Dragontale by LM Noonan

My mother was a dragon.

Did my father know?

Well not until the moment of his passing—gods rest his ignorant soul.

Ah, I see the doubt, I hear the chary thoughts—another gift of my ancestors.

How could he not know? Or; how could…he know a dragon?

She was bathing in an icy puddle of snow-melt, surrounded, suffused with steam and dragonbreath. The milk thistle sun glancing off her scales created a hall of mirrors effect. My father— hallucinatingly malnourished survivor of the harsh northern winter but rather handsome in his gauntness; caught sight of himself reflected, refracted as a hundreds of winsome, angular girls, all with the same startled blue eyes.

What can I say in his defence—there are no mirrors in the village, no reflective surfaces, the only potable water, dull, tea coloured, choked with debris; what can I say…I have my mother’s intellect.

Any normal yokel would have turned tail or hurled a testing stone or two. My father began instead to stroke her scales so enchanted was he with the fractured vision. He didn’t stop to wonder when they rippled beneath his hands—she says she will always remember his touch. He dropped his trews and pressed himself close to her trembling scutes, rubbing, caressing—she turning, turning.

Just as Daddy found the chink in her armour, a place less hard, less chitinous and—it seemed; a perfect temperature, she opened one dreaming eye to regard her lover.

She assures me that he died instantly.
The human heart can only take so much, which is why….it is a good thing I have a dragon’s heart.
But still, she wishes that her dragongirl had at least a few scales.

LM Noonan blogs here at Failed Painter