For example:

Queen Danuhalmea of Mahlirou is getting to an age where if she doesn't produce an heir soon she's not going to. Her husband is not pleased with the lack of results.

Things are... not good... when King Lacaiphon is displeased.

She goes for a long walk in the woods late at night, and she meets a mysterious old woman, and she gets some advice. But she's so anxious that by the time she wakes up the next morning, she has entirely forgotten which colour of rose was for a boy and which for a girl.

It is very important to get that right. She must have a son. It would be intolerable to come all this way and then have only a girl to show for it. It doesn't bear thinking about. The old woman can come back and personally set fire to her bedcurtains and burn down the palace, and Danuhalmea won't spare a moment's regret as long as it ends in the King having a male heir nine months from now.

There are two roses beneath the upturned bowl she left in the garden, just as the mysterious old woman said there would be. She takes them both up to her bedchamber, and she sits and stares at them for an hour, trying and trying to remember which is the one she needs. Red for a boy, because he will grow up to be a warrior? Red for a girl, because she will grow up to be a woman? White for a girl, because it symbolizes innocence? White for a boy, because it symbolizes death? No matter how she tries, she can't recall.

Maybe - maybe she'll have twins, if she eats both. Twins would be bad but not nearly as bad as a girl alone. And maybe some other disaster will befall her or the kingdom, but so long as it's a disaster in the shape of a prince -

She eats both roses.

She has twins.

The sex of the elder child is difficult to determine, because the elder child comes out four feet long and covered in pebbly green scales, with blunt little claws at the ends of its scaly green arms and a tapering point at the end of its coily green tail, and absolutely no teeth in its tiny green head. It promptly bites the midwife and scrambles out the window.

The younger child is a girl.

When the Queen sees her, wrapped in a soft little blanket, she looks up at the midwife with an expression of hope. "Is it - a boy?"

The midwife shakes her head. "A girl," she says, "a beautiful baby girl. What will you name her?"

The Queen goes very still for a moment.

"Sarianiphera," she whispers; and then she bursts into tears, shrieking and sobbing with inconsolable grief.

The midwife tries to soothe her - "look, she's perfectly healthy, pretty little thing, the loveliest baby I've ever seen -"

The Queen lunges up off her bed and snatches a decorative axe off the wall. The midwife takes cover behind a side table, shielding the baby with her body.

"You - don't - understand," wails the Queen. "I can't let him have her, I can't -"

The axe comes crashing down on the table, splintering it in two. The Queen heaves it up again for another try as the midwife scrambles out of the way. But the Queen overbalances, and she falls into the wreck of the table, and the axe lands on top of her, and she lets out a horrible gurgling scream and then stops moving entirely.

The death of the Queen and the birth of the Princess are announced together that same afternoon. It was a difficult delivery, they say, and the Queen died bringing her daughter into the world. Closemouthed servants wrap the body in white linen and dispose of the axe and the table and scrub the blood from the floor. She is laid to rest with all due ceremony in the royal graveyard north of the city.

Little Sarianiphera grows up... quiet.

She is a polite and obedient girl, always attending her lessons without a word of complaint. Her calligraphy and embroidery are exquisite. She can host parties and recite poetry. By the time she is fourteen, she is already running the household in her mother's place. Everyone who meets her comes away with the impression that she is a wonderfully nice girl, if a bit shy. And, it becomes clearer and clearer as she grows, stunningly beautiful.

When the Princess turns sixteen, the king of Enniver sends a messenger asking to arrange a match with his younger son. King Lacaiphon refuses the first offer, and the second, and the king of Enniver desists. Offers come in from farther afield. King Lacaiphon refuses them all. The Princess turns seventeen. She is by this point renowned across the continent as the most beautiful princess in the world. Princes from distant kingdoms travel to Mahlirou to make their suit personally. Hardly a week goes by without another foreign dignitary arriving. The Princess turns eighteen.

Finally, her father accepts an offer. Or tries to.

He is discussing betrothal arrangements with an emissary when the doors to his throne room fling themselves wide and an enormous serpent slithers into the room, its scales clicking and scraping on the stone floor, its jaws agape to display large sharp teeth.

"My sister will have no husband until her brother has a wife," it announces.

The emissary looks at King Lacaiphon, and at the lindworm, and at the King again, and once more at the lindworm. Then he shakes his head and walks out of the room.

For some reason, perhaps out of sheer spite, the king becomes much more receptive to marriage proposals after that. Unfortunately, the marriage proposals have become much more scarce. The legendary beauty of Sarianiphera of Mahlirou is somewhat spoiled by the forty-foot-long reptile that slithers up out of seemingly nowhere every time her nuptial prospects are seriously discussed.

Legendary beauty will lead a lot of people to do stupid things, though, and eventually one of the foreign suitors brings his sister to offer to the lizard. The King accepts the proposal immediately. Wedding plans are drawn up. Foreign princess to marry lindworm within the week; foreign prince to marry princess two months later. Foreign princess does not seem entirely happy with this arrangement, but she doesn't speak any of the local languages well enough to voice an objection.

The day of the reptilian wedding arrives. The ceremony is small, awkward, and poorly attended. The foreign princess flatly refuses to follow her slithering husband to the bridal chamber afterward, until King Lacaiphon personally drags her there and locks her in.

When the maid opens the door the following morning, the lindworm is coiled up on the floor amid the bloody shreds of the princess's wedding gown, picking lace from between its teeth.

The foreign prince is not deterred. Unfortunately for him, neither is the lindworm.

"My sister will have no husband until her brother has a wife," the serpent hisses.

"We gave you one already," says King Lacaiphon. "Go away."

"My sister will have no husband until her brother has a wife."

The foreign prince eyes the enormous dragon with its enormous teeth and decides that maybe he's a little deterred after all. He expresses his regrets, assures King Lacaiphon that there will be no trouble over the sister, and goes home.

The next week, King Lacaiphon has the royal guard find a maiden of marriageable age and drag her to the palace. She is married to the lindworm and locked in a room with him all night, and in the morning there is nothing left of her but the bloodstained dress. He does it again the week after that. Despite the extreme discretion of the servants, rumours begin to circulate. The marriageable maidens of Dianaevo find faraway relatives to move in with, or unobjectionable neighbours to marry.

Unfortunately not all of them have those options. 

Altaia isn't actually one of those unlucky ones, but she observes that they exist. She observes that they're fed, once a week, to the lindworm, and no one has done anything about it effective enough even for her to have heard of their failure. 

And she doesn't really want to marry any of the eligible boys she knows. 

She goes out into the forest, looking for mushrooms and herbs that might, in sufficient quantity under a shift, be poisonous to kill a lindworm.

An old woman is walking along the path. Starlight gleams from her soft grey shawls, and tiny green sprouts poke out of the ground in the dents left by her walking-stick.

"My dear," she says to Altaia, "what troubles you so?"

...Whoah. Okay, advice from a mysterious old woman sounds like a way better plan than "try to guess how much poison it takes to kill a lindworm."

"The king is feeding unmarried women to a giant serpent and even if the only affect this had was that all women got married the moment they were old enough that would still be bad, but it's not, people are actually getting eaten, and if anyone else is trying to do anything about it I haven't found out, so I'm trying to find as much toxic fungus and vegetation as I can hide under a wedding dress so if I volunteer I'll at least be the last fatality."

"Would you like my advice?"

"I would love your advice."

"Then listen closely and do just as I say," says the mysterious old woman.

"The day after tomorrow, go to the palace and tell the guards you have come to marry the prince. Before the marriage ceremony, dress yourself in ten snow-white shifts beneath your gown. Ask that a tub of lye, a tub of milk, and as many birch rods as a man can carry be brought to your bridal chamber. If you have practical difficulties accomplishing any of these preparations, you will find the princess willing to offer you any reasonable assistance you ask for. After you are wed, when your husband orders you to shed the first shift, bid him to shed a skin first. He will ask you this nine times, and when you are left wearing one shift you must whip him with the rods, wash him in the lye, bathe him in the milk, wrap him in the discarded shifts, and hold him in your arms."

She nods seriously and repeats the instructions back to make sure she has them correctly.

The mysterious old woman smiles slightly and nods.

"You will find the results agreeable, provided you follow the instructions."

She pricks her finger with the knife she brought for cutting toxic things and writes down the instructions on the paper she brought to wrap toxic things in (fortunately neither has been used at all yet) in blood because not accidentally getting anything mixed up is way more important than the possibility of getting an infection.

The day after tomorrow she goes to the palace and tells the guards she has come to marry the prince.

The guards seem to find this a completely reasonable thing to say. They escort her to a room where she is told to wait for her wedding.

Huh. She was expecting more surprise.

She asks if she can talk to her future sister-in-law.

One of the guards doesn't acknowledge the request, but the other one says he'll pass it along. They leave her alone in her room.

Her future sister-in-law shows up about ten minutes later.

"Hi. I have mysterious old woman advice for how to solve our mutual problem."

"Go on."

"So I was going for a walk in the woods trying to see if I could find enough poisonous mushrooms to kill a lindworm with if smuggled under a wedding dress when I ran across an old woman with all the hallmarks of relevant mysteriousness, and she offered me advice. I have it written down, here," she says, retrieving the folded up blood-written paper from under her dress and offering it to the princess.

She reads it. She nods thoughtfully.

"Yes, I can make the necessary arrangements."

"Thanks." Sigh. "What a mess. I'm really glad I happened to have paper on me; the last thing this situation needs is more magical fucking up."

"You're right about that," she agrees.

"Do you even know what caused this one, if it wouldn't be prying?"

"- it would be a little prying."

"Sorry, I'll drop it."

"Thank you," she says. "I'll go make the arrangements. The safest place for you in the meantime is here."

"Is the lindworm a hazard when it isn't married?"

She pauses.

"...It's complicated."

"Okay, if 'safest' means 'absolutely safe' and you don't wanna talk about it then I won't ask, but if I'm still at nonzero risk in here then I think I would like to hear more about what the risk is."

"Nothing is ever absolutely safe," she says. "It's more important to make sure of the arrangements. I'll explain afterward if I have time."

"Alright, I trust your judgment. Thank you."

She nods. She leaves.

It's kind of boring in here.

Sigh. Well, better temporary tedium than permanent fatality. She occupies herself as best she can imagining how the encounter with the lindworm is going to go.

The princess shows up again several hours later with ten shifts and a wedding dress.

"Everything's arranged. I won't have time to talk to you again until tomorrow. Here's your list. Good luck."

"...Thank you," she says.

(Something's wrong, something beyond the lindworm. She's not sure what, but--something's wrong.)

"Good luck to you too. For whatever you can use it for."

"- thank you," she says, almost but not quite smiling, and then she leaves again.

This is all pretty concerning but realistically it's going to have to wait until after the wedding. Lindworm first, then whatever problem the Princess has. She dons the shifts.

Shortly, some guards show up to escort her to her wedding.

She goes willingly, of course.

Neither the king nor the princess is in attendance.

Her groom is a forty-foot-long green scaly creature with a fanged dragonish head and two scaly green arms with surprisingly humanlike hands, accounting for the claws and the scales. He hisses his lines as though by rote.

...Huh. That's...interesting...

She repeats her own lines dutifully, studying the creature across from her as she does.

He stares back at her. His eyes are a brilliant poisonous green.

She feels a stab of sympathy for the creature. Presumably it--no, he--hadn't been the one to fuck up some magical advice and bring this all down on everyone.

Well. Nothing for it but to carry on.

Guards stand ready to escort her to the bridal chamber if necessary. The lindworm slithers through the halls, moving with grace and power.

She does not need guards to escort her, thank you very much. She'll walk there on her own, briskly and with her head held high.

They arrive. The door is closed and locked behind them.

The lindworm glances at the tubs of milk and lye and the pile of birch rods. Then he coils himself on the floor next to the bed and stares at her.

"Maiden, shed your shift for me."

Well then.

"Serpent, shed your skin first."

He blinks.

And claws himself out of his scaly green skin, leaving a darker one underneath, greenish-black and glistening.

Hmm.

The rote lines, the lack of objection...no point in worrying about it right now. She takes off a shift.

And again, "Maiden, shed your shift for me."

"Serpent, shed your skin first."

He claws out of the green-black skin to reveal a midnight blue one underneath, dusted with starry white speckles.

And on and on through nine shed shifts and nine shed skins, each more beautiful than the last, blood-red and dawn-gold and raven-black and violet and emerald; until at last he sits before her, rather smaller than he was to start, in a skin as snowy white as her final shift.

"Wife," he hisses, "shed your shift for me."

"Husband," she says softly but firmly, "shed your skin first."

There is not another skin underneath this one.

Well that's going to make what has to happen next less pleasant. Not that it would have been pleasant in any case, but--

Unpleasantness does not prevent her from following through. She is not especially experienced in the use of birch rods but then she doesn't really need to be.

There are a lot of them. Her husband thrashes around a lot, but somehow never hits her with his tail or damages any furniture or upends either of the tubs.

Hooraaaayy. Sort of. Happiness is not really on the menu here.

Her arms ache by the time the last rod gives out, but she pays it no mind, nor to the burn of the lye on her arms as she drags him over to the tub of lye, covering him in it as much as possible and wiping him down with it as gently as she can, under the circumstances.

Her husband, understandably, is not thrilled.

It is entirely understandable.

When she is satisfied that he qualifies as washed she drags him over to the tub of milk and tries to get as much of the lye off as she can while she bathes him.

He hisses unhappily but at least does not struggle much.

"I'm sorry," she tells him.

She finishes bathing him in the milk. She drags him over to the pile of shifts she left on the bed and wraps him in them and hugs him, firmly enough that she's sure it counts but gently enough to not aggravate his, uh, everything, any more than she has to.

She wouldn't have expected to be able to get to sleep very easily but that was all actually really exhausting.

And then -

She is dreaming. She is dreaming about a version of this room where the bed is twice as big and the floor goes on forever in every direction and there are no lizardskins or broken birch rods or splashes of milk, just the bed and the stone floor, and Altaia, and her husband, staring at her with his bright green eyes and then pouncing on her and kissing her.

Oooh. What a nice dream. What a lovely imagined human form. Her imagination is clearly doing a very good job tonight. She kisses back, winding her arms around his neck.

He pins her to the bed and his face shifts halfway back to a dragon's and he bites her shoulder and then turns human again and kisses the fang-marks.

Oh, nice. This is going to be one of the really good sex dreams, isn't it. She yelps in delighted startlement when he bites her shoulder and makes a pleased mm-ing noise when he kisses it.

He sure does seem inclined to behave like a really good sex dream. Enthusiastically and violently. Several times.

Being really exhausted has benefits, wow, normally she cannot hurt anywhere near this much in a dream without waking up. She behaves with similar enthusiasm.

And eventually he stops, and curls up and holds her in his arms, and cuddles her contentedly. "Mine. My wife. Mine."

"You are adorable," she informs him, running her fingers through his hair. "This is a nice dream."

He hums agreeably and nuzzles her cheek.

"Waking up's going to be less fun," she sighs, snuggling up.

"Mm?"

"I mean, this is a dream, dream-you is lovely but I've no idea what's going to be there when I wake up."

"Oh." Nuzzle. "'S me."

"I mean, theoretically, but things you learn in dreams are never true when you wake up."

He giggles.

She kisses him on the cheek. "So when I wake up I have to deal with whatever you're really like and then figure out what's up with your sister."

"Her dad's fucking her. I'm gonna kill him."

"The fuck."

"'Cause of the magic I had to show up whenever anybody tried to fuck her, and it was him a bunch of times, and then he started feeding me a girl a week, 'cause then once a week I'm busy all night."

"...A bunch of times--who else?"

"Counts when they're just talking about somebody marrying her, too."

"Okay, well, this just became a significantly less fun dream."

"Sorry. I said I'm gonna kill him, right?"

"I mean, yeah, but--dream. I mean. The horrible bit's probably just part of the dream too, but...she did have something wrong, and...this fits, and dreams are sometimes your subconscious putting stuff together..."

"Oh. I'm dreaming too," he says.

She pauses, mulls this over, and then-- "Logically I probably shouldn't believe you but I do. Can I help? Kill him, I mean. Unless you can do it some way chalked up to the death throes of the lindworm curse and thus escape execution for regicide, I guess."

"If I was gonna get executed for regicide why'd it be better if you did too?"

"Well, I mean, we could run, if you were gonna run I might wanna come with anyway, I just don't wanna spoil a perfectly good non-running option if it's available."

"Anyway I dunno how I'm gonna kill him."

Nod. Sigh.

"...On a note I really wish were not related, it doesn't matter how bad I get hurt in a dream but it does matter in real life because it takes time to heal and sometimes scars and these are both really inconvenient, that's probably important to establish if you're, like, a persistent individual in your own right with your own kinks and not just a really excellent fantasy."

He kisses her. "Well in real life I don't think I have fangs anymore, not even sometimes."

"Point. Still, that doesn't mean you couldn't fuck me up pretty badly if you wanted to."

"Mmm." Nuzzle. "If we're really lucky maybe we'll get to just keep dreaming like this every night."

"That would be pretty convenient," she admits. "I mean, there are things we can do in real life, a few bruises in the right places never killed anyone, but still."

More nuzzle.

Snuggle. "...If you're angling for another go, uh, sorry but I'm still pretty comprehensively turned off by the revelation about your sister."

"If we only get one of these..."

"Mmmm I see your point but maybe we should talk about other stuff for a little while first to see if the turned-off-ness goes away on its own. So, um, do you have a name, and do you know mine, I don't think they actually mentioned it during the ceremony. Or, like, did anything else to suggest I was a person and not just an interchangeable sacrifice."

Headshake.

"My name's Altaia. ...It's short for Jiraltania, but I don't tell most people that, it's. Intimate."

Snuggle. "Pretty."

"I know. I don't not tell people about it because I dislike it. Do you want a name?"

"I probably need one."

"Probably, yeah. Any thoughts about what you want in a name?"

"Dunno. Never had one before."

"Mm, true." She cuddles him some more. "I'm sorry I had to dump you skinless in a tub of lye, by the way."

"Well, I'm sorry I had to eat a bunch of girls."

"I'm not sure I'm the right person to apologize about that to, seeing as I did not get et," she says. "Possibly it would be appropriate to convey apologies to, like, their families. ...Also, unlike the lye thing which is arguably not anyone's fault at all, someone is responsible for those girls' deaths, and it isn't you."

"Mm, true."

"I'm sorry I was originally planning to poison you before I got mysterious old woman advice instead."

"Oh, it wouldn't have worked. The king tried all sorts of shit, he was pretty desperate to get me out of the way. "

"Bet it would've tasted foul, though, random poisonous fungi and herbs mostly are not delicious."

Giggle. Snuggle.

Snuggle. "You're impressively sweet for someone who grew up a giant lizard with little to no human contact."

"I'm probably worse at the being human thing when I'm not dreaming."

"I can see how dreaming would make it easier to operate an unfamiliar body but I'm not sure how it would affect sweetness."

"- if I'd met you first when I was awake I would've been mad about the beatings and all, it wouldn't have gone well."

"...Huh, okay."

Snuggle.

Snuggle. "D'you think you're gonna be mad when you wake up?"

"No, 'cause now I'm not."

"Okay, I'm going to admit that I figured the delightful roughness was because you hadn't figured out that there was any reason not to do that kind of thing in bed."

"It - wasn't exactly being mad at you but it wasn't exactly not being mad at you. And now I'm not."

"Mmkay. Well, I certainly have no complaints, it was delightful."

He grins. He hugs her.

Hug. Kiss! "Turned-offness is gone," she reports, "looks like conversation was a success."

Giggle.

"It helps that you're really hot. I don't know what exactly determined what you'd look like as a human but I very much appreciate the results."

He laughs. He kisses her.

She threads a hand through his hair and kisses back enthusiastically.

Mmmm.

Mmmm indeed. She wriggles a little closer.

He pins her to the bed again. It seems like a winning formula.

Well, it does have the minor flaw of making it difficult to kiss him.