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Old 12-04-2003, 05:54 PM   #198
mark12_30
Stormdancer of Doom
 
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Sting

Mellonin knitted her brows and quieted her voice, lest more folk than Baran also think her stupid. "Dragons? I thought you were looking for a woman. Oh-- Can she--" Mellonin dropped her voice still lower. "Like Luthien Tinuviel becoming a bat, and making Beren into a wolf? Can she enchant herself?"

Baran's eyes eyes twinkled and he said nothing. Realizing she had answered a question with another question, Mellonin sat up as tall as she could, and gathered her wits. "Dragons. Well, let me see. Eighty or perhaps ninety years or so ago, there was a dragon in Erebor; the Elder Baggins spoke with him and enticed him to leave his lair, and Bard the Bowman shot him. But it sounds like that was before she was born, which is a good thing, isn't it?"

Baran smiled.

"And then during the war there were those fell beasts. They didn't spout flame, but they did have wings, and they were leathery, scaly sorts of creatures. I suppose they could have been cold-drakes, of a sort. Is that what you mean?"

Baran shook his head.

"Good, they weren't very feminine and anyway they are all dead. Then there was that... well, in the war, that big flaming monster Mithrandir defeated, up under the mountains, before he came back from the dead. It seemed dragonish to me, in the tales I've heard. Very fiery. But that was male, I think, and he's dead too."

Baran's eyes began to glaze.

"I'm sorry. Perhaps there are more recent tales and sightings that I don't know about. I only just began here at the Inn. Would you like me to ask the others?" she said earnestly.

"No. Have an apple, " he said.

"What was she like?" Mellonin asked, taking a dainty nip out of the apple. Raising her eyes to his, she waited. His eyes were brown, not Gondorian grey, and there was a richness to them that puzzled her.
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