Exit The Dragon
Dragons, it is well known, are emotionally complex, highly intelligent beings possessing a volatile disposition and an almost unimaginable destructive power. What is lesser known, but which in hindsight seems obvious, is that they make extremely shitty girlfriends.
I know what you’re thinking, “Dating a dragon would be awesome!” And you’d think that, you really would. For one thing, there’s the fact that most of them can fly, which means you’d never again have to cram yourself into a commercial puddle-jumper for five hours of misery just to visit your grandmother at the ass-end of Nowhere, Nebraska. And that’s true, riding a dragon is a real time saver, not to mention incredible. I’d tell you what it’s like, only there’s literally nothing like it. Either you’ll get to experience it someday and you’ll know exactly what it’s like, or you won’t and you’ll never be able to imagine anything close. Probably the latter.
So yeah, the flying is pretty cramazing. As is the hoard of dragon treasure, which again, unless and until you’ve used a silver salver to sled down a small hill composed entirely of gold and jewels, there’s simply no way to imagine what it’s like.
But, as has often been said and with good reason, a dragon’s gift always demands a steep price in return. The flight to visit my gammy in Nebraska, for example, cost me a weekend with the ex’s clutchmates inside a dormant volcano located somewhere out on the Pacific rim (they’ll vrbo anything these days). And while she assured me that her siblings were merely acting in the time-honored role of protective big brothers the world over, they steadfastly refused to shift into their human forms for the entire visit. I wouldn’t call them specist, per se, but they did make a point of asking what other forms I could shift into. When the answer is “nothing,” you know that it’s time to start looking for your coat. And possibly a broadsword.
“But surely,” you say, “all the benefits of being with a dragon must far outweigh the negatives.” To which I would reply, I guess that would depend upon you. For me, they didn’t. If you don’t believe me, I’ll tell you a little story about the first time I saw her take dragon-form that I think illustrates my point.
About a year into my relationship with Eryn (that being her human name), the situation began to exhibit signs of strain. There was nothing in particular driving the turbulence and in all likelihood it was just the typical post-coital crash when the heady and hormonal tide of new love begins to ebb and you actually start noticing the little things, like the scraps of armor that fall out of her mouth when she chews her food. Or a temper that can only charitably be described as “fiery.”
For her part, I could tell that she was becoming a little irritated with my financial situation. More specifically, she was appalled that I didn’t have my own treasure trove, and said as much. When I pointed out the fact that humans don’t typically amass an enormous mound of gold and jewels, much less sleep on them, she pointed out the fact that plenty of humans did, naming Musk and Bezos, not to mention the various royal families in Europe and the Middle East. To which I could only reply, “touché.”
Regardless, this was the state we found ourselves in: the sparkle was off the hoard, so to speak, and neither of us was quite as enamored of the other as we originally had been. But here’s the thing: it had been years, years, since I’d even been in a relationship, and I just felt like I was due. Not that I thought the universe owed me some karmic debt for the complete lack of tail I’d seen after leaving college. But seriously — I’ve known LARPers that have had more success and I just wanted to scream into the void, “throw me a bone here!” Okay, so maybe I did feel like the universe owed me a solid, if only just this once. But the point is, I wanted to give it a real go.
Unfortunately, Eryn came into my life at the perfect moment to capitalize enormously on that mindset. I was so intent on finally getting a partner, I missed all the obvious signs that she was more interested in having an associate.
I received the first real inkling of just how badly I had misjudged the situation while we were out hiking one fall day in the mountains of the pacific northwest. We were on our way up a particularly grueling summit hike, about four miles in on a twelve mile out-and-back trail, consisting mainly of switchbacks. After the trail rose above the tree line, about a third of the way up the mountain, the sun beat down mercilessly upon us.
I find a strenuous hike to be a rewarding pursuit, especially when it’s well compensated by a spectacular view. Eryn was less appreciative.
“Why the fuck are we doing this again?” she panted from a few yards behind me as we made the turn at yet another switchback in a seemingly endless string of the same.
“We’re doing it because it’s great cardio and because we’ll have a spectacular view from the summit,” I wheezed back over my shoulder at her.
“Dragons don’t need cardio and if we want a closer look at a mountaintop, we land on it,” came her labored reply, to which there really was little to say.
We continued to wind our way tortuously up the mountain for another half hour or so. I could tell by the sounds that floated up to me from time to time that Eryn was becoming increasingly frustrated with the process. It was odd, but each little annoyed grunt or exasperated sigh that she uttered felt like a chain forged of resentment that shot out from her to clamp on to me. With each chain that attached, I took a little more of Eryn’s weight, until eventually it felt like I was dragging a damn dragon up the mountain. It was exhausting and more than a little disheartening. But I kept my eyes studiously fixed on the trail ahead and continued to slog my way upwards.
We were maybe thirty minutes from the top when we came across a small stream which bled down from a spring somewhere higher up, crossing the trail in front of us before wending its way further down the mountainside. I stooped to refill my water bottle from the trickle, while Eryn tapped her boot in annoyance on the trail behind me.
As I straightened up, I turned to look at her and caught my breath at the sight. Even exhausted and supremely irritated, as she most certainly was then, she possessed an elemental beauty. She had pale, sharp, almost cruel features framed by blazing red shoulder-length hair: an alp aflame that, if you dared to scale it, could only result in triumph or death.
I opened my mouth to speak, a tentative ice ax probing an unstable outcropping, half-listening for the basso rumble of a nascent avalanche, “Sooooo…. what do you think of your first real hike, so far?”
“I think,” she said, biting off her words, “that hiking is an astonishingly stupid pursuit when you can fly. I think that there are about a million other things I would rather be doing with my time, up to and including having a fang pulled. I think that if we don’t get to where we are going, and quickly, you are going to see something you’d really rather not.”
I attempted to lighten the mood, “That would be a sight to see… a dragon in hiking boots,” I said, forcing a grin.
Now understand something: I’d never actually seen her turn into a dragon, or do anything remotely lizard-like, unless you count naked sunbathing, which she did seem to have an affinity for (not that I had complained). Sure, she’d mentioned it with the kind of casual conviction that people usually reserve for statements like “the earth is round.” But I’d never seen it, or anything else for that matter, that indicated she was anything other than a normal if somewhat temperamental human. I still didn’t quite believe it, certain that it was at worst a euphemism for her “dark” side.
This certainty was badly shaken in that moment as I noticed twin wisps of gray-black smoke curling up from her nostrils. Somewhere, deep in my monkey hindbrain, alarm bells began to howl and I fought the urge to scamper for the shelter of the nearest tree. Shoving my water bottle into my pack, I spun around and headed up the trail. I wasn’t fleeing, mind you. But I did set a brisk pace.
Not long after, I huffed and puffed my way over the last rise and our destination rose into view: a fire lookout cabin, white clapboard siding beneath asphalt shingles, standing weathered but proud against an endlessly deep blue sky. I turned to Eryn, hoping to see her sour mood dissipate as she crested the ridge, like the last desultory grumble of a fading thunderstorm. I wasn’t so much disappointed at her expression as I was deeply frightened by it. Flames, actual flames, flickered in her eyes, the only light in a face that was otherwise dark with barely suppressed fury.
Get RoKo’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I spun back to focus on the cabin and stammered, “So…. Not a bad payoff, eh?”
“It’s a fucking hovel, Max” she growled around bared canines.
“Technically a cabin,” I hastily correct. “But babe, the view. Look at the view. Isn’t it breathtaking? Can you imagine waking up in this morning to a view like this?” I gamely rallied.
She sneered, “I’m a dragon. I’ve seen views that would quite literally melt your face. Did you think I was going to go slack-jawed and drop my panties like some villager seeing her first nobleman?”
I tried once more, “But baby, doesn’t it feel rewarding to know that you worked really hard to get what you wanted?”
“What part of, ‘I’m a dragon,’ don’t you understand?” she hissed.
“You know what, let’s go check out the cabin,” I said and double-timed it to the admittedly shabby looking shack.
I snaked a key out of my pocket as we approached the cabin door and, palming the lock, had the door open a second later.
“You have a key,” she observed, her tone now dangerously calm. “You have a key to this hovel. Max, why do you have a key to this hovel.”
I gave her a sheepish look. “You keep saying ‘hovel’ but it’s a cabin. See…. the thing is… the thing is that I went ahead and rented this cabin for the night. I thought it’d be romantic to sleep up here and then wakeup to a summit sunrise.”
“You thought that I, the daughter of draconian royalty, would like to sleep in this hovel that isn’t fit to house my livestock. That’s what you thought? Interesting.” Her voice fairly crackled with ice.
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” I said, holding the door open and ushering her in.
She stepped gingerly, not to say disdainfully, inside and I followed. It was one smallish room, sparsely furnished with two bunkbeds laid over a floor of rough-hewn planks. An old disused lantern hung from the rafters. I confess that it was a tiny bit underwhelming.
She turned slowly, taking in the room, seeing nothing that pleased her. She finished her turn, focusing on me and snarled, “I put up with your peasant pursuits, Max, because you’re moderately good in bed and because they seem to make you happy. But you are out of your fucking mind if you think I am staying the night in this hovel.”
And that’s when I made a near-fatal mistake. “I don’t like to be around you when you get like this,” I said, in a voice that I am embarrassed to admit was almost a squeak.
I had thought I had seen her angry before, but her cheeks, still flushed from the exertion of reaching the summit, whitened with rage, and she said, in a voice that could have cut diamond, “You don’t want to be around me. Let me get this straight. You don’t want to be around me.”
“I mean… that is to say… what I meant was,” I stammered.
There was a flash of light then, I think, and Eryn exploded — it’s the only way I can even begin to describe it. I got the impression of something huge and crimson rushing towards me, felt a terrible body-wide hammerblow, and found myself flying backwards… first through the wall, then through air, then through several small shrubs, and finally through what I believe was a terminally surprised marmot. I skidded to a halt some fifty feet or more from the cabin site, half upright against a convenient if painfully placed boulder, in a hail of wood, shingles and rodent.
Where there had once been a cabin, there was now a smoldering ruin. Above it, hovering in the air, wings thundering ponderously up and down, was an enormous metallic-red and clearly enraged Eryn, in all her draconic glory.
I stared at her, mouth agape, quite literally awestruck. It’s one thing to realize that your girlfriend has anger management issues. It’s quite another to see her transform into a fiery harbinger of the apocalypse.
Great, bat-like wings beating, she threw her head back and loosed a titanic roar that threatened to burst my eardrums. Her head came back down and she spit a stream of liquid fire, immolating the cabin ruins. With one more shriek of monumental indignation, she wheeled about, her whiplike tail giving an audible snap, and headed towards the setting sun, her wingbeats quickening as she fought the air to gain altitude.
I lay there, tiny bits of ash and larger bits of cabin still raining gently down around me, and did a haphazard inventory of my limbs. Other than a lightly sprained ankle that would make the trip back down the mountain feel considerably longer, I seemed miraculously unhurt.
I dazedly brushed a rather messy lump of marmot from my cheek and, as I sank into a concussion’s blissful embrace, my last thought was that I was definitely going to lose my deposit on the cabin.
