Author's Note:
So this is my first fic; I figured I've been lurking on this site for long enough and I should actually start contributing, so here it is. I've always loved dragons, stories where damsels are not in distress (personal favorite: Patricia C. Wrede's Dealing With Dragons series), and the myth of Hades and Persephone, so here is my attempt to combine them. Please read and review, and be nice! I am quite capable of taking constructive criticisms, but flames will make me very sad and disappointed with humanity and other depressing stuff.
This is how the story goes...
He should have known better. The dragon growled to himself as he checked the state of his many wounds, inflicted by the mercenaries who had left him for dead within the confines of the small rocky cave. Dragons can't win, after all. That isn't how the stories go. The knight in shining armor comes riding in on his noble white stallion, valiantly vanquishes the wicked dragon, and rescues the lovely maiden whether she really wants to be rescued or not, and no matter how benign the dragon. Not that the dragon really considered himself benign, of course. It was the principle of the thing. And this particular knight hadn't even been brave. Other knights, they'd come with only themselves, their armor and their swords. He'd killed them, of course, but they could die in the knowledge that they had secured their place in heaven by going up against impossible odds. This knight had been bespelled by the king to be invincible and had brought an entire troupe of mercenaries! The dragon growled again, angrily, at the memory. The knight had even poisoned all the mercenaries as soon as they had vanquished the dragon for him. A brave knight indeed. He wanted all the credit for himself, naturally. And he wanted her.
Not that she was particularly beautiful. She wasn't. She was rich, which was what had attracted the knight. It wasn't what had made the dragon take her, though. It was the way she had glared at him when he had descended on her father's castle, breathing fire and causing general panic and mayhem- not without fear, because anybody who looks at a dragon without fear is either supremely stupid or is insane and imagines that the roaring, fire-breathing beast is a fluffy little rabbit- but she had looked at him at first as though he was under a lens, something she wanted to classify, an unknown quantity, fulfillment of a theory that she hadn't even known she'd put forward until its proof was in front of her, ready to bite her head off. Then she had chucked a watermelon from the ruined feast table at his head. He had been attacked with a great many weapons, but a watermelon was something entirely new. So he had taken her, carried her off to the mountains, leaving her father, the greedy miser, wringing his hands and wondering how he would ever recover in his negotiations with the neighboring lord, as his daughter had been part of the deal. And her mother, determined to save her little girl, (whom she still tried to dress in bows and lace and sit on her lap like a doll) shrieking like a banshee and demanding that her husband do something.
No wonder the girl hadn't seemed particularly put out at being abducted by a dragon. Once the general courtesies were out of the way- he promised not to eat her, she promised that there would be no further flinging of any fruity projectiles- he'd made an effort to be civil for once, and found that she amused him; indeed, she fascinated him. She liked to argue about everything- it didn't matter if she was right, she would just do it for the sake of arguing. She made scientific drawings of the plants and animals of the mountains, and pestered him until he carried her up so that she could test her theory that the air was thinner at higher altitudes. She named him Pluto, after the coldest, loneliest planet she could see through her makeshift telescope, the planet that swung in a wild, elliptical orbit, a planet that she said shouldn't even be a planet, for all that it behaved like one. She was fond of telling the dragon, only half-jokingly, that he was an anomaly, an impossibility, something that shouldn't exist. His wings shouldn't carry his weight, the breathing fire was simply ludicrous, and the fact that he made intelligent conversation with triple rows of teeth in his mouth was absurd. She asked him if he was a figment of her imagination. He had told her loftily that it all had to do with magic. She had laughed.
Of course, her parents couldn't leave well enough alone. And when a brave and handsome knight had shown up claiming that he could slay the fearsome beast, and only wanted the small price of the daughter's hand in marriage, they agreed. So he went. He came, he saw, he conquered. Except he hadn't. He had gotten the girl, yes, dragged her away out of the cave where the dragon had told her to hide when he heard the knight coming. She hadn't left willingly, had called out for her Pluto. The knight had said that she was surely in shock. He told her it was all over, that she was fine now. She would forget everything, and it would be like a bad dream. He'd take her home to her mother, who would cry and wail about her precious little daughter, and they would live happily ever after. Of course, the drugs he had slipped into her food would help with the forgetting part, and would ensure that she wouldn't get any scientific notions into her head later.
The dragon smiled faintly. The drugs would help, certainly. The knight would beg for the maiden's hand. She might even say yes. There would be rejoicing throughout the kingdom. But she would never forget her dragon. After all, she had eaten the fruit. He had warned her about it, told her that she mustn't eat it. But of course, she had to. Always curious, always having to prove him wrong. She had slipped into his garden one day, picked it. He knew she would. He himself had planted the seeds in her mind by telling her not to touch it. He'd found her there, juice dripping down her chin, laughing. She remarked later about how much clearer things seemed, how all seemed to fall into place. So yes, the knight could drug her. But she had tasted the forbidden fruit. Her mind would always break free of its restraints, fly out and start singing and dancing equations, vectors, mitochondria, tesseracts. She would always stray towards the darkened cliffs and caverns, high mountain peaks and thin air, the smell of pine trees. Always, coiling in her mind would be flashing, iridescent, diamond-hard scales, writhing smoke, glowing eyes, and a voice that sounded like the dying notes of a symphony of thunder. She would come back. She had to. The fruit had bound her to that place and the one who lived there.
The dragon laughed. Not that anybody who had happened to see him at that moment would have considered it a laugh, given how frightening the baring of a triple row of teeth and a sound like the end of the world generally is. But it was laughter. He knew she would be back with her notebooks and charcoal, her equations and her triangles and her hypotheses. She would return to him, to the only one who knew who she was.
Persephone. The dragon thought. And he smiled.