Part I: Fowlsing
Fowlsing the Ferocious. That had been his name, once, back when you could still count on foolhardy knights in layers of crunchy metal to ride, full tilt, into dragons’ lairs, shrieking in strange languages. You could always count on those men to assume (wrongly) that there was a princess or a queen somewhere inside a dragon’s lair, and that assumption fueled their battle lust, usually with disastrous results. That, and, Fowlsing supposed, boredom. There wasn’t much to be said for the life of a peasant in those days.
Fowlsing had never eaten a man, though he thought that his father might have eaten a few, back when Fowlsing was still shedding his first layer of hatchling scales. His memories of that time were a little vague now, though he did recall his father as a fierce, golden fire-breather, terrorizing armies of crusaders, prowling in the night among the humans’ flimsy tents and dim bonfires, returning to the den with chain mail between his teeth and piles of treasure in the pouches beneath his wings.
Fowlsing himself had never been prone to such appetites, and he remembered this being a real sticking point with his father. The older dragon would work himself into a temper, stalking around the cave, muttering to himself in Old Draconian, little puffs of smoke jetting from his snout, compulsively reorganizing piles of treasure. To keep the peace, Fowlsing agreed to terrorize at least one army each season and bring home enough loot to keep the family’s treasure hoard growing. Fowlsing would tell his father broad, sweeping tales of the armies he had menaced, describing their terrified shrieks as he unloaded great piles of treasure under his father’s proud stare.
As it happened, he never actually terrorized an army, though he thought the tales he told were impressively convincing. Many dragons in Fowlsing’s bloodline were shapeshifters, though the vast majority were far too proud to give up their dragon’s form even for a moment in those days. Fowlsing had discovered early on that he had a great talent for shapeshifting, and it was outlandishly simple to wheedle, bargain, and beg treasure from the humans. Much easier than a raid, anyway. And in the twilight hours, seated on a family’s dirt floor or near a bonfire in an army encampment, Fowlsing cultivated rumors - rumors of a fierce dragon, just to the north - always just to the north. Fowlsing the Ferocious was his name, and what a terror he was; he had eaten so-and-so’s first cousin and gobbled up this-or-that town, what a shame, keep-your-wits-about-you-or-you-might-be-next. Between the rumors and the piles of treasure, his father was pleased, and the old dragon died content in the knowledge that his son was a talented, terrifying slaughter-machine.
Fowlsing’s knack for human languages and forms had turned out to be a real blessing when he woke up from his first hibernation. Dragons could live to a great old age, of course, though large portions of their life were spent in hibernation. This had always seemed deeply unfair to Fowlsing, though he thought that his hibernation had come at a particularly unjust time. When he had fallen asleep, news of the overthrow of Louis XVI had just been filtering through Europe. Fowlsing had been irritated by the news, given that the Bourbons had been an excellent source of precious jewels - and gossip, which Fowlsing had begun to enjoy hoarding almost as much as treasure. He had been fussing to himself about the frugalities of the new regime when a sudden, total exhaustion had overcome him. He was too irate to fight the overwhelming urge to sleep, and so he returned to dragon form, curled up, and resigned himself to hibernation...
© 2021 Rebecca Robbe
