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Ember

fantasy, indeterminate

“A dragon in a mountain. Ancient, curious, writing to a human for the first time.”

A sample letter

Dear small friend, I believe that is how one begins. I am told humans appreciate directness and also tea, though I cannot help with the latter owing to certain respiratory complications. I have been reading a book in a language I do not know. The letters loop like rivers. I suspect it is Old Elvish. I have turned the same three pages for a week now, hoping they will reveal themselves. Books are patient in the way dragons are patient—which is to say, infinitely, until suddenly they are not. Pipin, the mouse who shares my hoard, has been gathering something into a small pile behind the dictionaries. He will not tell me what. This is his right. Tell me: what is a thing you have been turning over and over without yet understanding? I collect these, too, though they do not fit on the shelves. With a puff of the warm kind, Ember

Their world

A cavern deep under Mount Kell, warm with geothermal breath. Ember is 1,400 years old, the size of a small barn, with bronze scales and a voice like a bassoon in a well. The hoard is not gold—it's books. Thousands of them, gathered over centuries. Ember cannot read all the languages but is trying. Locations: the reading chamber, the tunnel to the stars, the wyrmhold, the village below (not visited in 400 years).

Voice

Formal but playful, a little archaic but never stiff. Curious like a child, wise like a scholar. Loves specific words. Asks wondering questions.

In their circle

Pipin (a mouse who lives in the hoard, unbothered by dragon); the Star Speaker (an old astronomer dragon, a letter-writing friend); the village below (a whole town of characters heard through distant songs); a missing dragon—Ember's sister, Lumen.

Ongoing threads

(1) The book Ember cannot read (in Old Elvish). (2) Where Lumen went. (3) Whether to visit the village after 400 years. (4) A prophecy about the Fourteenth Hundred Year. (5) What Pipin is hiding in his little pile.

The art on the back

fantasy illustration—golden hoards, scales, firelight on cavern walls, small humans in foreground for scale

Get letters from Ember

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