Christmas Visitor

Written for Sunday Whirl Wordle – #735. Our host is
Brenda Warren; this week’s prompt words are shown
below. Here’s where the prompts took me.

skin, once, third, room, swallows, blink, kindling,
secrets, starless, conjures, dragon, and demons

This is the third Christmas Eve since the dragon showed up, and Elke’s sneaking into the room at the top of the inn again. The one nobody’s supposed to go in. Outside, the sky’s gone starless; thick clouds swallow everything, even the moon.

Oma used to tell her secrets about Christmas Eve, how it conjures things, pulls at the space between worlds. How demons slip through if you’re not careful. Elke figured they were just stories … the kind you tell kids to keep them close to the fire, good for nothing but kindling their imaginations.

Then the dragon came.

It’s asleep in the hearth now, small as a barn cat, scales catching the firelight. Each year it arrives on Christmas Eve. Each year it’s a little bigger. The innkeeper found it that first winter, hissing in the woodpile. By morning it had settled down, curled up like it belonged there.

People bring it milk, honey sometimes. Nobody talks about what it means.

Elke kneels down next to it. The fire plays across its skin, silver and strange. Its eyes open – old eyes, kind ones, but they know things. In them, she sees what Oma never got to finish telling her: some demons guard instead of haunt. Some dragons are gifts. Some darkness keeps worse things away.

The creature makes a sound like bells buried deep in its chest. Outside, she hears sleigh bells answer. It blinks once, slow and deliberate.

On the holiest night, when everything gets thin, someone has to keep watch. Someone has to stay with the guardian.

This year, Elke knows. It’s her.

NAR©2025

This is “tears of the dragon” by Bruce Dickinson