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Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for over twenty years. Her latest books are from opposite ends of the poetry spectrum: Elemental Haiku, containing haiku for the periodic table, and The Sign of the Dragon, an epic fantasy with Chinese elements, winner of the 2021 Elgin Award. She hides her online presence with a cryptically named website (marysoonlee.com) and an equally cryptic Twitter account (@MarySoonLee).
They say dragons despise drabbles, deeming a hundred words a derisory allotment to tell any tale worth the telling. Hardly surprising. You have the advantage of time. Centuries upon centuries, coiled on the cold coin of your hoards.
We dragonhunters don't have time to waste.
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You glare at me now, fire gone, sulfurous breath steaming with fading heat, scales pierced by my arrows. I glare back, lying spreadeagled, finished, my blood plinking down into the treasure's depths, hands fisted on your gold.
You don't understand what I'm saying, yet you understand me.
Our kinship of avarice. How brightly gold gleams.
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Author Comments
Over the past few months, I've been trying to write more drabbles: stories of exactly one hundred words. Most of the resulting drabbles were better behaved than this one, which decided to draw attention to itself by self-referentially discussing drabbles. I'm not sure I entirely approve. But it does have a dragon, and I am very partial to dragons.
- Mary Soon Lee
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