She could not help but see the Dragon glittering in the distance as she approached, and she considered leaving the road which ran near it to avoid an encounter.

However, she had been walking for days now in strange territory. Her provisions were waning and the prospect of encountering an unknown challenge in the open desert seemed somehow less attractive. At least she knew something of dragons. But her knowledge was only what everyone knew:

Ages ago real dragons did not exist, and so a grand dreamer decided to bring them into being. This without understanding the consequences. This without seeming to grasp that the dragons of myth were monstrous and monstrously powerful. Even in the legends that cast them as benevolent, the dragons were too powerful, too arcane and too close to reptile for any mere mortal mind to fully understand. To create them was as for an ant to fashion the child that crushes it without thinking.

And this particular dreamer was not wise, merely able; so the dragons were made. They were made with such clever artifice that both the living and the dead would not know them to be machines. And the first few beasts did not know it themselves. But they knew they were powerful, moreso than their creator. And they left her keep without a second thought. Those that felt themselves to be evil did evil. Those that felt themselves to be good did good. But what distinctions are these to small, wet, human minds? The snake is unknowable, and the cold clockworks, ultimately incomprehensible.

In fact, it was the most clever and benign of the goodly dragons that turned back while the others scattered over the earth. It turned back and destroyed their creator and her means of creation. In its eyes, she had done her life's work and heaven awaited. This great beast sacrificed itself to her destruction, and in its eyes this was a great honor to be humbly pursued. It cracked the earth asunder beneath her fortress; the dreamer and her dreams were lost, along with the best and brightest of her creations.

As for the rest of them in small ways, daily ways, the dragons acted out their parts and it was as if the old tales had come to life. The goodly dragons brought rain where needed, protected travellers upon the road and so on. Those that were evil, did terrible things indeed. Knights did battle, virgins were sacrificed. No dragon was ever defeated, only driven off to fly another day. The dreamer would have been pleased were she not dead, for there were dragons upon the earth for a thousand years, as if they had always been. Balanced, unchanging and eternal.

But these brilliant creatures were afflicted with a developing, cunning, clockwork logic. And over time those that did good began to see that their efforts did not matter; life was painful and suffering inevitable. Those that did evil came to realize that to spare the living was to condemn them to being alive amongst each other. So in time, the goodly dragons became those that killed newborns to spare them life's sorrows, while those that did evil fought to save them. It was a twisted age, and there were dragons still upon the earth for a thousand years more.

This was what everybody knew, as well as that in recent memory their numbers unaccountably dwindled. Perhaps the dream was beginning to fade. Perhaps it was a sickness among them. Regardless, it was not through human effort, for no dragon had ever been defeated, only driven off to fly another day.

She held up her eyes against the glaring sun. In the distance it glittered and she was certain it was aware of her. There was nothing around for miles, just flat dried earth, the road and the sun. It would have seen her coming long ago. So she did not try to hide, she did not leave the road. She walked on sore feet and sipped from her waterskin and made her way to the Dragon that remained.

She was told it would be there. Those in the last village warned her.

"If you follow that road much further, you will meet the Dragon on your way."

"Will it harm me," she had asked. They shook their heads in fear.

"No, it is evil."

But she had no other choice. Along the road was her path. Within a stone's throw she paused to collect herself. The ancient creature studied her curiously, clicking loudly enough for her to hear on the wind. Its wings - once glorious - were now tattered stumps, but she had no doubt it could cross the distance to her quickly enough if it wanted to. It yawned and writhed its great tail, stirring up dust that slowly drifted up as a cloud.

She squatted and pulled some dried meat from her pouch, nibbling it and looking around. She waved away a fly that had been following her. There was no shade except for a patch of rocks behind the beast and she could not put it off any longer.

It watched her with eyes that irised open and closed like crisp, bladed flowers. She stood before it silently, looking up. It looked down at her. Neither said anything for a long time. She could see that its hide had been eroded or flayed off over most of its body. It had one good talon left that looked quite capable and wicked; the other was a mass of tangled mechanism.

"You are a machine," she finally said.

"So are you," it replied without a pause, in a glassy choral tone. But it did lower its head to her level, turning to focus a large round eye upon her. The broad lens was clear as a dewdrop, bright and wet. She saw herself reflected upon the surface.

"Is it far from here?"
"Not for me. For you, another day's journey."

"Now that I am close, it will be dangerous when night comes, won't it?"

"Not for me. You will most certainly be eaten or worse."

"I should camp here then."
"Because I will protect you."

"I was warned about you," she said, unslinging her sack and walking closer. She entered into the shade of the Dragon with relief. It was cooler here, and closer still she felt the beast radiating an uncanny chill, humming.

"And with good reason."

It did not touch her, not once. And in conversation it only responded to her, but it did so readily, quite willing to talk when prompted.

"I don't want to leave," she said the next day. And she meant it; there was stability and certainty here that she would not know anywhere else, under any other circumstance, with anyone else, at any other time. The Dragon was devoted, safe and could be trusted.

"But you must," it replied, "If you stay, you will wither and starve."

"There is nothing here for me but you. Nothing," she said, to which the Dragon was at first silent. It watched her intently and then perhaps smiled.

"And you are always welcome, here."

Later in life, in hard times, during moments of deepest doubt and hopeless dismay, she would remember this and regret her choice in some small way. And at her happiest, in the company of friends, familiy and those she valued most, she never again felt as safe and as certain of the people around her as she did under that bright creature's gaze.