late in the darkest winter night, a moonless sky pressed down on the desert, stars glimmering in the velvet black.

the earth was still hot from the unforgiving sun and the mosses and lichens of the winter sands glowed with colour, their gentle blossoms unseen in the foreboding darkness. a fire glowed in the mud brick shack. the rag covered doorway an orange beacon.

on the horizon, a shadow swallowed the stars. the thin jute cloth that served as a door began to convulse as a musty breeze began to grow.

blocking the fire light in the doorway, Jolaf peered out into the night. the breeze, now a wind, rustled through the dry grasses in the roof and stroked sand over his feet. Jolaf's dusty hair dancing, he saw them.

"Put out the fire!"

dust swallowed up the hazy desert air. The night turned brown as wind picked sand up into the air. trees and grasses leaned and bent under the strengthening gales and a roaring and whooshing filled the valley.

The dragon sow pressed her lips to the churning earth, her calf drifting anxiously about her tail. She rose and fell as she sucked up the lichen from the sandy floor, her bloated scaly body gyrating in compensation for her mass. White horns about her face glowed in the darkness, delicate fins and flippers displacing the air. Just above the sow's front flipper, large pink holes opened and closed, releasing the flammable gas that kept her round body afloat.

Having consumed her fill, she reared up, high into the darkness and vanished into the shadows. the wind soon fell and the grasses and trees straightened up in relief. Jolaf hesitated. he would not relight the fire until he was sure. fire spread quickly, he recalled, glancing down at his wife's pitted and bubbling face. fire spreads quickly.