The Book Dragon

I am not the dragon of stolen gold.

I keep no crowns.

I do not kneel to men who confuse power with noise.

I am a book dragon.

I guard what the world keeps trying to forget.

My hoard is written in margins,

in dog-eared pages,

in stories smuggled through centuries

by women who learned to hide fire in words.

I curl myself around knowledge

the way others curl around children —

with teeth bared,

with my body between what is sacred

and what would consume it.

My fire is not spectacle.

It is hearth-heat.

It is womb-heat.

It is the low feral burn that says

you will not take this from me.

I do not burn libraries.

I become them.

Every scar on my hide is a lesson learned the hard way.

Every scale remembers a truth someone tried to silence.

I know which stories heal

and which ones must be handled with care.

Do not mistake my stillness for tameness.

I have ended things quietly

when they threatened what needed to survive.

I am older than permission.

I answer to no authority but continuity.

When the phoenix rises from ash,

I am already there —

keeping the words,

keeping the names,

keeping the fire that does not need to die

to be reborn.

I am the dragon.

I am the keeper.

And I will not loosen my coils.

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Offer whatever name you wish to be known by at the hearth today — real or imagined — we look forward to welcoming your words into the circle.