The Jewel Dragon's Glass Wife

The Jewel Dragon's Glass Wife

A Folktale

as recorded by Yolanda Greatwood

Once, from a deep wicked cave at the foot of a crawling mountain, there emerged a great Jewel Dragon. This Dragon had scales of silver, teeth of diamond, horns of ruby and eyes of emerald. When it belched, out came acrid smoke, and in went the spiritus of all anima that the smoke befouled. This vile Dragon came to the Lord's castle and said to the Lord:

Hark! Send to me thy haughty daughters, thy fleshy daughters! I have need of a Wife!

And the Lord shrank and shivered, for he had only one daughter, who was his dearly beloved, and she was hollow inside and had skin of glass. But the Lord was indeed a gutless and yellow-bellied coward, and so called her forth to be seen by the Dragon.

The Dragon sniffed and inspected the young lady through and through with its fourth-degree high senses. It licked out its tongue and tasted the Heart beneath her breasts -- a Heart pumping and made of pure Gold. This was a Jewel Dragon, and therefore hungry for Gold. And so the Dragon said to the Lord;

I take your humble daughter to be my Wife! We shall be wed in the chapel when three moons have passed. Prepare a great feast! Prepare a great festival!

And the Lord, for he was spineless and weak to suggestion and intimidation, spent up the coffers of the land in splendid preparations. The ceremony was the grandest ever to be seen before or since, with singing and music and merriment and large animals slaughtered and roasted, and at its conclusion the Dragon took in its mouth the Wife and flew off in seclusion to the wicked cave.

Said the Dragon to the Wife;

You are to serve me in wifely duties! You are to cook and clean, and ease my mind and flesh! Dance for me!

And so the humble Wife danced a shy dance before the great Dragon, who roared and laughed and belched, and all the acrid smoke that the Dragon belched was absorbed by the Wife's glass skin and held within her hollow body.

Said the Dragon to the Wife;

Ha ha ha! A dainty little dust-mote, all of mine to own! I will fatten you up, Wife, so I can see you! So small!

And the Dragon ripped out a chunk of gellun-flesh from a dead gellun in its foodstore and laid the bloody viscera before the humble Wife, who ate it gingerly and her hollow body was filled with flesh and blood. And the Dragon fed on the corpse of the gellun and laid to rest.

Said the Dragon to the Wife;

Wife, lay your body on my tongue so I may cage you in with my teeth and keep you close to me.

And so the Wife entered the Dragon's mouth and laid on its tongue and was held tightly, and this happened for three nights.

On the fourth night, the foodstore was empty of flesh and the great Dragon called forth the Wife to go out hunting. Carried she was on its silver back and silk wings. There the Dragon spied a herd of gellun-beasts and cast down to slay them. It burped out its acrid breath and the spiritus of the gellun-beasts and all plants and life surrounding collapsed into grey and black.

The smell of death rose, and the ground shook and stirred. Appeared then the great gellun-mother spirit, who births all gellun-beasts.

Cried out the gellun-mother:

Hark! All gone, my beloved children, my children beloved, all gone!

And then she began to weep. The Dragon was helpless before this figure, for spirit-beings are pure spiritus and have no anima to interface in kind; and so the Dragon howled and stamped its feet and swung up and back its nasty head. But the humble Wife spread her arms and softly approached the gellun-mother, who flew into her mouth and Heart and was held therein.

Back to the cave flew the Dragon and there it rested on its collection of gems and bones.

Said the Dragon to the Wife;

Wife, lay beside me, so I may look at you and see your beauty.

And so the Wife laid lithe on the stone and was observed. Her skin was soft blue glass and within swirled the acrid black smoke. Her pure Gold Heart glowed with spiritus. This glow energized the Dragon's motives and so said it to the Wife;

Crawl now into my mouth, that I may taste your beauty.

And so the Wife entered the Dragon's mouth and laid on its tongue and was tasted. And then the gellun-mother spirit flew through the Wife's Gold Heart and out of her timid mouth and into the sinus of the Dragon and clogged it up, and the Dragon coughed and sputtered and choked, and spat out the Wife whose glass skin shattered on the cave floor, and the Dragon belched and died. And the Wife whose skin was shattered was broken and dying, but the flesh and blood and smoke within her bound around her pure Gold Heart, and she rose to life again as a Black Gold Gellun Spirit, the first of its kind, and whose great presence is felt by all in acts of selflessness.