I was 17 years old when I found the baby dragon. I was in my last year of high school, and dreading moving to Sactaphrane's capital, Remizir, to attend the Djaini Academy of Magic.

Everyone said Remizir was beautiful, with its grand sculptures and opulent palaces, but I wasn't buying it.

Potions, spells, and fire quartz? Yes.

Over-the-top palaces, spoiled princes and princesses, and a general air of superiority? No thanks.

I was happy with my sandstone village, quiet local school, and down-to-earth neighbours. The third class we may be, but we didn't have to be royal to be worth something.

It was the day of my final exam, and I was walking home, simultaneously berating myself for forgetting the semi-rare ingredient needed for a curse indicator spell (crocodile tears) and dreaming of the desert my mother promised she'd have ready for me when I got home (loukis with extra jellub berries), when a patch of sand yipped at me.

To the best of my knowledge, patches of sand don't yip at people, so I went to check it out.

Sure enough, there was something squatting in the patch of sand.

At first I thought it was a cat. Then I remembered that cats don't have sky-blue scales tinged with lemon yellow, fanged snouts, or wings.

It was a dragon.

A baby dragon.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded.

"Yip," replied the dragon, somewhat unhelpfully.

Dragons are extremely rare. They used to be all over the place in ancient times, but these days their existence is limited to glimpses over the skies of the Deadly Desert.

Any law-abiding Sactaphranian would report it to the authorities. Dragons were vicious beasts that burned villages and ate people. They terrorised humans in the old days. They were merciless.

But this one was so...small.

"Yip?" it asked.

I stepped back. It might be small, but its mother would turn up soon to flatten my neighbourhood.

"Go back to your mother," I ordered.

"Yip."

"This isn't a dragon nursery."

"Yip."

If I called the authorities, they'd handle everything. But I knew what the king would order. He wouldn't let it live. If it would just go back to its mother, wherever she was, I wouldn't have a dead baby dragon or a flattened village.

I walked away from it, hoping it would do the smart thing and get lost.

"Yip."

Instead of doing the smart thing, it bounced after me, those impossible large eyes fixed on my face.

"You can't eat me. Go away."

"Yip."

"Go back to your mother."

"Yip."

"No baby dragons allowed."

"Yip."

Maybe something happened to its mother, and it was orphaned. That could explain why it was all alone in a human village. Still, I couldn't be sure. And it might be all innocent and yippy now, but it would grow up to be death on wings. I should report it to the authorities. That was the right thing to do.

"Yip?" it enquired.

They would put it down. That's what they did with dangerous beasts.

I could look after it until it got a bit bigger, then take it back to the desert to fend for itself. As long as my parents didn't find it, and no mother dragons came looking for it, and the authorities didn't arrest me for harbouring a gods-forsaken dragon, I'd be fine.

"My name is Ianna," I said. "I'm going to call you...Pesky."

The dragon didn't protest. It was the right name for it, after all.

"You can stay with me for a while, but then you're going back. And if your mother turns up, you'd better tell her not to flatten my village. Those are the rules."

The little dragon yipped excitedly.

Everything would be fine. It couldn't be that hard to take care of a baby dragon.

Right?