Dragon's Apprentice (5)

Part Five
It was hours later when the sound of her stomach rumbling loudly cut through the silence of the cave and the dragon, whom she had assumed to be asleep, his head on the backs of his hands, opened on bright eye to look at her. He smiled at her and rolled sleepily onto his back like an overgrown cat, stretching muscled legs up into the air as he moved.
“Hungry?” He asked and arched one expressive brow.
Lynn laughed. “Obviously.” She added yet another ring to the growing pile back in the trunk. “It’s your turn to hunt.”
He yawned. “Is it now?”
“You know it is, you great lazy lizard.” She held one ring up to the light and turned it so that it shone.
He jumped to his feet and glared down at her. “Lizard am I? Lizard!? I’ll show you lizard!” He bellowed and, to her great astonishment, vanished in a cloud of bright pink smoke. She blinked and waved the smoke away from her face. It was tasteless and odorless, but still stung her eyes.
Once it cleared she saw that the dragon was gone and in his place seemed to be an arm length, pink lizard attached half way up the cave wall by small, suckered feet.
It was the first time she’d ever seen him shape change to such and extravagant extent.
Lynn laughed. “I didn’t know you could change your color,” She said and stood to approach him. He grinned, exposing teeth that were far too draconic for a true lizard. Long and sharp they looked exactly like the teeth that always filled his mouth only now small enough to fit into the head of a lizard. Somehow the little needle like teeth were still slightly out of proportion.
“Only to some degree,” He said and turned on the wall to look down at her. “Impressed?”
As she drew closer she could see that the pink was splotchy in places and the entire tips of his toes were white with tiny, white talons on the end of each suckered pad. Little flecks of gold shone in his skin as if he’d been powdered with flakes cleaned from a jewelers file.
Since he was a primarily white dragon with gold tips on his scales neither the white nor gold surprised her. The hot pink did.
“Yeah, I’m impressed. Now how about some food?” She asked, smiling, and put her hands on her hips as she looked up at him with amazing amethyst eyes.
He threw his head back in a very unlizard like manner and laughed a laugh much too loud and powerful to ever come from such a small reptile. Even if she hadn’t recognized him already that laugh would have given him away. She’d have known that laugh anywhere.
“Alright, witch, I’m going. If you got it in your head to do so you could take over a kingdom with those eyes, I hope you know,” He said and scuttled up and around the ring of light that filled the cave before he disappeared along the ceiling of the passage that she had come in through. She watched him go before returning to her ring sorting.