red against the creature’s massive body, but Tosch didn’t
seem to care. He was thrilled with his new appearance and
he revelled in it – posturing every which way and asking
how he looked in every pose.
To Seron, it was all rather silly, but Kyra took the
dragon seriously, giving him her best advice on how to wear
the cape to his best advantage.
Finally, Tosch stood still and turned to Seron. “Your
wife gave me a wonderful gift,” stated the dragon. “What
are YOU going to give me?”
“I’m going to paint your picture,” he calmly replied.
“Once humans have seen your portrait, they won’t be so
surprised when they see you in the flesh. Isn’t that what you
want?”
Tosch looked at Kyra. “Can he draw?” he asked.
“Raise your right wing just a little higher,” said Seron,
as he painted Tosch’s picture in the forest clearing where
they had first met. “Just a bit higher. Yes. Good. Don’t
move.”
“I think I look better with my wings lower and my head
higher,” complained Tosch. “And I’ve got a great profile
from the left side. You said so, yourself.”
“My purpose is to create a dramatic effect,” the painter
reminded him, “not necessarily to make you look your
best.”
“I don’t understand the difference,” sniffed the dragon.
“If I look good, the picture looks good, right?”
“It’s the other way around, my friend,” laughed Seron.
“If the picture looks good, you’ll look good.”
“Hmmph.”
No one else was offering to paint pictures of Tosch, so
he remained a willing model despite differences with Seron.
The peacemaker was Kyra. She often joined them in the
forest clearing, stroking the dragon’s head when her
husband released him from a long, torturous pose.
Tosch, however, was not the easiest model to paint. The
brass dragon would often arrive late for sittings;
sometimes he wouldn’t come at all. Often, he would
quietly mutter a magical incantation, slap his tail against the
ground three times, and make Seron’s brushes disappear.
The dragon seemed bent on driving the artist to distraction.
But Kyra always soothed Seron’s anger by explaining
yet again that the dragon tales of her youth told of the
creatures’ freewheeling nature. “A brass dragon,” she said,
“comes and goes as he pleases and likes to play tricks. It’s
his nature; don’t blame him.”
And so the painting continued. At least for a short
while . . .
Tosch might have stayed for years instead of a few
short months, but when the Highlord and her forces invaded
Flotsam, the young dragon fled to the mountains.
Seron and Kyra might have done the same, but Flot sam
was all they had ever known; they had both been born
there, and neither of them had ever been anywhere else.
The truth was they were afraid to leave. Times were hard
after the dragonarmy took over. But even so, Seron eked out
a living. He managed to sell his pictures of Tosch, despite
the fact that dragons were now far more commonplace. One
of Seron’s portraits went to the owner of the inn where he
worked as a cook. He sold another to a fierce female ship
captain who said she would hang it in her cabin. Yet
another was bought by a traveling peddler. All of the buyers
admired how skillfully the artist had, at once, captured both
the youthful innocence and the natural arrogance of the
dragon.
With each sale, Kyra became ever more proud of her
husband. His reputation as a painter was growing, yet
nothing really changed. They still lived in the same small
hut, their clothes were still second-hand rags skillfully
repaired by Kyra, and Seron still had to work at the inn to
supplement their income.
“You won’t believe it!” exclaimed Seron in a rush of
words as he burst into their one-room home. “I was up on
Cold Rock Point,” he explained, “and I saw the Highlord
atop her blue dragon. She was leading a whole phalanx of
soldiers riding their own dragons. The entire sky was filled
with them. Everywhere you looked there were dragons!
Their wings were flapping with a power that nearly blew
me off the cliff, and their great mouths were screaming in