Dragonic Intervention

The dragon kidnapped Princess Ranni's prince on a Wednesday afternoon.

She and Prince Raj had been counting clouds after a perfectly perfect picnic by the fake Greek temple behind the fake ruined ziggurat past the I-90 interchange. Counting clouds is to say that they had been kissing like rabid mongeese and she'd been about to suggest that they move on to something that she learned from her unicorn, Rousseau, when the dragon showed up and ruined the mood.

The dragon roared briefly with a fairly over the top smoke ring and gout of red flames. Really, there was no question as to the dragon's gender thank-you-very-much, as the dragon insisted on flashing both of them with his jewel encrusted package. In the process, the dragon knocked over a bottle of Mead. The dragon grabbed Prince Raj by one foot and flew off in a flap of dire screeches up the mountain. Princess Ranni stood there amid the remnants of their picnic and yelled at the rapidly disappearing dragon, "Hey, he's the prince. I'm the princess." She turned to Rousseau and waved her arms. "What am I? Chopped liver?"

Rousseau, who was a bit of a lush, looked up from where he was licking at the glugging Mead bottle. He'd already gotten into the champagne while Princess Ranni and Prince Raj had been otherwise preparing to engage in an intense examination of cumulous phenomenon. Rousseau tapped his horn, spiraled for her pleasure, on the side of the picnic basket to indicate that perhaps the dragon only took virgins.

Princess Ranni paused. "What? Seriously! That counted?"

Rousseau snorted in a philosophical sort of way.

Princess Ranni held up her hand. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I don't want to hear it." She looked around the picnic for something useful. However, the faux temples remained faux and completely failed to yield any magically useful talismans. She did find some fairly disgusting garbage. Some people did not know how to pack out what they brought in.

In terms of real inventory, she had a corkscrew, half a bottle of Mead, some runny brie, a blanket, a picnic basket and a tipsy unicorn.

It was important to note that Rousseau wasn't one of those white horse with a horn on his head sort of unicorns. He was more one of those delicate goat-deer types with enormous anime eyes and a fragile wisp of a horn. He only came up to her knee and she'd have felt like an idiot trying to ride him when he wasn't tipsy.

Fortunately, she also had steel toes hiking boots, which had to count for something. According to her map, there was a cave at the top of the hill. Also there was a picture of a small dragon with the words, "Here be dragon." That seemed fairly clear. She packed up all their belongings, put her boots back on and started walking in the direction of the dragon.

Rousseau ambled after her. Actually, ambled would be a polite term for a sort of meandery walk with frequent stops to eat an interesting blade of grass.

His pace was not sufficiently energetic for Princess Ranni. However, in all fairness to Rousseau, a herd of stampeding elephants was a torpid brace of snails in comparison to her preferred pace.

In any case, she put him snuggly in the picnic basket, which she left open at the top. She could hear him licking at the Mead bottle. There really wasn't anything that could be done about that short of gagging him and then she'd never hear the end of it.

She marched up the mountain side. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly. The birds were singing chirpily. The flowers were blooming. Her boots ground the earth beneath them at a satisfyingly rapid pace. But it may as well all have been a dark and stormy night. Princess Ranni was still more than a little miffed that the dragon hadn't thought her worth kidnapping. She said as much. "This is not right."

There was no response from Rousseau, which probably meant that he was sleeping so she repeated in a louder voice, "This is completely wrong. I am the princess. I should be at the top of the mountain waiting for rescue. I should not have to hike up to do the rescuing."

This earned a snort from Rousseau, who then gave a long sigh through his nose to indicate that Princess Ranni was not really built for anything like "waiting" to be rescued. A further rumination of some earlier flowers indicated that of the two of them, Prince Raj was far better off waiting to be rescued that she would be. Unless, of course, as a tap on her cheek indicated, the dragon was into non-con, which he'd heard that some of them were. In which case, she might want to hurry.

She slapped him briefly on the horn, because that really was not a helpful comment, and picked up the pace in manner suitable for tsunami.

By the time she reached the top of the mountain, she had a plan. This plan involved smearing the blanket with brie and upending the last of the Mead on it. Rousseau was not in favor of this plan, which he felt smacked of the way in which civilization had tainted her natural noble-savage-whateverness. She said, "Uh, huh," and dumped the alcohol anyway.

Then she crept into the cave as much as one can creep in steel toed hiking boots. Prince Raj sat on a pile of gold junk next to the dragon looking adorably smudged. That is to say Prince Raj, not the dragon, looked adorable. He was typing on a small computer. The dragon was probably forcing him to code in Cobol.

She yelled, "I'm an engineer too!" The dragon reared back and prepared to do something inflammatory, which was when she tossed the sticky alcohol blanket on him.

The dragon didn't let that stop him, which was how he set the blanket and himself on fire. Princess Ranni had been about to stab the dragon with the corkscrew. However, given the way he was completely failing to drop, stop and roll, she opted to pick up a jewel encrusted sword instead and beat him about the head with it. Eventually, the dragon stopped moving.

Rousseau opined that they should have brought marshmallows.

Princess Ranni did not care what Rousseau thought. Prince Raj smiled a wide sweet smile at her that made her feel as if she'd fought ten dragons and small Troll army. She traced an idle pattern on the stone floor with her new sword. "Hey."

He slid down the pile of gold, which made for a gold avalanche. He said, "Hey." Then his bangs fell over his eyes.

That was when she jumped him. As had already been noted, Princess Ranni was not the most patient of princesses.