Imagine a story about a royal who’s sent to be locked away in a tower or castle that’s “guarded by a fire-breathing dragon” but it turns it the the castle description got cut off and the dragon is actually a dragonborn who’s been outcast from society because everyone thinks they’re a monster. Turns out the dragonborn just has allergies and can’t control their fire breath when they sneeze.
They've accidentally set fire in the market so many times that everyone starts closing up shop when they come into town to try and get supplies, so now they have a farm on the palace grounds where they tend to a massive garden of every kind of fruit, herb, and vegetable they could get their claws on, and they have a bunch of goats and sheep and chickens and other livestock that each of their own individual name.
Being outcast for so long, they've had to learn to cook, sew, and craft all sorts of things, but since they’re purely self-taught, they aren't exactly sure they’re doing it right, so the first week or so that the royal is staying with them, they’re just anxiously preparing this poor bean these lovely meals and worrying that the royal will hate it and be offended and the dragonborn is just apologizing in advance like, “I’m sorry if it’s not like what you used to eat, I tried my best, but I just didn't have the professional training that castle staff usually have and I’m limited to the ingredients I can grow in my garden and I just hnnnnnng, please let me know if you want something better.”
The dragonborn absolutely loves gardening, even beyond just growing food, and there are plants EVERYWHERE because the palace is old and falling apart because the dragonborn literally just found the place and said, “Yes this is now home” and so now there’s vines growing in the corridors and literally just a tree in foyer and probably the ballroom too. A flowering tree, definitely, and there’s petals all over the ballroom floor and they float down like snow and drift on the light draft flowing through the palace.
They also love reading and really just books in general and luck for them the palace came with a gigantic library that they’ll just disappear into constantly and the royal has to go and drag them out sometimes or at least bring them food because, friend, please, you need to eat, it’s very important.
There’s probably a ton of other animals too besides the livestock. Just stray dogs, cats, and maybe even just a bear everywhere. Seriously, living as an outcast is lonely, dragonborn needed friends, and if bats wanted to live in the study, well, bats can live in the study, as can the five owls and all these adorable rats and raccoons.
When the royal first arrives at the castle, they’re still pretty freaked out because they expected just your run-of-the-mill dragon that would keep them prisoner, but even finding an intelligent and civilized dragonborn, they’re still scared because who knows what this beastly humanoid will do to them, or with them, and they’re just really scared and staying in their tower for the most part because they don’t wanna make the dragonborn angry and bring wrath upon them. They quickly realize though that this dragonborn is just a lonely dork who needs cuddles and literally just someone to talk to, so step by step they start spending more time with the dragonborn, complimenting them on their cooking and helping them in the gardens, sitting with them in the library and just being there to listen as the dragonborn goes on and on for hours telling stories about their travels before they ended up in the palace, and prosing theories they have focused on the various books they've read in their time alone.
By the time a hero comes to save the royal, they've grown real close to the dragonborn and the two of them play a prank on the hero and just laugh when they reveal the prank and see the hero’s confusion and the royal just takes the hero’s hand and starts pulling them to the kitchen gushing on about the dragonborn’s cooking and everything else wonderful they can think of and saying how they’ll set up a room for the hero because surely they need to rest for a few days after their long travels coming to save them.
In the end, the hero decides to stay at the castle too.
