It hits me somewhere over the third day out here in the northern wilderness. Just when I was starting to accept it. Like an icicle dropped straight onto my soul.
"Wait. What do dragons do in winter?"
He doesn't answer at first. Just blinks slowly, frost rimming his lashes, like I've asked what the square root of goat.
Then: "Hibernate."
"What?"
"Hibernate." He doesn't even look at me. Just keeps flying like we're not moments away from an existential crisis. "We're reptiles, darling."
I blink. "Reptiles. You have a furnace in your belly. You breathe fire. Your morning farts can boil soup."
"Still a reptile."
"But you snore steam! You literally toasted a marsh hare just by exhaling near it!"
He shrugs mid-air. "Yes, and now every joint in my body is screaming for a cave, a hoard, and three months of unconsciousness. I ache, Saya. Deep in my ancestral bones."
I stare at the vast whiteness below. Ice lakes. Frozen pine. A wolf peeing on a tree, which immediately snaps from the cold.
"Are you telling me you're about to shut down like some scaly old man wrapped in a heated blanket?"
"Yes."
"And what am I supposed to do while you nap through the next blizzard? Knit socks out of my own hair?"
He dares to look smug. "Can't you hibernate too?"
"Humans don't hibernate!" I snap.
"You barely function without coffee and you sleep twelve hours a night. I assumed it was a latent instinct."
I point down. "We flew north. We left the warm lands. Why did we leave the warm lands?!"
He hums. "Something about 'the heat makes my thighs chafe' and 'my nipples deserve better air.'"
I sputter. "I was being sassy! Not issuing navigational commands!"
He sighs, rolls midair, wings wide and slow like an old barge turning. "Too late now. Unless you know of a nearby Neverdying Land to crash in for the winter."
I cross my arms, pouting. "We should have stayed closer. Somewhere with olives. And wine. And pillows. My butt's frozen."
"Your butt is always frozen when you spend half your life half-naked in a snowstorm."
"It's aesthetic!"
"You're shivering."
"No I'm not!"
He banks toward a ridge. "There. Cave. We nest, we sleep, we don't die. Sound good?"
"No! No it doesn't! I refuse to be stuck in some freezing dragon fart cave while you snore for three moons and I slowly chew my own foot off for entertainment!"
He lands anyway.
The cave is dark. It smells of old charcoal, forgotten battles, and one very dead bear.
I stand at the entrance. Cold wind whipping my hair. Utterly betrayed.
"This is how I die," I mutter. "Trapped in a cave with a napping fire-lizard, eating frozen regrets and hallucinating soup."
His voice echoes from inside. "Bring snacks."
I hate him.
I follow him in.
Gods damn it, I'm already regretting not stealing that sheepskin coat from the village idiot in Lerida.
He won't even let me light a fire.
Something about "attracting attention."
As if a snoring dragon isn't loud enough.
Hell.
I should've stayed with the Amazons.
At least they let you scream into the snow when your toes fall off.
The fire crackles. Barely.
He curls around it like a hoarder snake nesting his last treasure. One wing flops over his side, the spines twitch once, twice, then go still.
A long sigh puffs from his nostrils, hot and slow, stirring the embers into lazy life.
"Good night, Saya," he murmurs, voice like velvet dragged over bones. "Told you… should've fattened up for the winter…"
And just like that — out.
Gone.
Twelve tons of snoring, arrogant, heat-generating bastard curled into a coma like he hasn't just abandoned me to my frozen fate.
I sit there, blanket yanked over my knees, staring at the fire. The tiny, flickering, miserable fire that's clearly offended to be asked for warmth.
Fuck.
What am I supposed to do for the next three months?
Sit here and freeze?
Gnaw on roots and curse my life while he sleeps off his ancient gout like some overgrown scaly cat?
I glance toward the cave mouth. Outside, the taiga yawns. All snow and clawmarks and suspicious howls.
Lovely.
I whisper to myself, "Sure, Saya, let's go north. Let's see the auroras. Let's chase down the legendary hoard of King Varn's Frost Vault. Let's trust the dragon knows what he's doing."
I kick a stone. It bounces, hits his tail. He doesn't budge.
"Now look at you," I hiss. "Curled up like a lizard-shaped meatloaf. Leaving me to forage for squirrels. I don't even like squirrels. They're twitchy little acorn hoarders. Like you, but with fur."
I throw the blanket over my head and scream into it.
Then peek out again.
Okay. Okay. Deep breath.
I could try to hunt. Sure. With what? My charm and this rusty dagger? Go full forest nymph? Lure a bear with cleavage and then wrestle it to death? Yeah. That sounds realistic.
Or I shack up somewhere.
With someone.
Anyone.
Fuck it, even a lonely reindeer with a warm stable is starting to sound like a good deal.
I look at the dragon again. He's already drooling smoke and muttering in his sleep.
"…no… not the pink curtains… unspeakable…"
Great. He's having interior decor nightmares while I'm contemplating cannibalism by February.
I huddle closer to the fire and whisper the words that every desperate, freezing, half-naked con artist eventually utters:
"I need a plan. And a good fur coat. And possibly someone gullible, warm, and bad at saying no."
North. Gods-damned north.
Why is it always a stupid idea when I say it out loud after the fact?
***
It's barely morning when I snap.
I stuff my legs into the buckskin boots — the ones I stole from that fur trader with the foot fetish and zero taste — and immediately regret it. They're not waterproof. They never were. Now they're just damp leather bags designed to ferment my toes into pickled misery.
Tunic? Too short. Always has been. Barely covers my ass when I'm standing. Now it's riding up with every squelching step. My thighs are already offended.
Woolen cape? Thin, itchy, but hooded. I wrap it tight and slap the hood over my head like it's going to shield me from nature's endless, nipple-stiffening wrath.
Blanket? Dragon's. Still smells like sulfur, moss, and smugness. I wrap that around myself too. Layered like a broke onion. A sexy, pissed-off onion.
And then I step out.
Straight into soggy, whimpering cold.
Snowflakes whip past in little sideways tantrums. They melt the moment they hit the ground, turning everything to slush and mud and that weird yeast-smelling damp that makes your soul itch.
I trudge.
Each step is a slow, wet squelch of regret.
"Should've fattened up, he says. Hibernate, he says. You're the lizard!" I mutter. "I'm a warm-blooded biped with a taste for bathhouses and things that don't make my crotch frost over."
The trees leer at me. Bare, skeletal, dripping. Like they're waiting for me to freeze solid so they can use me as a scarecrow.
Then—
Smoke.
Thin. Sharp. Not the Dragon's kind — not sulfur, not hoard-fire, not ancient contempt made visible.
Just… smoke.
Real. Ordinary.
Someone's fire.
Someone.
I stop. Sniff.
There it is again. Woodsmoke. With just a hint of roasted something. Meat? Moldy bread? I don't care. It smells like alive.
Whoever's burning that fire is either a forest witch, a trapper, a cannibal, or a lonely hermit with questionable hygiene and a soft bed.
Perfect.
I adjust my blanket, hike up my too-short tunic, and start trudging toward it.
Whoever it is, whatever it is — it's better than freezing to death alone in a dragon-fart cave.