Creative Corner

Everyone sees the lights, first.

They’re blue, always blue, and they cut through the fog like a warm knife through butter. Just tiny pinpricks dancing in the distance, but as they near--and the crew holds its breath as they do-- one can just barely make out the shape of a dragon hovering over the waves.

Most crews disagree over the forms the creature takes. Some argue that it’s a guardian, after all it would make sense. What other breed of dragon would take so easily to the waves, to fight the bold currents and guide ships to safety? Others claim to have seen the lithe form of a skydancer, given its grace in the air in the fiercest of winds. Still, the assertions come: imperial, ridgeback, pearlcatcher.

And if one must know the truth: they’re wrong, all of them. And right, in a way. His preferred shape is that of a finned, slender-limbed fae, and the lights come from a lantern he wields and from certain parts of his wings.

Little is known about him and he prefers for it to stay that way. After all, he’s perfectly content on the miniscule island he calls home, watching ships pass by and living among the wealth he’s accumulated--fundamentally useless, of course, for the ocean gives him everything he could ever want, but he collects nevertheless.

At least, one thing the legends all agree on is that you must give up something of worth in exchange for safe passage and guidance from the mist. It’s a fair trade, a few treasure for dozens of lives, but the greedy ones who refuse to give it up find that the fog only gets thicker as they sail on and that the sea is never satiated. You’ll see their ships’ ghostly, hollow remains washed up on the coast days later.

He always gets his due.