Frazz

The Dwarf turned and looked behind him. Nothing. Just a bare hillside.

“Ugh! Dammit! I thought that they were following me. Apparently not. Apparently I have to do it all by myself,” he grumbled.

He turned and strode down the hill. A bird took off from almost under his feet, chirping its alarm call.

“Now where is that damn Dragon?” He hefted his axe in his hand.

There wasn’t much cover for a Dragon, he thought, as he looked around. A few boulders poked through the tussocky grasslands, but there were no caves or canyons that a large and scaly monster could hide in.

“That’s funny. The Oracle definitely indicated a Dragon in the area. I hope the Wurm is not invisible! That would be, um, difficult.”

Suddenly he caught sight of something in the corner of his eye, and spun, axe at the ready. A tail disappeared around a rock. The Dwarf carefully peered around the rock, and started laughing.

“What? What’s funny?” grumped the Dragon.

“You’re the Dragon, are you? But you must be, what, a metre long? I’m going to look pretty silly carrying your head into the Conclave, aren’t I?”

“My h-h-head?”

“To prove that I’ve killed you.”

“No! Please don’t kill me, Sir Dwarf. Please!”

The tiny Dragon scuttled behind the rock, then stuck its head out. It huffed and a few sparks and a cloud of smoke shot out of its nostrils.

“Dammit,” the Dragon grumped again. Tears filled its eyes.

The Dwarf laughed. He made a decision. “I’m not going to kill you, kid. Come on out.”

“You aren’t?” The Dragon bounced out from behind the rock. “Thanks, Sir Dwarf! Got any food?”

“Whoa! Slow down! I didn’t agree to feed you!”

The Dragon wilted.

“But I do have my lunch with me. Let me see.”

The Dwarf searched in his backpack for his lunch. The little Dragon didn’t help. It tried to stick its head into the Dwarf’s pack, looking for food.

“Get out, you little bugger. Ah, here it is. Have a carrot.”

“What? I’m a fierce fire breathing Dragon, not a bunny rabbit! Got any cheese?” The Dragon was outraged.

“Choosy beggar.”

The Dwarf crunched the carrot and tossed a small piece of cheese to the Dragon who grabbed it out of the air.

“Thanks, I love cheese! It does make me... Achooo! ...sneeze though.”

The Dwarf ducked as a small ball of fire headed towards him. He had plenty of time. The ball of fire rolled slowly through the air, until it disappeared with a pop.

“Sorry. Say is that a sausage?”

“You can’t have my sausage, kid! Oh, go on then. Here’s a bit off the end.”

“Mmmmm! Thank you. Sir Dwarf. What are you going to do now?”

“Ah, I might as well go home, kid. I’ll take you with me.”

“Why, Sir Dwarf?”

“Well, pal, if I left you here, you might grow up to be a big nuisance. The people round here...” He paused and looked at the bare landscape. Rocks and heather as far as the eye could see. Even the landscape said ‘There are no people here!’.

“Hmm. The people round here, if there are any, might not like having a big Dragon around, stealing sheep and stuff like that. Secondly, I’ve never heard of a baby Dragon before. I don’t think that anyone else has ever found one. Do you want to come along, kid?”

“Yes please, Sir Dwarf. Will there be sausages, do you think?”

The Dwarf laughed.

“There will definitely be sausages,” he said as he opened a door in the nearest rock, and he and the Dragon stepped through.

***

“Is that a bleeping Dragon?”

“Well, if it isn’t D-Harold the renowned Dragon spotter.”

“Shuddup, Thark. What’s it doing here? It’s tiny!”

“It’s Thark’s,” said Grizzy, D-Grizzella was a female Dwarf, and currently head of the local Conclave of Dwarfs.

“Well, I just found it,” said Thark, who didn’t want to end up being held responsible for the Dragon. “You know the Oracle told us there was a Dragon about? Well, Grizzy sent me out to deal with it and I found this little guy. That reminds me! You guys were supposed to back me up!”

The other Dwarfs ignored his complaint.

Harold filled his tankard from the communal ale barrel. “Looks like you really needed our help, pal,” he said.

The Dragon was lying in front of the fire, snoozing. He looked like a snake that had just been fed, as he stretched out, his limbs hidden beneath his body. He woke up and decided to try his luck. He rested his head on the table.

“Any sausages?” he asked, trying look as if he hadn’t been fed in weeks.

“Ha, he’s cute,” Harold said. “I’ve haven’t got any sausages, but here’s a hunk of cheese.”

The cheese was in air, as several of the company yelled “No!” or “Don’t”, and then dived out of the literal line of fire.

“Gulp! Thanks, Sir Harold. I love cheese but it makes me… Achoo! ...sneeze.”

The Dragon’s fireball hit the table and bounced up onto Harold’s chest and then onto his beard. Harold was quick, but not quite quick enough. He batted the fireball away and it popped out of existence, but his beard was partly burned away. A Dwarf’s beard is really tough, but Harold’s would be lopsided until it grew out. He might even have to trim it!

“Oh, bleep,” said Harold.

“Sorry, Sir Harold,” said the Dragon. “I didn’t mean it!”

“Grrr! I’ll ring your little neck!”

The Dragon hid under the table, going “Sorry, sorry, sorry, Sir Dwarf. Sorry.”

Everyone was laughing.

“Come out, you little ratbag,” said Harold, who was laughing as much as anyone. “I’ll not harm you.”

“Thank you, Sir Harold. Doesn’t anyone have any sausages?”

“No!” said everyone in unison.

“You’ve had plenty,” Thark told him. “Do you want me to put you back out in that moorland?”

The Dragon shivered. “No, please, no. I like it here. There’s a fire! And there are sausages! Sometimes.”

“Right, guys and gals. Let’s re-convene the Conclave. We have to decide what to do with Frazz here,” called Grizzy.

“’Frazz’? You called the little bugger ‘Frazz’?” asked Harold.

“D-Frazzle, actually,” the Dragon said.

“You can’t be ‘D-anything’. You’re not a Dwarf. Hmm, you can’t be ‘G-anything’ either. That’s Gnomes or Goblins.”

“How about ‘W’ for ‘Wurm’?” suggested Jenn.

“’W-Frazzle’ works for me.”

“ANYWAY,” Grizzy raised her voice to cut through the chatter. “The Conclave.”

The others fell silent.

“We’ve been discussing the Dragon. At least everyone who arrived on time has been discussing the Dragon.”

“Well, I was held up by…” started Harold.

Grizzy just talked over him. “Everyone is agreed. We don’t kill Frazz, Well not yet, anyway. We study him. I have to confirm that with the Full Conclave of course.”

“Er, Grizzy. He’s listening.”

“No, I’m not. La, la, la. I can’t hear you!”

Grizzy ignored the Dragon. “I know, Jenn. It doesn’t matter. We really need to study him. If he suddenly becomes dangerous, well, any one of us could take him out. You know that! We need to know why grown Dragons are so dangerous. It’s a heaven-sent opportunity.”

She looked around at the dozen or so Dwarfs around the table.

“All we need to decide is who looks after the little creature.” She looked at Thark. “Does anyone want to volunteer?”

Everyone looked anywhere but at Grizzy. In the end Thark gave in and sighed.

“OK, guys. I’ll look after the little bugger. You never know, it might be fun.’

He stood up to refill his tankard.

“We could celebrate with a plate of sausages,” suggested a voice.

“Seriously, kid? Are you always hungry?”

Frazz gave the question some serious thought. “I think so, Thark. I think so.”

***

“Get your head down, you dozy Dragon. They might see you!”

“Oh, what?” said Frazz. “Oh, right.” He lowered his head, then slid just his head over the rock. He narrowed his eyes like a cartoon spy.

Thark sighed. They shouldn’t have watched cartoons last night.

“They are messy buggers,” opined the little Dragon.

“What? Yes, I suppose so.” Thark looked at the group of Dragons again. “Yeah, you’re right, Frazz. There are bits of whatever it is they are eating all over the place. Hey, that one dropped a chunk of meat on the other one! Now they are fighting. Oh, the little gods! They rolled on it and then another one stole it! And swallowed it!”

“My Mum would never have let our nest get into that state!”

“Your Mum? You remember your Mum? How come you were all by yourself, pal? Did she chuck you out?”

The little Dragon sniggered. “No, not exactly. I left of my own accord. With one of my brothers and a sister, but we split up later. All of my brothers and sisters were leaving the nest, coz we had all grown up enough. Mum had had enough of us and was encouraging us. ‘It’s about time you guys started leaving,’ Mum said. ‘I want to have another brood’.”

Something happening in the Dragon nest distracted him. “Say, what are those two Dragons over there doing?”

Thark took a look. “Um, never mind. Tell me about your nest.”

The two Dragons in question stopped doing it, and Frazz gave them a puzzled look.

“Erm. Well, it had a fire-pit of course. To cook the meat and stuff. And we all dug sleeping holes. Mum would toss uneaten scraps of meat on the fire to keep the place tidy. Yeah! She’d get us to tidy up too. Bones and stuff. And we’d poop outside the nest, behind a rock, and Mum would blast it every day, to keep it… What’s the word, Thark?”

“Clean? Sanitary?”

“Yeah, san-it-ary. That’s it. But that lot are a bunch of unrelated Dragons, I’d say. No mother Dragon in sight.”

“Hmm.” Thark watched the Dragons in the nest for a while. There were five of them, two females and three males. They were all about two to three times the size of Frazz.

“How long before you get to that size, Frazz?”

Frazz laughed. “Err, never, pal. Those are swamp Dragons. I’m a highland Dragon.”

“You’re what, Frazz? There are different types of Dragons?”

Frazz was surprised. “You didn’t know that? Look at their feet!” He waved one of his in front of Thark, extending his sharp claws. “Theirs are more paddle like, pal. For walking in swamps and swimming. I’m more used to moors and rocky places.”

“Nobody noticed that?” said Thark to himself. He took another look at the Dragon nest. “They do look a little different to you, Frazz. More stocky. That’s astounding!”

“I didn’t realise at first that there are different types of Dwarfs.”

“Different types of Dwarfs? There’s only one sort of Dwarf!”

“What about Kev, the barman? He’s a different sort of Dwarf from you, isn’t he?”

“He’s a Human!”

“Is that not a type of Dwarf? How about Steevve?”

“Steevve is an Ogre! I told you that!”

“Krizztal, the cleaner?”

“Now you’re pulling my leg! She’s a Ghoul!”

“Ah! You all look very similar to me!”

The Dragon and the Dwarf looked at each other in confusion for a minute, and then they realised that nest of Dragons had fallen quiet. They both turned to look at the swamp Dragons who had all paused in the middle of their activities and were looking straight at them.

“Run!” yelled the little Dragon, heading away from the nest.

“Over here, idiot!” shouted the Dwarf, scrabbling on a rock. “Now where’s that lock and handle?”

“Quick! Quick!” squeaked the Dragon, as he batted away a fire ball or two.

“Got it!” said the Dwarf. He dragged the Dragon through the hidden door.

“I think we need to talk to Grizzy,” said Thark.

Frazz nodded. “Yeah.” Then he frowned. “What about?”

“You daft bugger!”

***

Grizzy watched them come in. “Sit down, sit down, Thark. Get out of there, Frazz!”

“What? Oh, OK.” Frazz removed his head from Grizzy’s rubbish bin. He scanned her desk.

“There’s no food here either,” she told the small Dragon. “Well, what did you want, guys? What did you find out?”

Frazz humphed and lay down, like a scaly Labrador dog.

“As you requested, Grizzy, we went and investigated that nest of Dragons that the Oracle found the other day.”

“Oh yeah. Down by the marsh. What did you find out?”

“They were swamp Dragons, Grizzy,” said Frazz. “Messy buggers.”

“Yeah, apparently Frazz is a mountain Dragon. Doesn’t much like the swamp Dragons. He told me that he wouldn’t grow as big as the swamp Dragons, and that his mother kept their nest much cleaner and tidier.”

“They stank,” interjected Frazz.

Grizzy regarded the little Dragon over the top of her desk. “There are types of Dragon? Swamp Dragons? Mountain Dragons? How many other sorts? Do you know, Frazz?”

“Well, er, no, Grizzy. When I left the nest, I went down to the lowlands and the Dwarfs, sorry, I mean Humans there had sausages! It was awesome! But the lowland Dragons warned me about the swamp Dragons! The humans didn’t like them either, so I avoided them. Say, the local Humans didn’t think I was a swamp Dragon! They got on well with the highland Dragons and the lowland Dragons. They knew the difference!”

“Hmm, where was your nest, Frazz?”

“Dunno! Oh, the Dw—, Humans called the range Krack,,, Kanag... something?”

“The Kragsbergs?”

“Yeah! That’s it.”

“I know some Dwarfs over that way. I’ll send them a message. Pick their brains.”

“Get them to send some sausages! Yours are great, but theirs are amazing.” The Dragon drooled at the thought.

“I’ve heard that, pal,” smiled Grizzy. “I might just do that.”

She stared at the little Dragon, and Frazz just grinned back. His grins showed a lot of teeth.

“Hmm,” said Grizzy, after a long pause. “Suddenly Dragons become a problem, or so the High Council of All Humanoids decrees. Suddenly the Oracle is reporting sighting of Dragons across the Seven Realms. Suddenly the Council requests that we ‘deal’ with Dragons that are reported to be a problem. And they are, and we do.”

Frazz giggled. “Sorry!”

“Suddenly we come across a cute, amenable little Dragon. Sorry, Frazz. I think that you are what you seem to be, but I can’t help but be suspicious. Why is this all happening?”

Frazz looked from side to side. “Sausages?” he tried.

Thark and Grizzy laughed. Grizzy turned to Thark.

"We'll have to find out," she said.