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Mal froze as the little dragon started to sniff at his boots. Very gently, and trying to avoid Dji’s gaze (which he probably didn’t as she was likely staring right at him or at least her little dragon), he tried to push the baby overgrown lizard away with his foot. He did NOT want to play, especially not with something that was likely to melt his boots or something. Unfortunately, he had the nagging feeling that his movements simply made the dragon more interested in playing with his feet.

Why him? he inwardly lamented, wondering what had possessed the creature to wander over to him, of all the people in this room! Why him?! Several of the other guards had noticed this and found the image of Mal trying to shake off a little dragon rather amusing… well, maybe it would have been amusing if it was happening to someone else.

Mal wasn’t laughing now, that was for sure. Shaking his leg more furiously, he tried to dislodge the little dragon. Having some experience with cats, he hissed quietly, hoping the noise would make the dragon go away. With his luck, he bitterly reflected, it would only make the dragon more interested. It was especially awkward when the dragon started pulling at his pant legs in an attempt to climb up into his lap. Especially embarrassing since Mal was currently standing up. Grabbing his waist band, he managed to keep his pants up. Thank God he had a belt on.

“You mind calling off your dragon, miss?” he asked as politely as he felt, which wasn’t exactly polite. It was… civil, that was true, but it wasn’t the normal amount of respect a person showed mages. Taking a few steps backwards, Mal tried to avoid stepping on the little dragon, which was far more difficult than it seemed. For such a little creature, it could wriggle around with amazing efficiency and quickness.

Things could only last so long, especially since Mal’s boots were slippery with dragon saliva… before long, the unfortunate guard slipped and tripped on the dragon, falling on his behind. Beaten by a dragon baby… how humiliating…

Mal blinked in surprise as Dji said ‘gentleman’ and he looked over his shoulder, wondering just who she was talking about. He wasn’t used to hearing the word ‘gentleman’ used in reference to himself unless there was a word like ‘NOT’ in between or unless the speaker immediately spat after saying it. Standing up, he brushed himself off, still eyeing the little dragon warily.

“Yes, I can see that…” what he couldn’t see was why someone would keep a dragon around. Oh, sure, he could understand people having pets; but, a pet where you had to duck behind the furniture every time it burped was not a good pet… or one that tended to jump on visitors. Not that Djibril got a lot of visitors; mages generally didn’t for some odd reason. Yes, very odd, the way that mages had the tendency to turn their visitors into toads and the like. Or into whatever ingredients they needed for their magical studies.

Another mystery was here, one that Mal couldn’t readily solve. “How did you get a dragon hatchling?” Admittedly, this close to dragon territory, it would have been easy to hire a dragon-hunter or something. Still, dragons watched their nests very closely. It was damn near impossible to imagine someone pinching an egg from a nest guarded by dragons! Or, more specifically, it was easy to imagine someone trying and then being fried to a crisp.

Ah, destroying a nest. Mal could easily understand that. Having seen the sort of damage that dragons could wreak on nearby towns, it made perfect sense to him. It seemed that many dragons blamed ALL humans to losing their wings. Blaming humans made sense, as it was human fault… but, that had been a long time ago. No need to continue taking out vengeance on those alive today who had absolutely no affiliation---beyond bloodlines---to those who lived back then. Dragons, however, were funny creatures and normally didn’t see things like this. It probably came with being so long-lived.

Yeah, so maybe it was cute in a sort of scaly way. It didn’t matter, really. Tiger cubs were pretty damned adorable too, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t grow up to be man-eating monsters on occasion. As Djibril started cooing at the little baby dragon, Mal sighed and decided that it wouldn’t be worth even attempting to talk to her for another couple of minutes. Whenever people---man or woman---got into the baby-talking stage, it was impossible to drag them out of it.

Ah well, the fat merchant was finally done counting his money anyway and was satisfied that Djibril had paid the full price. Well, their full agreed price anyway. Taariq waddled over to the pair and signaled to Mal before waddling away as dignified as he could while still walking quickly.

“Well, I must be off to wait for the fat b*****d to attempt to kill me and then I will have to turn the tables on him. Good day to you, Djibril, and you too… umm… Supreme Squishy Dragon,” Mal said before making a mocking bow and turning on his heels to follow Taariq. For a man who knew that someone was going to attempt to kill him, he was rather relaxed…

Once again, Mal’s answer was cavalier, without a single worry about this impending conflict. “Oh, well, you can’t blame him for trying to kill me. I want his money, so there’s a perfectly legitimate conflict of interest right there. And he’s clearly jealous of my a**. It’s far too nice.” Actually, he liked to think that his whole body was nice, but having a particular fondness for butts, he paid attention to that part of his anatomy.

Although… he looked out one of the windows at the rain pouring down. It didn’t look like it would let up any time soon. It was easily possible to get out of a fight with Taariq by demanding to be paid now and then simply staying here. Of course, that meant he would have to deal with a mad mage and her Supreme Squishy Dragon, but he had dealt with stranger sorts.

“Well, it’s not that I hold myself and my a** highly,” Mal explained, although he certainly thought that he was good-looking. “It’s more than I hold him really lowly. No competition, you know? As for the rain, I’ve seen worse. Much worse.” Yeah. Try going through a field fully loaded when magic missiles or whatever were raining down around you, he bitterly reflected to himself. And then there had been the time when he had marched through a storm that had gone on for days---without a drink, mind you, this being a dangerous place to stop for a drinking, even when it was raining--- and then had fallen in a puddle of horse piss. Yeah. That had definitely been worse.

Still, no reason to go out and get in danger if he could avoid it. Besides, it was always fun to throw a wrench in the merchant’s gears. “I may have to take you up on that offer…” he didn’t have any other jobs planned. His plans had been relatively simple: go to the nearest town and hunt around for work, preferably legal, but illegal was completely welcome as well.

As a matter of fact, Taariq had heard. Jiggling over Djibril and Mal’s way, he interjected his way into the conversation. “You mean all of us, or just Mal here?” He, for one, was not looking forward to jiggling his way out into the rain.

Mal watched the merchant’s face. He couldn’t help it. It was like watching a train wreck. A train wreck that had just collided with another train. And then had gone into a small lake of gasoline. Of course, none of these things existed, but it was the only way to completely describe the complete mix of looks and emotions that crossed Taariq’s face. First, there was greed: he wanted to keep as much money as he could and he wanted to stay out of the rain. Second there was…well, annoyance at the dragon. And, finally, there was more greed. And then more annoyance again. And very, very finally, there was fear as the dragon belched fire at him.

Backing up quickly, Taariq decided that rain couldn’t be as bad as staying with a mage who kept a dragon as a pet. “Ah, I just remembered! I have shipments to pick up tomorrow…” He looked at Mal. “You have jobs coming up, right?”

“Nope.”

“… but, aren’t I still paying you to come back to town?” Taariq wheedled, jiggling the coins, as if hoping that would somehow entice Mal to follow.

As a matter of fact, it did but only for a few seconds. “No, the agreement was to Djibril’s tower, actually. So, here’s the thing. I did the job. So, I get paid.” He held out his hand, patiently waiting.

And there was that final emotion on Taariq’s face; it was one that was normally seen on the faces of three-year old kids who had just been told that, no, they could NOT have that expensive toy. Grudgingly, he handed over a small bag of coins to Mal, who, not being a fool, checked inside before nodding. The merchant waddled away, his guards following.

Finally, Mal relaxed, pleased that everything had gone well. “Thanks. That saved my a potential conflict and a possible employer for later.”

Mal eyed the cane warily before moving a few extra inches away, just in case. He had learned the hard way that, for such an old man, ‘Al’ could move amazingly fast. And his cane was faster, especially when he wanted to beat someone for threatening his precious ferrets. “Yes. Not bad for a giant fire-breathing lizard which one day will probably make a human its slave,” Mal said, disapproval hanging on his every tone. He didn’t mind too much if the human wanted to be Bound. That was their own stupid decision. “Although, at this age, he’s more fire-hiccupping than ‘breathing’.”

“I’ll just stick around here for a few more hours then and then shuffle off when I decide that Taariq is far away enough that he won’t bother trying to kill me.” Staying the night?! Pfft… not a chance. He assumed that Djibril had meant he would stay only as long as he had to. Not to mention, he didn’t like the idea of spending too much time around mages. They were tricky bastards, they were. He had grown up with the campfire stories of mages kidnapping people when they needed ‘test subjects’ for their little experiments.

Sure, Djibril seemed nice… but that was probably only so she could save nastiness up for later. “What does… err… Vres eat?” he wasn’t sure he had caught the little dragon’s name correctly, but made an effort.