Shadows snapped against the stone walls behind the frail silver haired woman sitting in a ladder-back chair with a hoop of fabric across her lap. The pop of her needle through the canvas could barely be heard over the crackle of the fire in the hearth. The air smelled of charring wood and tasted of fresh ash. Liesl sat on the warmed stones at her feet, following the zip of her thread as it sketched a palm-sized eye within the hoop.

The woman added a glint to the pupil before stitching a shiny tooth into the reptilian sneer. “The burnished bronze serpent unfurled its wings—”

Liesl groaned and lay back on the stones before the fire. “Not that one, again, Ōma.”

“It’s a story worth repeating.”

“I’m too old for dragon stories.” Liesl stretched out like a cat.

“Any story worth telling has dragons.” The woman clipped the thread between her teeth. “Every hundred years the eggs warm within a hearth fire and crack open—”

“And the fly free,” Liesl sang out from the floor as she watched the light flickering against the rafters.

A sharp crack from the hearth startled her into silence. Liesl rolled over to see the fire roar into a torrent as the air whistled down the chimney. Her grandmother made a knowing hum. A tendril of smoke rose from the nostril in her hoop, and the shadows behind her writhed, forming monstrous silhouettes.

“Ōma,” she whispered, “could you tell me a little more?”   

Photo Compostition | Originals by Irene Van Der Klift, Lakshya Thakur, Anastasia Shuraeva