The dragon told me so

The dragon lies to everyone but me. He told me so. 

“You’re not like the others,” he told me so. 

I was the only one to enter his keep and exit with air, the only to see his gold and slow the steel, and the only to breathe his fire and endure the scorch. He told me so!

When I first trespassed his lair, the gold there smelled like pennies. His perfume - a rich musty odor that stayed in my lungs and hurt my chest - was consuming and hideous: everything stunk. His scales flaked and his eyes burned. His prison was dank and clammy, but I named it his kingdom. He told me he would label a cell after me but never erected a sign - “what’s the point? For the people who see and die? Do you need to be a legend?” - and I soon gave up asking for I heard my own childish whine and saw my begging as discordant piano keys. 

Later, I slept on his coins and counted how many I could hold in one hand (27) before he snapped at me for scratching his jewels. Our jewels, he told me once, but never again. By then, I had planted lavender in the walls and ran down the halls with herbs between my knuckles until I could breathe again. I touched his belly, heard him purr. 

The dragon loved me, which they never understood. He loved me and I loved holding our secret, loved people asking, loved my bad lying, loved their whispering and peering like they ever would accept the lechery we held, loved his impossible heart. Only his diamonds intimated me, never himself for I knew he was kind though his actions not. 

“Can a dragon even…love?” my mother asked, hovering over the bag I packed with her china because he needed the ancient glass (he told me so). Of course I screamed at her, feeling petulant and immature, that she didn’t even know love. He wouldn’t leave like she had only fathomed, wouldn’t discard me like my and her father did years separate. She was so irritating when she got like this, but so was I. I imagined these scenes with my mother from third person, playing out like a musical that he would call boring, that I would hide inside of myself. 

“Is he even nice to you?” oh my God, shut up. “What does he tell you about his past?” is it so hard to believe? That I was molded from nirvana, that we are outlandish but humane? Why do you believe everyone but me? We have together a love from the songs, a future for history. He told me so. “I don’t want to pry” yes you do. “But I just think that-” stop thinking, it was never your strong suit. “Maybe…maybe he might not be very right for you. you’re brilliant and kind and so full of life and I’m watching that leave you.” Because I save all of me for him. And by the way, she described the dragon. That had never belonged to me (he told me so) and only escaped under his claw. I snapped and hissed at the ceiling until she let me go. She was jealous. as were my aunts and sisters and friends. I marked their glances and their misshapen tusks, predicting my fortune like they had ever experienced intimacy like ours. The stories men told were lies, stories from embarrassed losers regretting a fight they were never bound to win. Most men lie. 

“Where did you come from?” I asked him once, balancing a stolen crown. 

“My princess,” he didn’t answer. 

“How long have you been here?” 

“I have a tiara that might suit you better. it matches your eyes.” My teeth shone and so did his. He liked my smile - he told me so - and I his. He sharpened my teeth into fangs, dandruffed my skin into plates and told me I was beautiful. And I believed him, running his poems through my tongue, recounting our soliloquy until I was dreary enough to find sleep. 

Our connection went beyond the petty bullshit of my classmates’ gossip. He didn’t care about my homecoming or lacrosse, but about my heart and soul. We lived electric and tired quick, my bones loose and sloshing in my skin. It’s hard to recognize passion. My diary weeps pages of another girl swearing she would never fall in love with anger. but I was angry too, throwing myself on the ground and slamming my fists into armor until my knuckles bled. 

“Where do you get this stuff?” I asked. He had piles and piles of treasure that went nowhere. My neighbors told my sister’s husband’s father the dragon tortured kings and queens, their babies too, but I knew better: I listened to his eyes before his words and I knew when he didn’t mean what he said. 

“Why is your face doing that?”

“Doing what?” 

“Your eyes rolled, I saw them. Don’t lie to me.” 

I tried explaining my eyes, grasping smoke (had I rolled my eyes?) and apologizing but maybe they were never the problem — maybe I was, maybe he was, maybe we were. We were sacred in late winter, thawed during spring and hollered all summer. 

He slowly grew colder. He was always aloof but now he didn’t even respond to my silly questions, only lolled and cried like a sick and forlorn child. I wanted to stop bothering him but I couldn’t and as much I tried to still the boredom, he only licked his claws and sniffed. He stopped telling me stories of dusty men, stopped enchanting me with woven songs made from silk. I couldn’t embarrass myself and therefore could never return home. I would have to withstand the calcine and cauterize myself.

The dragon was tired the last I saw him. His chest heaved slow and his eyes stayed half closed. But dragons do not die; he told me so. He inched nearer to me, saliva dripping onto his precious toys and roared, finally. It had been so long since he cared.