The Dragon raises an eyebrow, smug and disbelieving. "Have you ever tried honest work?"
I give him the look. You know. That look. The one that says I've tried everything, and I've regretted most of it.
"Oh please," I say, flipping my braid like it's a whip. "You think I came out of the womb with a price tag on my ass? I tried. Gods, I tried. Washer girl, scrubbing rags in the river until my knuckles bled. They still tried to grope me between soap buckets. Grape stomper? Same thing, only wetter. Cleaner? Apparently means bending over a lot while old men find reasons to 'supervise'."
He snorts. "Housemaid?"
"Oh yeah. That lasted three whole days. First day I polished cutlery. Second day I got propositioned by the scullery master, and the lady of the house. Third day I got slapped for 'distracting' the footmen. My tits were apparently too symmetrical for employment."
The Dragon hums. "So. No."
"I tried," I snap. "It's not just the groping. Though gods know that's part of it. It's the math, lizard. Honest work is hard. And it pays less. Less than whoring. Less than thieving. Less than breathing, sometimes. You scrub piss off tiles, they give you a copper and a crust. You suck one priest cock and suddenly you've got a roof and a velvet pillow."
He opens his mouth. Closes it again. Probably thinking about the priest thing too hard.
"So yeah," I finish, arms crossed under said offending boobs. "Honest work? Been there. Done that. Got pinched, underpaid, and nearly flogged. At least in my line, I charge extra for touching."
"Oh, and before you ask," I say, wagging a finger like I'm teaching a toddler not to lick knives, "yes, I did work a stall once. Market square. Fish stall. Not mine. Gods forbid. My job was to stand there, smile pretty, and weigh the damn fish. You know, make the buyers feel like they were getting their trout with a side of tits."
The Dragon rolls his eyes. "And let me guess—"
"I got accused of selling stinky fish," I cut in. "Me. As if I was the one rotting in the sun with flies in my gills. Some old goats started screaming about spoiled eels and next thing I know I'm hurling a mackerel at someone's face and getting chased down the street by a fishwife with a cleaver."
He winces. "Charming."
"Oh it gets better. I tried a bakery after that. 'Learn a trade,' they said. 'Rise with the dough,' they said. I tried! But they caught me nicking honey cakes. I was just testing the batch! Quality control!"
"You ate the whole batch."
"Only six," I mutter. "Anyway, they kicked me out before I learned how to knead anything but my own regrets."
He's smirking now. I hate that smug little curve of his mouth.
"And then—then—I even tried to be a rat catcher."
The Dragon pauses. Blinks. "A what."
"You heard me. They were paying a copper per corpse. I figured, hey, I've seen worse jobs. Brought in a whole sack of the nasty little bastards. They accused me of finding ones that were already dead! Said I was cheating. Who checks if a rat died natural or not? What am I, a plague coroner?"
The Dragon is shaking now. Silent chuckles, the kind where his ribs hitch and his wings twitch.
I glare at him. "You know what I learned from all that?"
He wipes a tear from his eye. "That you're unemployable?"
"No." I point at my chest. "That this? This here? Is wasted on honest work. I'm not built for crusts and copper. I'm built for chaos and crowns."
He bows his big scaly head. "And fish-fueled fistfights."
"That's the real problem, isn't it?" I say, kicking a pebble off the trail. "I'm too pretty to be shy."
The Dragon raises an eyebrow.
"No, don't give me that look. You think it's some kind of blessing? It's a target, scaled-boy. You show up to honest work with this face, these hips, and suddenly it's not about the job anymore. It's about how many favors the boss thinks he can slip in before lunch. You sweep floors, and they ask you to sweep something else. You weigh fish, and they ask if you're fresh too. You clean a room, and someone always forgets their pants just to see how you'll react."
I shrug. "And if you don't smile? You're a bitch. And if you do smile? You're a tease. No winning."
He grunts. "So you leaned into it."
"Damn right I did. If they're going to stare, might as well charge for the view." I glance at him. "And you? You're not exactly hard to look at either. For a reptilian death engine."
He exhales a thin curl of smoke. "I was beautiful once."
"You still are," I say, mock-sweet. "In a wrinkled, prehistoric, eldritch-bachelor kind of way."
He snorts, amused. I keep walking.
"Anyway," I add, louder now, "next time someone tells me to get a real job, I'll tell them this is my real job. Being unreasonably pretty and causing problems."
Pause.
"What else could a girl do, huh?" I toss over my shoulder, stepping over a root. "Tavern wench? Don't make me laugh. That's just being a whore with chores. You still get your ass pinched, your tits leered at, and you still end up on someone's lap by the end of the night—only difference is, now you're carrying six mugs of ale and spilling half of them down your dress."
The Dragon hums, noncommittal.
"And don't say temple work," I add, waving a hand like I'm shooing flies. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Chanting, incense, sacred mysteries, whatever. I was there, remember? They were never gonna promote me to priestess. Not me. Born too low. Too loud. Too round in the wrong places. Didn't matter how well I danced or how many dirty old pilgrims I 'blessed.' Girls like me don't get gold sashes. We get the back hall and the cheaper perfume."
I spit in the dust.
"So anyway," I say, kicking on, voice getting brighter like we're not knee-deep in existential mud, "I figured—screw it. If I'm gonna be treated like a whore no matter what I do, I might as well get paid like one. At least when I'm on my knees now, it's on my terms."
The Dragon doesn't answer right away.
Then, low and dry: "Inspiring."
"Shut up." I grin. "I'm a self-made woman."
I stop walking. Pivot hard. Hands on hips.
"Right," I say. "So that's me. Fish fights, bakery theft, rat corpses, and unsolicited ass-gropes. Your turn."
The Dragon blinks, caught mid-thought. "My—?"
"Your job, lizard. What's your glorious, respectable work history? Don't you dare smug at me like you were out there crunching numbers in some wizard tower."
He puffs up slightly. Proud. Defensive. Like I'd just insulted his lineage. "I am a dragon, Saya. My career is self-evident. Terror. Destruction. The calibrated management of fear and tribute. I've burned three hundred and thirty-seven villages, give or take. Flattened eighty nine keeps. Crushed several rebellions. I used to get epics written about me."
"Oh?" I arch a brow. "Full-time terrorizing? Or freelance arson?"
He narrows his eyes. "I was coveted, thank you very much. Kings sent paladins after me for generational glory. Entire crops were planted just to be torched as tribute. I had virgins chained to obsidian altars. Gold by the cartload. One barony surrendered its entire population just to be ignored for a season."
I whistle. "So… like a very flamboyant tax collector."
He exhales smoke, slow and offended. "You know nothing of the craft. There's nuance to it. Dread must be timed. Fire must be applied with precision. You don't just roast a castle. You silhouette it against the sky. You haunt people with absence. Fear isn't just fire. It's memory."
I blink. "You rehearsed that in a mirror, didn't you."
"Years ago. And it still holds up."
I grin. "So you've basically been doing the same job since the Bronze Age. Impressive. Ever think about switching careers?"
He growls.
I don't let up. Arms still crossed, foot tapping now. "Come on, you can't have just torched barns and hoarded baubles your whole life. Didn't you ever think—just once—of doing something else?"
He shifts, wings twitching. A flick of his tail gives him away.
"Oh," I say, eyes lighting up. "There is something."
He grumbles. "Well… there was a time. When I was younger. Some of the lads—other drakes, the ambitious types—they flew east. Crossed the Inner Sea. Signed on with the Imperium."
I raise a brow. "The Imperium?"
He nods. "Big gold banners. Statues everywhere. Rituals. Bureaucracy. They hired dragons as aerial artillery. Siege beasts. Court pets. Grand honor, if you like leashes."
"And you?"
"I stayed," he says simply.
"Why?"
He shrugs, almost sheepish. "Didn't want to wear livery. Didn't want to be some emperor's flaming lapdog. And this side of the globe… it's enough. Hills, rivers, terrified peasants. Plenty to do."
"Let me guess," I say, smirking, "you like being the main monster in your story."
He doesn't deny it. Just blows a little smoke and mutters, "I'm not fond of sharing credit."
"Wow," I say. "So it's not just me. You're also a petty, greedy, prideful disaster who stuck to the one thing you were good at because the alternatives involved kissing ass."
He side-eyes me. "Takes one to know one."
I wink. "See? We're the real working class."