As I think I have said before: Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and go well with ketchup. Beware, even, of the little ones.

I had a pocket dragon once. His name was Dragon, though. I don't know what became of him, but it's possible he dissolved when I walked away from imagery and put up a sign that said: "Don't enter the forest. It's not there."

Mmm, just because something's not "there", that doesn't mean you can't (or shouldn't) think about it. Some would even say that that ability is what makes our minds different from other animals'. You can't invent something that doesn't exist yet, unless you can imagine it.

Besides, it's fun.

Roger did not fly far, though. As his anger subsided, he realized that he might now be in some trouble. The humans were unlikely to let an attack on their children go unpunished, no matter how well-deserved it had been. He preferred not to be forced to fly on to the next village, and he had no reason to believe that life would be easier, if he did.

As he hovered, thinking, he caught sight of another human child, a little girl, watching him. Suddenly alert, he startled her by spinning around to face her. But she made no aggressive moves; instead, she spoke to him. "I won't hurt you! I saw what they did to you. I'm sorry. They bully me, too, when they can catch me."

Roger tried to answer her, but had to clear his throat first. He realized that he had not spoken to anyone for many days. "What do you want?" He realized that it sounded offensive, but he was not really in a mood to be polite.

"I just wanted to talk to you. I ... I don't have many friends." The little girl did not seem surprised to hear him speak. Human children appeared to be capable of accepting ideas to which the adults would respond in anger.

Roger was touched. For one thing, she was treating him with far more respect than anyone had for quite some time; not since he was full-sized, at least. Besides, he had a congenital weakness for fair maidens.

"Well, at the moment, it appears that I don't, either." He had to think for a moment about the next bit. It was something he had never even thought before, much less been forced to say. "In fact, it is possible that I will need a friend, soon. People won't like what I had to do, back there."

The little girl did not have to think for even a second. "I can hide you! You could come and live with me, and I'll feed you and keep you safe and ..." She broke off for a moment, then resumed as if to anticipate his objections. "You'll be free to go wherever you like! But it might be safer if you rode in my pocket, when other people are around." She turned her hip, and put her fingers inside the pocket to show him how roomy it was.

He looked at her for a moment. He was not sure whether he could trust her, particularly after what the boy-children had done to him. On the other hand, she had behaved differently in all sorts of ways, including such a simple thing as asking his permission. And, he had no better ideas for food or shelter.

Finally, she clinched his decision by saying, "My name is June. What's yours?"

So, for the first time in his entire life, he told a human his name.

"My mother named me Roger," he said. "It's an unusual name for a dragon. Most of us have exotic, elegant names; for one thing, it makes better public relations. But my mother was an unusual dragon, herself. She believed that dragons and people should work together, that together they could make a brighter future for both."

The little girl, June, was listening intently. Roger had no way of knowing how much of his story she understood, at her age, but he found that it was a story he needed to tell.

"Her ideas enraged the other dragons, though. They went against the dragon way of life that had been in place for millenia ... a very long time," he added, seeing June's blank look. "My mother was banished, sent away from the other dragons, and I never saw my father again."

Roger had not meant to pause at this point, but found that he had lost his voice, momentarily. In the brief silence, June spoke. "My daddy's gone, too," she said. "He went off to fight in the war, and he didn't come back."

Roger looked at the little girl who had just told him matter-of-factly that her father was dead. He had never stopped to consider that the knights who had come to fight him might have had families back home. And little girls who would never see them again. He had never seen it that way before, though he suddenly realized that his mother must have. He sighed and continued.

"My mother took me and went to live with humans, or tried to. But the humans, too, did not really understand. They were afraid, because dragons are big, and can be dangerous. But of course, humans can be dangerous, too; they just don't look like it, as much."

He sighed again. "At first, things went fairly well. We lived in a cave in the hills above the village. Every day my mother would fly down to the village for the day's work, and every night she would fly back to feed me whatever food the villagers had shared with her. But she remained cautious. She told me to stay in the cave, out of sight, and not to come down to the village. She also said that if one night she did not return, I should leave the cave at once and fly far away. I was almost full-grown by then, and I protested having to stay in the cave all the time, but she would not listen. I sometimes wonder whether she knew that there would be trouble.

"My mother helped the villagers in all sorts of ways. Dragons are natural leaders. Not just because we're large and fearsome (most of us), but because humans feel some sort of compulsion to do as we say. I have heard it called 'dragon charisma'. She helped them clear farm fields out of the forest, and to organize the village fire department. Dragons know all about fire and flame, not only how to produce it but how to control it. Mother taught them freely, and it seemed that all were benefitting.

"Unfortunately, the village elders began to get jealous. People were following my mother instead of them. She thought that by not interfering in their system of graft, she would avoid provoking the elders. On the contrary, her honest dealings with the villagers only endeared her to them. Soon, the people were pressuring their elders to treat them the same way. But that would have meant giving up the easy life they'd made for themselves. So, they hatched a plan.

"One night, after my mother had left the village to fly back to our cave, one of the elders slaughtered a bunch of sheep, and burned the bodies to make it look like my mother had done it. When she flew down to the village the next morning, the shepherds accused her of attacking their sheep. The idea scared the villagers, because it seemed like the food they had been giving her was not enough and that she might attack their livestock or even them, whenever she wanted. Their fear made them disregard the evidence of their eyes: the sheep were still whole, and the fire that had burnt them had not been nearly as hot as my mother's.

"So they tied her up in chains. She could of course have fought her way free, but she didn't want to hurt anyone and she still believed that she could convince them of her innocence. In fact, a few of those who had worked closely with her did listen. They volunteered to hike up to the cave to tell me what happened. But though they set out at once, they did not reach the cave until evening.

"By then, I was very worried. I was standing in the mouth of the cave, looking down into the valley, when the hikers reached me. Some of them were afraid to find that there really was a second dragon loose near their village, but one of them came forward and told me what had been happening.

"I couldn't help it; I was just a young and hot-headed dragon, in those days. I stamped around angrily and flamed out into the night. Gradually, though, the people who had come to bring me the news calmed me down. They persuaded me to approach the village with caution, and perhaps I would find a peaceful way to free my mother. So I took off silently from the hillside and flew over the village, looking for her.

Roger paused. Dragons are not equipped to cry, but nevertheless, he felt hollow and alone. He didn't know what had made him dredge up all of these memories now, or why he had to tell his life story to a little girl. Maybe he needed someone to know that he hadn't meant for it all to happen, that sometimes events make the decisions for us.

"It was my flame that did it," he continued, softly. "When the villagers realized that there was another dragon nearby, they were frightened. They could not know how many of us there were, or how angry we might be. One of the guards panicked. He had a long sharp spear ..." He stopped, and began again. "Dragon hide is virtually impenetrable, but there is a spot on the belly ... I heard her cry out, and I dived toward the village. I saw her fall ... I knew she was ..."

He swallowed convulsively, not sure he should tell the rest to a little girl, but unable to stop himself. "We dragons don't bury our dead. We usually die alone, and unmourned. But when possible, we prefer funeral pyres. We burn our dead." He glared angrily at nothing, at the image of a memory from long ago, in his youth. "I burned the entire village. Never has a dragon had a pyre so magnificent. I made sure of that. I flew back and forth over the village until there was nothing left, only smoke and fleeing firemen. I flew through the night, singing songs of my mother's deeds, as dragons do, until the village and my heart were filled with ashes."

He was quiet for a moment, remembering. "Out of respect for my mother, I did not hunt down the village elders. Instead, I returned to the ways of dragons, and that's how I've lived ever since, right up until I was shrunk."

When Roger had finished, he closed his eyes, half expecting June to run away in horror at what he had told her. After a minute or two, he opened his eyes and looked at her. She was crying silently; tears glistened on her cheeks. Seeing him looking at her, she grabbed him and hugged him to her neck. He froze for a moment in surprise, then found himself clinging to her in return, tiny claws gripping her clothing. It felt a little like hugging his mother, when he was just a tiny baby. Maybe somewhere in his dragon brain, he almost understood why he had needed so badly to finally tell the story.

But the hug was cut short by the sound of voices, little boy voices. Quickly June held open her pocket, and Roger scrambled inside for the first time. It was cozy, but not as tight as Roger had anticipated. For one thing, he could fold his wings tightly, and coil his tail. For another, June was wearing her sister's hand-me-downs, pinned at the waist, so there was extra room. Nestled in the dark pocket, Roger heard the boys come closer.

"Hey June," cried one. "Who ya talkin' to? We heard voices."

June must have thought rapidly. "Oh, just my dolls; we're having a tea party. Would you boys like to join us? There's plenty of room!"

This, of course, was greeted with all the revulsion that little boys can muster. Their reaction was driven, as it often is in such situations, by the fact that individually they would have loved to play quietly with her, but as a group, it was obviously out of the question. One of them would have had to say "yes" first.

So, with much jeering, and otherwise making just as much noise as they could, the boys ran back the way they had come. When all was quiet again, Roger poked his head out of June's pocket to find her looking at him.

"Roger, you're my pocket dragon! And we're going to have so much fun!"