It had been a stormy night when she had tamed the dragon. She had been watching it for weeks swooping in the skies above her cottage and making off with her sheep and chickens. She had laid many traps for it, but the final straw had been when it claimed her prize goat Anastasia who had been even tempered. So on that day she took down her mother’s heirloom from its shelf, dusted the cover then began to read its secrets. Then that night, as the wind howled bending the trees, thunder shook the earth and lightning split the sky, she laid her strongest trap with a spell.

The dragon screeched at her, its sound broken by the thunder. In the gloom its bronze color looked brown and washed out. She never had been close enough to see its eyes, but now they reflected blue green light back at her like a cat’s in her lamp light. First fear had filled her when she had heard its first roar in the night, but now she smirked at the creature that was as big around as a cart and as tall as a one story house in town. She never dreamed in her life to catch a creature so large and powerful with a spell newly learned; it had been months since she had last used a spell.

She had read about dragons in books, seen them painted by mind by storytellers and before her eyes by painters, but never could they come close to what she saw before her; the steam rising from its nostrils, the obsidian claws digging tightly into the wet earth, massive wings held close to its back by her binding spell and finally its tail sweeping the ground around it, warning her that it was not completely defenseless.

She held up her left hand and said “I claim you dragon.” By this phrase she completed the rite and a magical silver chain filled her hand leading to a beautiful collar carved from bone that appeared around the dragon’s neck. Suddenly the dragon roared causing her to stumble back a few steps in surprise before she tugged on the chain. “I’ll have none of that!” she snapped. “You stole my animals and my friend! Do you know how hard I work to keep this place up?” The dragon regarded her with deep intelligence then snorted, turning its head away from her as if to say, “whatever”. She tugged on the chain again. “Come beast, I will show you your new home.”

The girl led the dragon to her shed that was dug into the side of a large hill that shielded her home from the winter winds. It groaned in protest and snapped at her but her spell kept her from harm. “You will sleep here where Anastasia did, before you stole her, until I figure out what to do with you. Good night beast.” Closing the door to the shed securely she raced back to her cottage, her heart humming in her chest. I just caught a dragon, she thought, and then laughed.