I raise dragons. Not the intelligent talking kind but their more animalistic cousins. They’re basically flying scaly cats with a tendency to burn whatever winds up in their mouths. A new clutch just hatched. One of the eggs in it just sort of showed up one day. I wasn’t even certain it was a dragon egg, but I cared for it the best I could anyway. It hatched ter than its clutch mates and the dragon that crawled out was small and weak, even for an infant, but that infant dragon’s scales shine with a rainbow iridescence that I have never seen before.

  The young dragons grow, but that one with the shimmering scales remains the runt of the litter, often requiring additional care. When its clutch mates are the size of dogs, it remains closer to an underfed cat. It struggles to keep up as they py and I often fear it will be hurt in the py fighting.

  One day the strange, shining runt has a growth spurt overnight. Still not as rge as the others, but the size gap is smaller now. One of the other young dragons has gone missing. A possible connection doesn’t occur to me until some weeks ter when it happens again. I try to deny and bury the thought.

  The three remaining dragons of the clutch are nearly horse-sized now, and the once-runt with the iridescent scales that catch the light oh so beautifully is the rgest of them all. It’s grown difficult to deny what is happening but somehow I still manage.

  This time the noises in the night are too loud and too pained to ignore. I enter the metal, fireproof stable with a fshlight and find one of the dragons curled up and cowering in a corner. I follow crashes and cries further in. My fshlight beam falls on the rolling, twisting, forms of the shining-scaled dragon and its clutch mate. The light scatters off its scales and paints the walls with a rainbow that almost distracts from the red dripping from its blue-scaled sibling. The struggle stops and the pin dull blue one goes still.

  The ensuing silence doesn’t st long before being broken by the wet sound of chewing. I stand watching, paralyzed with fear, horror, and something harder to name but undeniably sublime. Eventually my precious little rainbow raises its head and looks down at me with red dripping from its jaws.

  It opens its mouth and thanks me for my understanding.