All through the breakfast the next day Renna could hear the dragon digging through its hoard. She assumed it was doing the equivalent of making its bed. At last it seemed satisfied and went to its morning flight.

Renna’s mind was calm. It had not been this quiet in her head for years. Something about it felt… oddly right. She found herself staring at the bracelet again.

Renna was not good at doing nothing. She needed to find something to occupy her mind. She went exploring again. There were many doors leading away from the great hall. She tried them one by one. Some were store rooms full of old paintings and knickknacks of all sorts. Others looked like guest bedrooms. Some were locked.

Then, she came to a door that opened to another large cavern - the kitchen! The fire ladies were busy preparing for lunch. There were six of them. Five looked interchangeably identical - Renna found no way to tell them apart. They looked like flimsy flames weakly filling a human shape. Sixth was different. She was more full of fire, more substantial, almost like a person. Renna realized that this was the only spirit she had heard speaking. She wondered if others were capable of speech at all.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something familiar about the sixth. A memory just out of reach was moving in the back of her mind… but it wasn’t willing to show itself yet. Renna let it go.

“Is there something for me to do?” She asked.

Brightest lady looked at her thoughtfully. Then she pointed to the buckets by the wall and the well in the far corner.

“Fetch water?” She asked her with a fire filled voice.

Renna got to work. There were about a dozen empty buckets to be filled. Two at a time she took them to the well, filled them up and hauled them back to their place by the wall.

When she was done, there was a trail of spilled water between the buckets and the well. Arriving with the last buckets she found a rag at the start of it. The hint was obvious. Renna started to mop up the trail.

When she finished, she felt that she had been helpful enough and quickly exited the kitchen before more work materialized.

Dragon was back and snoring loudly. But something circling its front paw caught her eye. She went closer to investigate. It was a bracelet, very similar to hers. It might even have been identical, if it wasn’t stretched out around the beast's gigantic paw. So that’s what the beast had been looking for in the morning when it dug through its bed…

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Renna couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in over her head. She was not just simply claimed as possession by this creature… It was more than that. It was complicated. She felt bound to this creature stronger than any rope could tie her.

Renna sat down on the couch to watch the beast sleep. She sat deep in thought until she was called to lunch. She resumed her exploration in the afternoon.

Most of the rooms she visited had been much the same - store rooms and bedrooms. But there was one that was different. It was empty. And there was a large mirror standing in the middle of it. But its glass surface did not reflect anything. It remained dark and empty even with her standing right in front of it. There were letters on its frame, but she couldn’t read, so they were of no help.

She walked around it and then decided to leave. She looked back over her shoulder when stepping out and for a moment, she thought she saw something, someone looking at her from the frame, but it was gone in an instant and the frame was empty again. She decided to not come back to this room again, it was magic and not the nice kind - she felt drained.

She returned to the big parlor room just in time for dinner, ate in silence and headed for bed. She put on her nightgown and got under the covers. But again sleep would not come. She sighed, got up, stuffed her pillow under her arm and wrapped herself in her blanket. She had missed having a pillow the night before. Then she walked out to the big cavern.

Dragon was awake and the carpet was laid out for her again. He seemed to have been waiting for her. She went and curled up next to him as if this was an entirely normal thing to do. It did not make sense, but it felt a normal and comfortable place for her to be. She drifted off to sleep.

Arion watched Renna’s interaction with his beast from the back of his mind. He was incredulous at first. But when she curled up next to the beast wearing his gift he felt ... envy. Jealousy even. She was so comfortable around him, but he had to watch out and not make any sudden movements to avoid scaring her away or getting hurt himself.

Other girls had been the opposite. They had warmed up to him very fast, but the beast… they wouldn’t even look at it. He wondered if this jealousy was what the beast had felt then, looking at him getting close to the girls but being excluded from company.

The next morning when the dragon slipped on the mate of the bracelet he had given her, even he could feel the old dragon magic snapping in place between them. He wondered if she knew or maybe guessed what she had done accepting it…

In the dragon world, these signified an engagement. A promise to share life with each other. A bond that may kill the one trying to reject it, if the rejection is not mutual. He was bound to this as much as the beast, they were one after all but he would have stopped the beast if he could. His heart sank thinking of spring. It made it infinitely harder to protect her when spring came. And it was impossibly hard already.

But spring was far away. It was still summer. There was time. He wanted to have as much of her confidence as the beast did.

Arion felt able to shift back around noon the next day, but he delayed it… The beast was reluctant to relinquish her so soon and … her closeness for the night calmed him. One more night like this … appealed to him as well. They spent the night watching her sleeping form through the beast's eyes together. Arion could feel the beast's emotions and they had a softness that had never been there before.