“I had a brother once, you know,” Esmeralda the Terrible, Dragon of Great Renown, told the trembling dragonologist.

“Wha-what happened to him?” the young woman asked, frantically scratching notes into her leather-bound journal with a shaky hand.

Esmerelda the Fierce, the Undefeated, stretched out her long neck and yawned, letting a puff of flame escape. The dargonologist dodged the gout of fire as the enormous beast spoke.

“I ate him in the womb.”

The dragonologist stumbled back as Esmerelda reached her long talons out to pluck a piece of volcanic stone, toss it into her maw, and chew, spewing molten gravel.

“Would you like to hear how I tore myself free?”

“I-I think I have enough. Thank you, you are most gracious, your--your Magnificentness,” said the nervous young woman as she climbed backwards down the mountain, not daring to take her eyes from the gargantuan beast.

“Anytime,” Esmerelda flicked her talons in dismissal as the dragonologist tumbled over the rocks in her race to get away.

A rumble from behind announced Esmerelda’s sibling emerging from his afternoon nap stretched atop their scaled back. His gigantic frilled head swung around from the back of the cave atop a serpentine neck which attached directly beside Esmerelda’s between their shoulders. “Why do you persist with the lie? At some point I’ll wake, they’ll see me, and know you didn’t eat me.”

Esmeralda popped another hot rock into her mouth, swallowed, then picked her teeth with a talon before smirking. “There’s still time.”

Image Composite | Photos by Vlad Zaytsev & Brent Keane