Castiel.
I woke up to my tribute scent coming up from the village. Yawning, I got up and stretched, before shaking myself off to banish the last tendrils of sleep clinging to me. The village always gave me nice things for my hoard, yet as curious as I was to see what I got this time, I liked to wait. Didn't want the humans to think I was their pet or servant. I might protect them, but that was my choice, and it was good to remind them of that fact. Also, I just liked to annoy them sometimes, as they could be irritating.
I looked around my bed cavern to see if there was anything to put away or clean up. I slept on a cave floor surrounded by a pile of my hoard. I liked to keep my hoard sorted, and the cavern that I liked to sleep in was one of the gold ones. The sleeping hollow was surrounded by piles of gold on all sides except for a gap to get in and out. I knew most dragons organized things based on personal preference and slept in the cavern with their favorites. I, however, found their sorting method to be far too arbitrary. Everything in my hoard was sorted by material, then by what the object was, and because I still wanted to show off my favorites just as much as the rest of my kin, I put the best pieces up higher in the corresponding room. This gold room mostly contained coins with the plain coins making up the stacks around me, the nicer coins up above the main pile, and the glowing blue rocks that lit the cavern in between.
Seeing that everything was in order, I went to check on some of the other caverns. Really I had no reason to do so, as I kept my cave clean, and even less of a reason than normal since I would have to sort the things the humans gave me today. But I wanted to stall going to them and this was better than just standing there waiting.
Tiring quickly of this useless task, I went to my water cavern to soak in the pool. The water was deliciously cold against my scales and washed off the dirt that always came with sleeping on the ground.
After soaking for most of the morning I got out of the water, which streamed off of my smooth scales, sighed, and decided I had put off going to the humans long enough. Besides the Tribute Spot was a good distance away from my cave and if I flew at a leisurely pace it would keep them waiting longer. Not to leisurely though as I was still excited to find out what I would receive. I walked up to the mouth of my cave, spread my wings wide, and took to the air.
The flight there was uneventful, as expected. The Tribute Spot was easy to see, even from this high up. It was at the edge of a forest, so there were still a few trees surrounding it, but not many. The trees then gave way to the rocky ground that was to be my landing point, before dropping off into a sheer cliff. I touched down and, still wanting to keep the humans waiting and assert my place over them, didn't even bother to look at what they gave me until I had shaken out my wings, which was unnecessary. I just wanted to show off my wingspan. With this last display of dominance, I decided that both the humans and I had waited long enough.
I eagerly looked up to see what I would get this time. My excitement, however, quickly died as I saw a human tied up on a gold table. What in the name of goodness above were these humans doing? I knew some of my kin liked sacrifices to be made to them, but I never had, and this village hadn't ever tried to give me one. There was no way on this earth or any other plane of existence that I was going to let this human die in my name. The man clearly wasn't even a willing sacrifice. As I looked into the human's eyes, which even under these circumstances still registered as green, more and more sickening thoughts came over me. What if they weren't just going to kill this human? Maybe they planned on torturing him first. What if they planned on sexually assaulting him in front of me because they thought that, for some sick reason, I would enjoy watching that? With the way they had him tied up it did look like a reasonable worry for me to have.
I reared up on my hind legs and roared. I felt bad for scaring the human worse, but this was all I could think of to get the others away from him before they could do anything. Everyone moved away from me and cowered down at my display. I quickly walked over to the human but was stalled by a scent. I had to make sure of it though, so I bent my head down to sniff the human. I was having trouble actually believing what I was smelling, and momentarily forgetting that I should be getting this human elsewhere with as little distress as possible, licked at trail up his skin. I threw my head back and roared with complete fury. These humans had put my tribute scent on him! I was at a disgusted loss as to why they thought I wanted a sacrifice in the first place, but putting my scent on him. Marking this sickening practice as mine. If the human hadn't of caught my eye just then I would have killed someone. I wasn't violent and didn't like to kill for more than food and then only woodland animals, but this was just so unacceptable. However, correcting them would have to wait until I got this human somewhere safe.
I easily cut through the ropes with my claws and picked the human up in my mouth. I couldn't take off from a standing spot. I was far too heavy for that, but that was why my Tribute Spot was near a cliff. I quickly walked over to it and took off.
As I was flying home, the human in my mouth started to throw himself around, and I worried he would hurt one of us. It was far more likely that the human would be the one getting hurt by hitting one of my teeth or just plain falling down my throat, but its thrashing about could hurt me as well. To avoid any of these scenarios becoming true, I paused for a moment, keeping myself in place with a few powerful beats of my wings, and transferred the human from my mouth to my paw.
It had the desired effect of getting the human to stop struggling. However, this didn't last long. After a few moments, he started to flail around in my paw. That was fine, as I had been careful to hold him away from the points of my claws, and I had held much bigger and stronger creatures than a simple human; he wouldn't be going anywhere. Apparently, he realized this as he stopped wriggling around and finally lay still.
When I got to my cave the landing wasn't as smooth as it normally was with just three of my paws available. I carefully put the human down on the ground and saw that at some point he had passed out. I shifted into my half-way form so I still had my wings and tail but attached to a human body. I could look completely human if I wanted to but I always preferred this. The only reason I usually shifted was to walk among humans, so I had charmed some clothes to appear when I changed.
I wasn't quite certain what to do with the human. It was obvious I couldn't leave him there. He was already shivering violently, and if I left him there much longer he would freeze to death. The problem was I am an ice dragon. Everything was cold. The rocks were cold, the water was cold, my hoard was cold, and I was cold so I couldn't even share body heat with him.
An idea came to me then. I bent down and picked up the human easily, although I hated having to touch him and draw out what little body heat he had left. I had never been so thankful for the way I organized my hoard. Some of the caverns were filled with furs that could keep the human warm. If I had just left them in a pile like most of my kin, he surely would have frozen before I could get enough. Instead, I carried him to my closest fur cavern and made a nest of furs around him.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the only problem to solve. Clothing was another matter with an easy fix. After all, he was in a room full of furs. If he didn't like them I had other rooms with different materials in them: silk and purple dyed linen. The question of food was easily answered as well. I was unusual among dragons for many reasons, one of which was that I ate plants. No solely, of course, but most dragons lived entirely off of meat. I, on the other hand, had a garden. There wasn't as much of a variety as some gardens had because most plants couldn't survive in the cold, but there was enough there to last until I could go down to collect some wild plants that grew in the forest below my cave. There was a storage room of meat for times when prey was hard to find, but that, like everything else in my cave, was frozen solid. To get him meat I would have to hunt it fresh.
Water was a problem that was not so easily addressed. The only water I had was in my cold spring and the small streams that ran into it. He certainly couldn't drink that. I had no idea how I was going to warm up enough water for him to drink, let alone bathe in to get rid of that smell. Maybe someone gave me something at some point that could solve my conundrum. I made my way to the back of the cave system where my junk caverns were. These were things that I saw no use or beauty in but still kept because it made the hoard bigger just the same. If I had something it would be in there, because what need would an ice dragon have for a heating device. I looked through the cavern and just when I thought there was nothing, I found a heating stone. Heating stones were very rare and the best tribute to give to a fire dragon. They almost instantly heated up whatever they were put in, including water.
Now with a plan to care for the human, I went to my garden to get some food for him. Not knowing what he liked or how hungry he would be, I picked some broccoli, a beet, three carrots, and a bit of kale. I walked around my cave to look for a container big enough for a bath. He was defiantly going to need a bath. I could still smell my tribute scent on him. I needed to go down to the village both to make certain that they never did anything like this ever again, and to get the rest of my tribute. It was still gold, and I wasn't going to just leave it there. As for a solution to correct the mistake in my tribute, I had briefly entertained the idea of destroying the village. The problem with this simple fix was that there was no way that all the commoners living there had anything to do with the decision of my tribute, and I didn't want to harm innocent people. Something needed to be done, but not right now. Right now I had a human to take care of.
I gathered all the necessities: the heating stone, food, and a tub of water, in the fur room with the human. Looking around to check that everything was alright, I settled myself down on a pile of furs to watch over the human and wait for him to awaken.