The Deal is Struck

Sammy hovered, her wings a frantic blur against the twilight sky, a tiny, shimmering beacon of pure, unadulterated annoyance. Below her, Bartholomew the dragon lay sprawled like a particularly lumpy mountain range, his snores rumbling through the very roots of the ancient oaks. He was utterly, magnificently asleep. And Sammy, despite her exhaustion, her slightly sticky wings from an unfortunate encounter with a jar of honey earlier that afternoon, and the lingering scent of dragon-breath that still tickled her nose, was *not* going to let him sleep. Not here. Not in *her* meadow.

"Honestly," she muttered, adjusting the tiny, acorn-cap helmet perched precariously on her head. "The sheer audacity. Taking up prime napping real estate like this. It's disrespectful to the dewdrop fairies, the moonlight moths, and frankly, to the very concept of a well-maintained meadow."

She’d tried everything. Glitter bombs had merely coated his obsidian scales in a rather fetching, albeit temporary, sparkle. Tickle fights, initiated with a feather plucked from a particularly snooty swan, had resulted in a few muffled grumbles and a slight shifting of his colossal form, but no actual awakening. The dragon’s sneeze, a truly seismic event that had sent Sammy tumbling through the air like a runaway dandelion seed, had been… well, it had been a setback. A rather spectacular, wind-blasting setback.