Chapter Text
"You don’t look so terrible," the little dwarfling said, and the dragon laughed.
"I have killed and devoured thousands of your king, dwarf," Smaugh answered with a cruel smile.
"Oh." There was a moment of silence. "You must have been very hungry then."
Smaug, who had opened his mouth to devour that child too, stopped and looked at it. It was very small (all dwarves were, but Smaug had a feeling this one was particularly little), and yet it seemed neither particularly scared or afraid of him.
"I was very hungry, yes."
"Then you should have eated beefs. They don’t fight as much, and they’re easier to make grow. Have you ever eated beefs?"
"I have, little one. But I did not come here only for meat. I came here for the gold, and cows do not have gold."
The child appeared to think about that as it looked around itself and gazed upon Smaug’s treasure.
"There’s a lot of gold here. Is it all yours?"
"All of it, to the last coin."
"What are you going to do with it?"
That question puzzled the dragon. Gold wasn’t to be used, but to be possessed. That was why gold existed, why dragon existed. One to be possessed, and the other to possess.
"I own it, little one. I need not do more than that with it."
"Oh. Can we play with it? I wanna play disguise. I’ll be the princess, and you’ll be a king, and we’ve got to fight against orcs to save our good people."
Once more, Smaug hesitated. Parts of him remembered that once upon a time, orcs were his allies, and so he should not have fought against them, not even to pretend.
But he liked being called king.
"Fine. Find me a crown, little one."
He could always eat the child later.