Runaway

Leather braced heroes labor up rocky levels trying to recapture a runaway princess, who scrambles over rocks that slip under satin skirts to scrape knees. Sneaking into fissures, breaching my home, a single sapphire slip-on shoe, seeking refuge in too sharp cave walls, to hide behind my body, big enough to close the cave mouth. Sword-scored scales dark as mountain shadowed stone, these plates blend into silk-skinned wings that fling me heavenward. She feels safe tucked between pages and prismatic pyramids and the crackling coal of my over burnt voice. We are mirrored but all switched around me, deep rumbles and accidentally singed words, and her, airy stories and sparking laughter. Nights she curls up against my fire-belly, mornings fishing towns for carrots, potatoes, apples and pears, afternoons learning where she can sit on my serpentine neck, evenings of her adding circular swirling words with small sticks of charcoal to my finished folios. Embers illuminate sunburnt vellum, small tongues fire-lick sticks of charcoal spread smoothly across pages, blank spaces ready to be filled with sapphire, ruby, and emerald painted images. Days laid out before us, images of brown leathered blackguards, her eyes, rolling like a bucking horse. Ruby magma from my gullet, that pushes past pursed lips to lick newly exposed bone. When the smoke settles, she still tucks herself between my forelegs, close to my fire.