FOREWORD:

Here it is - the dragon story! Finally finished. So excited. I feel like I've been writing and editing this forever.

I initially meant for this to be a short (as in, "a couple of chapters, maybe") satirical piece on P+S fighting a rogue dragon but er. . . somehow it found a life of its own. See, someone said in a review/PM/comment: what does P see in S? Or, more pertinently, how can we justify a thousands-of-years-old, extremely powerful, royal, immortal magical being with the world at his feet falling for an insecure tween mortal with serious trust and anger issues and a fair bit of emotional baggage, and whose only redeeming qualities seem to be a "mean right hook" and a not-particularly-unique love for her family?

(And no, "fate" doesn't count. Not if there was no premise to start with. I mean, if we claim, "the cat made me do it," we'd better have had a cat somewhere in the house.)

How, indeed.

So I put these two sillies in my head and told them, "convince me it wasn't just the hormones." And this story happened.

And "a couple of chapters, maybe" turned into 20 (at last count). Well, what can you do - sometimes the characters go where they will. But hey, if you liked BRINK, maybe you'd like this one, too. I'm going to be editing and posting every week or so, so no worries about waiting too long between chapters.

Three things:

one, this is not the sequel to Sixteen, nor is it the prequel to Nineteen. As always, the stories in my daftly-named Age Series are unrelated.

Two, P+S here are very different from their Sixteen or Nineteen (or even Fourteen) selves. I'd been writing P and S as sweet, soul-matey types thus far, which in a way they are, but I thought it might be fun to explore the more volatile side of their friendship in Seventeen. So a bit of identity crises, dealing with parents and your-world-my-world conflicts, as well as the fiery passion and unflinching loyalty of late adolescence - all the awkward and wonderful things that define us at that stage in our lives, human or Everafter. I hope you enjoy.

Three, I'd like to recommend a fic called The Fledgling Year by Schmo and Sushi. You can find it under the Favorites Stories tab in my profile. This is a story about Shasta/Cor and Aravis from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy. The writing is gorgeous, the story is historically lavish and the characters wonderfully developed. It has so much heart and soul, and I personally think it is far superior to many commercially published books out there. It's a long fic - almost 100 chapters - but well worth the read. I'm pointing you to it because its two main characters are children in the original work but we're told at the end of the book that they get together when they've grown up. So many similarities to P and S, and so much fun to parallel the romantic tension between both couples. A true delight to read.

Finally, because it's cheating for an entire chapter to comprise just the A/N, here's a limerick to redeem myself. Think of it as the prologue to this dragon story.

"Love," said a fairy named Puck*,

"is a lot like being hit by a truck -

you see it afar

so you're safe where you are,

then you're steamrolled before you can duck."

##

*Puck disclaims: "Absolutely NO personal experience was used in the making of this limerick. At all. Ever. Nada."

All hail Michael Buckley for creating such characters as to inspire even those of us well past the recommended reading age of the books to continue telling their stories. Thank you, sir, for letting me borrow them.

Look out for Chapter One after the weekend!

~QaS