Moonlight

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Moonlight is not a real dragon.


Every night, he patrols what is thought to be the border of a long-forgotten clan's territory. The path appears to be predetermined. Always the same. He "wakes", he walks for many miles, looping around to where he started, and then he "sleeps".

The whirring and ceaseless quiet ticking of his mechanisms as he approaches has become a reliable way to mark the time for locals.

Hatchlings give him gifts of ribbon and twine and lace while he slumbers, silent, during the day. They chatter to and around him in groups, plaiting together grasses and hex nuts and cloth strips as they do.

Occasionally someone comes along and tunes him up - usually a nearby mechanist, or occasionally a passing dragon of some skill who's heard tell of the Moonlit Patroller. (Or the Whirrwalker, or Old Man Porcelain, or - well. He has a lot of names, as such mysteries tend to.)


Moonlight is not a real dragon. He is a leftover relic.


"Why does he walk?"

No-one knows.

"Who made him?"

No-one knows.

"How long has he been here?"

Generations, at least, but... no-one knows. He's harmless enough though, Stranger, and some say he's older than the hills themselves, so don't you be laying a single claw on him with ill-intent, y'hear?


Moonlight is not a real dragon. He is a leftover relic. But he is cared for and protected, seen almost as the spirit of the place he dwells.


"Huh... so they built a shrine while I was away, then." an elder muses to himself, the tarpaulin-covered cart he pulls significantly lighter than when he left, months ago.

"He just..." one of his many bright-furred daughters later explains to him, "he always looked so lonely, curled up on the ground each day like he does... This way he can stay out of the rain," she adds, voice soft. "And it's not a shrine. It's barely a shed. It doesn't even have doors. He wouldn't be able to get in or out otherwise."

"I don't know..." the greying merchant trails off, taking in the loops of garlands and ribbons that already adorn the wooden walls of the small hut, and the automation within, motionless, draped with flowers and lace, "it sure looks like a shrine to my eyes, kid."


Moonlight is not a real dragon. He is a leftover relic. But he is cared for and protected, seen almost as the spirit of the place he dwells. And he is loved.
And one day, he vows, when he is freed of his curse, he will repay the kindnesses he has been shown a hundredfold.

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