Wrong.

For the millionth time in my life, I was wrong.

Pesky was a nightmare.

The first problem was food.

"I don't have any maidens for you to eat," I told him.

"Yip."

"What else can you have? Grass?"

"Yip?"

Think, Ianna. What do dragons eat? (And for the gods' sake, "maidens" is NOT a good answer).

I tried the grass. Pesky chewed it, thought about it, then spat it out in my face. No grass then. Other vegetables invited the same response. Pesky needed meat.

He couldn't eat people, so I tried chicken. He tolerated that, but he made sure to bite my hand so that I understood this wasn't his preferred food.

When he was done with the meal, he curled up on my bed to sleep. There was a semi-opaque amber globe the size of my hand sitting next to him.

Was that...poop? Shining amber poop?

It was uncannily beautiful for poop. It was perfectly spherical and felt like glass. I could sell it to a merchant for a handsome price. (I wasn't going to though. It was poop, for the gods' sake.)

Should I bury it? Chuck it into the desert? What exactly did one do with dragon poop?

I decided to go with burial. It was just the one globe, after all.

I returned to find my room covered in shining amber poop balls.

"What am I going to do with all this poop?" I snapped.

Pesky gave me a huffy "yip" and went back to sleep.

I went to bed that night with a garden full of dragon poop and a mind for vengeance.

The next morning was no better. I was woken up by the most annoying sound any creature could possibly produce.

"Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip."

I groaned.

Pesky was running around the room in circles. Every now and then he stopped to look pointedly at his food bowl and yip a bit more.

I left him plenty of food overnight. There was no need for him to be yip-yip-yipping away like I left him starving.

This time he spat the chicken in my face too. It turned out you can't feed him the same meat two days in a row, or he gets cranky. I'd heard that dragons were temperamental, but this was a bit much.

I tried to keep him out of the way the rest of the day while I wrote the essay for my academy application. I couldn't apply until my grades came back, but it didn't hurt to get started early.

I took a few breaks to bury poop balls, but come evening the essay was done. My mistake was leaving it alone with Pesky.

I was gone for two minutes (two minutes!), and when I came back the essay was gone. In its place was a mound of charred paper.

"You little arsonist!" I shouted.

"Yip yip yip," Pesky replied, clearly happy with his work.

That's how I realised he wasn't too young to breathe fire.

I couldn't wait to get rid of him. As soon as he could fly, he was out.

No mother dragons had turned up for him yet, but that didn't mean I was safe. Not only was it illegal to harbour a beast in a human village, it was Pesky's fate to turn into a man-eating monster. What would I do then? With all the insults I'd thrown at him, he's definitely going to eat me first. Then he'll go on to flatten the village. (Or burn it down, depending on his mood.)

Pesky might not agree to leave. In fact, I had a feeling he'd downright refuse. He was getting free chicken and a complimentary poop burial service with me.

If I dropped him off at the desert, he'd most likely follow me back home.

How was I ever going to get rid of the little monster?