N.H. Ritschard

The Dragon

Mossbark was hungry, as he always was. He walked through the forest, treading through pools of sunlight falling through the soaring pines and fir trees. Mossbark knew each one, had seen them rise from tiny green infanthood to the towering kings that they were now. They had risen as the years passed and many had fallen, yet Mossbark was there and did not grow with them. His feet traveled on their own accord, each stone and stem familiar after the long years. His mind was on food, on the hollow emptiness at his core and on the silver fish that swam in the pool in the meadow. Mossbark padded through the trees on cat-quiet feet and swam through the dense sea of green ferns, his scaly hide a mere whisper in the forest stillness. Though he was bigger than a full-grown male wolf, his passage disturbed none of the inhabitants of the forest. He was Mossbark, the guardian of the Wood and the Pool and the Meadow and all the creatures who made their homes there knew him and despite his claws and mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, they did not fear him. He was Mossbark and he had always been there, as much a part of the forest as rocks in the earth or the cones on the trees.