Once upon a time, a long time ago, when dragons were aplenty, there lived a girl, a very pretty girl, loved by many but who desired none.
She spent her days and nights in the forest outside her village, picking herbs, blossoms and shoots and using them to make curious, little potions which then she used on plants and animals to see their effects.
Some flowers bloomed before their time, others died before seeing the rising sun, animals grew wings and flew away, while others grew old and died. She kept the potions in small glass vials in the hidden pockets of her skirts, she made labels made of leaves to know which is which and she never let them out of her sight.
She was a clever, little girl with an everlasting talent for concotions and magic brews, a little witch, that was what she was.
Time flew, her beauty grew and so did her collections of tiny vials. Soon she could not carry them all at once
and began to look for a secret place to hide them, a cave perhaps.
Yet, such a talent cannot stay obscure, especially in a tiny village like hers, the village people started to talk.
So she found no other way but to leave her tiny house in the tiny village and make her living elsewhere.
All the village lads tried to change her mind. They offered her jewels, marriage and fancy fabrics, they begged and they wept, they made promises of travels to new lands but she never yielded. She left in the dead of night, into her mighty forest she went, where all her weapons grew. As she happily skipped around the trees her tiny vials made a happy, high-pitched sound which echoed miles away from where she was but she cared not, she felt home already.
The rising sun found her under a tall pine tree which stood right next to the mouth of a cave. When she woke up the sun was high up in the sky which caused her skin to be all itchy and red. She had a nasty sun-burn.
Into the cave she ran and there in the shade she took all her bottles out, one by one until she found the right one. A few drops and the angry burn was gone, her skin was all soft and cool, the magic brew had done its wonders once again.
And so it was that the village girl had found a new place to dwell and was happy indeed because she neither knew nor she cared that the cave was the house of someone else far stronger than her.
After a fortnight the dragon returned to his lair, where generations of dragons before him had called it home.
He came back in the middle of the night and found the pretty girl sleeping on a bed made of leaves.
Without making any noise, he placed his newly found treasures at the very back on the cave and spent the night scrutinizing the girl and the dozens of glass vials stacked in a single file on the floor.
He uncorked them all, some he smelt, others he used on his scaly skin, by dawn he knew them all and the girl as well.
The girl woke up with a start, her face near the dragon's nose, his big green eyes opened wide and the warm masculine voice sounded wisely.
"Welcome pretty girl to my home. I'll call you Maya and you'll be mine. "
The dragon's voice like a lover's song, touched her once closed heart. You see dragons have a magic of their own, far more cunning than all the potions she brewed together. The girl fell for the dragon right then and there. She fell so deep, her real name was erased from memory, so the story goes, she was only Maya, the dragon girl.
And so time flew again and Maya was a girl no more.
A dragon flier, a lover, a dragon witch, he had captured her heart, she had yielded within. Together fresh battles they won, new treasures they took, new places they explored and still time flew and a grown woman she soon was.
The dragon left her alone from time to time, in the cave she stayed, her potions she brew until one day, one very unfortunate day, a black steed came to rest outside the mouth of the cave, its rider all wounded and half dead lay on the steed's back still. She took him inside and made him all well, night after night he rested on her bed.
On the seventh night, the man's eyes opened and Maya was there, many nights followed and Maya slipped inside the bed.
A month later the man rode his horse at last, he asked her to come with him but she said that she couldn't. The man rode away but the dragon came back and he saw from the start Maya's change of heart.
Maya ran but not far enough the dragon followed. The dragon's angry breath burned her black silky hair and in the middle of her scream the dragon swallowed her whole!
And here the story ends, well not exactly but there is nothing much to tell. The dragon carried her within, close to his heart, two heart beats one inside the other. He made sure he fed regularly so that she could eat but never a herb of a weed, her weapons he was afraid to give. She cried and begged for the dragon to let her out but his vengeance lasted until her very last breath was out. Only then did the dragon cut his belly open and pulled her dead body out.
Woman and dragon lay together in the cave and were soon dead. I found their bones and their hidden treasures along with Maya's vials just like my husband had said. He was the wounded rider on the black steed and he was the only one in the story who lived happily ever after before he too, one day, dropped dead.
