It’s been hours since you first started climbing up this latest mountain, traveling towards some unknown goal. By some stroke of luck, you come upon an opening within the side of this mountain, an opening leading to a cave within. You decide that this would be the perfect opportunity to catch up on some much needed rest. Cautiously, you slip into the opening. The first thing you notice is how much warmer it is in here compared to the cooler air outside. Wondering why that is, you eventually shrug it off as some act of nature, perhaps a hot spring is housed within this cave.

Deeper and deeper you go into cave which is surprisingly rather bright. You go around one more curve and then suddenly you are greeted with the creature who calls this cave home and everything makes sense to you now. You freeze in place, more from awe rather than fear as you regard the magnificent dragon who sits a mere dozen meters away, this area of the cave ablaze with a few carefully placed fires, no doubt of its own doing. Almost immediately you can tell that this dragon is a female. The gentle curves of her body and the way she gracefully turns herself to regard you gives it away.

A soft growl rumbles in her chest. You can tell it’s not a hostile growl, however. She must just be surprised that someone has paid her a visit so randomly. She stares at you as you admire her form, estimating that she must be about 25 feet long from snout to tail tip, the length of her tail taking up just about half of that amount. The majority of her body was covered in red scales of a beautiful, rich tint. The front of her body, although, was yellow in color, those vibrant scales covering her chest, belly, and the bottom of her tail. As your eyes travel the length of her tail, you see that it ends with a black spade adorning the tip. And all along the spine of her back, starting on the top of her head and ending little bit before her tail spade, are a series of very short, black spikes, spaced rather close together.

She tilts her head at you, the movement catching your gaze and pulling it towards her pointed snout. Her upper lip seems to fold down slight over her lower lip, giving her muzzle that well defined, sharp look. She notices you gazing at her so intently and can’t help but give a rather sheepish smile, turning her head to the side slightly, giving you a wonderful view of her beautiful, vicious looking teeth. Your gaze than travels upwards to her eyes, slit and of a slightly brighter red than her scales. Her small, black pupils remain focused on you, regardless of how she turns her head about. And behind each of her eyes you notice large, white horns, curving upwards slightly from the back of her head.

Tired of sitting, the dragoness stands up all fours, making it obvious to you now that she is indeed a quadruped. Each of her legs are slender but clearly well built, the smooth curves of her muscles apparent beneath the red scales. You look down at her paws and you see that each of her fore and hind paws has four digits in the front with one off to the side and in the back. And coming out of each of her toes are very sharp looking, black claws. Definitely not something you would want to be on the receiving end of.

You return your gaze back to her sides once again, looking at her wings which have remained folded against her flank this entire time. She rumbles a bit, as if enjoying the fact she has awestruck you so. The membranes along the outside of her wings are made up of the same red color of the scales along her back. She stretches one of them out for you as much as she can in the confined space of her den, the insides of her wing membranes turning out to be the same yellow as her chest scales, the bones of her four fingers clearly apparent through the membranes. Judging by the size of the wing you can tell that her wingspan matches easily at least the length of her body.

She then folds the wing back up and purrs softly, a smile dominating her muzzle. She bows head politely to you, her tail gently flicking back and forth, as if gesturing for you to spend the night in her den rather than out in the cold open air. Such a magnificent, kind creature. You gladly accept her hospitality, still amazed that you even got the chance to lay eyes on such a gorgeous creature…