The sun of morning shone upon the realm of Goldencrest. Its gentle flaxen rays ramping for the eventual oppressive heat of the noon, but pleasant they were right now. Stone battlements and giant towers encircling a lively town. A market bustling with commerce, merchants and vendors haggling, stall-owners advertising merchandise, and the heavy sound of a smithy’s hammering.
Princess Beatrix, too, was heedless as she walked around the town, greeting one and all who approached her, absorbing the little town’s livelihood as she made her way to her dearest scene.
She trod the sun drenched cobblestone winding-paths that lead to the garden, escorted by armored eight – Brave men, if a tad overprotective, she thought with a smile.
Cherished was the garden in her heart, and her escorts knew so, for in her late mother’s memory it was made, by king and farmhand alike. Each planted a piece of its greenery, and each took care of it as their own.
She walked until she reached the roses, planted at the center of the garden by both herself and her father. They prospered, for they were planted with love, not just the roses, they all did. Vibrant color, amber and verdant, cerulean and ivory, and naturally, crimson.
It was also a racket of life, chirping, tweeting, and buzzing, heedless to the silence reigning around the realm.
The princess stared at one of the unfurling roses – a velvet, deep crimson, layers of petals unfurling with splendor.
A sun blocked. Shadow that dwarfed all. A roar. Tearing and thunderous. A horrible tremor. A crunch. Sulfur and fear replaced fragrance and aroma. Princess Beatrix watched with horror, brave men wasted before obsidian claws larger than bears.
Claws, as big as carriages, surrounded her with delicacy that replaced the violence. Then a gust of wind and another crash. She dared open her eyes and saw the kingdom beneath her. A tower was chosen as the dragon’s perch.
“Hark, mortals!” a deep resonant rumble boomed across the kingdom. “The flower of your kingdom, the princess, is now a trinket of my den. I am the great and dreadful Ignis. Send your armies, send your knights, send your broken swords. None shall succeed, heed well the price of her return!”
The dragon spread its wings, its shadow covered the palace multiple times over.
“No meager coin shall satisfy me, nor a king’s ransom. Every duke, earl, and title lord of this realm shall be stripped of its spring-gold – gathered since last frost, foundational, stripped from your petty holdings and miserable treasuries. Weighing no less than your subjects. Poured with shame into the mountain’s lake. Fail this reckoning and the princess will slumber eternally next to the gold that failed to purchase her freedom!”
The princess closed her eyes as the wings struck again, carrying them across the sky with just a beat, held by gentle, murderous claws. The journey was a blur of wind and fear, and a descent into the jagged peaks. The kingdoms of men but a tiny patch in the quilt of the world.
Ignis darted through the maws of the mountain, and landed into the vast cavern.
The sudden stillness was a shock, after such an antagonistic flight. Her legs nearly buckled underneath as she was set down in a cavern of phosphorescent minerals and gold. A dragon’s hoard.
Mountains of gold and bejeweled artifacts piled one upon another into heaps of glorious chaos.
Then a large eye blocked the sight. Ignis lowered its head and studied her.
“Now we shall wait for my reward in patience,” the dragon said in a threatening tone.
Beatrix took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The princess was delicate and afraid, but she was brave, too.
“Reward?” she said as she opened her eyes with determination. Her voice rang with clarity within the caverns. “Great Ignis, does this fortune not satisfy you?”
The dragon snorted, but did not respond. It watched her with amusement, instead.
“You are consumed by your greed,” she challenged, staring into its pale-yellow, serpentine eye.
“Greed?” The dragon let out a grinding toll, a laughter. “Call it what you will.” Ignis raised its head and pointed at the mountains around her. “"This gold – the very sun made tangible, the perfect form of desire, incorrupt eternal! I have devoured cattle, knights, and kingdoms, but I only hunger for this golden hue, this weight. This is Worth!"
Beatrix looked around, watching the piles of broken kingdoms, of shattered thrones. She approached one and picked one of the ancient coins. “Worth, great Ignis?” she turned to face the dragon, holding the coin and facing him without flinching. “Beast of Worth, you are mistaken. This is nothing,” she tossed the coin. “It is nothing but dross, a weighty shadow, a mockery of value. A measure of desire, not of what is of importance.
“It buys tyranny, and war. It has no memories, no loyalty. It cannot replace those who are lost, nor moments of joy. It cannot fill your hunger, nor quench your thirst,” she extended her arm towards the pile. “It feels nothing, does nothing, and inspires nothing. Nothing beyond acquisition. Is it not barren wealth? An infertile wealth?”
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The dragon shuffled, shaking its scales as it breathed out clouds of sulfur.
“Hipocrsy,” it rumbled, “you hoard such dross just as I!”
She watched as the dragon grabbed a clawful and let it seep between its claws in front of her.
“Tyranny? War?” Ignis said as it dangled a ceremonial sword. “Does this not buy blades that protect, princess?”
“It does,” she said.
“Does it not buy a fertile field?”
“It does,” she nodded.
“Does it not buy food that nourishes, drinks that quench? Does it not provide the skill of a physician, saving lives? Do humans not slave their time to get a tiny morsel of this worthless, infertile fortune?”
“There is truth in that,” she said, holding the dragon’s stare. Satisfaction filled its reptilian expression. “Not a whole truth, though.”
“What is the whole truth, then, princess?”
“It is a source of security,” she studied the coin, engraved with words she did not recognize. “It is a source of misfortune. Men and beasts will labor their lives to hoard it, and waste their lives to spend it. Great Ignis, what is this?” She held the coin up, before dropping it on the ground, it let out a chiming noise as it struck the stones. “It is but a tool, a tool that is useless if no one cared for it, of no value for those who did not bother with it, a useless weight to a person wishing for sustenance in a desert…”
“It. Is. Nothing.”
The dragon was about to respond when the princess held her palm up. “Shall I offer you something of greater value in its place, Great Ignis?”
“Of greater value?” the dragon asked, intrigued. “What is there that has more value than a fortune envied by all that lives?”
“I have a treasure more valuable than all of your hoard,” she confirmed. “A treasure envied by the gold gilded kings and the ragged peasants alike.”
The dragon scoffed, stirring the dust around the cavern. Princess Beatrix met his fierce gaze, unflinching.
“A trick. Show me this wonder of yours, let me judge its weight, and my fire test its worth, and if it lacks, you shall become part of my hoard, forever silenced into this eternity!”
She did not flinch, nor object.
“What is this treasure?” the dragon finally gave into its curiosity.
“I will not tell you,” she shook her head. The dragon was about to protest when she spoke again. “But I can show you.”
-
The dragon landed in the garden, and the soldiers and civilians gathered to fend it off. The princess persuaded them not to attack – an easy prospect with the towering dragon spewing flames and fear – and walked to the roses and extended her hand into the bushes.
She did not pull a jewel, a scroll of arcane knowledge, nor a scepter of royal power. She plucked a crimson rose.
Not a perfect, but simple, velvet-red garden rose. Its petals were still unfurling, with a deep, vibrant crimson colour that hasn't deepened to its full potential. A single drop of dew still clung to one of its petals, reflecting light like a tiny, liquid diamond.
“Great Ignis,” she extended it toward the dragon’s snout. “I offer you my treasure.”
The dragon roared. “You dare mock me!?”
“I dare not mock you,” she extended the rose. “Please accept this.”
The dragon heaved, but slowly extended its claws to grab the tiny rose.
“This is what you consider of more value than my hoard? What kings and peasants envy?”
“It is, great Ignis,” she nodded,
“Its life is measured in days, and my hoard is measured in millenia!” The dragon gathered the fiery spew in its maw and hissed out, “Lacking.”
“This rose is more valuable than your gold. You can burn it, you can stomp it, you will never ever find another just like it,” she smiled, and the dragon held back. “Its bloom, its death, its fragrance, you will never be able to find another that is just like it in any garden, across the entire world.”
“You offered me a rose,” the dragon glared.
“Which, great Ignis, is the more precious treasure?” she asked in defiance.
“This rose will decay, princess,” the dragon said, still holding it gently, “nothing will remain of it, not its petals, nor its scent. It will be of no value, just as much as the gold you claim to be.”
“It is so,” she agreed. “The rose bloomed, and unfurled, and is now blazing with the brilliance of its life and burning itself into nothingness.”
The dragon studied the rose, his head weaving around it.
“Is this intense blaze of life not more valuable than your never changing, long and tedious fortune of eternity?” she said. “This is something that is cherished now, before it withers, after it becomes.”
“It is lacking, and despite all your fancy words, princess, it is still a rose. This rose of yours is inferior to my treasure.”
She blinked and tilted her head in confusion. “Beast of Worth, the treasure I handed you was not this rose. What I handed you was life, it was Truth.”
The dragon squinted at her, slowly studying the princess and the rose. “You claim that mortality is precious because it is… fading?”
The princess stood proud and unrelenting.
“And so you offer this… rose?” the dragon spun the rose in its claws.
“I offered you Truth, and exchanged it for your time,” she said. “I gave you the rose to keep, to measure your hoard against its weight in truth, and see which side of the scales tips. And when this rose fades and turns to dust, when you miss its colours and fragrance, when you miss this memory more than all of your coins, you will realize…
“Realize what?”
“That even this tiny rose’s life is more valuable than all the treasures kings and emperors can provide you.”
“And if I find that the gleam of gold was more satisfying to me than the memory of this rose?” the dragon asked.
“Let its life be the measure,” she bowed. “And I assure you, its brief life will be a long lesson.”
The dragon unfurled its wings and rose menacingly. “Very well, princess! Let this be your ransom, for now,” the dragon held the rose tenderly, not allowing a single petal to fall as it began to fly away. “A bloom for a princess!”
She shook her head and replied with a clear voice as it flew away.
“It is not a bloom for a princess! It is a rose for a dragon!”
