Dragontown

“Oh-ho-ho!” I struggled to lift a little silver scepter in both of my hands. “Hear ye, subjects of Dragontown! Heed the call of your princess in our mighty town square!” I stood on my tiptoes to look taller. I balanced on a pile of plywood, once parts of a house’s walls. A streak through the middle was stained and half-melted. My subjects kept walking about, going through their morning business. They were dressed in the same rags they’d been in since Dragontown was founded.

“Barley today,” Madame Piff pursed her lips. Her curly white hair hung down lazily. She reached into the delivery pile, “always the same.”

“And, there’s less today than yesterday,” Mack knelt beside it, “bread again tonight, Daisy.” He patted his daughter on the head.

“I don’t want bread! I had bread last night!” She pouted.

Mack frowned at her, “With an attitude like that, you’ll be the next princess, young lady.”

“Are you even listening to me?” I stomped against my plywood. Far, red walls trembled slightly. Dragontown was in the belly of a kilometer-long dragon. Specifically, her stomach. A river of hissing acid ran under the broken, stone bridge. It rose a few millimeters every day, and within a year, everything would be flooded. Our only lights came from the pulsing fire glands deeper inside the dragon’s body.

“Well, Princess,” Madame Piff huffed, “you’re the only one the dragon listens to. Why don’t you tell her to send us something nicer than barley everyday?”

“Kneel,” I struggled to angle the scepter forward.

“Oh huff, Fawn!” The old lady rolled her eyes, “You’re trapped here like the rest of us. It’ll be half-risen bread for you, too.”

“Princess Fawn!” I whined.

She nodded, “Do you want the bread, Princess?”

“Heavens no!” I shook my head, “The bits of fruit the dragon swallowed for me haven't gone bad yet. Why would I have the gross, dry bread?”

“They’re going to spoil sooner or later,” she shook her leg until her knee loudly popped. “We would all be very grateful if…”

“I’ll give what’s left to the town once it’s already spoiled,” I turned my nose to the rounded, shaking ceiling. It wasn’t quite a dome, hardly illuminated by the distant fire glands. “The dragon didn’t send them here for a bunch of peasants.” I tilted my head side to side. I sighed like how my mother, the Empress of Farhaven, once did, “I love you all.”

Mack guided his daughter back toward their cottage. He told me it had been a blacksmith’s shop before the dragon swallowed it with their whole family inside. Dragontown hadn’t been one town, instead it was single buildings and people from all kinds of distant lands. I had been the princess of Farhaven before I was the princess of Dragontown.

Dragontown was a place that would only exist for a year. The body of a dragon didn’t exactly work like anyone else’s, it did everything rather slowly. Even her voice was long and drawn out. Of course, she had no intention of letting any of us leave this place. Me, especially.

Dragons had their diet to thank for their slow metabolism. Flesh didn’t sate them, but the very concept of power. I was the heiress to a great and terrible empire, more than plenty to keep the dragon satisfied for a century. The rest of the town, she brought here just to keep me company. My ungrateful subjects loved to moan about their conditions. It was far worse that I was going to die, since they had nothing to lose.

I sat defiantly with my legs crossed on the half-ruined plywood. I held my chin in my hands and looked up. I’d already finished all of the books the dragon had sent here for me. The scepter balanced in my lap for a moment, then clattered down against the wood. I yelped and grabbed it tightly, looking over it for any signs of damage. There never was any.

I was here for a week before Dragontown had really come into being. During that time, I’d made a point of complaining to the dragon about everything. I didn’t have nice enough clothes, or I didn’t have a bed, or I didn’t have food. I was lonely. She made a point in solving those issues in turn, but the scepter was the first gift she gave me. It was proof of my status. To her, I was the most important. I was the Princess of Dragontown.

The heat from the fire glands cooled for a moment, the sky darkened like a passing storm. I hadn’t seen clouds in almost a month. “What are you burning now, Bubbles?” I asked out loud into the nothingness. Bubbles wasn’t really the dragon’s name. She didn’t have a name like humans did. I had just taken to calling her something, and that was what stuck.

“Nothing at all,” her voice shook through the ground. People were thrown off their feet like an earthquake. The walls of the cottage trembled. Down the street, an infant cried out, clinging to his mother’s arms. She spoke sweetly and slowly, “I merely sneezed, Princess.”

“Oh heavens,” I bobbed my head up and down, “I should have realized that by now.”

“Is something wrong today, Princess?”

“I’m running out of tea,” I pouted, “the townspeople are lazy, and they don’t work hard, and they try not to listen to me.”

She thought for a moment. “I will get more tea from the village. The one you said your mother was born in.”

I pressed my head against my shoulder. I hadn’t thought about my mother in a while, “Isn’t that hundreds of kilometers away, now?”

“I can fly there by the afternoon. I’m quite fond of that village. Your mother is a respectable woman. And, she’s made one very nice thing.”

“Well, I am the nicest thing!” I agreed. I leapt onto my feet with a loud stomp, and looked sharply around Dragontown. There were my subjects, not looking to me, but focusing on trying to keep themselves from stumbling on the shaking, uneven ground. “The prettiest, and the generousest- most generous- and the loveliest!”

I stood triumphantly, watching my subjects slowly regaining their footing. The plywood made me taller than all of them. I took a deep breath. The air burned in my nostrils. It was acrid and caustic. I’d have to ask for more flowers to keep in my room.

“Tastiest…” The dragon added. Its words caused another earthquake. I tried to keep myself standing on the plywood, but tripped, falling onto my back. My golden hair spread out over my face, and my silver tiara clattered down on the ground behind me. “Cutest…”

“W-well!” I brushed the hair out of my face. “I am cleaner, better washed, and definitely nicer smelling than all of the peasants. I’ve been trying to make them civilized. Did you know they were trying to escape again?”

“I can hear everything they say to each other,” Bubbles said softly, “even when they think they’re whispering.”