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A young shepherd was the first one to spot him: the dark, winged creature in the sky. When he was just a speck against the billowing white clouds, the shepherd mistook him for a bird of prey hunting for a kill, but when he flew closer, he revealed himself as a scaled beast with a wingspan so wide that it blocked the sun. He was the largest creature the young shepherd had seen in his whole life – and also the most terrifyingly majestic and beautiful.
The boy ran back to the village, his thin legs pounding the hard-cracked earth, to tell the news to his people. The beast of such greatness must be hungry, and the sheep his people spent their lives protecting and guarding must be in danger.
As evening came and the villagers approached the place where the monster had landed, they saw him lying on the ground, curled into a shape not dissimilar to that of the crescent moon climbing high above the horizon. He didn’t move the whole night, as attested by the group of boys left to observe him while the rest of the villagers herded their sheep to higher ground.
When morning broke and the most daring of the boys crept closer to the beast, they saw that he was curled around the body of a woman. She was young and pale and beautiful even in death, her long silver hair reflecting the first rays of the sun — as did the hilt of a dagger still protruding from her chest. Who she was, and why the beast watched over her, they didn’t know.
———
It was the learned men from Astapor who arrived at the site as the news spread, who solved the mystery. She was once the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, they told the villagers. She was once the Queen of the Great Western Lands, they said. She simply couldn’t be anyone else, guarded by such a fearsome dragon. Drogon, someone whispered the name breathlessly. Yet another knew the place to be the very one where the Khaleesi had first set alight the funeral pyre that had achieved the impossible: resurrected from the past the dragons of old, thought to have been long lost.
A liberator, some said. A tyrant, said others.
Some of them wanted to take her while the beast was gone – as surely he would have to eat and drink sooner or later? They planned to seize her body and bring it to their capital, there to be paraded to the masses as a warning of what happens to those who defy the right and true world order.
Except that the dragon never left.
He moved, occasionally, to change his position, curling this way or that, but he never left his charge alone and never veered more than a few steps away from her. The young shepherd, who had taken it upon himself to guard the guardian, sometimes saw him nudging his mistress with a horned snout, tilting his head and staring at her as if still not quite believing that she was gone — but that was all.
———
As time went by, the most brazen thought they might be able to catch the dragon in its weakened state. They approached him with nets and spears, but he roared and breathed the fire of a thousand hells upon the unwise, and they ran away. Nobody was foolish enough to try after that.
The most kind-hearted wanted to provide him with sustenance, as surely if he wouldn’t eat or drink, he would eventually perish? They threw a carcass of a sheep, freshly killed, to his feet, but the beast turned his head away and didn’t touch it.
———
As time went by, the woman transformed. The dry desert air didn’t permit the decay of the body, but she shrivelled and shrank, her skin transforming into brittle parchment and her limbs turning into slender, delicate bones. And yet the dragon didn’t leave her.
Travellers came to see the sight and the villagers had to protect their sheep from a different kind of predators; those who walk on two legs. The pestilence of the curious throngs lasted a long time and the villagers grew weary of it, but eventually, people lost interest and moved on, and the dragon and the Khaleesi were left alone.
How the creature could live so long without eating or drinking, the villagers could never understand, but he did. Weeks changed into months, and the dragon lost weight, his scales grew dull and flaky and his movements became slow and stilted – and still, he didn’t leave his mistress.
———
The young shepherd had become obsessed with the dragon and the Khaleesi and spent almost all his time watching them. He raised his tent nearby and although he never dared to venture too close, he liked to think that the dragon endured his company better than he did that of the others.
And one day, long after the appearance of the beast, the same young shepherd who had first seen his arrival saw his parting.
The dragon had been lying motionless for a long time, his snout tucked against the folds of the long wingtips when he suddenly raised his head. One more nudge at his mistress, his dried scales brushing against hair that had remained as silvery and bright as ever despite the rest of her having withered way, and the beast drew in a long, screeching breath.
The young shepherd had risen to his feet as if anticipating that something important was about to happen, and the dragon turned his eyes, still-smouldering red pits, towards him. A silent recognition flashed between them of a task passed, a change of guard accepted, and the beast laid his head down again and closed his eyes – forever.
———
When the human foragers came with an intent to scavenge the flesh and the skin of the dragon, the young shepherd stood up and spoke against them, and soon the whole village followed his example. Ever since the dragon had arrived, their sheep had grown fat and lambed twins, their wells had filled with water and the grass had been plentiful. They knew it to be a unique blessing from the Great Shepherd, and they were not going to tolerate desecration of those who had brought it upon them.
And so it was that the place where the dragon had laid down became sacred, passing time in its cruel inevitability gradually seeing the remains of that huge beast fading away until only bones remained: huge bones of a winged creature, eternally curled around the delicate skeleton he had died protecting.
———
And the night was never alive with the music of the dragons again.