Before the first winter, before there were kings to count the years, a white dragon lived high in the rock. His body was made of fire, and he had only one task: to guard a single stone, green as deep water, with edges of jade. He never closed his eyes over it. For the stone was not a stone. It was his bride. Long ago she had been turned to jade, and he was waiting, a hundred winters at a time, for the world to sleep long enough for her to wake.
But stories travel faster than dragons fly. A rumour reached the castles of the valley: a jewel in the mountains, guarded by a beast. And every knight began to dream of the same two things, glory and the king's daughter.
The bravest of them went alone. He climbed into the gorge, drove his sword into the dragon's heart, and found the green stone lying in the nest like an egg. The dragon's blood had fallen on it and eaten into the smallest cracks, but the knight did not look closely. He was in a hurry. A reward was waiting.
The wedding was held in a castle by the forest. The whole court came in its finest, and on the bride's head they placed a crown, and in the crown, the green stone.
That is when the cracks gave way.
The crown ran down like wax. And out of the jade, in grief and fire, rose the dragon's bride. She looked once at the hall, and the hall was ash. She breathed once on the land, and the rivers turned to poison and the neighbouring kingdoms withered. Then she turned to the princess, and the princess became a stone, red as the blood of the one who had guarded her in the rock.
So the brave knight was left with what his courage had bought: a handful of ashes and a red stone. His bride was not dead. She was sleeping.
The mountain people say it simply. Whoever kills a dragon for gain takes the dragon's place. The slain one turns to jade and waits a hundred years, or until the one he loved is stone as well. And from that day the killer must do what the dragon did: guard his sleeping love from greed and harm, without closing his eyes. Somewhere in the rock, meanwhile, the dragon's bride lies down to sleep again.
This is the temple that grew over the white dragon's bones. The steps were laid by people who were afraid. The garden came by itself: lilac, stars of allium, pale hearts that hang from their stems and break at a touch. On the dragon's skull, as if on a mountain, stands a small castle, and in the open jaw an ember is still glowing.
Snails crawl over the battlements, in no hurry at all. Years later they will crawl across the masked face of the Oracle in the second episode of the saga. And when a knight walks out of the forest in the saga's final chapter, carrying the head of the monster he has slain, he will only be repeating this story, and with it, its ending.
The story was inspired by the song "Tale of the Dragon" by Dryad.
(Fine Art Photography. Created in May 2024.)
