Field. Noon. Drama imminent. There was a v-shaped trench across half the meadow. Smoke curled from a splintered tree stump that used to be a tree and was now more of a very tall toothpick. Feathers drifted down like confused snowflakes. A rabbit watched us from the bushes with the stunned expression of someone who just saw their god crash into a fence post. I folded my arms and stared at him.
"You need glasses."
The Dragon growled from the bottom of his crater. "I do not need glasses."
"Really?" I asked, hopping down the slope to where he was sprawled like an elderly crime scene. "Because from where I was standing, you dive-bombed an elm like it owed you money."
"There was fog," he muttered.
"There is no fog," I snapped, gesturing broadly at the crystal-clear, sunshine-sparkling, bird-chirping day around us. "Not a mist. Not a haze. Not even a dramatic little wisp. Just you. And a tree. And now…" I pointed behind him, "kindling."
He heaved himself up with the grace of a drunk bear and shook out his wings. One of them crunched. "That was structural," he hissed.
"Oh, don't be dramatic. You've crashed three times this month. Once into a barn. Once into a cliff. And now? Nature."
"That cliff had moss. It was deceptively textured."
"Are you listening to yourself?"
He swiveled toward me, eyes blazing like two insulted pumpkins. "I am a dragon. Ancient. Powerful. Death incarnate."
"And myopic," I added sweetly.
"I don't need—" he jabbed a claw at the sky like he was suing God—"corrective optics!"
"Okay." I nodded. "Sure. You just enjoy plowing into stationary objects at terminal velocity for the thrill."
He huffed, nostrils flaring. "I misjudged the descent."
"Because you couldn't see it."
"There was glare!"
"There was a tree!"
He groaned and tried to stomp away, only to immediately trip over the burnt remains of a sheep fence. I watched him hop-limp like a furious rhinoceros with gout and pride damage.
"You know," I called after him, "we could visit a lenscutter in town. I hear bifocals are very in this season. You could be mysterious. Intellectual. Maybe even get one of those little chains for around your neck. Very grandpa chic."
He stopped. Turned. Snarled. "I swear on the bones of my ancestors, Saya, if you ever suggest spectacles again—"
"What?" I said, blinking innocently. "You'd look adorable. Like a professor who hoards treasure and tenure."
"I will eat you."
I stood there, hands on hips, ankle-deep in scorched meadow, the smell of singed grass and wounded ego still thick in the air. The tree stump smoked behind us like a war crime.
"This is serious," I said.
From the bottom of his shallow crater, the dragon groaned like a theater critic forced to attend amateur night. "Oh gods, please stop."
"I'm not joking," I snapped. "You're going to get yourself killed."
He flopped onto his side like a fainting courtesan. "What a way to go. Slain by vegetation."
"I mean it. You're crashing more than you're landing. What if this happens while we're mid-scam? You nosedive into a granary or misjudge a spire and bam—instant dragon kabob. Halfwit hero strolls in with a pointy stick and takes credit. Do you know what that makes me?"
He sighed. "Bereaved?"
"Worse!" I yelled. "I'll be forced to become some hero's concubine. Probably some sweaty idiot with a neck beard and a family crest shaped like a sausage."
He rolled his eyes. "Oh please."
"Or worse," I hissed, stepping over a blackened fence post. "No hero shows up at all. You splat into a mountainside and I get chained to some altar and rot. Starve to death surrounded by goats and villagers who think rosemary is an acceptable seasoning for human sacrifice."
He sniffed, offended. "You're being hysterical."
"I am being realistic," I said, jabbing a finger at him. "This isn't a game, Scales. You're not young anymore. You can't just drop out of the clouds and assume everyone will flee on cue. One false move and I end up sold to some flea-bitten roadside brothel with straw mattresses and a pig for a doorman."
He sat up, looking thoroughly scandalized. "Do not speak such things in my presence."
"Well someone has to!" I shouted. "Your eyesight is going! Admit it!"
He flared his nostrils. "I will not."
"You crashed into a tree!"
"It ambushed me."
"It was rooted to the ground!"
"It was leaning aggressively."
I groaned and rubbed my temples. "Gods, you're impossible."
"And you," he said, rising like a storm cloud filled with opinions, "are ungrateful. Do you have any idea how hard it is to land these days? My left wing clicks. My tail cramps. My depth perception is—" He caught himself, froze mid-rant, then straightened. "—impeccable. My depth perception is impeccable."
I gave him a look. The kind of look that could peel paint.
He sniffed again, wounded. "I will not wear spectacles."
"No one said spectacles," I lied.
"Don't you dare say monocle either."
I grinned. "Oh come on. One little lens. For one little eye. You'd look so distinguished."
He flared his wings dramatically—probably strained something again, but he'd die before admitting it. "I am not a librarian. I am not a butler. I am not one of those dusty old wizards who lives in a tower made entirely of secondhand scrolls and spite!"
I crossed my arms. "You're a queer old lizard who crashes into things."
He stomped past me, nose high. "And you, madam, are a melodramatic nymphomaniac in yesterday's underthings."
"Still better than tomorrow's eulogy!"
He paused. "Was that supposed to be poetic?"
I shrugged. "Maybe."
He snorted, smoke curling from his nostrils. "You worry too much."
"You crash too much."
We glared at each other across the smoldering grass.
Then a breeze picked up, ruffling my skirt and his ego.
He exhaled and looked away. "I'm not going to some human lenscutter."
We were halfway into one of our classic bicker cycle when we heard it.
Crreeaaaak.
Like an old door being opened by a ghost with arthritis. Or, more accurately, like the sound of vengeance being slowly unrooted.
We both froze.
Then came the voice.
"You monsters."
I turned.
And stared into the bark-skinned, knot-eyed, fury-puckered face of a tree.
No, scratch that. A walking, talking, eight-foot-tall pissed-off Ent.
He loomed at the edge of the meadow like a judge grown from mulch and rage. Moss clung to his eyebrows. His leaves were trembling. And his gnarled limbs curled into the approximate shape of fists.
"You murdered one of us!" he thundered, pointing a twisted branch-finger at the smoldering stump behind us.
The dragon blinked. "That was not murder. That was... an unfortunate collision."
I whispered, "You're arguing with a sentient pine."
"Elm," the Ent snarled.
The dragon corrected himself instinctively. "Right. Elm. Of course. My condolences."
"You snapped her in half like a twig!"
"Well, technically—"
"She was my cousin!"
We both flinched.
The dragon cleared his throat. "...It was foggy."
"Liar!"
And that's when I noticed the rest of the forest.
A dozen. No. Two dozen.
All moving.
Slowly.
Horribly.
Like a wooden army of environmental litigation attorneys, each one older than sin and twice as cranky.
They were creeping out of the tree line with all the speed of guilt and all the grace of lumber with grudges.
"Oh gods," I whispered. "They're advancing."
The dragon had gone pale—well, ashen—and his wings twitched like an old widow's fan.
"This is absurd," he said. "I refuse to be lynched by shrubbery."
"They're trees with teeth," I said. "You want to explain ecosystem manslaughter to them?"
The lead Ent raised both arms. "For the crime of arboreal homicide, we declare war!"
"Oh hell no," I said, grabbing the dragon by one wing joint. "Time to go."
"But I haven't even—"
"Sky!" I screamed.
Behind us, the first Ent thundered forward with surprising speed for someone whose toes were literal roots. Another one—an oak, I think—let out a war cry that sounded like a bear gargling compost.
The dragon shrieked like an opera singer at tax season and unfurled his wings with a snap that definitely pulled something. "My sciatica!"
"Not now!" I cried, scrambling onto his back. "Up, up, up!"
He launched us into the air with all the grace of a harpsichord being kicked off a balcony.
Below, the Ents howled and flung branches, rocks, and what might've been a flaming beehive. A vine whipped past my leg and almost snagged my sandal.
"We will remember this!" one shouted.
"Get in line!" I yelled back, clinging to the dragon's neck.
We spiraled upward, smoke trailing from his sore wing, wind slapping my hair across my face, the forest shrinking below us like a very angry salad.
It wasn't until we cleared the last cloud that the dragon finally spoke.
"Trees," he huffed, "are the rudest of all plant life."
I didn't answer. I was too busy rethinking our retirement plan.
Because clearly, we were going to need one.
The wind whipped past us as the meadow—and its rapidly mobilizing tree militia—vanished into the horizon.
We were both silent for a moment, caught in the adrenaline and awkwardness that follows narrowly escaping a slow-motion lynching by foliage.
Then I cleared my throat.
"You know," I said, casually brushing a leaf out of my hair, "Elvish science has made incredible strides lately."
The dragon groaned. "Not this again."
"I'm just saying," I continued sweetly, adjusting my grip on his back ridge, "maybe you don't need spectacles. Maybe some of those new corrective ointments would work. You know the ones—infused with forest crystals, filtered moonlight, and unicorn tears."
"That sounds like a scam."
I grinned. "Says the dragon flying away from an actual lynch mob of sentient bark."
"I refuse to rub anything onto my eyeballs that was extracted from a unicorn," he muttered.
"Come on," I teased. "I hear it's very soothing. And you only need to chant three verses of the Moon Hymn while standing barefoot in morning dew."
He made a gagging noise. "This is why I don't trust elves. They always smell like damp moss and misplaced superiority."
"And better vision."
"And smugness!"
I leaned forward. "Besides, imagine the look—eleg ancient beast, eyes shimmering with lunar clarity. Maybe you even glow a little at dusk."
He twitched midair. "I do not want to glow. Glowing is for sprites and sluts."
"Sometimes both," I said dreamily.
"Unicorn tears," he sneered. "Elves and their obsession with weeping animals. What's next? Otter bile? Ferret semen?"
"I bet you'd see everything," I said, ignoring him. "Every twig. Every church steeple. Every gallows meant for ancient flying menaces who couldn't avoid a tree."
He growled deep in his chest.
I grinned wider.
"Oh come on," I said. "What's the harm in a consultation? Just a quick visit to a temple of Lunar Optics. I'm sure they'd love the chance to restore sight to such a majestic creature."
He puffed smoke. "I have sight."
"Says the dragon who confused an elm with a landing strip."
"There was fog!"
"There were squirrels having brunch in that tree. You knocked them into another tax bracket."
He grumbled something that might've been "traitor" or "menace," then began muttering in a dialect that sounded suspiciously like Ancient Draconic Cursing.
I sat back, content.
The sun glittered off his scales. His wings flapped with labored dignity. And below us, the world rolled out like a patchwork quilt of poor life choices.
"Unicorn tears," he scoffed one last time.
But quieter.
Quieter… and maybe a tiny bit curious.
And that, my friends, is how you start a long game.