Dragon story

 In a glimmering cave filled with carved heads, a big lizard with a hot belly is draped around a stalagmite. His belly is red, his eyes are red, and he can breathe fire, and his wings are draped. They are resting on him like folded tarps, trailing a little bit in the dust on the ground. There is a cage hanging from the ceiling by a silver thread, the cage twists left for a while and then right for a while. Inside it is a small dog, the dragon's fair friend, who the dragon does not allow to leave.

There are also red markings on the floor and the walls in the shape of men, or people, marching every which way. They carry spears and shields, they are coming to slay the dragon. He does not fear the markings.

There is no way in or out except a small hole in the ceiling, which the dragon can crawl up to on the walls, his wings hanging limply down like clothes on a hanger, as his rigid claws grasp the stalactites and striations in the cave walls and allow him to climb up to the hole. Up there can be seen the many stars embedded in the flint sky, it is always dark when the dragon goes out of the hole.

The carved heads are of very old men with broad faces and no hair. They are all scowling. No one knows who put them there. They are gazing every which way. Some of them are a little bit bigger than the others. They are not carved from the stalagmites. The carved heads were brought in a long time ago and left there in a deliberate pattern, as if this was an art gallery. Although the hole in the ceiling is too small to fit the heads through, and there is no other way in or out.

When the dragon crawls out of the hole he emerges in a conifer forest. The smell is of sweet wind and wood branches. He climbs then up a tree that he knows well, the tree is sturdy and old and its branches are well placed for his claws. Have you ever seen an alligator climbing a tree? You would think it impossible. But he is able to stretch and grasp nimbly, though not swiftly. And he comes through the pine branches to grip the top of the tree and up there to take a moment to gain his balance, the tree moving left and right underneath it, and the forest all spread out in all directions, dark and running over the mountains underneath the night sky, and a warm breeze coming opposite the direction where the dragon wants to go. He lets his wings trail out behind him and then catch the wind, his wings that are at first like crumpled cloth and then like sails, which the dragon tucks and maneuvers to better catch the wind. They are arrayed behind him, much bigger than the dragon, and thin, and the dragon lets himself get caught by the wind, and carried into the sky.

Up into the twinkling sky. Where there are mounded and sparkling white clouds. And far below it there is the dark forest, now just a dark patch in a crumpled and dark landscape. Crumpled like a blanket on a bed, crossed with a single shining river, and there a patch of sparks, which are the windows of houses, not all asleep at this hour of the night. The dragon allows his wings to carry him, through strips and tatters of cold cloud. He twists his long neck to look behind him and below him, checking for whether he is being followed, though he could not say what would follow him. The silver thread of the river shined on the black landscape, curving in slow turns as if a boy had been ambling over the hills with a downturned teapot, allowing the water to fall where he happened to stroll. 

When below him the dragon could see, far below him now, the houses of the small village, built in a flat place in the land and bordered by square fields of different shades of black, he flexed his wings so they could not catch wind and allowed him to fall, and land on a house, which broke under his weight, so that he landed in a pile of roofing and part way on a broken wooden wall of a house, the sound of which he did not really register, only noticing that he was now where he meant to be. A person was under his red belly and he moved aside and put his leg on the person and crushed it to death. Then the dragon parted his lips and allowed the fire to drift from his open mouth. It drifted like a slow fog, moving about him like a glimmering yellow fog, but where it touched house, sprang up into a cunning fire, and made him warm.

Thereupon the dragon moved from the house into the streets of the village. Street lamps and a fountain were there in the village. There was screams of the people who screamed at the sight of him. And the fire drifted from his mouth and spread across the dusty earth like ghosts, and took up post in the houses, and burned them. If he happened to see a person, he would let the fire catch them, so that they would die. He stepped into the fountain with one foot and let the fountain burn up into steam. The steam went up around him and surrounded his body and then was also burned away by the fire, leaving him standing in an empty square.

This is how it went for a time. The dragon crawling down narrow streets and over stone walls and into the burning sides of broken houses. Many people were burned up and died. Some men came with bows and stood at a fair distance, at an intersection beside a street sign on which a little flame danced, and they sent arrows at the dragon, but the arrows could not pierce his scales. For he looked like a lizard, but is dense and hard as the densest metal at the center of the earth. The dragon opened his mouth and sent his fire onto the men, who screamed and died.

When the village was fairly burnt up and destroyed from the river to its outer walls, where the dark fields spread out into low hills lit up by the yellow light of the fires, the dragon made his way to the river, and dipped his mouth into the water, and drank it up. The cold river water, heavy with thick river stink, reeds, black algae, water hopping insects, tadpoles, fish, frogs, herons and egrets, and all other river things, reversed course at the power of the dragon's drinking, and were drawn up into the dragon's belly, leaving a trench of bad smelling mud. 

The dragon, his red belly now swollen tight like a red balloon, went then to the village church, and climbed up the walls of the church, just as he had in his cavern, and up the roof of the church up to its high steeple, where was affixed a metal cross. The dragon then broke the cross from the roof with his claws and held it, and opened his wings again, and let himself be lifted into the air. Below him was the remains of the destroyed village, burned and crushed, belching columns of black smoke, and crossed with the deep trench of what used to be its river. The dragon did not look at this.

He let himself drift a ways away from the village and dropped the church cross into a patch of trees, and then stirred his wings, and flapped them like a bird flaps his wings, propelling himself through the night air, now sinuous as a snake over the crumpled landscape no longer split by the silver river, and came through the air to his conifer forest, where he dropped to the tree that he knew, and to the forest ground covered in boulders and branches, and folded his wings, and found the crack in the earth where his cavern was, and crawled head-first down into the crack. He could barely fit into the crack because be was so swollen with the river, and spent a long time easing his way through the crack, his swollen red belly scraping on the outcrops of stalactites, but shortly made his way into his cave filled with carved heads and red markings and his cage held by a silver thread with his dog in it. He sent his tongue into the cage of the dog and touched the dog's head, and the dog shivered, because it was cold in its cage. 

Thereupon the dragon laid himself down in the hollow where he had begun the night and did not sleep and kept his eyes open, and digested the river, and thought no thoughts at all.