this lizard makes an excellent dynamite stick

For most students of Auradon Prep, summer holidays involve dating, and beaches, movies and shopping. For Jane, it mostly involves trying not to be in the room when the dragon explodes.

Or, Jane has a summer job. It's . . interesting.

As was the usual tradition for Jane, two days after the end of the school year, she packed her things, said goodbye to her friends and loved ones, and then got on a train for five or six hours - depending on the circumstances of the train system that day - and went to another country for the next almost-three months.

See, she didn't have solely one parent, she just had one parent in Auradon.

Adrien Castle, PhD, Creator of the Anti-Magic Dome that sits over the Isle of the Lost and published Arcanologist and Historian, had moved to a new country - along with a solid two-thirds of what was formerly Auradon's magical population - when the Restriction of Magic, Cosmos Altering and Other Forces Act was implemented, the year of Jane's birth.

An outspoken political activist at the time, Castle had argued against the Act, stating that it was an infringement on the rights of fae beings. King Adam Goodwin, the reigning monarch of Auradon at the time, disagreed. Castle called him a fascist, broke Goodwin's nose, and then stormed out of Auradon City, settled the custody agreement with the mother of his child, Abigail Fairchild - more commonly known as the Fairy Godmother, Head of the Godmother's Association and then-recently-instated Headmistress of Auradon Prepatory Academy - and then left with the rest of the fae community.

Together, the exodus of beings had settled into a then-unoccupied valley in the northern area of the continent that Auradon was a part of. Coincidentally, that same valley was home to one of the world's largest collection of intercrossing ley lines (the lines of magical energy that intersect across the world). As a result of such a large population of fae beings in the valley and the intersecting ley lines, Castle's home was known as the Most Magical Place On Earth.

That's not hyperbole, or some title. It is literally the most magical place on earth. See, when magic is congregated in certain areas in large quantities, the magic needs to discharge itself. Trees randomly uprooting themselves and going for a walk was a common sight. Random vortexes of energy occurring at certain points of the year could set a calendar. Random creatures that had never been seen before and never would after occasionally prowled the streets. The last time Jane was in town for the summer, a random glowing cloud turned up, hovered over town and dropped the carcasses of dead animals for about an hour and a half, before floating away and dissipating in the wind*.

The valley, and the city it housed, was Jane's favourite place in the world.

And in it was Jane's favourite person in the world. Adrien Castle slouched against the psychedelically-painted hippie van in the car park of the train station. Standing at six-foot-three, his pale skin was covered in various tattoos depicting runes, passages from historical or magical texts, the images of various monsters that he'd studied, and in one small image, Jane's name and date of creation. He had dark blue eyes that gave one the reminder of the night sky, the dark brown hair that Jane had inherited, and an air of a man that had once been idealistic before being kicked in the teeth by the world, and therefore refused to have to deal with that again. He was wearing black jeans, steel-toed combat boots that had definitely been used in a couple fights, and a floral-printed button shirt in the same colours Jane wore to school every day.

It was a sight Jane only got to see a couple times a year, and she always loved it. Jane grinned as she exited the train station and walked towards her father, feeling happier and more relaxed than she had been in weeks. Her father's happiness at seeing her flooded Jane's senses, and she felt better at the sensation.

He greeted her with the words: "Hey, my sunshine."

Jane dropped her bags to a stop and threw herself into her father's waiting embrace. It was a firm hug, his bigger bulk enveloping Jane's smaller frame. His skin was warm, and Jane could feel herself relax. She was home.

During the car ride, Jane and her father caught up with each other, Jane telling him all the things that had happened since the last time she'd seen him, he telling her about his semester teaching at the local university and all the students he'd dealt with, from the excellent to the stupid to those really suffering from College Syndrome. Jane could take a guess what those poor kids were dealing with, Charlie Charming was really feeling the effects of College Syndrome the last time she'd spoken to him - running almost four days on no sleep and barely anything but coffee had been effecting his temperament quite a bit.

"Does Roslin Smaug still need me this year?" Jane asked.

"Smaug is gonna need you every year for as long as she keeps that farm of hers going, and there's some shmuck willing to be paid to do it." said Adrien, keeping his eyes on the road, still keeping the smile he'd had since Jane had gotten off the train. "Apparently, that egg-separation thing you suggest last year worked beyond expectation. More than fifteen babies had made it through winter - although three of them died in the spring."

"I take umbrage at that title."

"What title?"

"Shmuck. I remind you, darling father," both of them were smiling now, at Jane's teasing tone, "that you were the one that volunteered me for this. And I get paid a lot of money for it."

Adrien chuckled. "Janey, you get paid so much because if Smaug didn't, no sane person would be willing to put up with that smell, or the drool, or the explosions that they'd have to clean up."

"So it's a job that isn't glamourous, and I make bank doing it. It's perfect for me. Madame Roslin Smaug of the Dragon Breeding Mansion knows how to get herself employees that know what they want out of life."

"And what you want is to smell like dragon shit?"

"I wanna be rolling in money by the end of this summer. That is a perfectly respectable thing to want out of life."

The father and daughter drove home, eventually starting to sing along to the radio.

Looking at her reflection, Jane took in her appearance.

For once entirely without makeup, Jane's complexion was a little different than her friends knew. Mostly it was the near-permanent bags under her eyes - sleep was not required for faeries, but it never hurt, and Jane's habit of going weeks without it had taken its toll years ago - and the freckles across her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Pale but distinctive, the blue dots scattered themselves across her face like a bunch of permanent markers that if there was one thing Jane was not, it was a human**. She'd gotten into the habit of covering them up early in her high school career, her classmates constant unease with her fae-ness did not need to be exacerbated by the very obvious reminder of what she was. Her ears and wings could be easily covered up by clothes and hair, but her freckles had been a different story, and as such, Jane had taken to liberal amounts of concealer and foundation to make sure her pale skin was as human-looking as possible.

She'd been considering ditching the cover-up for a while, as she was becoming more and more accepting of her differences from her peers, but over the years the make-up had seemed more of a shield, keeping her from scorn.

Either way, it was not her freckles that were the cause of her scrutiny. It was her hair.

After all the mess with Mal and her use of magic on Jane's hair, it'd been decided that Jane could learn hair spells for herself - just the one! - and Mal had to stop using magic on the people's appearances. That hadn't gone over well with some of the Royals at school, but Abigail was headmistress, and she'd announced it at assembly, and therefore the rule was law in the hall of Auradon Prep. Jane's hair, however, had been turned back into the neck-length bob it'd been for a few years, but it had grown down to her shoulders in the time since then. She was going to miss it, but there really was no choice.

Jane turned on her father's electric razor, and took it to her locks, the buzzing device sending her dark hair floating down to the floor.

Okay, before you question this, here's an explanation:

As previously explained, Jane spent her summers working with Madame Roslin Smaug at her dragon breeding enclosure, which inhabited Smaug's mansion. But the thing about dragons is, despite what any mythos would have you believe, they are not the fearsome, dangerous, gargantuan creatures everyone pictures. Most dragons may grow to be no bigger than a Golden Retriever dog, or Pit Bull. Most dragons are smaller than that, the size of house cats or birds. Being so small is one of the few reasons they can actually fly.

Whereas Fae beings with wings move around due to the fact that they are beings of magic, most dragons are in line with reptiles on the evolutionary scale, crossbreeding with magic only occasionally. The massive dragons of fairy tales are often the result of magicians and sorcerers and fae and witches messing about with magic and turning themselves - or something else - into fire-breathing monstrosities of scales and talons.

Regular dragons, often called 'swamp dragons' for the environment they originally inhabited, are small, unhappy creatures. Prone to eating anything, their fires are provoked by those same ingested materials being broken down by the chemicals in their bodies and stomaches - dragons having a digestive system that more closely resembles a chemical processing plant than a stomach with organs - and their brains being almost entirely dedicated to keeping that digestive system functioning, thereby allowing ignition of gasses that the dragon exhales. However, those same chemicals that allow dragons their fire are constantly unbalanced, leaving the beast in the perpetual state of feeling ill and at the precipice of exploding into a very gory fireball.

Often, dragons loose this battle with their stomaches, creating a very digesting mess.

People who spend large amounts of their time with swamp dragons do not hold onto their hair for very long, especially when that hair is long in length.

(By the way, this is what happened to Jane her first summer working for Mme. Smaug. Her long hair had caught fire and had to be shaved off. It was very traumatic for the thirteen-year-old, and the pixie cut she'd gone back to school with and been promptly laughed at for having had not helped. Now Jane just shaved her head before her first day of work. It saved the fire extinguishers to be used on things that weren't attached to people.)

Lord Mumbardy the Third's watery, bulbous eyes blinked at Jane's approaching form, her steady gait a far cry from those that normally approached the large mansion. Normally, a person would be walking confidently toward the property, and then the smell would hit them. A pleasant odour of dragon dung, rotted fruit and vegetables (to say nothing of the raw meat in the mansion) and the not-quite washed-off formerly-smouldering remains of Missus Esmeraude from last night often swayed guests from the dragon-breeding home.

Jane, however, had come to the house five days out of the week, for nine weeks for the last three years of her life. The smell, while still utterly repugnant, was one she was used to. Her wand was tucked into the specially-sewn pocket of her pants, she was wearing sturdy boots, and her head was freshly shaved. There was nothing in the mansion that she hadn't dealt with before.

Mme Smaug bred swamp dragons as pets, to be sold to the sort of people with more money than common sense who had a desire for exotic pets. The demand for own-able dragons was one of the only things that had kept the species from going extinct, mostly because dragons themselves could only be bothered breeding once per year, and half the eggs laid inevitably got crushed by nonchalant dragons, themselves. Female dragons are capable of laying three or four clutches of eggs over the summer period of the year - the high temperatures of the air, once coupled with the heat required for a dragon egg to be laid, was what drove the dragons into their breeding 'frenzy' - please remember, most of the animals cannot move without wanting to explode from pain (and most often do), so 'frenzy' is perhaps too strong a word - and dragons go from being vaguely-breathing scaly logs to vaguely-motivated single-minded buzz saws that sometimes exploded.

Jane's job was to help during the summer, feeding the beasts, noting the eggs and which ones actually made it to the point of hatching, making sure that the smell was not as bad as it could be - as with all stenches, heat tended to make it all a good deal worse than normal. Mme Smaug's last summer worker had been a college student who'd moved after graduation, and not many others had wanted the job at the time.

Jane's foot landed solidly on the stairs to the mansion, moving briskly up to the door. As she did, she ran a hand over the dull edges of Lord Mumbardy's flank, causing him to huff some smoke from his nostrils, before exhaling more smoke (with the addition of drool) from his mouth, exposing the soot-blackened teeth protruding from his mouth.

A normal start to her day, during the summer.

Jane couldn't wait.

All the dragons's descriptions - their bodies, how they function, all that - was taken from the late and great Terry Pratchett's novel Guards! Guards!, which is an excellent novel that I recommend everyone read at least once.

I picture Adrien as Jon Bernthal in the film Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, where he plays a teacher. Google his pic, you'll know what I mean. I am working on a fic about him, but it isn't complete yet.

As for the valley, I imagine it as something of a cross-between Gravity Falls and Welcome to Night Vale, without the shady government. It just a really weird place, filled with really weird people. They're magic - it's weird by nature.

* Welcome to Night Vale, episode 2. The Glow Cloud.

** Kudos to , who came up with the idea of Jane having blue freckles

Let me know with reviews whether or not I should continue the tales of Jane's summer job, because I can't make up my mind.