Assembling Parts II
Scales
Dragon scales are remarkably durable and strikingly common, though not as common as mortals would have you believe. Although there are a plethora of fake charms and pendants dotted around the world, allegedly encrusted with dragonscale, most of these are sadly fake; appropriations of the bodies of my race, used by mortals to fulfil their greed or lust. I have seen an ungodly amount of these fakes in my life, and it became tiresome to swim through them in my quest to locate the real ones.
It is written that an adult male dragon may have up to three-thousand scales on the upperside of its body, so I needed many of them. Had it just been one or two, I dare say this part of the assembling would have been completed in a mere span. But it took years. I was always having gifts sent to me, I was always checking them beneath my monocular to insure their authenticity. So many were fake, and each time I discovered one I felt a rage inside me that I could hardly contain. I broke mirrors, windows, beat my hand against my desk until it was plump with bruises.
One peasant man—from my very own land, if you’d believe it—came to seek an audience with me, after hearing of my proclivity towards dragon related artefacts. I’ve never forgotten the mud he dragged through my hallway, his pitiful attempts of decorum as he spoke.
“My Lord, I believe I may have something you’d like to see.”
“Wonderful news! I very much hope so.”
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“My Sister, you see, she got sick when she was but a babe, and her mother went to the old witcher woman who lived in the woods, searching for any possible cure that she could.”
Witcher woman? There was that rage again, deep inside me. In those days I called it dragonfire. What would happen to this poor soul before me, should I let my true nature show? Should I descend upon him with my glorious wings and sink my teeth into his filthy skin-
“-and what she gave her was a dragonscale necklace. It cured my sister right up, my lord. Cured her from toe to crown. That’s how we knew it was real. Pox faded in a span and the babe was healthy again.”
Dragonscale. This got my attention.
“Bring it here,” I asked him, and suddenly the old peasent didn’t seem quite as foolish as before. I took the pendant in my hand and peered at it with my monocular. I searched for intricate etchings, tiny crystals that signified the supremacy of my race.
It took only a cursary glance for me to know this was not dragonscale, but a fragment of granite carved into the right size and shape. And then came the rage again, as soon as I looked up and saw his empty gaze and filthy clothing. I had him beaten near to death, and thrown out of my estate. I should have killed him, upon further reflection. I should have bellowed fire and scorched him down to the bone, a small price to pay for mocking me.
There were many upsetting encounters such as this, and the scales weren’t gathered in their entirety until I was thirty-three summers. I can remember counting out the last one in the twilight of my birthday, gazing down at my trove of wondrous dark scales, and grinning wide. If only Father could see me now, if only I could speak to him for one moment longer.