It is your choice to believe.

The dragon might have always been a dragon and the story might have been the simple gift of a child.

Or…perhaps the dragon was once a woman who was robbed of her human form by the usual wizardly enchantment. Had she been foolish or proud? Had she refused the wrong man’s hand?

The dragon is not saying. She has wrapped herself in a mantle of smoke. She is thinking about what is to be done with the lovely small thing wrapped in a soft blanket, somehow sleeping next to the warm heft of her serpentine splendor.

Surely no child should be raised by a dragon…
She thinks
And yet how could she bear to lose him?
How could she ever bear to live away from this bundle of light?