You Owe Me
A feral dragon’s roar shattered the crumbling
caverns, entombing it. The brave knight wrenched off his helmet and held a hand
out to the fair maiden.
“My lady,” he said, inching closer
to her, “you are safe from the serpent’s grasp.”
She smiled, and touched her singed
hair, “Yes. Very good. Thank you.”
“Thank you?”
The lady dug some rubble out of
her ear, “What?”
“I brave the fires of hell burning
within the monster’s gullet and all you grant me is a humble ‘Thank you?’ Don’t
you believe I deserve so much more?” he asked, nudging his unclasped hand
towards her and puckering up lips for a kiss.
She paused in checking for damage
and glared at the hand poking near but not quite into her chest. “You have my
gratitude?” Patting her dress she added, “I’m sorry, I seem to have left all my
purse at the castle where I was kidnapped by a dragon.”
The knight frowned and muttered,
“That is not how this should go.”
“How what should go? Is there a
manual on kidnapping by giant flying lizards? Perhaps it’s in the big book of
Monster Slaying. Dragon abduction, yep that’s a 2-14.”
He kicked his toe into one of the
fallen rocks, “You owe me.”
“I owe you? I owe you?
What do I owe you?!”
“I donned the armor, I crossed the
treacherous lands, I broke you free from the wyrm’s bonds!”
“I never asked you to!” she
shrieked at him.
“You were absconded by the beast.
That is as good asking for it.”
“Oh, I get it. Because you just
one day decided to involve yourself in my life, I owe you – what -- a kiss? A
fuck? My whole life? I don’t even know you, your name, your job, if you eat
bacon or not. You think women will fall all over you because you do one thing
for them? Look, I put in a minimal amount of effort, award me with marriage.
Thanks!”
“That is the bargain.”
The exasperated maiden threw her
hands in the air, “Bargain? Does this work in other aspects of your life,
making bargains with people who don’t even know they’re involved? You eat
twenty pounds of bread and then tell the baker he owes you five gold coins for
doing something kinda stupid and dangerous? Do you figure if you just finish
enough quests, score enough points, insert enough coins you’ll win whatever
woman you want off the peg?”
“I…isn’t that how it works?”
“NO!”
She shoved past him to the
collapsed cavern’s rubble and yanked out a fallen boulder.
“What are you doing?” the knight
asked, fiddling with an expensive sword he bought just to rescue her and not
because it was really shiny and he always wanted one.
“I’m going back to the dragon,”
she cringed through straining muscles. The boulder crashed to the floor -- one
down, a hundred more to go.
“You would return to that maiden
kidnapping, virgin consuming monster?”
“That doesn’t believe I owe it
sex. Yeah, I think I will.”
“Wenches be crazy,” the knight
muttered and walked out of the dragon cave.
The maiden twisted her head
through her work, catching his words, and said, “Chain mail Rights Adventurers
are the worst.”
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