Author's Note: Just for a bit of background, this is a story in response to a personal challenge. Each chapter is in based on a particular suit of a regular deck of cards (spades hearts, diamonds, clubs). Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Spades

Selendrile was out stretching his wings when he saw her. He rolled his eyes. Yet another maiden left out for the dragon to devour. Would humans never learn? Well he was definitely not going to help. He had sworn off his role has the hero when the last maiden had fainted and, thinking she was dead, her father and brothers had pursued him everywhere except his hidden mountain cave. They had only stopped after a generous compensation from his hoard—and Selendrile didn't like being generous-and the maiden coming to. This maiden, he could tell, was angry, making her fairly different than all the other sacrifices swooning in fear at the sight of him, What's more, this maiden caught sight of him and yelled into the sky.

"Hey dragon! You want a roasted maiden for lunch? Well come and get me!" Now he had to land, if only out of sheer curiosity. When he landed the aforementioned damsel in distress was fuming.

"You stupid dragons are all the same, always hungry, forever greedy." It seemed the conversation would continue in this vein and Selendrile hardly needed another irate person's opinion about dragons. In fact, he would have let, giving her something to puzzle about—something to confound her silly notions—if it hadn't been for what she said next. "So go ahead. Eat me. I have nothing to lose. Not anymore."

For the first time in his long, long life Selendrile had found an interesting human, what's more an interesting human who was seemingly unafraid of dragons. He decided to pursue this conversation further so he changed into human form. That certainly shut the maiden up. Oh. He'd forgotten. Currently, as human as he was, he was divest of all garments that a human might wear. That and the fact he'd just transformed from beast to man couldn't have helped much.

"Oh for Pete's sake," he said. It seemed there was nothing he could do to placate these humans. He sank down into a sitting position and crossed his legs.

"There. Is that enough to comply with your modest sensibilities? Mind you, I can't get you out of those bonds like this."

"What are you?" the girl asked. Yet, even struck as dumb as she was, cleverness gleamed in her eyes. It seemed as though she would file away Selendrile's answer in her head, to be used (with some benefit to herself) at a later date.

"It should be obvious by now," Selendrile said in a sardonic tone. Then he stood up and remembered the satchel at his ankle which held clothes, which he had for just such situations as this one. He started to put the clothes on and noticed the maiden, despite her supposedly delicate sensibilities, was staring. "What? I'm covering up. Isn't that what you wanted?" Quickly she averted her eyes, at his words.

"You said something about getting me out," she said tentatively, still adamantly refusing to look in his direction. "Can you get to that spade over there? She pointed to a spot on the ground with her foot as her hands were tied behind her back around the wooded pole the villagers tied her to. So thoughtful of them really, not to use iron, thought Selendrile wryly. From the scuff marks in the earth around the spade, it was evident that the maiden had tried in vain to get the tool closer to her. However, it remained just out of her reach. Selendrile picked up the useful tool and was about to hand it to her when he remembered that her hands were, quite literally, tied. He sighed. He always regretted his good deeds in the end. Nevertheless, with strength much greater than an ordinary man, he struck through the rope imprisoning her hands with one whack. The maiden freed herself and then glanced at Selendrile in confusion. He took this as his cue to go. Just as he started to turn away from her, the maiden spoke.

"Wait," she said tentatively. "What is your name?" He turned to face her with one raised eyebrow. "I should, at least, get to know the name of the...being fool enough to save me."