Dinner Guest

She really had been lucky to find such a bounty, and Meriadoc reminded herself of this fact every step of the way. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew that she’d been underprepared for her journey across the countryside. 

The sprite lifted one end of the branch she had skewered her pig on, turning it so it would cook on the other side. She’d spent hours tending to it, and her mouth watered as she watched the fat sizzle on the meat, dripping into fire. She wished she’d had her cookware with her, she could have collected those drippings and roasted some vegetables in it. Ah well, this would be plenty for her. 

She hadn’t intended to stay in this area for long, but she’d found a pig dangling from a tree with a noose around its leg, too tired to even squeal as she had cut it down. Meriadoc was no thief though, and she had waited for hours to see if anyone would come for the pig. When no one had, she dispatched it quickly, drained and gutted it, and set it over a modest fire. Now here she lay, with just enough of a clearing around her that it didn’t feel like the trees were closing in around her. She could see a patch of starlight overhead too, and she watched them twinkle with a smile on her face. 

The fire crackled and spat, and beyond that crickets chirped in the trees around her. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, until it didn’t. Meri turned her head to the side and looked beyond her little campfire, but the flames had spoiled her night vision. She blinked a few times and strained her hearing, but only the hiss of the fire remained. The forest was silent, and that set her on edge. 

Before she could even move from her place, a shape lumbered out of the trees, fearsome teeth flashing in the light of the fire, blue eyes pinned and a hiss rumbling in a broad, brown chest. 

The dracus snarled at her, but Meri did not run. She saw the dracus’s matted brown mane with leaves and twigs stuck all through it and smears of dark brown covering light-colored scales. She watched as he descended on her campfire, grabbing the pig between his jaws and leaping back with a defensive snarl. He ripped the branch out of the carcass and tore chunks from it, swallowing them whole without tasting. His tail lashed behind him, toppling a sapling and he flinched when it crashed to the ground. 

She watched as the dracus devoured her dinner – and what would likely have been her breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next day – in silence, a little disappointed but realizing that a drakiri with those manners must have been truly desperate. The state of them too, she realized, hinted at a series of unfortunate events. 

Only once the pig was gone did the dracus calm, sinking to the ground some distance away from her and belching before resting his head on the grass. 

“May I at least know your name?” Meri asked, her voice seeming loud in the silence that followed the dracus’s feast. She saw his eyes crack open and his lips twitch in annoyance, but he must have decided that talking to her wasn’t going to kill him. 

“Milarose,” he said finally. 

“I like that name,” she said, smiling still, “and I would have liked to eat some of that pig. I imagine you must have been famished, though.” 

The stranger glanced at her and then turned his head away, turning his body so his back was to her. He clearly wasn’t interested in conversing. It would have been nice to have a distraction from her rumbling belly, but Meri wouldn’t push the subject. She stood and kicked earth over the fireplace before she moved to where she had set up her bed. She hesitated, having intended to go right to sleep, but when she looked over her shoulder and saw the dracus fast asleep, she wondered if his day wouldn’t be made better by helping with those twigs. Maybe he would help her find another pig if she did him this favor. 

The sprite walked over to the dracus, placing her hooves carefully until she was certain he wouldn’t wake. He must have been exhausted. As she neared him, she realized he was caked in foul-smelling mud, and she knew he must have had a terribly difficult night. Removing these leaves and twigs was likely to be the first in a series of long steps to get this poor creature back on his feet. Maybe she could convince him to visit the nearby river? She surely hoped he would have time to find that pig…