The Dragon and The Rider

Just a few ideas for how to kick a story off. Nothing's set in stone; at best, these serve as fuel for inspiration, not stone-inscribed dictates as to how a story "must" start. For ease, references to the characters will be "the human" and "the dragon", only since pronouns and other adjectives would be awkward to juggle.

The human awakes in a place they don't recognize, with no clear memory of what happened; everything after a certain point becomes hazy, uncertain. They pick themselves off the ground and realize they were laying next to--a dragon. One that's breathing shallowly, blood streaming from wounds. The dragon's scales are cracked, spears stuck in it, wings are shattered and torn--it's a mess. And then it opens its eye, and focuses on the human.

It's a standard introduction, but from it springs so many possibilities. They have to work together, find ways to trust one another--against all odds and against all lessons taught to each about the other.

This is the one that intrigues me more, admittedly, because it takes the idea of "In Medias Res" and runs with it to an interesting extreme. The human grows up with a grandparent who, if very infrequently, tells a story of when they were very young--an adventure with a dragon, one that ended with them both nearly dying, one where they both risked their lives for one another, and as far as they knew, the dragon gave its last breath to bring the human back home again. It flew off, but in such a state as to make its survival unlikely at best. A child finds a talisman--perhaps a pendant, or a ring, or an oddly shiny stone--far in the forest. Farther than they should be. They rub it, and it makes the softest musical note in response. Intrigued, they keep the item.

Some days later, they finally show it to their grandparent--who remembers it. It called to the dragon, acting not as a command, as an order, but called to it nonetheless. Until that moment, only their own touch could make the talisman "sing". Fond memories and perhaps another story are interrupted--by the dragon's landing. In the time since it last saw the grandparent, it had grown to an adult, even taking a mate and siring young dragons of its own, which, after spending a moment simply re-bonding with the human, the dragon almost shows off.

A bit of time is spent together--then disaster strikes. The grandchild and one of the young dragons are separated from the others, ending up lost and alone so very, very far from home. They have to find their way home, and perhaps they stumble across elements of the grandparent's own adventure so long ago along the way.

This one is something that's started to intrigue me--the idea is that the human is a normal, regular, human from our own Earth, and either they end up in the dragon's world, or vice-versa. I'm open to how that could happen, though I don't think it needs to be detailed too heavily beforehand. It could be something that develops later, with even the very mystery of it driving the over-arcing plot.

It would be a heavy fish-out-of-water set-up that would lend to a lot of possibilities, including elements of humor, drama, and so on. As difficult as it would be to hide a legitimate dragon in today's world, it would be just as hard for an Earth human to fit in amongst the people of the dragon's world. It could be an interesting view of cultural identity and what being human, and humane, really mean.