Now…
“What are you doing?” Argus roared up at the magnanimously squeeing princess. He flapped his wings, ascending through the still-falling rain of shattered mountain rock, and blasted his way out into the uncommonly sunny morning.
“Oh, my dear sweet Argus!” the princess gasped, placing her hand over her heart, and without thinking, hurled the husk of the mountain peak off to uncharted lands. “You have no idea how pleased I am to see you’re well! I’ve missed you so. Please, tell me, since you appear to be in fine health as always, why you neglected our yearly visit? Surely you know I look forward to it every year, more than any other holiday? When you didn’t show up this year, I started to think something awful had happened!”
Dumbfounded, Argus flew half a league away from Narina. He hovered, and squinted across the rocky landscape to the far distance. Everywhere Narina had stepped was visible, not only in the shapes of her footprints stamped into the squishy ground by her earth-breaking slippers, but in the clearing of trees and rising dust clouds. The dragon was certain he’d stationed his conquered human armies along this precise path, for indeed, Narina was a predictable creature, and followed the exact road he foresaw. Yet here she was, so soon after he’d missed their appointment. How was it possible she’d bypassed millions of soldiers without so much as a stumble?
“Come back, puppy!” Narina gasped. “I came all this way to see you, and I’m not letting you go until I say hello properly!” Thinking the dragon was about to leave her yet again, the princess stepped quickly after him, then took hold of the scaly beast’s great tail between her thumb and forefinger. The creature’s extremity was quite simple to ensnare since, in light of Narina’s doubled size over the past year, Argus had comparatively shrunk from the size of a young kitten to a malnourished rat.
“It CAN’T be!” Argus crowed. “IMPOSSIBLE!”
He beat his wings in a bid to escape the grapple of Narina’s fingers, but as usual, discovered he was utterly immobilized by the strength of the princess. However, he didn’t fight it for long, as the dragon was still recovering from the soul-crushing disappointment that his plan had been undone. Adding salt to the wound, it seemed to Argus that Narina had walked past the continent’s most dangerous human threat on accident.
It was so disgusting, the dragon had half a mind to give up then and there, but rage refueled his fire. He went limp as he felt Narina pulling him back toward her through the air, until he was in cuddling range. She released the grip on his tail, and before the dragon could dart away, both of the girl’s hands closed in around him. The walls of those creamy palms bludgeoned Argus into her grasp. As her fingers coiled around the monster’s sides, and pinned his wings down flush, he simply bided his time. His belly glowed with the strength of oncoming fireball breath.
“So what do you have to say for yourself, hmm?” Narina sternly questioned. She turned Argus around and held him right up to her face, aligned with her lips, like he was a stubborn hamster. Her fingers drummed impatiently on his back. “Come on, don’t be a grumpus. I’ve walked a very long way to see you, and while I don’t like to throw my title around, as princess, I demand to know why you decided to make me so worried!”
“I’ll give you something to worry about,” Argus snarled. He opened his jaws and let loose the most powerful stream of flame he’d ever unleashed. Crimson quickly turned to blue. The heat alone could’ve melted the armor of a knight right into steam.
Yet without missing a beat, Narina puckered her lips and blew concentrated cold air right into the curling fire before it could touch her face. The princess’s chilly breath battled against Argus’s incendiary blast for a moment, and then like that, the flames were squelched into smoke. Shaking her head, Narina scoldingly clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“NO, Argus. Silly puppy. I’m just trying to talk to you. Why won’t you talk back? I’ve never known you to come up short with words. We can still play with your adorable little fires after, but you have to use your words first!”
Argus coughed, recovering his strength again, but didn’t respond. His leathery wings thrashed pathetically against the firm pinning of Narina’s thumbs, gentle though they were with him, which only earned him an even more restrictive hold. The prodigious princess laboriously took a seat on a mountain directly neighboring the dragon’s no-longer-secret lair. From there, she snuggled Argus up against her chest, rocking him back and forth in the cradle of her arms. The pulse of her heartbeat thumped contentedly through, causing Argus’s skull to vibrate.
“Let’s hear it, puppy. Spit it out. No more fire for now,” Narina sweetly warned. She bowed her head and planted a quick wet kiss atop Argus’s head, then two more smooches on each of his wings. When they were both settled in, and she was sure she had him caged in her hands, the princess relaxed her grip enough to stroke her fingers along the creature’s bony back, careful not to rub against the grain of his scales, for fear of hurting him.
“Don’t you see that you’ve ruined EVERYTHING? I-” the dragon scowled, but as he turned his serpentine neck to look up at his greatest foe’s face, he was struck by her expression. Though she spoke with her usual lullabied gentility, and continued petting him like a housecat, Narina’s lips were no longer curled into a smile. Enough moisture to overpower a river dam had welled in her glassy eyes, and was already tumbling down. Thick salty drops descended her cheeks in multiple streaks.
Argus spat. He couldn’t believe she had the audacity to weep, when it was his year-long masterplan that had been destroyed, not hers. The girl was the size of an entire ecosystem on her own, wielding untold strength and fearsome power, yet she was just a bundle of childish nerves and shaky emotions. He angrily wrested his head away from her tickling, pillar-sized fingers before they could caress his head once more.
“Why would you want to upset me like this, Argus?” Narina whimpered. She hadn’t allowed herself to look this vulnerable for a while, what with her usual duties defending the kingdom, but she felt safe with the little dragon, even if she was wounded by his willful avoidance of their meet-up. “Please. I just want to know why. We’ve known each other for so long, since I was a child. You were my first and only true friend as I continued to grow, when it became impossible to be close with any creature but you. Surely you owe me a little honesty?”
Argus didn’t speak, as he was busy recharging his flame for another blast, which he planned to unload in tandem with a flurry of claw and tail-spike strikes. If he was lucky, it would earn him enough of a window to break free. Range would be his ally in this battle; he just had to get away from Narina and rethink his tactics. The dragon trembled with the fury of a dozen annual losses, opened his mighty flame-spewing jaws, and…
“Oh, ARGUS!” The princess’s delighted squeal ricocheted across canyons for dozens of miles around. The sheer concentrated euphoria of her words might have shattered the mountain itself, if she hadn’t already ripped it away with her ladylike fingers instead.
“What?”
“Did YOU make this?” Narina had merely glanced into the crumbled opening of the dragon’s lair, but once she saw what was inside, she practically hurled herself off the mountainside. Argus was jostled every which way, his head bonking against the pillowy hills of the princess’s chest as she cradled him flush to her body, then knelt low enough to peer inside the cavern. Though the dust had just finished settling, there was no mistaking the massive image skillfully painted on a mural canvas. The princess gawked in wide, unending wonder at the portrait of herself that Argus had ordered for purposes of vengeance rumination.