You must understand, my Grandmother Brigid is a gnome fair of mien, but not of countenance. When she was young and met someone for the first time they would usually grab her and start hollering for medical attention. Her right eye is blue where left is green, and bulges to twice its companion's size. The hump on her back makes her left shoulder higher than the right, but I tell you from experience either arm swings a chastening wooden spoon with impressive force. I know for a fact my Uncle Milty once declined to duel a man who made an unfavorable comparison between her face and the south end of a northbound swine. I guess her nose is not so bad. Birds admire it so much sometimes they perch on it.
Her parents did their best to raise her in the fashion of the day. She learned to cook and clean and sew. She could herd sheep, tend a garden, and knew the uses of herbs. She was always quick to help anyone who could use an extra hand, and to say a kind word when someone was down. She even became a good shot with a sling, and learned to weave illusions. She never was much for tricks, being the target of so many, you see, but she had a clever tongue and was good at the Insult Game.
When Brigid came of age she began to look for a husband. The way my grandmother says it, "you don't need to be married to start a family, but it cuts down on weird looks from the neighbors." Unfortunately, all of the bachelors in her village mysteriously chose to be celibate.
She was sad, not being able to find a husband and all, and the village was sad, not seeing any chances for marriages any time in the near future, so the city council cast oracles and looked for signs of answers. One day when her parents were on a trip, they remembered a group of gnome men had traveled way south, to the hills that birth the mighty Thesselindrach (called the Dragon's Tail in the Common tongue), to prospect for emeralds. They suggested my grandmother travel there to look for a husband, and she agreed. That was back in 436, the year before the village had an unusual baby boom.
So there she was, a tender young gnome, making her way all alone in the world, traveling up the dangerous Dragon's Tail to find a husband. Wherever she stopped she asked about the prospectors, and sometimes she found some old human who remembered stories of a group of gnomes traveling up the river to the hills, so she kept going.
Eventually she made her way into the mountains that birth the Dragon's Tail, and after searching for two months, found mine tailings, followed them, and discovered a mine and a fine manor house partially built into a mountain. The door was locked, but only against big folk, so she got in easy enough. The place was big enough to hold fifty gnomes, but was empty and showed signs of long neglect. Brigid suspected the city council suspected there weren't going to be gnome men at the headwaters of the Dragon's Tail.
She was wandering around the manor, examining the few furnishings that had not fallen to pieces, when a gnome man appeared in the hallway. His skin was a red so dark it was almost black, he had a spiky ginger beard, and wore fierce leathers and a cap, all dyed red, which I imagine is quite uncomfortable and was not at all in fashion at Brigid's village. He wore cast iron boots that sometimes struck sparks as he walked.
"This is MY house," the red gnome shouted at her.
"As you say," Brigid replied. She indicated a nearby room. "I was thinking of fixing up this room to stay in for a while."
"No!" he shouted. "This is MY house."
My grandmother sniffed, which, just imagine her nose, is quite a production. "There is no need to be rude. I will just set up somewhere else, then. I was looking for some gnomes who were mining emeralds hereabouts. Do you know where they are?"
The red gnome was taken aback. He was used to people being scared of him, with his fierce leathers and all. "They are GONE," he shouted. "And you will be too, if you do not GO AWAY!"
"Pish-posh," Brigid replied. "I have come a long way, from a village that might not be too ready to see me again too soon. I think I will rest up a bit before I go back. It's not like I'll be in your way."
The red gnome snorted and stomped his foot hard enough to crack the slate flooring. But my grandmother looked on with indifference, and he realized she was not scared of him, and never would be.
"Fine," the red gnome said through gritted teeth. "But stay out of my way. And do not eat any of my vicuña."
Brigid had seen the strange animals as she climbed the tailings to the manor.
"Those things?" she asked. "Like I would try to eat something so big."
This was not at all how the red gnome thought this conversation would go. "They. Are. MINE!"
He stormed down the hallway. Brigid heard a door slam, and the click of several locks. She shrugged and left the manor house.
She decided to give her situation a thorough think. The area around the manor house was desolate because of forest fires, but we gnomes have few needs, so she set herself up a comfortable burrow some ways down the valley from the manor house.
She made friends with the local rabbits (you have to be cautious about that, rabbits are very tricky so Granny says you have to play on their vanity). They told her where to find plenty of food, and about the vicuña that lived in the mountains. The local badgers taught her about the local predators (Granny says you should always bring some honeycomb when you negotiate with badgers), and helped arrange for a pack of wolves to leave her alone . With just a few of the locals on your side, it does not have to be difficult to live somewhere.
Something, perhaps the red gnome's insistence that the animals belonged to him, made her curious about the vicuña. You may find it hard to believe, but she had never seen one before. She visited the herds in the mountains, learned their names, and befriended them. She learned about their wool, the softest and warmest known anywhere, by picking it from bushes they passed. She made some combs and brushes, to gather the wool, which is slow but the best way. I've heard of people shearing them like sheep but that leaves them vulnerable to the cold mountain air.
Her gentle hands helped the herds grow. She drove away the wolves and catamounts that preyed on them. She guided them from pasture to pasture, ensuring plenty to eat, and that none got lost. She healed the sick and wounded, and midwifed their births. And when the red gnome took one for a meal, she would gather the herd back together and calm them so they could return to a happier life.
One night she heard a terrible windstorm outside her burrow, then someone was shouting.
"I know you are in there. Come out!"
Brigid peeked from her burrow, and there was the red gnome, dressed in his fierce leathers, pacing impatiently in front of her borrow.
"You don't have a bell or even a door," he scolded her. She shrugged. "The flocks of vicuña seem to be growing."
"I reckon so," Brigid replied.
He waited for her to say more, but when she did not he turned and walked away. When she went back into her burrow, she heard another windstorm. The next morning she found lumber, a chest of gold and gems she could barely lift, and a fine brass bell with a snappy tone and cheerful sustain.
Brigid did not see the red gnome again for some time, but she suspected he was watching her. The frequent wildfires in the mountains are something that attracts orcs, and sure enough, a group showed up and began hunting in the area. After several days she tricked them into following her, and buried almost all of them in a rockslide. Their Nob, though, survived, and almost caught her, but she fell from a cliff instead. She thought she was done for, but awoke in her own bed, with three magical potions nearby to help her heal.
Also at the foot of her bed was a coil of silk rope, thin and light and strong, and a hammer backed hatchet that chops through wood like cheese, or stone and metal like softwood, and to this day has never shown signs of nicks or dulling. My cousin Carbuncle shaved my head with it once, and the beating we got afterward...I still won't even sit under a willow tree.
My grandmother lived her life, tending the vicuña with the help of the rabbits and badgers. She spun their fantastic wool into the finest yarns. A small chest of gold and gems would show up outside her burrow sometimes. Occasionally she would would travel to the nearest town to trade for things to make her life more interesting and comfortable.
One day she heard a large commotion, and saw a small army, almost two hundred strong, advancing up the mountainside. She saw human and dwarven warriors in mail, and elven archers who were almost invisible among the rocks. She saw clerics of multiple religions, chanting and swinging incense. She even saw six wizards, five picking their way among the rocks, while the most powerful reclined in comfort on a carpet that floated above the ground. She watched them come and go, careful not to be seen, until the last disappeared over a saddle that led to the next valley. She shut the door to her burrow and hid under her bed.
That night there was a terrible battle in the next valley. She could not hear the screams, but there were explosions that shook dust from her ceiling, and booms that made her cover her ears. Just before morning there was silence.
The next morning she left her burrow and cautiously followed the route the army had taken over the saddle to the next valley. This valley was behind the mountain the manor house was built into, and she had never ventured there. The rabbits had told her it was a place of burnt trees and blasted rock, and the single stream that flowed down its middle was bright yellow with poison.
The moment she reached the trail leading into the valley, she knew the place the rabbits described was better than what lay before her. All that remained of any trees were charred stumps. Smoking craters pockmarked the valley. The stream smoked, too, a bright green smoke rising from behind piles of rubble that blocked the water in several places. Some two hundred dead bodies were strewn across the landscape. Some were burnt, others were torn apart or raked with deep wounds. At the bottom of the valley, his back against a massive stone, red hat beside him, lay the red gnome, covered in wounds, unconscious and barely breathing, but still holding a ten foot long pike, more than three times his own height.
Brigid cautiously bound his wounds and gently stretched him out on the ground. She found some healing potions among the bodies, and gave one to the red gnome. Some of the wounds closed, but he remained unconscious. She rigged a travois from some intact cloaks and elven bowstaves, and dragged the unconscious figure back to her burrow.
There she put him in her bed and gave him another healing potion. His breathing improved, but he did not open his eyes. She watched him for a while until she convinced herself he would not die in the next few hours. Then she picked up her hatchet and went looking for supplies. One thing Brigid did not worry about was getting the blood out of her lovely vicuña wool blanket, because she had a foolproof soap for removing stains.
My grandmother spent weeks nursing the red gnome back to health. She changed his bandages and linens. She fed him soups and stews. As he woke for longer and longer periods, she fed him more solid foods. When she was cooking, cleaning, or working at her loom, she would sing, not the best singer, my grandmother, just songs we gnomes sing while cooking, gardening, or taking care of children, but it kept him calm. At night she would play her mbira, halflings call it a thumb-harp, but we gnomes play with the first two fingers of each hand, which helped him sleep comfortably.
One morning she brought in the red gnome's breakfast and found him sitting up, clear-eyed and with a slight smile. He had removed his bandages, and his wounds were faded to thin scars. He took the tray she offered, and the two watched each other as he ate.
"You saved my life," the red gnome told her.
"Aye."
"Why?"
It was not an easy question, but she had had weeks to work out the answer.
"You were the only one still alive," she replied.
"King Gulder's army is dead, then?"
"All of them, to a man."
"It is time for me to go outside," he said as he finished eating. "Where are my leathers?"
"They were torn to shreds," Brigid told him. "But I have something you can wear." She brought him a robe, one of the finest examples of the weaving for which she is justifiably famous, dyed red the way the rising sun is sometimes, and a new cap, dyed the color of fresh blood. The red gnome fingered the fabrics with wonder.
"I should have paid more attention to their outsides," he said with a faint smile. Brigid looked away politely as he donned his robe. He took her by the hand and led her outside. There he took a deep breath chest swelling unexpectedly large, laughed loudly, and changed.
His whole body swelled in size, his arms lengthening as he bent over. He grew a long neck and tail, and wings grew from his back. His skin roughened, thickened, and became scaly, while retaining the same dark red color. He raised his now reptilian head to the sky and blasted a plume of flame over a hundred feet into the air.
He roared so loudly Brigid was staggered. The dragon scooped her up easily and launched into the sky. In this form, the remnants of his injuries made his flying labored as he worked himself up and over the ridge. He quickly spotted rows upon rows of cairns and glided to them. He landed poorly, crashing into the ground, but deposited Brigid back on her feet unharmed.
"What do you think of my true form?" the dragon asked the gnome.
"I've known what you are since the day we met," Brigid told him. "That is how I knew to bind your wounds with sulfur, and dissolve saltpeter in your soup.
The dragon laughed, more softly this time, and changed back into a gnome. He spent a few minutes walking among the graves, which were piled with their occupants' former possessions. He stopped in front of one with an ornate helm, and picked it up. After contemplating it for a few moments he wadded up the helm like cheap paper and dropped it back on the stones. He picked up his pike and laid it across his shoulders.
"That answers that, your Grace," he told the grave. Then he turned back to Brigid.
"Now what?" she asked.
The dragon smiled with his gnome mouth. "The gnomes that built that manor house, were they your kin?"
Brigid shook her head. "My village tricked me into coming here to look for a husband." The dragon's eyes flashed with anger, but he blinked it away. "I will not return without a proper trick to repay them."
"I had been asleep for a decade when the gnomes started to mine the back of my mountain," the dragon said. "I do not think they realized what they had done when they breached my bedchamber. I...was rash...when I awoke to find them there."
"Now what?" Brigid repeated. "We can no longer pretend I do not know what you are."
The red gnome lept to the top of a boulder and pointed his pike at her.
"Now what?" he mused. "What to do with a little gnome, who creeps about my mountains like a mouse, expanding my flocks without being asked, and saves my life when common sense should tell her to let me die?" He transformed back into his dragon form, and lowered one great eye to peer into Brigid's. He rumbled deep in his throat.
"Marry me," he said. "Be my wife. Take care of my flocks, sing and play music for me, become a famous weaver of fabrics."
"But I know your nature," Brigid said. "Will you hit me when you are angry? Or eat me when you are hungry?"
The dragon threw up his head, laughed, and shot a plume of fire into the air.
"It would be safer to catch lightning than to mishandle someone of your cleverness," he said. "And it would be easier to choke down my mountain than to swallow you and all of your courage."
"What of my dowry?" the gnome woman asked. "I have nothing that did not already belong to you."
The dragon turned back into a red gnome and went down on one knee before her.
"Music played to comfort, songs of a life I never imagined, a robe of surpassing quality and softness," he said. "These are a dowry I suddenly treasure as much as half my hoard."
He took her hands in his, and whispered in her ear something even I do not know. "That is my true name. There is nothing you could do to me with it that would hurt as much as your refusal. By the custom of my people, if you agree, we are married."
"I will call you Red Cap," Brigid said, and laughed, and she pulled his hat over his eyes. "But how will our marriage work?"
Red Cap lept into the air, and landed back on the boulder in his dragon form.
"I know my own nature," he said. "I will take you back to your own country, with vicuña to raise and enough gold and gems for you to be comfortable. I will visit you, to make sure you are comfortable, and to cull my flock. We will have children. I must raise raise the first son myself, but the rest you can teach your cleverness and courage, and they will make you proud, and be a comfort in your old age."
My grandfather was as good as his word, so my clan follows his example to this day. They returned to my grandmother's village, and bought a large house. She had six beautiful daughters and seven strong sons, the oldest of which my grandfather took away when he cut his first tooth, and none of us grandchildren have met him.
As my grandfather promised, she taught her children her courage and cleverness, and they passed those gifts down to her grandchildren.
She raised a large flock of vicuña, so many she could no longer spin the yarn by hand, but my Aunt Jenny invented a machine, powered by a water wheel, to spin the wool almost as well as my Grandmother Brigid. Trade in vicuña wool has made her almost as wealthy as the chests of gold and gems my grandfather brings her. Our wool was famous before this castle was built. I have traded it in many lands myself, and will be proud to continue to do so for many years into the future.
As I said, my grandmother passed her courage and cleverness all of her grandchildren. I have gifts from my grandfather as well. I take grave offense when something of mine is stolen, like if soldiers I have seen guarding your gates rob my caravan and murder my guards.
I have a certain low cunning, the sort to remember to kill a snake by cutting off its head. The sort willing to be thrown into a dungeon, with its myriad smells of death and decay, to be near a certain thieving baron who famously gloats over his prisoners.
Ah, look, I've broken my chains. And there goes the door-you really should have had it bound in iron. Don't bother to run, it was too late when your men waylaid my caravan. You cannot outrun the Red Caps. No one can.