Disclaimer: This story is completely original. All characters, settings, and events are spawned from my own mixed up little mind and may not be used, copied, or adapted without my express written permission. Do not steal my story!!!

4.

Supper was a lively affair, as it usually was with all of them there. Then Lynne and Toby said good night to Edna and Dominic. Toby promptly retreated to her room to 'do homework,' even though she'd finished her homework during her free period, which she usually spent in the library where the others couldn't taunt her… as loudly, anyway.

She was curled up on her bed, a large book propped open on her knees, when she heard it outside – a huge THUMP! as if something very large had just landed in their backyard. She sat up.

"Mom?" she called, but her mother didn't answer. Sighing, she closed the book and tossed it onto her bed. "If this is another prank, I'm getting the BB gun out…"

She descended the stairs, still muttering to herself. "They better not have squished my pansies… I'll definitely shoot them if they did. Mom?" She peeked her head into the living room, but her mother was nowhere to be seen. She shrugged her mother's absence off (her mother was very weird, as established by the fact that her daughter's name was Tobias and she made milkshakes of vanilla and celery). Instead, she headed out back to investigate the source of the noise.

Pushing the creaky screen door open, she gazed out over the patch of semi-trimmed grass they called their backyard. It disappeared into forest where their land ended and was interrupted by several half-hearted attempts at gardens or landscaping, the neatest and least-forgotten of which were Toby's pansies.

There was nothing there.

The screen door slammed shut behind her and she tucked her arms around her as she frowned, fireflies dotting the night air. "Hello?" she called. "This is private property, you're trespassing. Go home!"

Don't yell, I can hear you perfectly fine.

The voice bloomed inside of her head, a rich baritone accompanied by soft humming, as if the sound was so pleasing her brain was quivering with joy. It was neither soft nor loud, but impossibly beautiful, and for a moment she didn't care that it was also alien and strange.

Princess?

She jumped, jolted out of her temporary reverie. "Wh-who's there? How are you doing that?" Her eyes scoured the garden, but saw nothing… until a wedge shaped head born on a long, graceful neck lowered into her view from above. It sparkled in the evening darkness as if its scales were made of millions of tiny sapphires, its eyes luminescent and glowing softly like twin moons in its slim head.

Toby screamed.

She stumbled back, fell on her butt, and screamed again, at which the thing— the dragon— reared up out of her sight.

Ow! I said I could hear you! followed her as she scrambled to her feet and fled inside, slamming the door behind her and locking it. There's a dragon on my porch roof, there's a dragon on my porch roof, there's a dragon on my porch roof…ran through her head as she ran through the house.

"Mom?! Mom! Mom!!"

Your mother's been eaten, the dragon informed her, and she gripped her head again at the sensation of hearing his voice in her head. She was almost positive it was a he, she could just …tell.

"What? Eaten?! By what?!"

That strange metal beast that sat in front of your house. It swallowed her up and then headed off along its path. Such a silly creature, your mother. She walked right up to it.

The house creaked and then there was a muffled thump to one side of the kitchen. A minute later she could see the dragon peering through the window at her, his eye shining brilliantly in the darkness. She stared, feeling detached from reality as her mind worked to make sense of what he was saying.

"The car?"

Is that what that beast was?

"It's not a beast at all! It's a machine!"

Whatever that means… The dragon's nonchalant voice swept through her mind, so much like a song that she could nearly hear the melody of his relative disinterest in the subject.

"She's not eaten, she's just fine. She controls the car," Toby said as if speaking through a fog. She was talking. To a dragon. Through the kitchen window. Maybe she'd fallen asleep..?

Oh. The dragon harrumphed softly, the gesture making the house quiver. He twisted his neck, peering at her through the window with his other eye. Oh, do come out of there, Princess. It's not dignified to have an audience through a window, no matter what part of the world you're from.

"… you'll eat me."

The dragon let out a bellow that sounded like a flurry of horns all being blown at the same time, straightening up. She shrank back, afraid that she'd angered him, but when his voice bloomed in her mind again it was full of indignation.

Eat you? What do you take me for, a 14th century dragon? I, your Highness, would never dare eat a princess. I just need you to be distressed.

She stared at him as her brain worked slowly through what he was saying, finally blinking in confusion at the end – well, at all of it, but mostly the end. "… be distressed? I'm rather distressed right now, if you couldn't tell!"

Yeeeeeees, but I need you distressed out here. How are we supposed to have an epic battle with you inside that box of twigs like that?

"A battle? What?!"

The dragon harrumphed again, an annoyed sound, as he craned his head to try and see her more fully. He looked like he was about ready to reach through the window and grab her, and she backed up again.

Yes. A battle, Princess. You know, what Knights and Dragons are supposed to do? His snout nudged the window impatiently. Hurry up, it's been ages since we've had a good battle. Get out here, your royal damsel-ness, and be distressed!

"You have got to be kidding me! This isn't real. I must have hit my head or something. Oh, god." She sank to the floor, covering her head with her hands. She could hear the dragon's note of annoyance again, but squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe if she tried, really really hard, she could just wish him away or wake up from this bad dream or something.

There was, quite suddenly, two soft crunches, and then one rather loud and long creak, from all around her. Then came the sound of a thousand boards groaning and then snapping, and the dragon lifted the house up around her. She thought, as she stared up at him, splinters of wood and possessions that slid off of shelves raining down around her, that it really wasn't physically possible for him to just lift it up like that. It was a really big house, after all.

He calmly set the house to one side, leaving only the floor, complete with the furniture, where the house had been. Toby inhaled.

No screaming! The dragon's head suddenly whipped back towards her, barely a foot from her. This close, she could see how each of the small scales on his hide glittered like a prism, and that his eyes were slowly, gently whirling. She choked on her scream, which sent her into a coughing fit.

The dragon sighed – she'd never thought a dragon could sigh – and patted her on the back with the tip of his tail. Please try not to distress yourself to death, Princess. I'm sure my Knight Errant will be here soon enough.

Toby was sure she was hyperventilating and going to pass out at any second. She blinked up at the dragon, who, upon closer inspection, was roughly as long as a bus, not including his tail, which was again as long as his body. His wings were tucked against his sides, but folded up over his back and not neatly at his side like all of the pictures she'd ever seen of dragons. They didn't look like bat wings at all.

He rumbled and she jumped, yelping in surprise, which made him look over at her in irritation.

You sure are jumpy, for a Princess…

"St-stop calling me that!" she finally protested, the first flare of anger sparking into her eyes.

Shush, the dragon instructed, and then curled around her in the remains of the kitchen, his head staring off towards the woods as if waiting for someone. Now just stay there. This is close enough. That blasted Knight should be here soon.

"You spilled the milkshakes," she observed.

Shush!