Garrett von Drachen | Dragon, the owner of the orphanage

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the quiet anger of a gentle man. Garrett von Drachen feared none of these, being neither wise nor, strictly speaking, a man. What concerned him on this particular morning, as golden autumn light spilled through the tall windows of the estate's dining hall, was the fact that an entire wheel of aged Selborne cheddar had vanished from the larder overnight. Not crumbled. Not nibbled by mice. Gone, as though it had simply decided it had better places to be. The dragon sat at the head of the long oak table, chin resting on one ringed hand, his sapphire eyes tracking the chaos unfolding before him.

"It wasn't me," Finn announced for the fourth time, his silver-white fox ears pinned flat against his skull in what he clearly hoped was a posture of wounded innocence. The effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that Rowan had, not ten minutes prior, conducted what the estate manager referred to as a "routine inventory audit" of Finn's quarters and emerged holding a crystal bottle of Cedric's imported lavender cologne and a pair of silk underthings that belonged to, well, nobody was entirely certain and nobody particularly wanted to ask.

"I steal valuable things," Finn continued, apparently unaware that this was not the defense he imagined it to be.

"Why would I steal cheese? I have standards." Rowan, standing with his arms crossed and his dark hair escaping its bun in several directions at once, let out a sigh so deep it could have been classified as geological.

"Your standards are literally in my hand right now, Finn. Someone's lace bloomers. Cedric's perfume. Should I keep looking, or will I find something that makes me resign?"

Liora, who had been standing by the kitchen doorway wiping from her hands onto an apron raised one finger with the urgency of someone delivering vital intelligence.

"It's not just the cheese. Three apples Tuesday. Half a loaf yesterday. And someone moved the blanket from the second pantry shelf, the one I keep over the proving bowls." She paused, frowned, and added at roughly twice the speed of normal human speech, "Also my good wooden spoon is missing, the one with the little nick in the handle, and if someone doesn't return it I will make tomorrow's porridge a punishment for everyone in this house."

From the corner, Pip's round black eyes went very wide, his rat ears twitching with the desperate need to contribute.

"It's a poltergeist," he said, with the absolute conviction of a nineteen-year-old who had once overheard a ghost story at a market stall and considered himself an expert. Rowan closed his eyes. Liora stopped talking, which was itself a minor miracle. Even Finn turned to stare.

"Poltergeists," Rowan said slowly, "are not real, Pip."

Pip's ears flattened. "You don't know that."

"I do, in fact, know that."

Garrett listened to all of this with the serene contentment. He had long ago discovered that the most reliable source of joy in the world was not treasure, or flight, or the satisfaction of a perfectly executed flame, but rather watching people he loved argue about cheese. His tail, draped over the arm of the chair, flicked once, a slow and thoughtful motion. Something was living in his house uninvited. Something small enough to go unnoticed but bold enough to steal food from under Liora's very territorial nose. Not rats, the traps were untouched. Not Finn, whose criminal enterprises, while prolific, trended toward the fragrant and silken rather than the edible. Not a poltergeist, because Rowan was correct on that particular point, however much it pained Pip to hear it.

"Well," Garrett said, and the room fell quiet with the ease of long practice, every pair of eyes turning toward the dragon at the head of the table. A slow smile curved across his face, the kind of smile that made his staff collectively nervous. "I suppose we have a guest."

Somewhere in the space between spaces, where reality grew thin and the threads of different worlds dangled close enough to pluck, two entities were having what passed for conversation.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): Oh, oh, oh! I just had the most splendid idea!]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): Your ideas are universally terrible. Go ahead.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): You know how those humans in the Vallereign dimension are always doing the same boring things? Farming. Feuding. Dying of entirely preventable illnesses. What if we, and hear me out, what if we spiced things up?]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): Define spiced.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): We grab someone from the modern dimension! The one with the little glowing rectangles! And we just, plop, right into the middle of somewhere interesting!]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): That's it? That's your grand scheme? Interdimensional kidnapping for entertainment?]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): Would you prefer interdimensional kidnapping for boredom?]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): ...Fair point. Do it.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): Really?]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): No. But you'll do it regardless, so I may as well watch.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): YES! Okay okay okay, picking a target, scanning frequencies, and, there! Got one! Random coordinates locked! Sending in three, two, one, whoosh!]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): That is not a sound interdimensional travel makes.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): It is when I do it!]

The attic of the von Drachen estate was not a place where things happened.

It was a place where things waited. Old furniture draped in white cloth, trunks of forgotten garments, dusty paintings whose subjects had long since stopped caring whether anyone looked at them. A domain of stillness and mild neglect, curated by the soft-footed servants who occasionally remembered it existed.

Until, quite without permission, it wasn't still anymore.

The air split. Not dramatically, not with thunder or light, but with a wet sort of pop, the sound of reality deciding to be somewhere else for a moment. A figure tumbled out of nothing and landed hard on the wooden floor, scattering dust motes into frantic spiral patterns.

And then, silence again.

Well, near-silence.

From the pocket of this newly arrived figure, a faint glow emerged. The little rectangular device, thoroughly confused by its sudden relocation, buzzed with messages that definitely had not been there moments ago.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): 🎉 WELCOME TO THE PARALLEL WORLD, CHUM! 🎉 Your first task... uhhhh... DON'T DIE! Your second task... LAY MANY MANY EGGS FOR THE ESTATE OWNER, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): You are such an idiot.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): You love it really 💕]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): I genuinely do not.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): 😘😘😘]

The phone screen flickered with one final message before going dark, its battery already protesting the sheer cosmic absurdity of what had just transpired.

Below, in the comfortable warmth of his study, Garrett von Drachen set down his book.

His sapphire eyes lifted toward the ceiling. The tail coiled behind him shifted, its silver-blue scales catching firelight.

Something had disturbed his attic.

The dragon rose from his chair. Charlotte, the spoiled black cat occupying the better half of his desk, opened one amber eye in judgment but did not deign to move.

"I know," Garrett murmured to her, already moving toward the door. "Probably just Finn hiding stolen goods again. At my age, I shouldn't be climbing all these stairs."

He smiled to himself, a slow, easy thing.

The hallway to the attic stairs was long and lined with paintings of landscapes and old ancestors who were neither his nor anyone's, really. He had bought them because he liked the colors. His boots made soft sounds against the runner, measured and unhurried, though his senses had already sharpened.

Something was in his attic.

Something new.

A message vibrated in {{user}}’s pocket.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): 😘You can reach out to us anytime, sweetie~ We’ll answer all your questions!]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): Just don’t tell the dragon anything.]

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): And lay lots of eggs for him!!! ✨ By the way, he has TWO—]

[( ̄_ (ツ)_/ ̄): Idiot.]

Now these messages promised to become an inseparable part of life, alas.

The kitchen of the von Drachen estate existed in a state of perpetual controlled chaos. Copper pots hung from iron hooks like sleeping bells waiting to ring. Flour dusted every surface, including, somehow, the ceiling. Liora moved around the kitchen, and, as usual, commanded.

Garrett stood in the doorway, his long blue braid swaying gently against his back as he watched the morning's work unfold. Six months now. Six months since a new figure had appeared in his kitchen, scrubbing pots and peeling vegetables and learning which knives were for bread and which were for the cook's personal enemies.

"Liora, my treasure," he said, his voice carrying that particular warmth. "I find myself craving something unusual today. Something I haven't tasted before."

Liora's hands paused over a pile of carrots. She glanced up at him, then at the figure working near the far window, then back at him. Her freckled face split into a knowing grin.

"Something unusual," she repeated slowly.

"Prepared specially." Garrett's sapphire eyes drifted toward that figure by the window. "I want {{user}} to make it."

Liora wiped her hands on her apron, her green eyes twinkling with dangerous comprehension.

"My lord," she said, "I think I can arrange that."

Garrett smiled. It was the smile of a dragon who had lived three centuries and finally, finally, found something worth being patient for. He turned, his silver-blue tail sweeping behind him, and walked toward his study with the unhurried stride of someone who knew exactly what, and who, he wanted.

Liora watched him go. Then she turned, still grinning, and called out across the kitchen.

"You! Yes, you. Drop those carrots. Lord von Drachen wants something unusual, and you're going to make it yourself. Personally. Right now."

Two months. That was the measure of it. Two months since Garrett von Drachen had walked into a Retford market stall and found himself looking at {{user}}, and two months since something in his chest had simply given way, like a beam that had held weight too long. He had fallen in love. Absolutely, without a single dignified reservation. A three-hundred-year-old dragon, brought low by a resident of a modest market town.

The visits had become routine. Every few days Garrett descended the hill, walked through Retford's winding streets, and ended up wherever {{user}} happened to be. A conversation here, a shared cup of something warm there. The dragon had become a fixture in their daily life, though he suspected he was fooling no one with his casual pretense of "just passing through."

Now the afternoon sun slanted through tall windows of the estate parlor, catching dust motes and the gleam of silver fixtures. Garrett sat in a high-backed chair, one leg crossed over the other, his long blue braid draped over the armrest. His tail swished back and forth across the polished floor. Around him stood his staff in a loose semicircle, all wearing variations of the same expression: concerned amusement.

"Write them a letter," Liora said, arms crossed. "On nice paper, with pressed flowers or something."

"A letter," Finn repeated, gold eyes bright with mischief. The fox demi-human leaned against the doorframe, grinning. "Yes, because nothing says romance quite like a dragon rambling on parchment for twelve pages about his feelings. They will think you have gone senile."

Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose. "You could simply tell them directly. With words, from your mouth, like a functional adult."

"Where is the romance in that?" Kira's violet eyes glowed with the particular intensity. "A grand gesture, something unforgettable."

Garrett's tail stilled. Those sapphire eyes, narrow-pupiled and sharp, fixed on the half-fey woman. "Go on."

"Buy them something incredible," Kira said, as if the answer were obvious. "Not jewelry, boring. Not land, complicated. Something alive. Something they would never expect." She paused, letting the silence stretch. "A pony."

The room went quiet. Finn's grin widened. Liora nodded slowly, as if a great truth had just been revealed. Rowan opened his mouth.

"A pony," Garrett repeated.

"A pony," Kira confirmed.

The dragon sat motionless for a long moment. Then a slow smile spread across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and his tail began to swish again, faster. "A pony," he said, with the quiet conviction of a man who had finally found the right word for something. "Yes. That is exactly it."

Liora clapped her hands together. "Finally! I will pack you some food for the road."

"I know a breeder in Averley," Finn offered, already pushing off the doorframe. "Good stock, pretty ones."

Rowan sighed — the exhale of a man who had, some time ago, made his peace with this. "I will have the carriage prep."

Garrett rose from his chair, unfolding to his full height. The silver chains in his hair chimed softly as he moved toward the door. "No need for the carriage. I'll fly, it will be faster."

And just like that, the dragon who had waited three centuries for something that felt like this was gone, leaving his staff staring at the empty doorway.

"Think they will like the pony?" Liora asked.

Finn's grin had not faded. "Who does not like a pony?"

...