Hollie
She stood there sputtering for a second before she chased after him.
Shit shit shit!
“No. You can’t do that!” she cried out, getting in front of him and putting her hands up to stop him.
The dragon-man just kept walking and she sort of bounced off him. Good Lord, he felt like he was made of steel! Hollie couldn’t have moved him if she tried. Angrily she shook her head, trying to come up with another option. There had to be a different way. Obviously strength wasn’t going to do it.
“Listen,” she pleaded, jogging up alongside him. His eyes flicked over to her, so at least she knew he was listening. “You can’t just go kill everyone. These people are my friends. They don’t know that what they were doing is wrong. If they knew that this was your mountain, and that you existed, they would never have done it! Please, just stop and talk!”
Just like that the walking colossus came to an abrupt halt. There was no slowdown; he just stopped. It was rather eerie. His head turned over to look in her direction. “Will you take me to the local noble so that I may speak with him?”
She sighed. “It’s not that easy.”
“Okay,” he said uncaringly and started to walk again.
“Wait just a second!”
He turned back to look at her, fire—literal fire, she could see the flames dancing—in his eyes. “Do not speak to me like that again,” he boomed, his voice loud and powerful, clearly designed to force Hollie to submit.
“Fuck you,” she snarled, reaching down to harness her own anger, hurling it back at him. “Give me the chance to actually finish speaking before you walk off like a petulant spoiled brat who’s upset he didn’t get his own way.”
Hollie knew that she was toeing the line with the dragon by treating him so. He could kill her any second, and probably without even trying. She could still remember how solid and strong he felt when she’d tried to push him. By all rights she should be absolutely terrified right now. But instead, she found herself pissed off. He had cornered her, and on one hand was promising death, and on the other hand, was also promising death. Any predator should know that backing someone into a corner with no way out wasn’t going to end well.
She expected him to react angrily again, but to her surprise something akin to humor appeared briefly on his face before vanishing. Was he mocking her? She felt her blood begin to boil.
Keep yourself in control, woman. Your friends and a lot of innocent humans are counting on you, Hollie. You need to find a way to talk him down. He’s obviously not interested in just killing you out of hand, which is good. In fact, he’s talking to you. Use that to your advantage. Keep him talking, try to delay!
“Look,” she said firmly. “It’s not that I said I wouldn’t.”
The dragon looked thoughtful for a moment, then tilted his head, conceding her point.
“But the fact is, I can’t just take you to the local noble, even if I wanted to.”
“Why is that?” He crossed his arms while he awaited her explanation.
“Because, for starters, there are no nobles? They aren’t a thing anymore?”
“No? Well, take me to your ruler then.”
Hollie sagged, rolling her eyes. “We don’t have a ruler,” she said sarcastically. “We have democracy. Where the people elect our leaders to govern for us.”
The dragon appeared surprise. “Really? The Greeks managed to make that silly concept stick around did they?”
“It’s not silly,” she snapped back with another roll of her eyes at his pretentiousness. “And we value it quite highly. If that’s the last thing you remember though, then you have a lot to catch up on.”
“No, I remember more.”
Suddenly something occurred to Hollie. “Wait. You’re talking nobles, but five hundred years ago there were no nobles here. Hell, this part of the world had barely just been discovered. The native peoples were here, but they didn’t have a system like that.”
He looked thoughtful. “Right. Of course. Obviously not. I just assumed that that was something that would have been imported with the first waves of newcomers.” More irritation was visible on his face before he schooled it back to neutral. “I tried so hard to get away from those pricks. It’s why I came over here in the first place,” he revealed.
“To get away from the nobles?”
“Absolutely. You wouldn’t believe how stuffy they get.”
Hollie snorted. “Old men in power stuffy and full of themselves? You don’t say. Tell me something I don’t know.”
The dragon-man looked at her oddly, obviously not fully grasping the changes that had happened.
Oh boy, are you going to have fun learning that women are now, legally at least, on the same level as you men.
She couldn’t keep the smile from her face as she pictured his reaction to learning that the local “ruler,” the mayor of Drake’s Crossing, was a woman. All of a sudden Hollie wanted nothing more than to take him to the town hall and watch him struggle to accept that he was forced to deal with a woman.
It would probably cause his head to explode, she thought, stifling a giggle by clamping a hand over her mouth. Poor dragon-man can’t handle a woman with power. This is going to be priceless.
“Hey,” she said suddenly into the silence that had fallen between them. “Do you have a name? I’m tired of referring to you as dragon-man in my head whenever I think about how much I hate you.”
He shook his head in annoyance. “You need not hate me. I do not hate you.”
“Well no shit. I’m not threatening to kill your friends and family,” she spat back. “To you I’m probably nothing more than a toothpick. Why would you hate me when you can use me to clean out your teeth after you eat everyone?”
The dragon recoiled in what appeared to be genuine horror. “Ew. Excuse me? I do not eat humans. That’s just revolting.”
She relaxed. “Oh, perhaps you have some manners after all.”
“You taste terrible.”
“Or maybe not,” she groaned.
“Obsidian.”
“What?”
“My name,” he said impatiently. “You may call me Obsidian.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to fly,” she said dryly. “I’m not using that silly name.”
He glared at her. “It is not silly. It is my name!”
“It’s my name!” she mocked, scrunching her face up. “Listen, I’m not calling you that. How about Sid? Yeah, you look like a Sid. Okay, Sid,” she repeated, testing out the nickname. “Yeah, Sid it is. Much easier and quicker.”
“You will refer to me by my name,” he snarled.
“Listen, Obsidian,” she said, relenting for this particular time. “In this day and age, the shortening of one’s name to something quick and easy to pronounce is commonplace, got it? It’s not an insult. We value efficiency and convenience. Single-syllable names are much more preferred than multiple.”
Sid seemed to consider her words for a moment. “So you are not being rude to me?”
“No. My name is Hollie-Annabelle. But nobody ever calls me that.”
“I see. So I may refer to you by a shortened, single syllable name related to your full name?”
She shook her head at his wording, screwing her eyes shut, but then she nodded. “Yes, you may. Most people call me Hollie.”
“That is two syllables. I shall shorten Hollie down.”
“Go for it,” she said with a sigh. Being called Hol—pronounced Hall—wasn’t her favorite nickname, but she was more than used to it now.
“Okay then, come on, Ho, let us proceed,” Sid told her, starting his walk up the tunnel once more.
She stood unmoving for a solid ten seconds, her jaw working up and down while she tried to process whether he had purposefully called her that or not.
“That is NOT how it works!” she growled at last and raced after him, already tired of having to do so much walking. “You can’t just go around calling someone Ho!”
Sid slowed, but he didn’t stop this time. Eventually she caught up with him, falling into step as best she could, despite his longer legs.
“There is something wrong with the name I chose for you?” he asked with false innocence.
“Yes, there is,” she snapped. “I suspect that you understand fully that Ho is a shortened version of the word whore. Of which I am most decidedly not, okay?”
“Of course,” he replied. “I was simply demonstrating just how rude it is to shorten someone’s name without their approval.”
“Okay, okay, point proven. I’ll call you Obsidian if I must.”
He waved her off with a casual movement of his hand. “No, I have decided that Sid will be acceptable. What do you prefer I call you?”
Grinding her teeth at his imperious answer, she told him. “Hol or Hollie are the two most common terms I get. I prefer Hollie, but Hol is acceptable.”
“Very well. Hollie it is. Now, shall we go see the local chieftain or shaman? I wish to get this matter of whom the mountain belongs to settled.”
Once again his words left her standing there searching for what to say as he walked off. Finally she resorted to the tried and true.
“THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS!” she shouted, and for what felt like the fiftieth time went racing after the dragon from another era.