Princess Neve wore a cloak covered in silver stars, and every single night she walked to the cave at the edge of the royal garden to read to the egg. The egg was enormous — big as an armchair, pale as the moon, with one long crack running zigzag across the middle. Neve loved it very much. She always read the same book: *The Dragon Who Ate Seventeen Clouds*. The egg would glow faintly pink when she reached the good parts. Warm, warm, warm — that was how the egg always felt under her palm. But tonight, when Neve pressed her hand to the shell, it was stone cold.
She pressed her ear to the crack instead. No glow. No warmth. Just a tiny, unmistakable sound from deep inside. *Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.* Something in there was crying. Neve pulled her starry cloak tight and picked up her lantern. If something was sad, she was going to find out why. She stepped deeper into the cave, where the tunnel curved away into the dark, and the real exploring began.
The cave was not empty. Giant flowers grew from the cave walls — pale blue, pale gold — their petals lit from inside like paper lanterns. Tangled roots glowed violet along the ceiling. Neve had to duck under three of them. One dripped cold water exactly onto her nose. She wiped it and kept going.
Then she stopped. Behind a tall, pointy stalagmite, something was hiding. She could see the tip of a small purple tail and two orange ears, very flat against a small purple head. *Warm, warm, warm* — the air near the stalagmite smelled faintly of smoke. "Hello," said Neve. The ears went flatter. In two small claws, the tiny dragon was clutching a book. Or what had been a book. The cover was singed black. Several pages were crispy at the edges, and a thin curl of smoke still drifted up from the corner. The dragon peeked one eye around the stalagmite. The eye was golden and very sorry-looking.
Neve held out her hand for the book. The dragon handed it over. Neve tried to open it carefully. A small shower of charred pages fluttered to the cave floor like dark snowflakes. Both of them froze. Then Neve giggled. Then the dragon made a sound like a kettle — which was, it turned out, how small pastel dragons giggle. "I don't have another book," Neve said, sitting cross-legged on the cave floor. "But I remember every single word." She cleared her throat. She began. *"Once there was a dragon who was absolutely certain she could eat a cloud —"* Neve made a big swooping gesture with both arms. The dragon's ears lifted slightly. Neve kept going, doing all the voices, even the grumpy thundercloud's voice, which was very low and rumbly. *Warm, warm, warm* — she could feel the dragon edging closer across the stone floor, scale by scale.
By the time the dragon in the story swallowed cloud number fourteen and hiccupped a small rainbow, the real dragon was sitting right beside Neve, wings folded neatly, tail curled around her own feet. By cloud number seventeen, the dragon had pressed her cheek against the big cracked eggshell. Her breath came slow and steady. The shell, Neve noticed, had turned faintly pink again. Neve leaned back against the warm shell beside her. The cave flowers pulsed their soft blue-gold light. The singed book lay on the floor between them, its last good page open, the words still perfectly legible. *Sniff. Sniff. Sniff* — but not sad now. Just small sleepy breaths, in and out, in and out. The dragon's purple tail lay across Neve's feet, heavy and still.
