Clumsily stumbling through the thick, monster-infested underbrush of the unforgiving forest, barely failing to curb the urge to retch every time his feet squelched on something particularly questionable, lute almost sliding off his sweaty back, Julien conceded that perhaps his father was right.
Maybe Julien wasn’t fit for the life of a traveling bard, and, like his father insisted, would simply “end up dead in a ditch somewhere,” either by a beast or his own stupidity—though his father had seemed rather stuck on the latter as his method of demise.
His father was also convinced that Julien would be back in his estate within the week—Julien was sure he wouldn’t, mostly due to spite, and so Julien figured his father was wrong about his predicted death as well.
Unfortunately for his father, and more so for Julien himself, Julien would rather spend the rest of his days rotting in a ravine than stuck in the stifling life of nobility, married off to some meek, shallow daughter of some noble as soon as he was of age.
And so, Julien continued the wretched trek through the forest, determinedly not looking down, where he knew he would likely see guts, blood, tufts of fur, and mud, combined together to look like an even more horrifying version of his, frankly terrible, attempt to dye his own brown hair red a couple years back. An attempt which had ended with matted hair, fainting servants, and, somehow, a fire so intense people had believed a dragon, of all things, started it. Don’t ask.
But, back to the horrific forest floor. Ah yes, maybe he had forgotten to mention.
Perhaps it was Julien’s bad luck, or maybe he had done something to offend the divine, but for some godforsaken reason, Julien had managed to step into the aftermath of a massacre.
When he had initially entered the forest, it had seemed normal, if a bit quieter than usual. But Julien had ignored it, too pampered by the lavish life of nobility to recognize the warning sign for what it was.
And what a mistake it was.
He had noticed the occasional animal carcass, but had simply assumed that some hunters had cleared the area prior to his arrival. Boy, was he wrong.
As he walked farther and farther into the forest, he noticed more and more remains of animals and monsters. It was then that he began to have the inkling that something was terribly wrong. It was only after he stumbled into a clearing, painted red and black with blood, burns, and the charred remains of various unidentified creatures, that he realized he was absolutely screwed.
Which brings him to now, as Julien continues to ignore the stench of rotting meat wafting up from the air, as well as the unfortunate squelching beneath his feet. He could feel sweat forming everywhere, even between his toes. Gods, what he would give for a bath.
Crack! Julien yelped, tossing himself to the side, desperately trying to protect his sacred lute, whilst attempting to ignore the slimy wetness forming on his face from the ground. He shakily looked up from his place on the dirt. An arrow stuck out of the deformed tree next to him. He gulped.
Suddenly, he heard the squelch of footsteps coming towards him. Praying to the heavens that it was simply a bandit, Julien cursed when his aggressor came into view. It was decidedly not a bandit, because Julien would never be that lucky.
No, instead it was a gosh-darned mage, and not just any mage, but Valdo—an absolute bastard who Julien had met when he was younger, as well as the cause of the fire which had sprung from his failed hair-dying. Now, did Valdo set the fire? No. But he tripped Julien, which then led to a chain of events that ended in the fire, so it was still Valdo’s fault.
“Well, look who we have here,” Valdo sinisterly smiled, a crooked thing which showed off his missing tooth—an achievement Julien was extremely proud of.
“Certainly not your front tooth, that’s for sure,” shot back Julien.
He was proud of that comeback. Or at least he was, until Valdo decided to roast him.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
Julien rolled out of the way, clumsily sprinting his way through the foliage. Luckily, for all that Valdo was more powerful than him, Julien was quicker, trained by the reckless incidents he managed to get into as a child.
Julien could feel himself losing Valdo, and he barked out a gleeful laugh. But in his distraction, he missed a claw-shaped gorge in the ground. Slam! Agony bloomed across his face.
“No, not my nose,” Julien whined.
A hand roughly tugged at his hair, and his heart dropped. Valdo had found him.
“Time to finish what I should have done a while ago, you wretched pest!”
Julien concluded that Valdo was still salty about the missing tooth.
Accepting his fate, Julien begged “at least let me put my lute somewhere safe, you know how expensive it was.”
A horrible human being, but also a fellow musician, Valdo tore the lute off of Julien’s sweaty back, and set it aside. Julien could feel Valdo’s smugness from where he sat on the ground, and swore that he would haunt Valdo from the afterlife.
Crackle! Julien could feel the heat of the fire, and quickly closed his eyes. He felt the heat come closer and closer, and readied himself for an agonizing death.
“Holy mother of Go-”
A trembling roar, an even greater heat than before, cries of agony which sounded suspiciously like Valdo, a strangely still-breathing Julien, and…chirping? He cracked an eye open, both eyes flying wide at what he saw.
In place of Valdo was a crumbling pile of charred remains and, right next to what he assumed used to be Valdo, sat a tiny reptilian creature. Not just any reptilian creature, but the cutest one Julien had ever laid his eyes upon.
He squealed, “oh you marvelous, adorable, creature!”
He flung himself onto the animal, squeezing it into his chest and singing its praises. The creature—who he decided would be named Dandelion—started rumbling in what he assumed was a purr.
Excitement finally calming, he put Dandelion down and took a closer look. The first thing he noticed: Dandelion had wings. The second: Dandelion had a suspiciously dragon-shaped snout, as well as claws, and teeth. Now, did all signs point to Dandelion being a dragon? Yes. But Julien was going to ignore that.
Except then Dandelion sneezed and lit a bush on fire, and then Julien could no longer ignore it. He knew that he couldn’t take Dandelion with him on his journey, no matter how much he wanted to. He couldn’t take him. Really, it was an awful idea to keep him as a pet. Despite his small size, at the end of the day, Dandelion was a dragon. And Julien was maybe now realizing just what had massacred the forest. So really, he couldn’t take him.
Julien took him.
He knew it was a bad idea, and he really was going to leave Dandelion there in the forest, but one look at Dandelion’s twinkling eyes, and the next thing he knew, Julien was carrying the dragon across his shoulders.
And as he continued his walk, strumming on his lute, a warm presence riding on his shoulders, Julien found that he no longer regretted his decision to journey through the forest.