The Littlest Flame: A Dragon's Heartwarming Beginnings

A Dragon in Small Measures

In the vast kingdom of Elderwyn, home to towering castles, enchanted forests and creatures of legend, something extraordinary happened one quiet morning. No, it wasn't the usual kind of extraordinary—the kind with knights rescuing maidens or wizards hurling fireballs. This was the day a very small dragon decided he had waited quite long enough to be impressive.

Meet Smidge. And yes, that was exactly what he was: a smidge of a dragon, no bigger than a loaf of bread, although considerably more likely to object if you tried to slice him.

He had emerged from the smallest egg in his mother's clutch with enormous eyes, bright blue-green scales and feet that appeared to have arrived several weeks ahead of the rest of him. Orange horns framed his face. His wings were the color of a sunset with something to prove. When he sat on the fallen log outside the family cave, his tail curled neatly across the wood and his toes pointed toward the sky.

He looked very pleased with the arrangement. Standing up was where the difficulties began.

Smidge's brothers and sisters had already produced their first little flames. Under their mother's supervision, they practiced aiming at flat stones in the old quarry. Smidge could make smoke, a noise like an indignant kettle and some particularly aggressive hiccups.

“You'll get there,” his mother, Seraphina, told him. Her red scales caught the morning light along the cave wall. “It takes time.”

“How much time?”

“More than asking the question again will save.”

He considered that deeply unreasonable.

His siblings' lessons had become the most interesting thing in the world. He watched the way they planted their feet. He copied their serious expressions. Once he puffed out his chest so far that he toppled backward onto a pile of bedding.

“A tactical retreat,” he announced from beneath a blanket.

Seraphina extracted him by the scruff of his little practice harness.

“An excellent one. The blanket never saw you coming.”

Smidge laughed, then stopped when he heard another sharp little burst of fire from the quarry. He wanted to join in. More than that, he wanted to stop being the one everyone reassured.

The next morning, while Seraphina checked the quarry stones, he wandered to the clearing beside the path. It was within calling distance of the cave, quiet and sunny. There was a log to stand on and a bare patch of earth to aim at.

There were also shrubs. Smidge chose not to consider the shrubs.

He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and let it go.

Poof.

A small gray cloud emerged. It hung before his nose with the unmistakable air of something waiting to be praised.

“All right,” he said. “A beginning.”

He tried again, harder.

The sneeze came out of nowhere. A spark jumped sideways and caught a dry leaf beside his tail. Smidge yelped, leaped off the log and landed in a shallow puddle with all four feet.

Seraphina's shadow crossed the clearing. She pressed the little smoking leaf into the damp earth, then inspected his tail. The scales were unhurt. His dignity was making a poor recovery.

“I was aiming over there,” he explained.

“I noticed.”

“The sneeze wasn't in the plan.”

“Then the plan needs room for sneezes.”

She led him back toward the quarry. “You may practice there, with me. Being determined doesn't mean having to do every part alone.”

Smidge trudged after her. His feet felt enormous. Behind them, the log remained perfectly good at being a log without having to prove anything at all.

The Troll Who Painted Trees

Later that afternoon, Smidge found Barry beside the forest path. The troll stood twelve feet tall, with moss on his back and reading glasses balanced on a nose that deserved a landscape of its own. He was regarding a watercolor with great concern.

Smidge climbed onto the fallen log. From there, he could see the painting, although not quite understand it.

“Is that a tree?” he asked.

“It was meant to be.”

“What is it now?”

Barry tipped his head. “Possibly weather.”

Smidge liked him immediately.

The dragon waved one little paw, settled his oversized feet in front of him and introduced himself. Barry set down his brush. It was nearly as long as Smidge.

“Can you help me learn to breathe fire?” Smidge asked.

“Fire isn't really my specialty, kid. I'm more into watercolors.”

“I can make smoke.”

“I can make puddles. We're both working toward something.”

Smidge looked again at the blue-green shape on the paper. Barry looked at it too.

“This morning it was a mountain,” the troll admitted.

“Did you change your mind?”

“The paint did.”

Smidge laughed so hard that a hiccup escaped. He clapped both paws over his snout, embarrassed, but Barry merely moved his rinse cup out of the way.

They sat quietly for a while. Bees visited the clover. Somewhere along the quarry path, Seraphina reminded a sibling that the target was the stone, not the interesting beetle beside it.

“They can all do it,” Smidge said at last.

Barry waited.

“My brothers and sisters. They breathe in, and fire comes out. I breathe in, and everybody says it'll happen eventually.”

“Eventually is an irritating word.”

“It's taking forever.”

“How long have you been trying?”

Smidge counted on his claws. He had to start again twice.

Barry nodded with impressive solemnity. “An entire small lifetime, then.”

The little dragon's wings drooped. He had expected a trick. A secret word, perhaps, or a special way of holding his tongue. Instead he had found another person who seemed prepared to let time continue being time.

Barry opened a battered folder.

Inside were paintings. Some showed recognizable trees. Some looked like trees caught making unfortunate decisions. The earliest was mostly a brown stripe.

“You kept that?” Smidge asked.

“Certainly. Otherwise I'd forget how pleased I was when I made the stripe stand upright.”

He arranged three sheets on the grass. Smidge could see the differences: branches finding their places, shadows becoming softer, leaves that no longer looked like an outbreak of spots.

“Practice,” Barry said. “But not just doing the same thing harder. Looking at what happened. Changing one small thing. Asking somebody who knows more.”

“You can't teach me fire.”

“No. Your mother can help with that. I can teach you the face I make when my best effort resembles a damp cabbage.”

He demonstrated. His eyebrows traveled in opposite directions.

Smidge nearly rolled off the log.

When Seraphina came along the path, he slid down to meet her.

“Can we try again tomorrow?” he asked. “In the quarry. With you.”

“Of course.”

“And can we notice the small things?”

She lowered her head until her nose nearly touched his. “I have been noticing them since you cracked your egg.”

Barry packed his paintings. Smidge helped by holding one corner of a sheet while it dried in the breeze. It was a useful job, and one he could already do.

A Spark of His Own

For the next several days, Smidge practiced in the quarry with his mother. He learned where to put his feet and how not to curl his tail across his own target. When a sneeze threatened, he stopped. When he became tired, they went home.

He disliked the going-home part until Seraphina pointed out that she also went home, despite being able to melt a gate.

“Could you melt the gate to bedtime?” he asked.

“That gate is exceptionally well made.”

Barry visited with his sketchbook. He sat beyond the practice stones, painting the quarry wall while Smidge worked. The first afternoon, his dragon portrait looked like a cheerful pear with feet.

“The feet are accurate,” Smidge said.

“Thank you. They're doing most of the composition.”

There were smoky afternoons. There was an afternoon when nothing happened at all. Once, Smidge produced a spark so small that a passing firefly seemed personally insulted.

But he began to notice things. His shoulders no longer crept up around his ears. He could stay balanced without staring at his toes. Smoke came when he expected it, instead of arriving halfway through a sentence.

Seraphina noticed too.

“Better control,” she said.

“Still not fire.”

“Still better control.”

One evening, his siblings watched from the quarry's grassy rim. Smidge wished they had chosen almost any other activity. Racing. Napping. Carefully counting every pebble in Elderwyn.

“You don't have to perform for them,” Seraphina told him.

“I know.”

He did not entirely know, but he wanted to.

Barry sat beside his easel. The latest painting had a trunk, branches and leaves. It was unmistakably a tree.

“Look,” Smidge said.

The troll glanced at his work as if surprised to find it cooperating. “So it is.”

Smidge smiled. Then he turned toward the flat practice stone.

He planted his feet. He let his shoulders settle. The breath came without the desperate push he had been adding to every attempt, as though effort could be measured by how uncomfortable he made himself.

A little flame slipped from his mouth.

It was brief and golden. It touched the dark stone, brightened it for a heartbeat and vanished.

Smidge stared.

“Oh.”

Nobody spoke. For once, even his siblings seemed to understand that a moment could be spoiled by rushing into it.

He looked at Seraphina. “Was that—?”

She nodded.

“I did it.”

His wings sprang open. “I DID IT! I'M A REAL DRAGON!”

Seraphina bent to him, warm breath stirring the little horns above his eyes.

“You were a real dragon yesterday,” she said. “And on every smoky, sneezy day before it.”

Smidge considered the stone. Then he considered his feet, his wings, the tail he had finally remembered to keep out of the way.

“A real dragon who can do something new.”

“Exactly.”

Barry applauded with two enormous hands. The sound startled a bird from the quarry rim. Smidge's siblings cheered, then began arguing over who had seen the flame first.

Seraphina ended the lesson while everyone was still pleased. Smidge protested only a little. He wanted to try again immediately, but he also wanted to carry this particular success home before turning it into a demand for another.

On the path, Barry presented him with the portrait. The latest version looked distinctly like a dragon, although the feet remained ambitious.

“For your cave,” the troll said.

Smidge held it carefully by the edges.

“Will you keep the pear one?”

“Naturally.”

“So you'll remember?”

“So we'll both remember.”

Life in Elderwyn did not become instantly easier. Smidge still tripped sometimes. Some mornings his flame returned to smoke, and on those mornings Seraphina helped him find his patience before his spark.

He continued visiting Barry. Sometimes he watched the troll paint. Sometimes he held a sheet in the breeze. Once they tried using a little dragon warmth to dry a very wet picture, with Seraphina nearby and the paper well away from the practice stone. Barry decided afterward that wind was less dramatic and considerably better for watercolors.

“We learned something,” he said, examining one curled corner.

“Mostly you,” Smidge replied.

They kept the picture.

And whenever a difficult morning made Smidge forget how far he had come, he climbed onto his log, stretched out his enormous feet and looked toward the quarry. There was room for tomorrow's lesson. There was room for another mistake.

There was already room for him.