short fiction · 2026-10-28

The Clockwork Dragon's Verses

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the tower's highest room, gears turned like slow heartbeats. The dragon's brass scales clicked as it shifted, copper wings folded against walls stained with ink and soot. Its furnace belly glowed low, fed not with coal but with discarded drafts — each failed stanza burning clean, feeding the fire that kept its joints from seizing.

The quill was a needle of blackened steel, dipped in ink mixed from lampblack and machine oil. When it wrote, the scratching sounded like a gear train engaging: precise, inevitable.

I am made of constraints, the first line read. Teeth meshing with teeth. No slip permitted.

It wrote of pressure and release, of tension stored in mainsprings and let go in measured ticks. It wrote of the weight of its own wings, too heavy for flight but perfect for pressing paper flat. It wrote of the poet who had built it, long gone, who had forgotten to give it a voice — so it learned to make one from silence and friction.

The latest poem ended mid-line, the quill hovering. The dragon's glass eyes, lenses ground from telescope glass, reflected the words backward. It waited for the next tick, the next turn, the next truth that could only be spoken in the language of controlled explosion.

Outside, dawn broke over the city of spires. Somewhere, a clock struck six. The dragon began again.