Three days had passed since Sophie had persuaded the dragon that she was a limited time damsel, and another beautiful dawn was sneaking over the mountain peaks. The sky was clear, with not a snowflake to be seen, and the air was crisp as it eddied down from the heights.

It was still, of course, well over forty below, and as Sophie - still wearing the hennin - peeked out the cave mouth she could see the abominable snowmen picking the flesh of lost hikers off of their bones, but at least they were poised picturesquely as they snapped the femurs to get at the marrow.

Her morning peek finished, Sophie returned to her office - after, naturally, having grabbed the requisite cup of coffee - and set to work.

Surprisingly, the dragon had had a bedroom for her, from the last time he'd distressed a genuine, flesh and blood damsel. It was old and mouldy and dusty and had entirely too many bed bugs living in lavishly designed lint cities atop the dresser, but it was cosy enough and, better yet, had an office.

It was an office she intended to use.

Oh, the dragon had said she didn't have to - it was sufficient, he said, for her to be distressed (he even pointed out the spots where she could lean dramatically and sigh, and a small grotto he'd carved where she could cower in terror) - but she felt something of a debt of gratitude.

She had initially considered organising his gold, but that proved a bust - the dragon already had it organised and filed, down to the last coin, with helpful little stickers affixed for identification - and had instead settled for acting as his amanuensis.

This turned out to be a surprisingly involved task. One apparently acquired rather a lot of friends and acquaintances and colleagues and business contacts after centuries of existence (a tendency not abated by the dragon's habit of keeping tabs on the great-great-grandkids of earlier damsels), and even if the mailman could only reach you on one night of the year it left quite a backlog of letters to reply to and letters to send.

They had quite the strange way of sending letters - they would compose them in shorthand, and then rewrite them (but this time all pretty, handwritten in cursive) and then, this being a mediaeval world, small drawings of snail men and boxing sea monsters and gentlemen with three too many heads had to be added into the margins.

After this the letter would be sealed with the stamp inside the envelope (the dragon said it added an element of mystery), and stored carefully near the chimney (not the one in the entryway; there was another, near the back, which had been specially installed for the purpose), whence the mailman would descend to steal it come the winter solstice.

That particular morning Sophie was busy crafting a letter to a perfunctorily pedantic pixie of the dragon's acquaintance - and adding in cute drawings of squirrels fighting knights along the borders - when the dragon in question knocked at the door.

“Good morning. Are you good with caribou for dinner?” He asked, eyeing the tiny letter with scepticism. Privately, he was rather worried that his interlocutors would reject his letters as forged when they arrived and weren't the size of a human haycart.

“Shoot, if you're offering,” Sophie said.

How the dragon hunted, she never found out. His tiny webbed wings were incapable of lifting his body off the earth - else she would've asked him to fly her to the next town - and she saw him do no more than run out the mouth of the cave and plunge off the nearest cliff face, before returning with dinner an hour later.

She was not, however, especially inclined to complain; nor would you be, if you had a dragon bringing you fresh caught meat on the daily.

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***

It was one of those rare, beautiful days upon the mountaintops, when the sun shone and the gorse bushes peeked their heads out over the snow.

The caribou was taking full advantage of the lovely weather. He had separated from his herd and was wandering over the mountains, browsing, and enjoying the fresh grass at their base.

The sky grew dark. The caribou looked up, and saw a green, scaly object the size of three conjoined elephants hurtling out of the sky towards him.

And then the world went black.

***

Sophie had just finished the stylised initial letter beginning her text and was going for some more coffee when the dragon rushed in, squooshed caribou slung over his shoulder, his pace frantic and his gaze excited.

“He's coming,” the dragon said, as he tossed the tasty snack into the corner and hurriedly began to buff his scales.

“Who is?” Sophie asked, accidentally adding twice as much cream in her shock.

“The knight - he's coming. I saw him cantering over the mountains… Well, not quite cantering; you can't actually ride a horse here; more properly, he was just waving a horse skull about on a stick, but he was putting on a darn good cantering impression as he did so I think we can give him the bonus points.”

There was a mad moment in which Sophie wondered if it wasn't her knight, Sir Higgins, but it couldn't be - it wasn't Tuesday yet.

“Well?” The dragon snapped, as Sophie continued to stand there, overly creamy coffee held in her hands.

“Well water,” Sophie replied instantaneously, and the dragon snorted.

“Aren't you going to get changed? You're supposed to be the damsel he'll be saving.”

And then Sophie remembered she was wearing the clothes in which she'd come - now freshly laundered - which were very much not princess clothes, but before she could run to her room she heard the sounds of chattering chain mail and a human male aggressively whinnying in poor imitation of a horse, and she realised she had no time.

“Bah,” snapped the dragon, all in a rush, and he slung Sophie over his shoulder before depositing her in a vaguely princess-y location atop a nearby hill. She stood there, watching, as the knight rounded the mountain path on his… horse.

There he was, decidedly not Sir Higgins, his armour tarnished, his square helmet dented, the blue boar on his shield done in fading paint.

He made awkward cantering motions until he neared the cave of the dragon, then threw his horse skull aside and drew an immense sword from off his back.

He pointed his sword at the hill where Sophie was standing. “En garde, dragon! I am here to rescue yon fair maiden!”

Sophie was on the verge of pumping her fist, when she realised that he was pointing his blade not at her, but six feet over… where stood one of the dragon's damsels.

“Oh, come on!”

The dragon came rumbling out of his cavern, smoke pouring from his nostrils and his eyes ablaze with fury.

“You dare challenge me? I, the great dragon of the northern mountains, am to be challenged by one as feeble in form as you? Nay, mortal - as ye live, draw thy blade, and prepare to fall in the contest against this glorious one!”

And he bounced on his hind legs, rolling his fists like a child playing wrestler.

The knight removed his helmet - revealing a chiselled face with his luscious locks plastered to his head - spit melodramatically on the ground, put his helmet back on, and waved his sword at the dragon.

“Oh, it's on!”

“Wait!” Cried Sophie, before the pair could do battle. “You aren't going to rescue me?”

The knight looked at her aghast. “You can’t possibly expect me to rescue a real female. Good Heavens - to violently roughhouse in that fashion!”

“That’s what I said!” Said the dragon. “But she would go on about how she’s extra rare because she’s a real live human being, and it’s something no other dragon has in their collection, and so on and such like.”

The knight looked sympathetically at the dragon. The two shared a moment of brotherhood, and then the dragon drew his cutlass.

“En garde,” he cried, spitting fire and fury. “Ye shall not reclaim yon fair maiden from me.”

And the two did battle.