The last animal of fire, in his lonely, dark cave, slept dreaming without thinking since, in his animal quality, his cerebral traits were somewhat limited. He was dreaming with the last time he made love, and the last time he saw a female still alive. In his dream the world was a monumental embrace of fire and coal, and his dwelling was tainted with a redness that did more than live, it bubbled with a gleefulness that dyed the air with enormous sparks. He had already convinced the female that this was a nest worthy of their progeny. He let her get installed at the warmest site of the crater that he had suffered so much to conquer. He had expelled and rejected dragons with so many beautiful shades in their scales that he could not remember them anymore. She, his partner, seemed to be at peace in the spot he had chosen; however, he knew that soon she would start to get violent to the extent of releasing flame gusts through each one of her pores. It was the natural process. But he would wait and keep her right. He would withstand the physical touch of her skin turned into embers, and would keep her in her place with cuddles and subtle hugs wrapped with his wings. He would bear all of this for love. Her horns penetrating his neck, and the last flare from her mouth coming into his the way explosions do. And only then, with her being exhausted and frankly soothed, he could, with the little strength he would have left, end the act of love. Then, for an instant, for a magic moment of ecstasy that would not last more than a second and that would not be repeated for years, they would both at the same time become beings with blood cold and barren. Lonely beings keeping company to each other at the moment of that which for dragons is an actual explosion. To be together and be one with each other for an eternal instant at which the future would be perpetuated with their seeds.
All of this was still imagination within the dream of the last animal of fire. He came back from his daydream within his oneiric unreality and contemplated once more how his partner was getting comfortable, knowing that this was the peace before the storm of the courtship soon to be consummated. He looked at his dragoness and found her beautiful, just at the time that a flock of men, behind her back, came out of the back part of the crater under the mountain with their evil yearning for extermination. The animal of fire, scared as he was before the view of what was approaching, started flying immediately towards his loved one to protect her now that she was defenseless within the aim of the human spears, but he never reached his destination...
He woke up in the cold darkness of his cave with his wings extended towards an embrace that just wrapped on thin air. Anguished and upset, he did not try to explain what had just happened, but he continued searching for his dragoness with his eyes, knowing that he would not find her, since in this wretched shelter no female would ever lay their gaze. He then kept quietly monitoring in search of threatening men, but he did not find them either. Soon after, he quit, and stabbed the wet, earthy ground with his chin, and -even when in his animal quality he had no awareness of his having dreamt and remembered- without knowing what that stabbing pain was that ripped from his heart, he became sadness invaded, and two confused tears added moisture to his eyes to vaporize at the touch of his scaled skin, love forgotten...
