I'd found the cave when I was a young boy, hardly old enough to walk. I was hiding from my father after knocking over a flagon of ale.

That was maybe five years ago now, five years since I'd first met Azinghal. The dragon. He lived hidden and unknown under our Inn, he'd been there since long before we ever had. His wrinkled red form lay atop a pile of tarnished gold pieces like a worm amidst a field of spoiled wheat.

I'd been so young as to not even recognize what he was. If I had I would never have spoken to him.

Dragons are well known for many things, their cunning, their power, their massive hordes of treasure. They are not, however, renown for their conversational skills. Azinghal was hardly what the legends said him to be. He was a gentleman.

I'd still had tears staining my cheeks when I came upon him, tumbling from the narrow tunnel to all but land in his very lap. It had taken him a long time to wake, his coils sliding about me like a scaled mountain slowly coming to life. The light was dim, yet I could see him as he wreathed, a behemoth rising, having laid dormant for ages but a dozen feet beneath my bedroom.

His slowly opening eyes held the orange luster of a candle flame before the wick had been trimmed, slitted like a cat's, and each the size of my whole head.

If I'd known any better, been any older and more learned, I'd have been terrified and running. But I wasn't. To me this creature was an unknown, something that was neither good nor evil. I had yet to learn what I should be frightened of in this dark world, and so he was not frightening, only different.

Slowly his eyes narrowed, focusing upon me, the fog of a century's slumber gradually fading from them.

"You are not the whelp I was expecting to see." His voice sounded like my Grandfather's had. Old and cracked, the words were perfectly formed, eager and pushing at the edges, daring you to hear something more.

All I could think to say was, "My name is Jack. What's yours?"

The dragon just laughed, a quiet hiss as his forked tongue slipped between age worn teeth. He said something that I couldn't understand, a word that shook the earth around us, sent the cavern rumbling but yet not seeming to move at all. He looked at me again. "But you, whelp, you may call me Azinghal."

I asked him what he was doing on our land. My father had a temper, and would throw out anyone who hadn't paid their rent for the night. The dragon laughed again.

"And what makes you think it is your land, whelp? You've paid for it? You live here? But what of I? Have I paid for it? No, certainly not. When I came here there was no village, no self-proclaimed counsel of men to purchase it from. When I came there was nothing. They, you, came to me.”

He thrashed slowly before continuing. Even the slightest flick of his tail was enough to send the gold and jewels strewn across the floor flying.

"You came, you small not-quite-orcs, came and built around me, like your kind so often do. Your father came and bought this land from the others who had laid their silly claim to it. Does that mean he bought me, too? I am as much a part of this land as any tree, stone, or beast. Does that mean he owns me as well?”

He smiled, lips pulling back from grand teeth. It should have been terrifying, yet the glimmer in his burning eyes kept his visage civil.

"How would one acquire land that no one has yet laid claim to? When you buy a toy from a toy maker, has he not created it first in order to lay claim to it? This slice of land has been made by no one save the Creator, and he would hardly enter a bargain with a mere man.

"So how is it, my dear whelp, that you can lay claim to this land, and my cave within it?" He lay his head back down, eyes still focused upon me.

I climbed upon one of his dry, scaly coils, it was starting to warm beneath me. "My Father said so. He bought the land from the village elders for a silver, then built the Inn here. It's my home. It's mine."

"But where did the elders get it from, little one? They did not purchase it from me, and I was here long before they."

"But... it's mine. It's my home." I balled up my small hands, searching for words that I couldn't find. What was he asking of me, and why?

I hopped off his coil and ran to the edge of the cavern, trying to scamper up to the small crack in the earthen wall that I had fallen from. My hands dug at the soft soil and out came a gem stone, polished and shiny in the non-existent light.

I looked at it for a moment, its smooth, cut red surface was a harder, brighter red than Azinghal's scales. I could see the reflection of his eyes from behind my shoulder.

I stared at the stone for a moment, head spinning, before it struck. Dashing back to him, I scrambled over his coils until I could reach out and touch his wide snout with a finger. I held the stone out.

"Here." I said, thrusting the gem towards him. "I want to buy it with this."

He watched me, lazily eying the stone. "A ruby?" The edge of one of his lips turned up. "You wish to buy this forsaken plot of land with a whole ruby? That alone would likely be more than enough to make your father a rich man."

I pushed it into his nose. He pulled back for a moment before softly sneezing. I could smell just a hint of sulfur in the trail of smoke that escaped him.

"Please?" I pressed it forward again, becoming frantic.

He hissed, laying his head back down. "I suppose I have no alternative. And I do have a taste for such brilliant things." His eyes closed. His words now were heavy, dripping with sleep. "I hereby sell this land, and the buildings upon it, the whole village in fact, to you in return for one flawless ruby." He flicked his tail towards a corner of the cavern, "Put it over there with the others."

Proudly, I set the stone upon the pile, amongst a dozen others exactly the same.


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