Chapter Text
Tommy has been searching for what feels like months, but he’s sure that now, he has finally, finally, found a tower. It is white-stoned; travertine and marbled in a way that the bricks hold a pattern to them that become clearer the closer Tommy approaches, moving quiet from the lengths of long grass and overcast shadows as he slips out from the forest boundary.
It’s not like he’s afraid. He’s just being cautious. He’s a dragon, with impenetrable scales and talons that crack stone, and his wings are large enough he can knock aside anything that dares to threaten him—not that anything should dare to threaten him, he’s a dragon, never mind that he’s young and venturing out into the world on his own for the first time since hatching.
Tommy has passed through mountains and valleys, and he’s been hunting on his own for a long time now, but he’s yet to meet people. Still, he’s not afraid. Just cautious.
Tommy curls across the grass, almost like he’s stalking the white-stoned tower. It’s not like the towers he’s heard about from what Mother would tell him, just to get him to curl up in the next and not want to go practise hunting or throwing himself off small rocks to try and fly. For a start, this tower has wings; great white sails that spin around in a continuous circle, not for any use or attempt at flying but certainly something, Tommy wonders, passing into the shadow of one of the wings as it stretches out on across the grass of it’s base.
It doesn’t seem to be as tall as the ones in the stories, although it is still fairly tall and even if Tommy stretched up on his back legs and reached his neck as long as it would go he doesn’t think he’d even be able to reach halfway up to where there are windows cut out of the stone. At the very top, near the bulbous roof, there is wooden supports and a balcony that curves all the way around the circular tower, with windows and ivy and flowering plants that climb up rock and brick to add a splash of colour to the white rock.
The princess must live at the top of the tower. Tommy hopes that she doesn’t already have a dragon guarding her. He’s already been searching for a while and he’s still young, so this small tower would suit him just fine.
Slowly, Tommy slinks around the tower, hoping that there is a door or something. He’s not so good at flying—he’s still young, he needs to practice—so he’d rather not have to figure his way up to the top of the balcony, but luckily he doesn’t have to when he circles the tower and finds a door, pathed with stones and worn dirt where it has been frequented enough.
Luckily, the door is large enough for him to fit through, if he tucks his wings close to his body, but Tommy doesn’t want to scare his new princess, nor start a fight with her dragon if she’s already got one, so he doesn’t just push his way in. Instead, he calls out, listening out for any sounds. Tommy is given nothing but quiet in return; the sounds of the sails in the wind above catching and spinning round, and the gentle creak of the door where Tommy nudges it with his snout, just to be sure.
But the tower is empty. Even when Tommy calls up the stairs that curl around the wall, climbing to the top of the tower. He can’t hear footsteps on the floorboards and he’s not too eager to test his weight.
Tommy pulls back from the tower, watching the door swing closed, ears and tail drooping. He was hoping for a princess to be here. He’s been searching for months, and its disheartening that the first tower he finds is empty.
Although, there is a path.
Tommy eyes it now, lifting his head as if that would allow him to see where it goes; winding down the hill, through the long grass, and disappearing around a knoll that is crowned with trees. He’s hopeful, but he’s ready to be disappointed too as he follows at a slow, cautious pace, and yet finds himself surprised when he sees a farmhouse further down the hill, connected to the tower by the path. It has been built with the same white stone and red-tiled roof, and supporting wooden frame that leads Tommy closer.
There are little pens near the house, connected similarly with worn tracks, and even further down the hill there is a larger pen, with cows grazing, none of them larger than Tommy’s size; and other smaller pens with bushes and trees that grow delicious-smelling fruit, reminding him of his growing hunger a little too soon. But Tommy needs to find the princess first, he thinks, and keeps going, having intended to head towards the door, but finds himself veering off course when he hears the sound of hum.
It’s a soft, gentle song that leads Tommy around the side of the house to a little fenced garden where the air is alight in scents of flowers and the sweetness of ripe fruits and foods; tomatoes growing tall and proud on knotted-wood frames, potato and carrot bushels flowering the ground while strawberries crawl across the fence, vying for space alongside blackberry bushes yet to ripen. There are sunflowers and valerian that entice bees, and the sweetness of both their pollen and the honey of their nest in a nearby apple tree, as there are fresh greens and herbs.
And knelt in the middle of the garden, hands buried in soil, is the princess.
From what Tommy can see of her, he thinks she’s very pretty. She’s wearing a pale lilac dress, and her hair is a deep, rich brown, and she’s shielding her face from the sun with a large, brimmed hat; humming a song that has no words with a smile so clear in her voice that Tommy doesn’t feel as cautious about meeting a person for the first time, let alone a princess.
“Um, hello,” Tommy says, in the language that humans understand. But the princess doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t even turn around, almost as if she doesn’t notice that Tommy is there, standing awkwardly at her garden gate. Quietly, as not to startle her, Tommy enters, being very mindful of the plants she’s growing, making sure that his tail doesn’t swing out behind him either, and tries again. This time, he’s close enough to just… press her. Lightly. With the tip of his muzzle, and Tommy can’t help himself from breathing in the scent of lavender and honey and freshly washed cotton. He also doesn’t mean to push the princess enough to unbalance her, but he does slightly, and she lets out a startled sound, hand reaching out and—Tommy is quick enough to place himself close enough to help, he doesn’t think his first meeting should be shoving his could-be princess into the dirt—she manages to steady herself with her hand placed firmly on Tommy’s head.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Tommy says quickly, gushing apologies and more, trying to focus on the princess rather than the way where her skin and his scales meet, and the feeling of warmth that resonates. Its soft too, and Tommy almost wants to purr, to lean up into the sensation that is almost remarkably like how Mother would scent him and nudge him when he was too small to leave the nest. Before she took flight and left him to his own independence.
He’s not very good at it, he knows, and the princess’s silence isn’t doing anything for his nerves. She is staring at him with wide-blown eyes, mouth slightly slack and Tommy can’t help the whine that slips out from between his teeth, ears flattened to his head and he ducks down, making himself appear small. He doesn’t think he’s that intimidating—he’s no larger than the cows in the princess’s field—but he knows that he’s been rude, having barged his way into her garden and he ducks his head lower and apologises again, for nearly knocking her over, for interrupting her garden, for intruding, especially if she already has a dragon, for scaring her—
“You didn’t scare me,” the princess says, offering a tentative smile, like she’s a little unsure towards what she’s saying, “I was just surprised is all.”
Tommy nods, and privately hopes that he hasn’t caused her great offence. He can’t smell another dragon around here, and he really needs a princess to protect if he’s going to be a fierce and strong dragon, but he also can’t be rude, or at the vey least any ruder than he’s already been, and it’s this subtle reminder that has Tommy ducking his head a little deeper.
“I’m looking for a princess,” he says, hoping that she is familiar that princesses are guarded by dragons, in towers, and that hopefully she’ll allow Tommy to stick around and protect her. Not only is she pretty, but this valley is also very nice and there are plenty of fruit on the trees and fish in the stream that more-than sates Tommy’s hunger, and he kind of really doesn’t want to have to keep looking when he’s already looked so far.
“Why do you need a princess?” she asks, still not quite so settled. Tommy feels guilty for the wariness in her voice, and thinks that perhaps he is more intimidating than he realised—certainly if she doesn’t know that princesses are supposed to be guarded by dragons when all he has done is scare her—so he folds his front paws and making sure that he’s not squashing any of her garden plants, he sits himself down on the sun-warmed soil and explains.
He also explains that he’s been looking for a long time, that he’s been travelling along the mountains and their peaks ever since the rain had let up and the days started getting longer, and Tommy finds that the more he speaks, the more the princess seems to settle. She doesn’t look like she’s sat so rigid as before, and her hands aren’t clenched tight to themselves enough to make her knuckles go white, and the funny fluttering of her hearts sounds less like bird wings and more like gentle footsteps of deer in the fields.
Still, Tommy can’t help but worry.
“You don’t have a dragon already do you?” he asks, holding his bottom lips between his teeth, pulling his front paws closer in, folding his wings in all the same. He makes sure his tail is remaining perfectly still so as not to damage any of the plants that grow in the garden whilst also remaining perfectly fixated on the princess and the way she shakes her head. “No, I— You mean you’d like to stay?”
She sounds shocked. Like she is surprised that Tommy would want to.
“I know I’m small,” he says, and tries not to sound too disheartened about it, not wanting to have to turn tail and slip back into the wilds in search of another tower and another princess when he has already travelled so far as it is. “But I’m still growing,” he tells her, “and I know I was rude and I came into your garden without asking and I scared you, but I will become stronger. And bigger.”
For some reason, that day doesn’t feel so warm, the sunshine not so inviting on his scales. He had, kind of foolishly, not thought about what might happen if a princess was to reject his offer. It made sense if she already had a dragon, and Tommy was in no interest of pushing himself into a space that he doesn’t belong, but he hadn’t been able to help hoping, and now he feels like that’s all about to be dashed.
“But I’m not…” the princess trails off, biting her lip at the way that Tommy’s ears flatten down against his head. She’s probably not even looking for a dragon—or waiting for one. That’s probably why she’s out here, why she lives in such a small tower, different from the ones that Tommy had heard about. Maybe the sails were to disguise her tower, and Tommy has intruded yet again because he’s overlooked her wish for privacy and barged his way in anyway.
“I’m not alone,” she says, although Tommy is able to pick up on the way she says it, hope catching like a candle breathing new life because it doesn’t sound like she’s dismissing him. “I live with my husband and two son. I don’t think we’d mind the company. Not that I think we were ever expecting a dragon,” she says, and finally, laughs.
Tommy can’t help the way his ears flick, rippling all the way down his spine until his tail swishes too, although gentle enough that he doesn’t behead any of the flowers.
“So… I can stay?” he asks, still somewhat tentatively.
The princess smiles at him. “You may stay. My name is Kristin.”
“I’m Tommy,” Tommy beams, bouncing forward once more, offering himself in assistance as Princess Kristin climbs to her feet, snagging hold of a basket previously unseen that is laden with vegetables and herbs where she had been gathering food for lunch, inviting Tommy to join her. She pauses at the garden gate, looking back at Tommy, with a wonder as to what he would like to eat.
Tommy paws at the ground, almost a little embarrassed. “I don’t suppose you have apples, do you?”