Archive of Our Own ^beta

The cat-dragon tiptoes, soft, stealthy, ever so quiet over the grass, the moss, the little springy, aromatic plants. There is something in the taller stems that edge the lawn, something that glimmers in the thin moon-and-star light, gleams with a flicker-flash, a sheen of water-damp, a grey you-can’t-see-me — but cats and dragons both see shades of grey very well indeed, and that sort of misdirection does not work on them, no indeed — a twitch of tail, of wing-tips, and with a pounce, a wet crunch, the cat-dragon's claws hold a shred of grey that might have been a Mewlip, once.

The cat-dragon crouches on the lip of the fountain that is also a pond, patient and alert. The water-lilies are busy with dragon-flies, only ordinary insects, however glittery bright, nothing warranting the dragon-cat's attention. Unlike the turtles. Some of the turtles in the pond were the regular kind, but at least one of them was very definitely not. There was no call to be upsetting the shape of their little world, round one moment, flat the next; islands and then waves in a pond that should have neither. No fantastical turtle would be doing any such thing in cat-dragon's garden.

The cat-dragon flies, bright wings outstretched, reveling in the wind and the freedom of the sky. There are sand dunes below, stippled with the shadows of wider wings -- leathern, feathered, scaled -- and the tracks of far stranger things than a cat that is also a dragon. Fell beasts and were-worms prosper here, in the sand-deeps of the Uttermost East, far and far from the cat-dragon's garden. Oliphaunts and rock-mice, moon-slithers and grey-gold wind-wisps, saber-cats and elusive sand-pigs, snuffling in the dune-shadows. From this high vantage, it was all a mosaic fitting cleverly together; a picture they too were a part.

The cat-dragon lies curled in a golden sunbeam, gleaming nearly as bright as the light and the reflections off the pale stones, ostensibly napping and to all appearances completely languid and relaxed. But there is a gleam under one eyelid, and the air by their nose wavers with heat-haze. The Girabbit's puff-ball tail is such a tempting target, pouffy and white and right there. Just a little flame, nothing that would hurt, only startle. Singe the puff-ball just a little. To see how far he would leap in surprise. But that would mean moving from the sunbeam. Not worth it.

The cat dreams -- but are they dreams? Or realities? Fantasies or memories? Intimations of possibilities? Dreams of dragons, small and crystal-caught, wings of gossamer-webbed steel, impervious to hazard; large and leather-winged, a Smaug of dragons, a Glaurung, an Ancalagon, the size of mountains, with wings to darken the sky, a tail to scythe through foes as an ordinary tail flattens grass, talons edged and pointed, curved and deadly -- much more so than small weapons ready in paw. And oh, to breathe fire! Venom, some other wondrous, dangerous fume!

What cat would not wish to be a dragon, of whatever kind?