To be fair, she’d tried everything she could think of before going online. She let her friends set her up with their friends (they just weren’t into her), she tried blind dates (ugh, disaster after unmitigated disaster — do you know what happens when an unsuspecting dolled up dragon meets an equally dapper yet unsuspecting Duke at an upscale bistro. I’ll tell you this, no one was killed, but you’d never guess a dragon in A-line shift dress could dodge the spears of half a dozen bodyguards so ably, and the duke realized polyester was a poor fabric choice once Leslie started breathing fire). She tried singles mixers, she even asked Taylor the leprechaun in IT out (turns out he was gay. who knew?).

Leslie the Dragon was at her wits end.

And it wasn’t like Craigslist was her first foray online either. She’d tried Match.com, eHarmony, Plenty of Fish, Zoosk… she was super excited about d-date.com, the all-dragon dating site? Turns out it’s full of Russian chat bots trying to sell you counterfeit prescription drugs.

Deterred but not defeated, she decided to pull out all the stops in an effort not to spend another Valentine’s day by herself in her cave watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend reruns. So, despite her better judgement, she found herself on Craigslist creating an account (PrplPpleEtr37) and composing a post in the Long Term Relationship room for “Women Seeking Men”. She started simply, with the title: “SPD [Single Purple Dragon] seeking a good man for Valentine’s Day!” Good start, she thought. Now for the post…

“Are you a fun-loving, adventurous man? Do you like dragons (who doesn’t?! 🙂 ) Are you looking for a fun Valentine’s date? Send me a message!” Short, sweet, simple, she thought, this is easier than I thought! She took a deep sulfurous breath and clicked “Submit”.

She didn’t have to wait long.

The first response came in just three minutes later. “HawtDude69” had drunkenly (she’d hoped he was drunk) scrawled out the reply, “Hey BB, I can slay that dragon. Let’s hook up! You want this!” She frowned and deleted the message, but the deluge had just started. Over the next few hours the responses poured in, most making HawtDude69’s message read like Shakespeare. Then she got her first unsolicited pic of male genitalia. Out of pure shock, she accidentally incinerated her monitor. She took that as a sign and decided she was done for the night.

She got a new monitor the next day, and proceeded to sort through the detritus that passed as responses — all 138 of them. One caught her eye, though. His handle was  “NeverNeedsALighter336”. Cute…. “Hey PrplPpleEtr37! You sound like a lot of fun! I’m 12’ 10” [tall, good…], athletic [positive...], like to laugh [ooh, nice!], and have fun [me too!]. Let’s get coffee or pillage a village soon! JK about the village!”

Leslie was over the moon. She wrote back, got his phone number and they agreed to meet the next day at a coffee shop near her work.

The next day her coworkers smiled at her renewed enthusiasm. Taylor admired her filed and painted claws and the leprechaun said her black skirt and boots were, in his words, “fierce”. Before she left work, she re-did her makeup in the bathroom, admired the new faux-emerald stud she wore in her nose horn. She felt, in the parlance of Craigslist, “hawt”.

She got to the coffeeshop early, ordered a skinny latte with a shot of brimstone and waited. And waited. And waited. Sometime after her fifth skinny latte she decided to text NeverNeedsALighter. “New phone, who dis?” came back. She left claw marks in the table.

She removed her first post and tried another, simpler post: “SPD looking for a real guy.”

Same cavalcade of sex solicitations and male genitalia. Oh, and look at that, a post from “NeverNeedsALighter493” new number, same schtick. There were a few decent, genuine-sounding emails that she responded to, but none wrote back. What gives?!

Valentine’s Day drew ever nearer, and her third, fourth, fifth posts garnered the same responses. She set up two more meetings and had two more no-shows— one she swore she saw the guy peek his sout around the corner and then disappear. She started casting a wider net, posting in “Strictly Platonic,” “Misc Romance”, and even “Casual Encounters”. She wasn’t looking for a casual encounter, mind you, but she just wanted a real person! Her posts had degraded, too — “SPD looking for anything. Come on!”

Same responses, but this time even more male genitalia.

Leslie had had it with Craigslist. Unfortunately, now it was Valentine’s Day and despite her posts, her cute outfits and being stood up, here she was. As she cued up the first episode of the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, resigned to start the series again from the beginning, she changed her mind. She opened up her laptop, brought up Craigslist, and started a new post — this time, though, it was in “Rants and Raves”.

Out of curiousity, she’d perused the room before and found it to be the domain of the lunatic paranoid, the right-wing conspiracist, and the furiously jaded. She turned her head, let out a hot, angry jet of flame, and decided she fit that last category.

Right out of the gate, she fumed, “Any male dragons on this site are a disgrace!” From there she let loose an assault of colorful invective that made her earlier jet of real fire seem like a cool breeze. When she finished, she didn’t click “submit” as much as she hammered it with a fist.

Responses came back fast and furious. Sure, there was the ubiquitous male genitalia (seriously, she thought, who the hell sends these?!) but there were also emails from women expressing “You go girl!” And “Set it on fire, my scaly sister!” For the first time since getting stood up by NeverNeedsALighter336, she showed her teeth in a genuine smile.

And then another email came in. The email was “KnightNDay43” and it matched Leslie’s rant for sheer anger.

“You think being a female dragon is bad? Try being a [explative removed] knight! For every purported damsel email (who never show, BTW) there’s countless bots and angry women with axes to grind — literally, they usually come out with axes. Who needs this [explative]?”

A knight? She pursed her mouth like she had bitten into a fire extinguisher. She moved for the delete button, but her claw hovered over the key… Slowly, she moved her talon over to “Reply.” As she started her reply, she told herself it wasn’t out of anything other than shared hatred for Craigslist users. It absolutely wasn’t about him — for gods’ sake, he was aknight! She was a dragon. “You’re right, KnightNDay43, it sucks all around for dragons and knights alike!” She rifled around her meager liquor cabinet and poured herself a shot of Fireball whiskey, and typed, “Alone on Valentine’s Day. Screw it! This shot’s to you, KnightNDay43!” And she hit send, then slugged back the cinnamon whiskey, which ignited halfway down her throat and literally burned.

He emailed back a picture of a shot glass of amber alcohol held poised in a chain mail gloved hand.

She opened a bottle of mead, poured herself a generous glass and wrote back, “What the hell is it with people and dragons, and everything?! Seriously?!”

He responded that he didn’t know but agreed, “People and mythical beasts suck. Present company excluded.”

That made her smile — in a, you know, jaded, angry, now slightly buzzed way. She responded, “Same.” And they kept emailing.

She didn’t remember how far after midnight they emailed. She didn’t remember which one asked for the other’s phone number, nor how or why they hatched a plan to commiserate over coffee. The next day, though, she did not wear a fierce skirt and boots, opting instead for her preferred Doc Martins and comfy jeans. She didn’t do her makeup before she left work — she didn’t even do her makeup before work. And her claws were chipped and she didn’t give an F.

But when she got to the coffee shop, he sat there early at a middle table, his helm occupying the seat next to him. She folded her wings against her body, pushed open the door and started inside. KnightNDay43 looked up, saw her, and smiled a smile that lit the room and melted her brimstone heart.This, she thought, is a good start.