As you step back, you see a woman that looks as much unlike a witch as you could possibly imagine.
That is, you could have imagined a witch being many different things, such as unusually ugly and haggard, a thing of ethereal beauty, a mean-looking tyrant in red lipstick, or even a squat little old bitty that could be Mrs. Claus. There are many things that you have been led to believe that a witch ought to look like, not all of them hideous or ugly (after all, there was the Good Witch of the North/South). You have read books where at least one witch was some cute little old lady that kept an extraordinarily clean house in spite of having a lot of cats, one of which was apparently immune to being dissolved by throwing buckets of water with lemon juice over her. You expected just about anything except a skinny, gaunt-cheeked, casually-dressed, middle-class-looking woman wearing cheap-looking frameless spectacles, apparently in her thirties and her hair being not so much of a "strawberry-blonde" as just failing miserably at being either red or blonde. Her jaw is a little bit too large to be pretty for a woman but just a little bit too small to be handsome for a man. Overall, though, while she cannot be said to be "pretty" by conventional standards, you cannot think of any argument to say she distinctly "ugly." She just lacked anything thrilling about her at all.
Of course, you are not surprised because, during your earlier reconnaissance, you got a good enough look at her that you could figure this out.
"Okay, weird beastie," she trills in that annoying tone in which women talk to small children and animals, "come on in, and we'll see what I can do for you. Come on!"
You might want to retort "I am not some stupid animal." Let's say, instead, that you have just enough presence of mind to bite your tongue (which hurts) and shuffle through the doorway into her kitchen, with your left wing catching ingloriously on the door-frame as you enter.
As she closes the door, you look up at the woman timidly. "So you are not scared of me?" you hear yourself saying.
She blinks at you once and looks down at you frozenly for a moment, and then she gasps out a single, breathy laugh. "In case you have not noticed, you are only about the size of a collie." She raises her hand in a "stopping" motion. "No. I am hardly going to run away from you in terror." She points at an Indonesian day bed, which is a type of large bench, that has a slightly dirty-looking cushion on it. "Get your little butt up there, little whelp, and we'll sit down and talk."
"Whelp!?" you say with a scowl. "I'm not a whelp!"
She sits down on the bench and retorts as she leans down at you with a smirk, "Dragons like you live a minimum of one thousand years and don't mature until their second century. Heck, you're not even old enough to be officially juvenile, so shame on whoever threw you out of your nest. You're a whelp.
Listen to the witch. Yes, I am conversing with you, the reader, as I tell this story, just to break the fourth wall a little bit.
As you reluctantly climb up onto the bench, she puts her hand on you in the overly familiar way that she would a dog, petting on you gently as she leans down to talk to you. "So are you a little bit scared?" she says softly.
"I'm not scared," you say reflexively.
She smiles indulgently. "That's because you're a brave, little guy," she says, making it worse.
You almost reject her attempts to be comforting and motherly, but as what you have been through over the past few days comes home, something breaks inside you, the tip of your snout trembling. "They...they tried to shoot me..." you stammer through sobs.
She smiles gently. "You're safe now," she says. "Shhhh."
"But they hate me now," you wail. "They'll never accept me...you know, like this!"
She just listens, saying nothing and giving you a moment to recover yourself and continue.
"How is my life not ruined now? There is nothing left for me, is there?"
"Well, did you attack them?" she inquires.
You nod your head. "I didn't mean to, though. I don't think I hurt anybody too badly."
She sighs and closes her eyes in disappointment. "That still doesn't help your situation," she says. "I am sorry to tell you this, but if you had managed to slip out peacefully, there might have been a chance of persuading them to adopt you back. They're most likely going to be scared of you now, no matter what I say or do. To them, I am a witch, and you are a dangerous animal, even if I could convince them that you used to be their son."
"Everything is crap," you swear.
Your swearing earns you a thwap on the back of your head. "You won't be old enough to swear for another hundred years, whelp, so get used to it."
You push her hand away with your paw, accidentally scratching her but not badly enough to break the skin. "You're NOT my MOTHER!" you snarl.
She looks at the mark where your claws scraped against her flesh and tilts her head. "Just as well you're not a werewolf," she mutters. "That antidote tastes awful." She sighs and shakes her head. "Well, I am not sure that I can adopt you because I'm out of space for pets. I haven't had a dragon in my home for a while, though, so perhaps an apprenticeship is in order. It would earn you a small wage, so you could afford to live in some gnome-owned subsidy housing, cramped but at least clean and equipped with central heat and indoor plumbing. On the other hand, I suppose that I could turn you loose on an old-fashioned dragon quest with a simple grimoire, a map, and some advice. Of course, if you don't mind meeting a few Underworld creatures once in a while and being transformed occasionally, I could take you on as a familiar.
The choice, as always, is yours.