After various unsuccessful tries at bonding and earning the dragon's trust Neil began walking back to the cave.
He was disappointed for sure but still thankful to be alive.
'To think that Cora would be able to stop the dragon from killing me…Could it be that Cora somehow has some kind of connection with this dragon? Is that why it was acting so weird when she saw it battling last night? Maybe instead of being scared for herself, she was worried for the dragon..' '
As he was thinking this he looked back to see Cora who was walking beside him and he shook his head.
'No, she is clearly nervous about having the dragon with us.'
The moment that they made eye contact the dragon glared at him and growled showing its teeth.
He quickly turned around and smiled in a cold sweat, 'He won't suddenly change his mind and eat me, right?'
'Now that I get a better look at him without having to fear for my life he kinda looks like toothless or at least how I remember him. Though, the shape of his body and wings seems different not to mention the fur. It's kinda like comparing a rhino and a woolly rhino….A WoollyFury? Nah that sounds terrible. Its purple tongue also freaks me out is it poisonous or something?'
After an uncomfortable walk, they arrived at the cave and he began a fire to cook the rabbits.
Once they were done he gave two legs to Cora and offered one to the dragon that was simply laying outside.
As he got closer the dragon looked in his direction until he offered the rabbit which it flicked away from his hands using its big tail.
Neil rubbed his hands which had become red and covered in a stinging sensation as if a colony of ants had begun munching on a meal.
"Guess you don't like rabbit, well it fell in the ground anyway so leave it there, if you don't eat it Cora will."
As he turned around and sat back down the dragon began spreading its wings and flew off. It returned after a bit with a block of ice in its mouth. After making eye contact with Neil it crushed it and began chewing on the fish.
'Either you are telling me that you can crush me as if I were nothing or that you can catch your own meals and don't need anything from me. Let's hope it's the second one, for my mind's sake. Still, knowing that you like fish is a win, if I can dig back into the shelter and get my daggers or at least the wooden spear that I made I might be able to catch some fish. Who knows it might weaken his guard.'
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, other than collecting fruits and resetting the traps he didn't do much.
Early the next day he checked the traps but they seemed to have been untouched so far. When he made it back to his old home he used a broken wooden plank and began digging.
After around 20 minutes of digging, he took a brake.
"Could you help me dig?"
He pointed at the dragon and did the digging motions but the dragon looked away completely uninterested.
'Well, it was worth a try.'
A few hours passed until he finally reached his goal. Inside the mud he pulled out his ruined log/diary, it had been damaged by the water before but now all the pages were destroyed by the mud.
Neil couldn't help but feel his heartbreak when he saw that all his entries were now unreadable.
'Well, it still was a big help these past months. I can still get some use out of the paper to make fires when the pages dry. The leather book cover is still good, once I add some new paper it should be as good as new.'
He continued to wade through the mud and ended up getting one of his makeshift spears, some ruined Nightmare markers, and the Zippleback cloak. Neil continued but after a long time, he didn't find anything else.
After he rinsed the cloak and himself in the lake he sighed and looked at Cora and the lazy dragon.
"All right, let's call it a day and go back."
When they returned home they had some more rabbit and began preparing to go to bed. The dragon rejected his invitations to go inside and to be honest, he felt relieved. Not knowing the real reason the dragon hadn't killed him like all the others had, he felt somewhat uneasy.
In the middle of the night, he was woken up by bustling bushes followed by many growls.
'What the hell is that?!'
As he hurried to the entrance a loud howl-like roar was heard followed by the noise of strong winds.
By the time he had gotten out with a spear in hand things had become quiet and the surrounding vegetation had become frozen.
"What the hell was that? The only time I've heard something close to that was when I came upon a group of terrible terrors and that was not terrible terrors."
The woolly dragon growled and after a few minutes it seemed to calm down and lay back asleep. Meanwhile, Neil was left not being able to sleep a wink.
'He might be a grump but at least he's useful when needed. Just why exactly are you looking after us? That loud howl-like roar…..Woolly Howler?...Yeah no… but how about Woolly Howl?'