It was, indeed, a dragon. Albeit smaller than Luthiriensis had imagined dragons to be. All-in-all, the dragon reached, she surmised, fifteen feet in length, from snout to tail. Long, sinuous body with the most adorable chromatic sheen to its scales upon its back, that shimmered between a lovely pink colour and a royal purple, and the cutest little wings that twitched and flapped excitedly. So lovely! So beautiful! But still a dragon, and Luthiriensis took the precaution of stepping back a couple of feet. It probably wouldn't help, should the dragon wish to eat her, but it made the dwarf the closest target if the dragon did decide it was hungry.

The dwarf stepped back, too, causing Luthiriensis to step back again. She could see the dwarf was a canny, wily opponent in this little game. Meanwhile, the dragon, with big, wide eyes looked about ready to burst into action, sturdy, muscular forelegs, ending in long, delightfully sharp claws, clapped together.

"Oh, this is brilliant!" These were not the words Luthiriensis expected the dragon to say. "Aren't you two just wonderful!"

"Dragon, small I may be, but I shall smite thee with the blood of my ancestors powering my arms!" The dwarf raised his enormous axe, with difficulty, and brandished it before the dragon. "Or I'll run and good luck catching me."

"Oh, please! With those legs?" Luthiriensis took another step back, hoping the dwarf didn't notice. "I'll be back in the city before the dragon has taken its first bite of you."

Another step back and Luthiriensis saw an odd expression upon the dragon's face. Assuming she could read dragon features, that is. The dragon looked ... hurt. Not physically, of course, unless it had a thorn in its paw, which happened in some stories, but more of a saddened hurt. The large head, a mane of green leaf-like scales flapping in the breeze, drooped and, Luthiriensis could swear on all the gods, looked about ready to cry.

"Smite me? Bite you?" The dragon pouted. It was definitely a pout. "Why? Why would you say that? Do I look like I'm going to bite anybody?"

The dwarf looked at where he thought Luthiriensis stood, turned to find her several feet behind him and stepped back to join her. He gave Luthiriensis a questioning look and she could only shrug as she stepped back again. The dwarf had a cunning grasp of strategy, but Luthiriensis could match him, and surpass him in wits. She expected she could, at least.

"You kind of do." Luthiriensis tilted her head, shrugging again. "You are a dragon, after all."

"A sylvan dragon! Sylvan!" One of the dragon's claws tapped its chest in determined fashion. "We're herbivores, thank you very much! I wouldn't bite anybody."

The last words came out in a hurt whisper as the dragon gathered its tail about its body and started picking at the tuft of green, leafy scales at the end. It looked like the dragon was about to cry. Uncertain what else to do, Luthiriensis leaned forward, careful not to get closer to the dragon than the dwarf and tried to think of something comforting to say.

"There, there. Never mind." There was no way she was even about to contemplate the possibility of patting the dragon's head in a soothing fashion. "I'm sorry I assumed you were about to eat us. You can understand the confusion, I'm sure."

"No." The dragon spat out the word, sniffling, wiping its nose on its tale and peeking out from under its eyebrows. "I'm not a fire drake. They're, like, all red and mean. And they think its fun to burn our nests when its not fun at all! Its mean and ... and ... really mean."

"By the gods! This thing is either an idiot or a child, which aren't entirely mutually exclusive." The dwarf dropped the butt of his axe to the ground, almost losing his grip upon it. After a moment, he stepped forward, which pleased Luthiriensis. "I'm sorry, for assuming. And for wanting to smite you. That was wrong of me. Now, good day. I have an heir to find and I'm still not registered and some thieving halfling has made off with my secondary spare coin pouch which I was intending to use as an entry fee."

With a grunt, the dwarf tried to heave his axe onto his shoulder, failed, and bent double to lift it up from the ground. Luthiriensis narrowed her eyes at the dragon. Now she thought about it, it did seem a little child-like. How old must a dragon be to consider it an adult? Four? Five thousand years. And now the dragon had slumped to the ground, coiling its long body around itself, snivelling and sniffing.

"What is your name?" She stepped forward, which probably wasn't the best idea, but the dwarf was still nearer, which was fine. "My name is Luthiriensis-Co-Dubastienel. Well, partly. The song of my full name lasts for several verses and requires a small orchestra to relate, but you can call me Luthiriensis."

"Can I call you Luthy? I love Luthy!" In an instant, the dragon's mood changed from moping to over-excitement, claws clacking together as it clapped. "My name is Pinto. You can call me Pinto."

"Like the horses?" Now the dwarf had returned to the conversation, having managed to lift his axe upon his shoulder. A shoulder that now listed at least two inches lower than the other. "Alright, Pinto, Luthy. I'm Mott. Just that. Mott. My dad was Mott, his dad was Mott and his dad before him. And, when I am burdened with progeny, my son will be called Mott."

"What if you have a daughter? Does it get confusing? With all the Motts? Do you differentiate between each other? Like, 'Mott the Elder', and 'Mott the Really Elder'?" Luthiriensis loved learning about other cultures. Then she realised what they had both called her. "And don't call me 'Luthy'. That's not my name. My name is the product of thousands of years of elven culture, going back to the days of Celdereth the Ever-Wise-But-Often-Confused. In fact ..."

"There are horses called 'Pinto'?" The dragon, Pinto, squealed in delight, accompanied by more clacking of claws as it clapped even more. "How exciting! Isn't it exciting, Luthy? Oh, I can tell we're just going to be the bestest friends ever!"

Luthiriensis wasn't quite sure about that. For one, Pinto was a dragon and how did friendships even work with dragons? Secondly, they had only this moment met and elven culture had very strict protocols for the declaration of friendships, that usually entailed several weeks of intense study, letters of compatibility from the Fenestri council, and the ritual bath of purification. Luthiriensis much preferred 'nodding acquaintances' to friends. The protocols weren't quite as stringent, but the bath of purification still remained. It was a lovely bath.

The dwarf looked as though he was thinking about something. Very hard. Either that, or he had just realised that he should have visited the loo before coming out here. Luthiriensis could understand that. The human food in the city seemed to pass right through her without bothering with all the messy stuff about passing through her stomachs and intestines. Tasted nice, though.

"Wait a minute!" The dwarf, Mott, prodded a chubby finger out toward the dragon, scowling. "You wrote this note? This note that says you know where the heir is? Where? Where is the heir? Where?"

Mott had pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from somewhere that Luthiriensis didn't want to think about, spent some time unravelling it, and then held it out to the dragon. Pinto lowered its head and peered at the paper, mouth moving as it read the words. The dragon paused, scowled itself, and tilted its head to the side before repeating the exercise, moving lips and everything. After a moment, where Luthiriensis felt certain she had actually felt the world age, the dragon straightened up, nodding.

"I did. Write that note. What do you think?" Pinto looked between Luthiriensis and Mott, expecting something, though Luthiriensis didn't know what. "My penmanship? My tutor says I have the writing ability of a poisonous toad that managed to lick its own back and I don't think it was a compliment."

"It could ... use a little practice." Luthiriensis remembered the note she had read, where the ink itself had looked like it wanted to escape from the grotesquely written words. "I got the gist of it, though. Though I'm more interested in how you managed to slip the note into my coin purse. You're not exactly ... petite."

"Oh, that was easy. Once a day, between dawn and dusk, I can turn human." The dragon nodded, as though that explained everything. It didn't, and Pinto soon realised, jerking back to attention, and a little glee. "And invisible! I can turn human and invisible."

"At the same time?" Mott scratched his beard, confusion twisting his features. "Seems a bit redundant."

"It doesn't have to be. At the same time, I mean. I can turn invisible for three hundred 'Pretty Ponies', and human for six hundred 'Pretty Ponies'." The dragon rolled its eyes, looking a little sheepish, which, for a dragon, was something decidedly odd to see. It didn't bother explaining what a 'Pretty Pony' was. "You don't want to mix those up, though. Humans get very weird when dragons suddenly appear out of thin air. Or from a little girl that only wanted to see the Harvest Princess. Not that that ever happened!"

"Turns invisible, or human, or both." By now, Mott had almost scratched the skin from his bones beneath his beard as his brain worked far harder, and for far longer, than Luthiriensis expected dwarves were ever used to. Or capable of. "Could be useful."

"Useful with what?" This had all seemed quite fun, at first, and there was no doubt meeting a dragon was a highlight, but Luthiriensis had heard quite enough nonsense for this day. "You're not thinking of doing it, are you? Going after the heir? It's suicide! Do you know how many warriors have tried and failed, and died, trying to find the heir? It's ... well ... there were ... it's ... a lot! A lot! And I, for one, am far too beautiful to do anything strenuous like that. Pinto? How very nice to meet you. Dwarf."

Luthiriensis began to walk away. She had given the dragon the semi-formal, partly-respectful bow number forty-two of the elven code, suitable for such occasions, and she had even managed not to sneer at the dwarf in the expected tradition between their two races. Almost not-disrespectfully. Now she had to return to the city, where parties awaited her, famous people to meet, rich people to cajole, and royalty to mingle with.

Adventures were not, in any way, shape, or form, her 'thing'. In fact, adventuring was about as far from her 'thing' as anything could possibly be. She tried to imagine the greatest distance in the world, tripled it, squared it, then multiplied it by some rational infinity and not even that would prove as far as between adventuring and her 'thing'. Her 'thing' was not this. Her 'thing' was unassailable. Her 'thing' was an untouchable statue upon a pedestal.

She wasn't quite certain what her 'thing' was, but it certainly was not adventuring. Maybe needlework. That could be her 'thing'. Or maidenly gossip. She did like that, and, with her ears, she did tend to hear a lot of it. Some of which made her positively blush, but never stopped her repeating it to like-minded individuals. Not adventuring. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No!

Only as she tried to walk away did she realise that she couldn't. Walk away, that is. Something had stopped her and she dearly hoped it wasn't the dwarf, because no amount of purifying baths would remove that stench. She looked down and found something wrapped, loosely, around her dainty waste, that looked pleasingly flat. The something had beautiful chromatic scales and a tuft of green 'leaves'. Pinto's tail.

"Please?" The dragon used its tail to turn Luthiriensis back toward it. "It'll be fun. I promise."

How she could tell, Luthiriensis could not understand, but it looked like Pinto was trying to look cute and endearing and, much to Luthiriensis' frustration, it worked. The dragon did look deliciously adorable. She supposed it couldn't hurt to hear the dragon's plan.

After all, what was the worst that could happen?