Deep in a mossy cave, where the walls were cool and damp and smelled of rain and old stone, a baby dragon named Pip slept curled beside a very old treasure chest.
Pip's scales shimmered in the dark — rose, amber, violet, green — each one a different colour, like river stones just beneath the surface of a shallow stream. Pip was small and round and very serious about sleeping.
But tonight, something was different. *Hmmm.* Low and warm and steady. Pip's ear twitched. One eye opened. The treasure chest was humming.
Pip pressed one small ear flat against the lid. *Hmmm.* It was the sound of something waiting. Something patient. Something that needed help. Pip sat up very straight and thought very hard. *Hmmm.*
"I will open it," Pip decided, with the great seriousness of a very small dragon who has made up their mind.
The latch was stiff. Pip nudged it with a snout. Nothing. Pip nuzzled it with a cheek. It wobbled. Pip headbutted it — *bonk* — and the latch gave way with a sharp *clunk*, and the lid swung open, and Pip sat back with crossed eyes and a slightly dented snout.
Inside the chest, there was no gold. There were no gems. There was only a small rolled cloud, pale as morning fog, drifting in slow circles. It bumped gently against one corner. Then the other. A small grey cloud, lost in the dark.
A tiny snail on the cave floor lifted its head and looked. Then it tucked back in. Some things, the snail had decided, were not its business.
Pip leaned close. The cloud smelled of high-up wind and something faintly sweet, like rain before it falls. It puffed out a little grey wisp, uncertain. It had been in the dark a long time. It had forgotten what colour it was supposed to be.
Pip breathed on it. Very, very gently. A small curl of rose-coloured smoke. The cloud shivered. A blush of pink spread across one edge — soft, then brighter. *Hmmm.* Pip breathed again. Amber this time, then green, then the faintest blue, like the inside of a shallow wave.
Colour crept across the cloud, patch by quiet patch. The cave filled with a glow that made the moss on the walls look like tiny green stars. The cloud puffed up. It was remembering now.
Then it rose. Up past Pip's nose. Up past the chest. Up through the mossy cave opening where the dark sky waited, and gone.
Pip scrambled to the opening and looked up. The cloud was still rising, slowly, slowly, until it found its place among the other clouds. And then — very carefully, the way you might arrange a pillow — it folded itself into a shape.
A small sleeping dragon, round and curled, with its tail tucked under its chin. Right there in the night sky.
Pip stared up at it for a long time. The air smelled of cold stone and faraway rain. Pip blinked once. Slowly.
Then Pip turned around, walked back to the treasure chest, climbed in — it fit perfectly, like it had always been meant to — curled up small, and closed both eyes.
*Hmmm.* Quiet now. The chest still warm. The cloud still glowing, just above, in the shape of a small round dragon, keeping watch.
