Death was the designated survivor at knitting circle meetings. Not that she didn’t like the Mistress, in fact the two of them got along very well, but although they had never exchanged words on the matter, Acereces had more than a sneaking suspicion that of the eight other members of the Society, only the Mistress was sharp enough to discern that when the silver dragon entered a “trance like state of rapt attention” during one of Mr. K’s long, involved speeches on the worth of the knitting circle and its agents as defenders of the weak and cultivators of the young, she had actually fallen asleep.

In this particular meeting, however, The Ensouled Machine was the survivor, and Mr. K had droned on particularly long. Acereces was roused by the Mistress of Death congratulating him (quite loudly and from a different position in the room much closer to Acereces’ feet than the dragon had last seen her in before tedium overtook her) on his brave and inspiring words. Thankfully nobody felt particular need to expound upon any of the points that Mr. K might circuitously have raised, so the subject of the meeting advanced to finding out what horrendous artefact of intense power the twins had dug up in an ancient elvish settlement and brought for show and tell this time, and how critical it was that the thing be humanely destroyed as quickly as possible.

Once it had been established that all that the twins had to show this time was the salacious tale of their discovery of (and eventual beddings, mutual and separate, of) a half-elf man who claimed to represent the union of the lost imperial lineages of both the shogunate and the first elven empire (“There was sadly no way to confirm or repudiate this claim in full, but we know for sure he was a shogunate-human-high-elf cross and let me tell you, that is a combination we strongly encourage whoever is in charge of the production of beautiful people to consider further! *sniggering*”) the meeting quickly drew to an end, and Acereces entreated everybody to get out of her cave and wend their way back to where they came from.

Gradually, the noise and warmth of bodies pressed into her cavern faded away, and Acereces turned to consideration of the pile of monographs of varying quality on dragonborn lineages stacked at neck height at the back of the cave. She was rattled, as she always was when it had been her turn to host the Society, and her senses were all awash with unfamiliar sensations, which is why it took approximately ten minutes for her to identify an intruding scent in her normally pristine home.

“A human lingers.” She growled, half to herself. “Not the Mistress, she is old and her magical aura smells of static, like a coming thunderstorm. Neither an earthy starchy human like Bear the druid. A young human who smells of book-mould and inks. A scholar.” She craned her neck around, her body following it in serpentine fashion. “What is your purpose here, little human?”

Standing before her, and oh so very small by comparison, was a lean, brown-skinned man of about twenty, Acereces should estimate. His hair was slick and black and he wore a thick green sleeveless sweater and a cloth undershirt, while his lower half was clad in a smart pair of brown breeches. The details of his face Acereces could make little of at this distance, but he seemed of a pleasant appearance. He was standing, seemingly quite unafraid, in the entrance to the cave.

“Pardon my intrusion, Madame.” The young man began. His voice was pleasant, practiced. His words sounded almost rehearsed. “But I was hoping to inquire as to whether you required an assistant?”

Acereces’ head swooped down very close to the youth, turning aside that one enormous eye might narrow at him. She could see now his face was pinched, with a concave curve to the nose and a full pair of lips that nevertheless held just as sharp an angle with the rest of the face as any other feature. The eyes were hazel, and there was a scar on the left nostril, the only blemish she could see. Further, it was clear there was little to no musculature to the boy- evidently an upbringing spent favouring books to food had crafted the slim little scholar before her.

“Do you know, child,” she began to utter in her booming voice “even what you ask?”

“I know that you are Acereces, the silver dragon scholar.” The youth began, seemingly picking his words with care. “The literature on dragons speaks of you little in comparison to dragons of more dramatic stature. Eflaaz, for instance, or the first dragon. Or the three brothers. But your own body of work is prolific in output, if rare in copy. I know that you are a member of the secretive organisation known in some circles as the Society, a meeting of whom has just concluded. I know that other members of the Society at least are known to have others in their employ as agents, eyes and ears the world over, though this is not the position that I request of you unless you would have me no other way, and regardless I could find no record of you employing any such agents.”

“If you know me so keenly by my reputation, boy.” Acereces growled. “Then you know I have lived many centuries without any need for an ‘assistant’”.

“I know that you have lived many centuries without employing one, Madame.” The boy retorted. “But that is hardly the same thing.”

Acereces blinked. The boy is obsessed. She thought. He’s genuinely serious, and seemingly relentless, by the all-mother!

“Wherefore would you think it wise to come to ask me this this absurdity so persistently, little human? It is far more widely understood than merely in the halls of scholars and philosophers, after all, that I have sharp teeth with which I could effortlessly eat you, and ice in my belly with which to shatter you. It is only slightly less broadly known, amongst those who recognise the dragon’s lair at all, that I have a low tolerance for all but the most select of visitors. What has driven you, a tiny talon-clipping of a human, to stride into my cave and state this preposterous intent with such utter conviction?”

There was a moment of silence. The boy’s expression became briefly pained, and he pursed his lips.

“My mother, Madame…” He said, distastefully. “…sees little worth in the scholarly arts. She commands me to secure employment, yet her faith in my abilities and my quality is so lacking that she despairs of my ability to do so to her satisfaction. There are a number of respected scholars and magicians close by into whose service I could, in truth, most likely place myself with little difficulty, but I fear that further harassment on her part would only ensue, seeing as she would these positions as petty gallivanting, evidence of my inability to make worth of myself. I had had it in my consideration, Madame, that while any one of those persons could write for me some letter of commendation, she would be less inclined to pooh-pooh one issuing from a master several orders of magnitude larger than her and possessed of sharper teeth.”

Acereces reared back up to her full height, her head snaking away from the human as he craned his neck to look at her. For a moment, every muscle in her smooth, shining frame tensed, perhaps as if to attack. And then a noise began to fill the cavern. Quiet at first, it echoed and rang about as it made its way up the dragon’s throat and out of her maw that stretched wide to accommodate it.

Acereces laughed, a high, aristocratic chuckle that made the boy shiver as it washed over him.

“I worry, Sir, that your preconceptions of my wisdom and insight are perhaps to be shaken a little.” She breathed, still giggling. “Of all the things that might have possessed a human youth to so brazenly step it into my lair, ‘furious indignation’ was not one that had occurred to me. Disinclined as I was to your request, the notion of your jape tickles me.” Her neck swooped down once again, her mouth baring her many sharp teeth in a mischievous smile. “What is your name, human?”

“Tristan, Madame.” The youth replied. “Or Agavoli if you prefer, though I answer to that less now that my father is deceased.”

“Tristan, then.” Acereces said decisively. “What exactly had you intended to assist me with, Tristan?”

“It occurs to me, Madame, that the biggest obstruction to the sharing of scholarly articles between dragons and the smaller peoples lies in the size of our tomes. It is surely of significant difficulty, possessed even as you are of a piercingly keen sense of sight, for a dragon to turn the pages of a human or elf’s book, and similarly folk of my size might understandably struggle to arrange comfortably a volume as large comparatively as a bed to us. I was thinking that I could be of service in reading for you books and scrolls that are inaccessibly small for you to do yourself.”

Acereces considered. “I am capable of enlarging documents of particular interest myself, with magic, but your suggestion isn’t without merit. What languages do you read, Tristan?”

“Common, Elvish, Dwarvish and Orcish, Madame.” Tristan was counting on his fingers. “With an academic understanding of Draconic and Old Elvish. And of course Marshscript, though not as well as my mother would like; and what little of the old human tongue my father had the chance to teach me.”

“Acceptable, if true.” Acereces slid a stack of books across the floor towards Tristan. “Read me the introduction to that volume on the top, Tristan.”

Tristan picked up the heavy book and looked up in shock. “You have a first edition of Ak Ludzk Yli Sordan?”

“I do, and I would like you to read to me from it, if you please.” Acereces persisted.

Tristan opened the cover of the tome. He had read Metamorphogenesis, of course, but that had been hard enough to acquire without even thinking of reading in the original draconic. He cleared this throat and began to read.

“Schodshiyesya Schedziec są, I bezwątstav szacabel kul’tur samikh…” he began before he was once again interrupted by the dragon’s vibratory laugh echoing throughout the cavern.

“Oh no, oh dear.” Acereces struggled to keep ahold of herself. “I’m sorry Tristan, your diction is actually perfectly…ha HA… perfectly acceptable, but that ACCENT! All-Mother’s breath.”

“I do apologise Madame.” Tristan looked crestfallen. “I haven’t had much opportunity to use the draconic tongue verbally.”

“Your grasp is rough, but workable.” Acereces said kindly. “Why don’t you try the elvish text underneath instead?”

Tristan perked up a little and moved onto the other book as per the dragon’s recommendation. He must have read for a good half hour before Acereces held up a claw.

“I’m convinced.” She announced. “You are an accomplished scholar, Tristan, and a competent polyglot. I have little need for an assistant in the long term, but I propose… a fortnight’s internship, in the service of your prank. I’m afraid that I cannot really pay you, per se. But then you knew that with a few notable exceptions, the old canard about dragons as hoarders of wealth is nonsense, didn’t you, Mister Draconic Scholar?”

“In a more traditional position, Madame” Tristan said thoughtfully. “My need for lucre would only be in service of securing food and shelter. If you can provide these things yourself, there would be no need for an intermediary resource.”

“Hmph. Well, fortunately for you, I am not one of those dragons who denies herself the pleasures of sustenance just because she does not require them.” Acereces softened. “I will endeavour to hunt more often while you are here, and you are welcome to whatever share of what I bring in that you need, though if you require it cooked you will need to arrange this yourself. There is a stream outside from which you may drink, and we will find you an appropriate ledge in here on which to sleep. For your part, in return, you will read to me those books which are frustratingly small for me and in languages which you can interpret, and you will assist me in cleaning those crannies of this cave that are prohibitively fiddly for me to reach, as well as anything else that I desire that is reasonably within your powers. At the end of this period, assuming I am satisfied with your service, I will fly you into town with a letter of commendation approximating in comparative size to one of your bedsheets, for the attention of both your mother and any genuine follow-on employer willing to accept the word of a dragon. Do you find these terms acceptable?”

The young man’s eyes widened in joy. “I do, Madame.”

“Very well, then, Tristan. A two-week internship it is. Consider yourself hired.”

---

For the next week or so, Tristan endeavoured to make himself as useful as he could to the silver dragon scholar. In addition to those languages he had confessed to Acereces already, he showed a surprising acuity for written Sylvan; though he did not strictly speak it, its concordance with the classical elvish texts that had formed so much of his education lent him a degree of insight into fey missives to mortals. He did not, however, prove to be a particularly gifted cook, frequently burning his portions of the carcasses Acereces brought in on his first attempt. Eventually she decided, free as she was from the actual need for material sustenance, to simply eat whatever was left of the elk or boar once he had finally managed to produce something edible from an attempt, rather than to strictly delineate portions for each of them.

It was on the seventh day that the trouble really began. It hadn’t occurred to Acereces that she had never accepted another being, let alone another sapient, into her home for this long before. She was beginning to feel restless, realising that although she had accounted for indulging the bodily functions of eating and excreting more than she generally might, there was one need she hadn’t thought of.

By the ninth day, she could stand it no longer.

“Tristan?” She said thinly after he had finished dictating her copy of Empires Of Stone. “I want you to take the afternoon off.”

“The entire afternoon, Madame?”

“Yes. You are relieved of all duties, and I would like you to leave the cave.”

“…Madame, it is raining quite heavily outside, and you agreed that I should not return to the village before my time with you comes to an end, to avoid jeopardising the prank.”

“That as may be, I need you to leave, and not come back until after nightfall, this afternoon. Haven’t you any appropriate clothing for the weather?”

“No Madame, only the clothes I came in, and the change from my bag which I have been washing in the stream. Both are light and would be no protection from a downpour like this. Madame I must ask- have I done something to offend?”

“No, Tristan, I have very much enjoyed our time together thus far, but I had not anticipated that there would arise… cases… wherein I would nonetheless require an environment of only my own company for an extended period.”

“Such as?”

“Tristan, you are a bright and scholarly boy, in whose intelligence I have thus far been very impressed, please do not make me spell this out for you.”

Tristan scrunched his face in confusion for a moment, then relaxed as understanding washed over him. “I see… and of course you would require the entire afternoon for such a… delicate purpose because of the inherent painful difficulty involved for dragonkind, as detailed in Goldagatha the brass wyrm’s On The Lesser Known Peculiarities Of Dragons.”

“Tristan, far be it from me to echo your mother’s unkind notions of how appropriately weighted your education has been, but I honestly cannot believe that you are somehow simultaneously unable to grasp the proper cooking method for a pound of elk flesh and yet are also keenly aware of how difficult it is for dragons to masturbate.”

“A scholar, as I am sure you are aware, Madame, is an individual of strengths and weaknesses.” Tristan turned to leave.

Acereces frowned. “Tristan, wait!”

The boy turned.

“You’re…” Acereces gritted her teeth. “You’re right. I can’t turf you out into the pouring rain just because I haven’t had a wank in a week. You can stay.”

“Will you be all right, Madame? I certainly have no real desire to waterlog myself and my clothes in this weather, but neither does it bring me pleasure to see you driven to distraction by… intimate frustration.”

“I’ll just have to struggle through. It could hardly be comfortable for either of us for me to disrespect you by carrying on anyway.”

Tristan was quiet for a minute or so.

“Is it specifically the necessity of my observation that would make Madame uncomfortable?” He asked, tentatively.

“As opposed to what, Tristan?” Acereces asked in a tired voice.

“Perhaps… my participation?” Tristan squeaked.

Acereces’ eyes widened. Her long serpentine neck extended down past her coiled up torso to within a few feet of her young assistant.

“Tristan?” She breathed.

“Madame?”

“Did you just suggest what I think you just suggested?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily presume to know Madame’s thoughts, so this I cannot answer.”

“Tristan, might I remind you that not only are you approximately fifteen times smaller than I am, and sized in such a way that if I wished to eat you in one bite it would not be difficult, but also that we occupy different classes of animal life, and that I am over a thousand years old, which means that even if you somehow were a silver dragon of approximately your stage of maturity, I would still be old enough to be your mother.”

“Challenges, Madame, that are nonetheless not insurmountable.”

“I am your employer, Tristan! It would be most inappropriate.”

“As you wish, Madame.” Tristan said, obligingly. Acereces shivered in inadvertent pleasure at the supplicatory sound of his voice.

“Don’t do that, Tristan.”

“Don’t do what, Madame?”

“Don’t… talk like that. It makes me feel…odd.”

“I must confess a little confusion, but I shall endeavour not to, Madame, as I aim to please you in all things.”

“Tristan!”

“Oh I do apologise, Madame, if my conduct was not… satisfactory.”

“All-mother’s breath. Tristan you menace, this definitely warrants some sort of demerit on that final assessment. A blot on your record, so to speak.”

“Oh, how tragic, Madame, I shall surely have to work extra hard to make it up to you.”

Acereces narrowed her eyes and pressed her forehead against Tristan’s body. “All right you little rodent, if you’re determined to play this game, time to put your money where your mouth is.”

“Are you certain, Madame?”

Acereces shuddered again, but rolled over onto her side and pulled her legs out of the way, revealing her moist cloaca.

“Certainly not, but we’re committed now, boy. You’ve pledged yourself to my servitude.” The dragon’s voice deepened as her eyes glowed fiery blue. “Now serve.”

Tristan reached down to his waist and pulled his shirt and sweater off over his head in one fluid motion. Tossing them aside, he flexed every uninspiring muscle in his thin, smooth torso and walked down the length of Acereces’ prone form toward the cavern of her sex.

“I can’t say I imagined this is how my first time would go.” He muttered, half to himself. Immediately the cloaca before him contracted and the dragon’s muscles tensed. He felt the presence of a large head behind him.

“Tristan. No.” The dragon’s stern voice spoke into his ear. “This is not ‘your first time’”. Your first time will be a mutually beneficial arrangement with another consenting sapient humanoid approximating your own size; a human or an elf or something. What you are doing here is climbing into a genital orifice that is as large as you are, to obligingly assist an older woman who struggles to do it alone get off.”

“An apt description, Madame, I just find framing this activity as kindly helping the elderly a little obstructive to the general mood.” Tristan smirked.

“Good.” The dragon grumbled. “Pervert mammal.” She relaxed and the cloaca in front of Tristan opened up again.

Tristan pressed forward experimentally with his spindly fingers, tentatively touching the rim of soft metallic-tinted flesh in front of him. It was damp to the touch, though not as slimy as he had been expecting. He pressed forward, sliding his hand up the tunnel before him, finding a fleshy fork in the channel a few feet in.

He frowned, a little embarrassed, and stayed frozen in place for a moment in silence.

“Problem, Tristan?” A voice from his left called.

Tristan gritted his teeth, then replied softly. “I have, embarrassingly, Madame-” he said, in a loud whisper “forgot my readings. I would appreciate your assistance on a delicate matter.”

“Ask your question.”

“Am I proceeding upward or downward here?”

“I haven’t eaten or drunk at all in the last few days given your atrocious efforts with that boar, so I daresay you’d not come to much harm going down, but ideally you’d want to be heading up, Tristan.”

“Thank you, Madame. Have you any feedback thus far?”

“No strong complaints thus far, but this much I could manage myself fairly easily. Show some creativity! What’s the point in having your warm mammalian limbs down there if you’re only going to do what I could do with my own claw fairly painlessly?”

Tristan grunted. He reached in with his other arm and began massaging the walls of the canal before him gently, feeling the tender silver skin give and tense under his touch.

“Does that feel nice, Madame?”

“It’s pleasant.” She replied, “but not particularly titillating. On a par with a particularly dextrous massage.”

“Hm. Let me try something else.” Tristan reached down to his waist again and clumsily unfastened his belt, stepping out of his trousers as they fell to his ankles. He leaned forward and attempted to brace himself against the sides of the smaller cavern to his left, pulling himself bodily inside Acereces’ cloaca.

“That’s nice. Your feet are off the floor, do you need any help?”

“Whatever you find most pleasing, Madame.” Tristan called, and almost lost his grip as the walls around him moistened. He yelped and felt a sudden scaly grip around his legs.

“Sorry! Sorry.” His employer’s embarrassed voice rang out behind him. “Perhaps I was a little more excited than I thought. I’ve got your feet. Do you need to be pulled out?”

“Perhaps a little, Madame.” Tristan called. “And then back in, if you so wish. I’ll try to handle myself as best I can in here, mayhap you can take care of the larger motions.”

“So… you want me to fuck myself with you?” Acereces said, uncertainty in her voice.

“If it pleases you, Madame, feel free to use me as you might any other tool at your disposal.” Tristan purred. Instantly he lost his grip again on the moist flesh around him as fluid trickled through his fingers.

“Oh…” Acereces whispered, briefly losing her composure. She grasped the young man’s legs firmly in her claw and began to slowly slide him out of and back into her nethers. Inside her, Tristan began to gently massage the walls about him, running his hands in circles and moving his fingers in a gentle tickling motion.

“That’s nice, Tristan, I like it.”

“Your pleasure is my only concern, Madame.”

“Oh!” Acereces gasped again. “It’s lovely, but… please, Tristan… it would be perfect if you could just… say some more of the lovely things you’ve been saying.”

“Has Madame any specific requests? Perhaps an intimate secret she wishes to share, that I might be of better assistance? Rest assured I am committed to the utmost confidence.”

“You’re such a considerate boy, I almost feel bad…” Acereces breathed. “All right, just between us…”

“Many dragons, some of whose exploits you’ve no doubt read of… they take no issue with the enslavement of the biped peoples… the forcing of humanoids into servitude, the use of those persons smaller and weaker than them as little more than tools, toys or livestock.” Acereces began, breathing heavily through her explanation as she slid Tristan’s torso up and down her sex. “Intellectually, I find that abominable. I have many close friends and valued colleagues amongst humanity and elfkind, and to with such slow cruelty consume and appropriate the life of another is a notion that I find any cerebral consideration of utterly revolting.” With a wet schlick she pulled Tristan, his body glistening in the dim light of the cavern, his hair matted to his head, out from inside her and lifted him up to her face, her cool blue eyes staring into his hazel ones, a catlike smile on her scaly lips.

“But we all have deep, dark fantasies, do we not?” She whispered in a husky voice. “And mine tread closer to the more primal side of my nature, that which, in my full composure, I would consider with disgust, but which in the heat of hedonistic pleasure I revel in.”

Tristan was gasping for breath, and it took him a moment to regain his own composure, but then he reached up, curled the hair out of his eyes and smiled softly into the giant face before him.

“Madame wishes to own me.”

“Oh Tristan.” Acereces breathed. “So much.”

“She wishes me to be as much her property as the books I have read to her.”

“Yes. It is so shameful, but I want it so very desperately.”

“It is not so shameful as long as it is only true here, now.” He consoled her. “For truly, if only for an hour or so, I wish to belong to you, Mistress Acereces.”

“Ah…” Acereces spasmed in surprised pleasure, thrusting the claw she held her diligent employee in toward her dripping nethers again. Tristan raised his voice.

“I desire for you to turn me into a thing, to strip away my personhood, to render me an object and show me that my true purpose is that of a catalyst to your pleasure, a plaything of no greater concern than that equivalent device a woman my size might craft of wood and lambskin.” He began running his fingers along her walls again.

“I will!” Acereces called between sharp ecstatic breaths. “Trust in my word that it shall be done! You shall come to know what you truly are, a toy for your better! Property to be owned, used and discarded as I see fit!”

“Good! I exist only for your satisfaction! I live to serve you and only you and it is by your grace that I live at all!” He cried as he was slid back and forth faster and faster.

“Not my grace, Tristan, merely your utility and your beauty!” She barked back as she assumed the cruel and unfeeling character they had coaxed from her. “You exist because you are useful to me, and because you are so beautiful, you have the impression of an expensive trinket about you, a gaudy bauble to be flaunted to those few dragons I still retain contact with. Would that I could, I would wear you around my neck when they flew to meet me, as if to say; recognise my greatness. I am that splendid that I have taken this promising, gifted young scholar, and I have turned him into nothing more than a decoration to augment my own beauty and power. As indeed is all he is good for.”

“Surely it cannot be true, mistress!” Tristan wailed in mock horror. “My only purpose in life cannot be merely to augment your considerable beauty, when it is already so great that I would truly be outshone in my little lot.”

“It is no concern of yours how well you might achieve your purpose, little trophy, only that it is yours!” Acereces cackled. “But it is true, I misspoke, you have one further raison d’être, and I am using you for it now!”

“As is your right, mistress!” Tristan’s voice cracked as it reached an alarmingly high pitch, his posture almost that of a swimmer as his body slid up and down the lubricated channel that surrounded it. “As is the privilege of the dragoness, the beautiful and terrible decider of the fates of lesser beings! As soon as you set eyes upon me, though surely I did not know it, I became a part of your collection of entertaining possessions! It is my destiny, and my ecstasy, and for certain it is more than I deserve!”

“All-mother, yes!” Acereces shrieked. “Tell it to me, Tristan, why do you exist?”

“For your pleasure and your comfort, Mistress Acereces, and for nothing else, for all my life!” Tristan cried.

It was too much for Acereces. She gave a loud squeal and no sooner had the claw around Tristan’s legs suddenly begun to grip far too tightly, than it had slackened off entirely and he slid out of the dark, wet tunnel on a wave of viscous fluid, collapsing into a heap on the cold stone floor. He lifted his head, just enough to gaze upon the glittering draconic form before him, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he experienced his own climax that left him curled in the foetal position, panting.

Acereces stood up and wobbled over to the cave mouth side of the sticky young man, her body shielding his from the rain outside. She coiled her neck around him so that her head was next to his.

“That still doesn’t count as your first time.” She murmured.

---

It was not hard for Tristan to wash himself. The rain showed no sign of stopping, and he needed only step outside the cave mouth to the soil above the stream to be thoroughly soaked, the rainwater serving easily to wash away the more viscous fluids that bedecked his body. In no time at all he was stepping back in, drying himself off with his shirt and making for his bindle to secure his change of clothes.

“Tristan?” came a feeble voice from the other end of the cavern.

“Madame Acereces?”

“Tristan I… very much enjoyed the service you performed for me this afternoon. Nothing of the sort was in your contract so I appreciate the favour, truly. I said some… very extreme things while you were helping me. I liked saying them, and pretending to mean them, quite a lot, but I want you to know that I value you very much as a scholar and as my assistant, and as a human being. You do know that, don’t you?”

Tristan stood silently for a moment, towelling his hair with the shirt.

“Why Madame,” he said, in a measured tone. “I surely cannot remember ever having reason to doubt such a thing. You must forgive me for my actions this afternoon- I fear that I was temporarily taken quite mad, and I haven’t sufficient memory to think or speak of any of what you or I might have done or said. I daresay I likely shan’t ever remember, unless I am somehow taken similarly mad on another afternoon.” He looked at the large silver form occupying the far end of the cavern and winked, almost imperceptibly.

“I see.” Said Acereces, in that same measured tone. “Well why don’t we agree that you shall not speak of anything you might remember, and in return I will forgive of you any little indiscretions today that might have given me cause to mark against my assessment of your performance?

“That sounds very satisfactory, Madame.” Tristan replied, hauling his dry sweater on over his change of shirt.

---

The rest of Tristan’s internship passed in much the same way, with only one further encounter of the contractually dubious kind, on the afternoon of the twelfth day, which will not be detailed here, but which the reader can safely assumed followed a similar pattern to the first. When it came time for the fourteenth afternoon, as she had promised Acereces drew up a glowing review of Tristan’s talents for scholarly assistance and leapt to the sky with it and Tristan in her clutches.

In the nearby village, outside a house of moderate furnishing, a middle-aged woman of obvious marshfolk extraction, wearing a headwrap and a rather plain dress and apron, sat at a woodturning wheel grumpily whittling what looked fated in future to be a candlestick.

Looking up from her work long enough to spy one of the custodians of the local library tower, she called out in an unpleasant, jeering tone:

“Oi, Harris! Ready to give back my boy yet?”

The librarian, a bearded, white haired man in his fifties, turned to her with a look of annoyance.

“I am no more holding him than any time you demanded him in the last week, Jeanne. This grows tiresome.”

“Well it’s got to be you or Moltmaster, no way Tristan would run away to find a real job. Whichever one of you it is, I’ll crack you eventually. Mark my words.”

Just then, a great and powerful wind from above blew Jeanne off her chair and nearly pinned Harris to the ground. From out of the sky, an enormous silver dragon, clasping in her claws a sweater-clad youth and a gigantic sheaf of parchment, came flapping down to the ground. She looked at the two humans before her, lying on their backs, tense with fear.

“Is this her?” She whispered to the youth extricating himself from her talons. He looked over at Jeanne and nodded.

“Tristan’s mother, I presume.” The dragon spoke with a great and terrible voice. Jeanne, petrified with fear, nodded slightly.

“…yes?”

“I consider it my duty to inform you that your son has completed a fortnight’s trial employment as my assistant, performing primarily scholarly duties.” The dragon boomed. “And while I have no further need for those services I contracted him to provide, I have only the greatest of praise for the quality of his… performance. And for the utility of his skill. As I am sure you can appreciate, I am rather an individual who is used to having her opinion valued, and it would be such a terrible shame for me to discover that the nasty rumours I could not help but hear about your own pathetic esteem for his talents had any sort of truth to them.”

Jeanne didn’t say anything. She was frozen to the spot in the crablike position she had fallen in.

The dragon turned her attention to Harris. “And who exactly might you be?”

“H…H…Harris, ma’am. Harris Witchwither. I’m one of the librarians for the library tower just outside town. And I’m sure you must be Acereces… the scholar-dragon, from up in the mountains.”

“That I am. Well, Harris of the library-tower; Tristan carries with him an important document pertaining to my glowing recommendation of his services. I appreciate that for beings as small as you and he it is a little unwieldy, but I encourage you as a colleague of the tome to give it your perusal, if my word can buy such a generosity.”

“I…uh…but of course!” Harris stuttered. “It’s a little unorthodox, but your academic reputation is… known… to those of us who know where to look. A reference from you should be as valid as any other. We might need some heavy stones to pin down the edges…” -he examined the bedsheet-sized scroll- “But I’m sure I can give it a look, no problem.”

“Good.” Acereces looked satisfied. She turned to Tristan. “Goodbye, Tristan. Thank you for your service these past two weeks. And don’t be a stranger.” She lowered her head to look him in the eye and slowly winked at him. “You are always welcome to visit my cavern in the afternoons, assuming you have the time.”

Tristan nodded, a stupid smile on his face. Then, with a great gust of wind, Acereces effortlessly took to the sky, her enormous silver form receding into the sky and heading due north. Everything was silent save for the quiet flapping of metallic wings for a minute or so as the three humans stood in the street in awe. The silence was finally broken by a violent expulsion from Tristan’s mother.

“What the hell’d you do to get on a beast like her’s good side? Anyone’d think you fucked her or summat!