Queen to the Dragon King Pt. 03

The cave was dark, but the King's warmth kept it from growing cold.

In the light that radiated from the central fire, Ciara could make out the shapes of the arches and supports that were throughout the cavern. For his part, the King dozed, as he did for hours at a time. It seemed that in the last few weeks, as the leaves had turned red and yellow and then fallen off, her King had started sleeping even more.

The firelight cast a dancing pattern over the golden bed they curled on. When she had first come to the King's lair, she'd found that coins made a poor mattress for her, although her King could abide no other. Fortunately he did not mind having Ciara curl up atop his back or along his underside. Nowadays there was so much less light and warmth to the day and frost upon the ground in the mornings; she often slept curled just under her King's neck, where he was at his warmest, with the fire only a short distance from her.

Ciara sighed. Of late, her lover slept in far later than she did, leaving her with time to fill with her books. Gingerly, Ciara climbed out from her lover's embrace and slipped into the shadows beyond the fire's light. She walked on the balls of her feet, not to keep quiet (for her lover could already hear her, she was certain; his senses missed very little) but to minimize her contact with the frigid stones.

Hastily, she crossed the cavern to her makeshift bookshelf. Her King had helped her make it, carving the niches to store the books on into the walls of the cave, even though he had pouted while she re-arranged his hoard of valuables so that she could put all of the tomes in one place. The shelves and the fire pit were her only alterations to his cave, and she knew that her King had found it difficult to allow them. This effort on his part made the shelves all the more precious to Ciara.

Thick tome in hand, she quickly scampered back into bed, feeling a shiver of cold pass up and down her spine. She paused for a moment to appreciate her lover; he was immense in form, and scaled; he possessed terrible claws and long, ferocious fangs, with two great, leathery wings, and a long tail. His eyes, closed right now, were as large as dinner plates. But he was also snoring, making a delightful half-grumble as he exhaled. He was savage, and feral, and she had seen him kill beasts, but he was kind with her, sharing his meals freely, praising her cooking, touching her softly, and pleasing her as a lover.

He was the King of the Forest, a dragon. And she was his Queen and lover.

Carefully, she repositioned herself alongside her king, snuggling into the softer scales of his underside, right along his neck. She leaned her book on his neck, and began to read.

Short minutes stretched into long hours as she read. She mouthed the words she was unfamiliar with, following along with her finger in the book. It seemed an exhaustive reference on the properties of flowering plants, and their uses in magical brews, but contained no new information on the question she most needed answers to: do magical brews lose effectiveness with repeat use?

Honey, a daub of wine, some blood, and Love-In-Idleness, alongside a few other herbs, combined to make her potion. When first she had drank it, some four months ago before the harvest season, it had allowed her body to please her lover; under the effects of the potion, the King of the Forest had found her irresistible, and they had mated, time and again, over hours. But over the last few weeks, the potion's effectiveness had begun to wane. A single use of the brew used to allow them congress for just over a day; now, it's effectiveness was waning to the point that a single dose might only be effective for a few hours, and once it passed, their coitus still left her aching and weak. Last time, when she had finished the potion and invited her King upon herself, she'd felt her stomach churn and barely had time to get out from under him before emptying her stomach's contents most unpleasantly, as her King's tail stroked at her back.

The latest book was not instructive on the topic. Several of its recipes were themselves unclear or incomplete, or contained cautions that a user may only consume them once each rising of the moon or at high summer; others cautioned that repeated exposure might render a brew toxic or dangerous. Diminished effectiveness, however, was not mentioned.

Ciara sighed in frustration. She was neither an alchemist nor a wizard. She was a farm girl who had found a brew with specific properties, and thought to use it to spare her community some pain (and to give life to a foolish girl's night-time fantasies). She absentmindedly stroked her King's neck as she became lost in thought. While she no longer needed the potion to convince her King to desire her, he was simply too ... immense for her to fully satisfy without magical aid. She sighed and reminded herself that, of all the problems in the world, finding a way to share a bed with the King of the Forest was one of the better ones to have.

"No solution presents itself." The King's voice was a roiling baritone. He barely moved his mouth to speak. He could; if he was inclined to do so, he could speak quite animatedly, moving his lips, showing tooth and tongue like any other speaker. But he was also capable of speaking through his closed mouth. Whatever it was that granted the King of the Forest the power of speech, it lay in his throat, not his mouth. Ciara patted his scales, and a grand rumbling began to emanate from his chest.

"No. There's nothing. I'm almost out of books." She said, sighing and pressing her lips to his scales.

"There are magicians. Sorcerers, in more distant lands. We could ... ", he began, before pausing. Ciara traced at his scales with her fingers. Of course, they couldn't. Dragons, even her King, were ferocious creatures. His appetite knew no limits, and his craving for treasure could never be satiated. It was no more sensible than a mortal man suggesting he could give Ciara the moon - but no less romantic, either.

Ciara shook her head. "No, no. You and I both know they would hunt you. I wouldn't subject you to that. Nor would I subject them to that", she added, with a smile. "There might be a resolution in one of the other books. And it hasn't yet stopped working, after all. It just ... passes. Too quickly."

As Ciara spoke, the King raised and slowly lowered his wings to fan the fire. He shifted a claw to drop some fresh wood into the blaze. "You should bundle up.", he intoned. His wonderful baritone had a way of filling the chamber; sometimes, when the spoke at length, Ciara would lie on one of the large stones by the basin, just so she could feel it tremble slightly as the King spoke. "It will be cold outside, and still colder higher up."

Ciara sighed and rolled to her feet, sorry to see the morning over so soon, but smirking in anticipation as well. With her King's help, she had prepared herself a suit for cold weather; bearskin for warmth, deerskin on the inside to be comfortable, with fox-fur trim, because she was a Queen and her King indulged her. She took the few steps to the area she had designated as her closet, and searched out her boots. "Why is that?" Ciara asked, always curious. "I thought hot air rose. And it would be closer to the sun, wouldn't it?"

The King's eyes narrowed, and he considered. "I ... I'm not sure. Mountains are colder, though. Perhaps it is the further you move from the surface? The wind up there is often terrible; perhaps that plays a part. Maybe", he chuckled, "when we seek out a book on herbs and potions, we should get one about the weather. Always asking. Ever curious."

Ciara smirked at him. He was clever and wise, and knew many things - far more than Ciara did. But it seemed sometimes that her King rarely troubled himself with the why of things, finding it enough to know the what. "Perhaps.", she said. "And a book on dragons, besides, one with a chapter on the best places to rub them, when they mock you!" she said, fiercely kicking her King's long tail. His responding laugh caused the floor of the cavern to shudder again; Ciara loved to hear him laugh.

Fully outfitted Ciara felt bulky and heavy, but was toasty-warm. She walked alongside her King as he slinked out the front of the lair they shared. The brilliant sunlight reflecting off the snow and ice that coated the swamp around them caused Ciara to blink her eyes to adjust, as her King paused to stretch his wings and neck wide.

She had brought with her a length of rope, the ends of which were looped around and knotted. Loosely, she set one end over her left shoulder, and when the King lowered himself to the ground, she set her foot on his powerful forelimb and pushed off, climbing onto his back. She reached down, and he handed the other loop up to her; she slid her arm through, and grasped the rope with both hands through her rough leather gloves.

"Ready?" the King asked, his wings fanning, preparing to catch the air.

"Ready!" Ciara replied, unable to conceal her excitement.

The King's powerful forelegs tensed. Beneath her, even through the animal hides, Ciara felt the muscles that commanded his wings tighten and prepare, and he lifted himself on his forelimbs. Ciara leaned forward, into her King's neck, as he held his head aloft and skyward.

The King of the Forest pounced at the sky, and Ciara heard herself shriek at the sudden motion. She felt her body pressed back and down, and only the strong ropes she had harnessed herself to the King with kept her seated. Her King hurled himself forward with his wings spread, catching as much of the wind as he could, and gaining altitude with the strength of his back legs. Ciara cried out again, her cheering stifled slightly by her bulky snowsuit. At the apex of his leap, her King's body began to curve downwards; Ciara felt her momentum shift, and had the wonderful sensation of her body being pulled up. Her body rose from the King's back, and for a moment, the rope was slack; for a moment, under the momentum her King's pounce had granted her, she arced up and away even as he dropped downward.

For a moment, Ciara was flying.

Her King beat his wings; a singular, powerful motion that caused his body to leap up. Ciara's rear end reconnected with her King's shoulders with a dull thud that she felt with her tailbone. As she tightened her ropes, and heard herself laughing; she adored those few moments of freedom, when she was sailing through the air with her King, free and truly flying. She heard, and felt, her King beneath her and between her legs, chuckling to himself and rumbling, purring and pleased at the chance to make her laugh.

"That will never get old!" she screamed. With the speeds her King could maneuver at, Ciara often had to struggle to make herself heard as they flew, even with her King's heightened sense of hearing. She kicked with her heels, one then the other repeatedly, to help communicate her idea, and the King of the Forest craned his head to look back at her slightly.

"Was it smooth enough? That was a solid thud, right at the end..." the King asked. His voice carried back to her easily; he said it had something to do with the direction of their motion. She squeezed with her knees once, their agreed-upon signal for 'yes'. Then she spurred him with her heels - faster, faster.

She heard her King chuckle as he beat his wings twice to comply. The King of the Forest's airspeed increased, even as he arced upwards. The acceleration was not quite so rapid as last time, so that while Ciara felt her stomach race to keep up with her, she did not actually rise into the air this time. She laughed and cheered as she saw the ground fall even further away. When the King of the Forest reached the apex of his climb, he again arched his body, and she felt another weightless moment as she hovered, who knows how high above the earth, keeping company with the clouds. Ciara inhaled deeply, and felt that the air was freezing and chilled. She braced herself.

The King dropped, tucking his wings into his sides and accelerating downward so rapidly that Ciara felt the breath she had been holding pressed free from her lungs. She clung to the rope, feeling her fingers grow numb from the effort and her shoulders push back against the straps holding her in position. Before her was a bay that, from a great height had seemed so small, but now that they raced downward, it was rapidly expanding, becoming so vast that from the water's center she would have been unable to see land. She screamed, reveling in the thrill of sharing this with her lover, and the King of the Forest answered her with a bellow, roaring so resoundingly that it made the air tremble.

At the last moment, just before the King and his Queen hit the surface of the water, the King spread his wings and arched with his tail, changing his shape just so. Rather than plunge into the frigid waters of the bay, the pair turned and raced through the air parallel it's unbroken mirror-surface. Ciara turned to watch behind them as they soared, so that she could see the two turbulent waves that stirred in their wake. Tiny pellets of frozen water dropping back into the bay and coalescing to leave a wonderful half-frozen path across the ice following behind them.

Ciara clamped her knees in to tightly clench at her King as she let the reins go for just a moment. She held her hands up in the air and could feel the wind even through her gloves. She saw the shoreline, at first a mere shadowy glimmer, rapidly taking the form of trees and rocks and sand and grasses. She brought her hand back to the reins just in time for her King to arc upward slightly, by just enough to clear the trees ...

"Duck.", the King said, his voice a booming command. Ciara obeyed, burying her face against his neck. In seconds, her back was pelted by branches and brambles, and she heard the bending and snapping of tree limbs. The King, for whatever reason, had opted not to gain altitude and avoid the woods, but instead to ...

Ciara heard the crunch of bone and a cry that sounded like a trumpet in pain; the noise was abruptly cut mercifully short. The King lost significant momentum, and his weight shifted, as if his left side was suddenly heavier. She heard, and felt, her King beat his wings to increase his altitude.

After there was a moment's pause, Ciara lifted her head. Above the King was only blue sky and beneath them a vast green forest, but clutched in the King's left paw was a huge, dense form. The King's hunt had been a success.

"Moose meat?", Ciara called, smiling. "Sounds delicious!"

Her King chuffed in response, but he raised the corner of his lip just so, proud his Queen was pleased.

Normally, cleaning and preparing a full moose would be a task requiring hours of work, but it was made nearly effortless by the King's help. At first he watched with fascination as Ciara prepared the body, and held his hand and talon out, allowing her to use it's razor-sharp edge as her cutting surface. He maneuvered the moose as she instructed, and ate the skull in a single bite, producing a resounding crunch that echoed through the lair. He did, however, have to foresight to spare the antlers, preferring to gnaw at them rather than consume them outright. He chewed at the horns as Ciara finished slicing the last of the meat, and prepared to smoke over the fire.

"We could do with some salt, or sugar. We'll pick some up ...", she began, and hesitated. It wasn't as though she could stroll into town and buy the supplies she needed anymore; it would attract attention and questions.

The King watched her, and for a moment, Ciara thought his expression softened. "There are merchant caravans that run along the North Road, eighty miles from here. I shouldn't think a merchant's wagon of baking essentials would have too great an armed escort.", he murmured, as the antlers rattled against the stone floor. "They run more in the Spring, though ... so you may have something of a wait."

Ciara smiled up at her King as she walked over to the basin to wash off the blood. "I wish I could just eat anything, like you. Then we could avoid the problem altogether. We'd dine every night on moose and deer!", she laughed.

He glanced up from the horns. "It'd be risky. We'd need to move southward. This domain doesn't produce enough to feed two through the winter."

Ciara laughed more, soaking her lower arms. "Well, I'm somewhat smaller than you. I probably need less to eat."

The dragon's eyes narrowed to study her, and she saw his translucent inner eyelid close, then open again. "... true.", he said, at length. He sat a moment, one of his taloned digits holding the antler he had been gnawing in place, while his tail flicked back and forth; Ciara felt his eyes on her, as drew off her wet clothes and climbed into the spring. When her curves had disappeared beneath the water's surface, the King rose from his game and sprightly crossed the chamber to Ciara's shelves. His manner reminded Ciara, not for the first time, of a cat struck by a sudden whimsy.

She tilted her head to try to watch her King. "What are you doing?", she called after him. By way of response, his tail flicked, and he widened his wings to better block her view. Ciara giggled, but it was as much out of confusion as amusement. She swam to the side of the basin, then propped herself up as she strain to see. The sound of bottles clinking off each other carried across the room as her King did ... whatever it was he was doing.

"...what are you doing back there?", Ciara asked again. She heard a light chuckle roll back in response.

"Never you mind..." he responded, but moments later, he turned back towards her, holding a mug filled with her familiar potion.

The King crossed the chamber towards the pool, and daintily set the mug full of the brew in front of Ciara. He lowered his head to stare at her over the brew, and she saw his back end wiggle back and forth like a feline ... either settling in, or preparing for a pounce.

"Well well", she said, with a laugh, feeling her smile curl up into a smirk. "It's been a while since such a handsome man bought me a drink, m'lord."

"Nothing but the finest.", her King intoned. "It's a little something I've seen the serving-staff mix up a score of times. Thought I'd try my hand at it." The King of the Forest watched Ciara as she pushed her way back off the side of the basin, leaving herself to float weightlessly. She heard her King's claws grind along the stones of the floor, and she idly propelled herself by waving her hands through the water.

"I'm flattered. But a girl should be careful, my lord. Taking drinks from strange men? Could get one into all kinds of trouble.", Ciara said, feeling herself smile. She pulled herself up on the far side of the basin, leaning on her elbows so that the small of her back was at the water level, with the disturbed surface of the water splashing around her hips and her wet hair dangling down her back. She turned to look over her shoulder at her King, watching him from beneath her eyelashes and biting her lip.

They both loved this game, teasing at each other; with the King of the Forest as her lover, the game kept it's suspense, because Ciara was never sure when he would grow tired of playing and simply take her in a display of his power he had. She reveled in the joy of being able to taunt and tease him; the game felt as if she were dangling a tempting steak before a great hound, only in this case Ciara herself was the steak - and her magnificent hound always won the game.