Annus

you think most of it comes from your inability to tell how long you've spent with him. your internal clock will tell you it's been at least a few hours, the activities you doing telling you another few hours still, and yet when you look to the sun for a gauge on how long you were hanging out, you see that the sun has barely moved.

imperials are large dragons as it is, and yet- he feels so much larger than life itself. he and his friend who looks like a ridgeback joke about him being short. you're scared about who could consider him short.

many dragons like to wrap sand-glasses around themselves, just as a fashion statement or an easy to way to keep the time. but his is large and impossibly controlled, one sand falling for one second. he's told you that it keeps track of one year. it's silly, but you wonder if he even needs the sand-glass to tell the time down to the second.

his wings, large and glorious, carry him at speeds that are unnatural. he boasts about it, and while many dragons lie and exaggerate and say "i can fly faster than the sun's light," you've seen this one take flight, and you've seen him outfly the dawn. you wonder if he could fly fast enough to turn back {or fowards}.

he loves making jokes. he's the smart one of his group of two, a engineer who stopped his education. he's handy, too, having done woodworking for a period of time. still though, he laughs himself silly when his friend seemingly has a stroke mid-sentence. however, you can't get it out of your mind, the one time you saw him stop his laughing and ask any nearby dragons if they were ready for their time to run out, for the ticking of the clock to march ever onwards despite their loss.

too many times, you wonder if the many, many sand-glasses you've seen him carry are representing a dragon's life. too many times you wonder if you have a sand-glass, and how much sand you have left.