My entire body ached as I slowly regained consciousness. For a moment I thought maybe this had all been a bad dream, that I had just fallen and hit my head or something, but that hope was instantly dispelled as I opened my eyes and saw the stony ground, the fire pit, and the sleeping dragons.

I shivered. The fire was on its last legs, and it was getting far too cold, too quickly. I slowly got up and paced about, breathing heavily. I didn’t want to wake any of the dragons, but I knew they would inevitably wake eventually, and I needed to think about what I was going to do next.

My first thought was to run, to try to make my way down the mountain. But almost as soon as I had that idea, I realized how ridiculous it was. Even if I could manage the long and tough climb down, I would freeze to death before I reached the bottom. And besides that, the dragons would be looking for me from the air as soon as they woke up, and I would have nowhere to hide from them. There was no way I could escape.

I shivered harder, and stepped into the fire pit, to get closer to the last remnants of the bonfire. I realized that I would either have to build a fire myself, or get the dragons to build one for me, if I was going to make it through the rest of the night and the following day. I was wearing clothes for the moderate spring weather in the forest. Groaning from the discomfort of being manhandled, frozen, and sleeping on an uneven bed of rocks, I slowly hobbled over to the gigantic stack of “firewood”.

I had never realized before now that dragons used fire for warmth rather than solely as a weapon. I supposed that many of the times I had previously seen smoke floating up from the direction of the mountains, it had been dragons making camp like these ones had, not burning things down for no reason.

As quickly as I could, I snapped off some branches, twigs and leaves from one of the trees on the pile, and took several trips to move the wood far away from the pile. The last thing I wanted was to anger the dragons by setting their entire wood stores alight. I set up a campfire, still shivering from the freezing cold, and began trying to light it with two rocks I had picked up off the ground.

The sound of the banging rocks was uncomfortably loud, and I worried that I might wake the dragons, but by this point, I was so cold and desperate to start the fire that I didn’t care. I focused all my attention on the task at hand, until I finally breathed a sigh of relief as the fire caught. I carefully fanned the flames, and relaxed a bit as I felt the refreshing warmth. I looked up from the fire, then yelped and jumped back as I saw one of the dragons standing there, staring at me and my fire.

I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought that this was the same dragon that had attacked my tribe. The dragons were slightly different in size from each other, and their faces were proportioned slightly differently. An ugly feeling stirred in my gut. I didn’t know who or how many of my friends and family this beast had killed, but I did know it constantly killed people, and had put me in this horrible situation. The part of me that wasn’t immediately afraid for my life yearned for revenge.

The dragon continued looking back and forth between me and the fire, and chuckled softly to itself (at least, that’s what I thought the dragons’ incessant “rururu” meant). Then I was astonished to see the dragon pick up two stones off of the ground, one in each front claw, and mimic the motion of striking them together, as I had done to ignite the fire. Then it pointed towards the fire, tilting its head a bit as it did.

Clearly, the dragon had understood, at least partially, what I was doing. For now, my anger was replaced by curiosity. Perhaps these beasts were rational after all? Perhaps they could be negotiated with?

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I quickly jumped up, and tried my best to tell the dragon that it was right. I grabbed the rocks I had used, hit them together a few times, then pointed at the fire. “Yes,” I said, nodding my head. “Rocks,” I said, holding up the rocks. “Fire,” I said, pointing at the fire again.

“Furl,” the dragon responded, lifting one of the rocks it held towards me. Then it pointed at the fire, saying “Rinel.” Was the dragon telling me what its words for rock and fire were? Excitedly, I did the same thing again, but this time copied the dragon, saying “Furl” for the rocks, and “Rinel” for the fire.

“Dur,” replied the dragon, tilting its head from side to side, then repeating the same routine again. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I suspected that the dragon was trying to tell me I was doing it right. Then did “Dur” mean yes? Did “Furl” really mean rock, and “Rinel” fire? For the first time, I had some hope. If the dragon actually wanted me to learn to speak to it, maybe it would let me go once I learned enough to ask it!

But then I grimaced, my cheeks flushed as the hot anger returned. I was so angry I could barely feel the cold. For all this time, we had all thought that dragons were dumb beasts like any other, hunting humans simply because they were hungry and following their instincts. That they might be intelligent was only a strange idle theory. But now that I knew they were intelligent?

They knew what they were doing to us, they understood life and death and pain, and they still attacked us, ate us, left us helpless. This dragon tormented me even now, threatening me and leaving me in the snow even as it tried to speak with me. I bit back my anger, because I knew it was useless at this moment, but I made a vow to myself that someday I would find a way to kill these monsters.

With these thoughts about dragons’ malice towards us in mind, I suddenly wondered what their term for us was. I repeated the “rock-fire” routine once again, using the dragon’s words, but this time, I pointed to myself after I was done, and stared at the dragon, hoping it would interpret my actions correctly.

It seemed that it did. It promptly raised its claw at me, and spoke. “Wuren.”

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“Human,” I told the human. “You are a human.”

“Human,” it said, pointing at itself once again. “You are a human.”

I laughed a bit at that, but it was understandable. Maybe it knew what “human” meant now, but it didn’t know what “you” meant, and I didn’t know how to explain it either. “No,” I said, nodding my head no. “I’m a dragon. You are a human.”

“You’re a human,” the human said once again, pointing at itself. “I’m a dragon,” it said, pointing at me. I laughed some more, but I supposed that was good enough for now.

My mate had woken up and strolled over to me, draping his wing over me. “What’s all this?” he asked, looking quizzically at the fire and the blabbering human.

“It made a fire by itself! I was confused because humans can’t make fire with their breath like we do, but it does some strange trick with a pile of wood and rocks! I’ve never seen that before!”

“Huh,” he said, clearly not as impressed or curious about the situation as I was.

“And I taught it words!” I said, turning back to the human and doing the “rock-fire” routine with it once again.

My mate sighed. “It’s just copying you again like a dumb animal, like it did all last night.” I pointed at the fire, and tilted my head at the human. “Fire,” it said, after a brief pause. Then I pointed at the human and it said “You are human.” Then I pointed at my mate and it said “I’m a dragon”.

“See? It’s not just copying, it remembers the words!”

But my mate just rolled his eyes. “It’s just a dumb animal,” he said again. “I didn’t know humans could do these things, but I’ve heard even some birds can repeat the things you say to them. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

Then he grabbed another log off of the pile, wandered back to the fire pit and set it alight. I didn’t bother trying to argue any more, as it was clear all he wanted to do was get back to sleep. I’d try to be more quiet with my experimenting for the rest of the night.