Free Song of Sorcery by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

heart.
    “Of course, I might at any time prior to my entanglement in that tree have swum to shore. But I was asleep when the floodwaters filled my cave, and before I had quite gathered my faculties, I was struck behind the ears with a portion of a nearby mountain, which must have become dislodged in the flood. At least, I suppose it had to be something as substantial as that, for I am quite well armored, you know.
    “Oh, yes, we dragons are almost completely protected externally, but ah, the searing pain that can burn within! I see you appear puzzled, but it is true, my friends, it is indeed true that we, too, have feelings that cannot be shielded by our scales, and bear passions hotter than our own fires. Though the flood has extinguished one flame, that other within me burns like a torch I carry—for him. And I had always considered myself to be such a cool-headed sort!
    “Ah, but that was all before I met —him . If only you could see him! A dragon is surely just a dragon, you may say. How quickly your preconceptions would melt away if only you could see my Grimley! Brilliant red-orange scales glittering in the sun! The liquid reptilian grace of him as he sails through the Southern Aurora! The sensuousness of his slither when he turned to sear me with that earthquaking smile from those hypnotic garnet eyes of his! Ah, Grimley, Grimley, my heart, my flame, my own!”
    (For a moment she seemed quite overcome but was finally able to proceed in a calmer fashion.)
    “We were very happy for a while—he scarcely left my side nor would he allow me to hunt for myself, but fed me from his own snout the choicest morsels. We were so blissful! How could we have quarreled and parted over such a small thing? I tell you, I am quite, quite bereft! Absolutely bereft. I simply felt, you know, that it was demeaning to my darling to let that MAN choose what he ate from our range, instead of raiding the herds and villages at the dictate of his dragonly will. He took my concern amiss, and called me a little hothead who had no concern for the security of our future offspring. And I—oh, the terrible things I said—still…I feel, you know, that I must resolve in my own heart this matter of dragonian dignity, On the river, as it all flashed before me in the extremity of my need, I decided that if I should be freed, I would fly to the east to consult our great queen. Perhaps her wise counsel could heal those harsh words. If our queen agrees with me, then I shall return with her to my love in a blaze of glory, and how can he deny me then? If not, I shall crawl all the way back home and beg his forgiveness.”
    (Another flood impended, as the great dragon tears rolled off her snout and down her stomach, further saturating the sodden ground surrounding her. She sniffed a giant sniff and continued.)
    “At any rate, I drifted unconscious downstream after the mountain hit me, until I became entangled in that tree, as first you beheld me. Although I possessed the strength to free myself, I was afraid of injuring my wings, which are ever so fragile. Then, when you people were playing about on that rope, you jarred the tree loose that had pinioned my wings, and set me free, and—and here I am—flameless, loveless wretch as you see me!”
    Colin, his poet’s sensitivity aroused, had quietly drawn his fiddle from his bag and was playing a little lament for the creature as she finished her tale.
    Uncomfortable with the surfeit of sentimentality, Maggie squirmed a bit, but did feel sorry for the beast. She was actually, objectively speaking, an attractive thing. From royal blue snout to spiked and slender tail tip, her color altered many times to blend from blue to turquoise, aquamarine, and other blue-green distinctions, to sea green, and mist green, and forest green, and emerald green, to finally tip her membranous wings and frost her spikes with a chartreuse of the same beautiful shade as her big, limpid eyes, pools of misery that were, as has