Disclaimer: I want a knight and a dragon...don't have one

Bowen yawned softly as he woke up and hour before dawn, he was stiff and smelled like rotten meat; the dragon's breath had reeked of it. Speaking of the beast, Bowen sat up to see the beast snorting fire on the log trapping his tail, it took only a couple of fire balls to weaken the wood enough for the dragon to break a good part of the log off, but not the part encasing his tail.

Bowen smiled and waited a few more moments before standing with a chuckle and unsheathing his sword.

The dragon hadn't seen him yet, so when he tried to dislodge the wood from his tail, he almost took off Bowen's head.

"Watch it!" There went Bowen's calm mood as the dragon's tail came to the ground with a smack in front of him.

"Sorry 'bout that." The dragon said tersely and tried to pry it off with his now cracked and broken talons.

Bowen rolled his eyes and started hacking at the wood with his sword, ignoring the feel of the dull metal and sharp chips flying.

The pair worked silently, trying to move fast. Frustration and impatience gave way to common sense and Bowen was at his breaking point, "It'd be easier to just cut it off." Was the mutter. The dragon was unamused, instead of using Bowen; the beast took his anger out on the trees and whipped his tail into them, shattering the log off.

Bowen sobered at that and left to find his horse, the dragon heard a deer a little further off and started to head quietly towards it, but something the pair had forgotten stopped him.

Bowen turned when he heard the dragon hit the ground and remembered the bolos and his saddle, barely able to make it back to the clearing, Bowen burst out laughing with the dragon sprawled on the ground with his leg stretched out behind him. The dragon snarled and tried to push himself up, but was too sprawled out to barely move. Bowen risked a glance at the dragon as he tried to stop laughing, the dragon shoved hard and winced, one of his forelimbs was trapped beneath most of his weight, and it was really starting to hurt.

Again giving the dragon a hand, Bowen found the tree the saddle was imbedded in and wrenched it free after untying the bolos' chain. The saddle was thrown onto the horse's back, the stallion having followed Bowen to the tree. Bowen began to wrap up the length of chain and then started to slowly untangle the mesh and bolos from the dragon's claws.

The beast sighed softly then winced as the blood rushed back into his forelimb as he stood. A half-hearted grin was all the knight received before the beast took off…

I always wondered about that particular morning after...how about you?