Prisoner's Lament
#3 of Old Stories
This is a flash fiction piece I wrote sometime between 2015-17 about a fox being prisoner to a dragon.
From the treacherous and stingingly cold waters of Lake Gondarr rose a haggard fox, his fur waterlogged and torn in places. Nothing was on him save a soaked loincloth, which was also shredded, and he was carrying a wooden bucket much too big for his scrawny body. As he emerged from the depths onto the cream sand, he scanned the area, his ears flicking at the chirps of far away birds. The beach stretched out long and thin to either side, and in front of him, it stopped about a couple yards before him into lush verdant jungle. He cursed through gritted teeth and soldiered on towards the trees, his ochre tail dragging and accumulating dirt as he went on, for he outright loathed working for the services of a powerful (and very demanding) ancient dragon.
Some time later, he arrived at his master's lair: a toothed cavern, its stalactites and stalagmites smothered in enough gold to pay entire kingdoms. (He wished that it would be lent to such causes, but given the dragon's covetous manners, he knew in his heart that this would never truly happen.)
As the fox heaved the bucket over in his last shaking steps before meeting hard stone, he heard a deep rumble. The dragon was here. He gulped down his fear and straightened up, preparing for the coming conversation.
"Thanks be to you, my ssservant," the dragon said. He reached forth: a terrible red-scaled claw, big enough to crush the fox. As the dragon drew back the bucket, he could see the eyes of the beast, red and glaring in the darkness. A mere second later, the sloshing of the dragon lapping down the pail could be heard, followed by a muffled clang as it was tossed before the fox's feet. "Give me mooore, dear servant," the beast bellowed, "and fast!"
The fox never wanted to be apprenticed to the beast in the first place. Ever since dragons killed his parents at age thirteen, he was tirelessly searching for a way out of perpetual slavery. Besides, his ears still rung with the sheer volume of the scarlet wyrm's voice, and if there was any indication of hope, it had vanished, day after day after day. He settled himself on an old stump not far from the shore, thinking of how many years he had until death. He knew thoughts like that were morbid, but given his situation, what else was there really to ponder about? Nature? His family? All of that seemed so far away from him these days; a distant memory, some would say.
He rose carefully. Time to do the demon's bidding, he thought. He marched over to the water, his tail far from clean, and slipped into the fray, icy waves touching him like cold liquid fingers as he slid under.
If there's ever a way to get out of this, the prisoner lamented, I can't find one.