Crest

art by Angeline Phan, words by Sana Friedman

The night is quiet but the house is loud. Upstairs, a little face with blue-hot tears tosses and turns to the surging voices below. Her pajama pants are on backward and her blanket is the wrong way across. She tells herself she is a brave girl, and braces against the torrents: red-hot pleas, the splinter of glass, the shutting of doors, the cold air on her toes.

Sometimes, this unfortunate cradle capsizes and the house shakes from the deep: when her tiny hands cup her ears and she shuts her eyes tight enough to see stars in her eyelids, the Dragon comes to her window and takes her away

away

away from here.

They climb up and up in a sky bruise-red but cherry sweet, above the storm and away from it all. Everything still roars here, but in lullaby: tides of wind crash against the Dragon’s great wings and drown out anything else. He is big and strong and the fire within him doesn’t burn like her father’s. She nestles against his scaly neck and giggles erupt as they spiral through the sky, the cool mist from the clouds kissing her little face goodnight.

The stars near and her eyes close. She just wants to stay here

here,

here.

When she’s caught all the breaths that she’d held, she returns to her bed. The Dragon keeps her far away, suspended in escape, until she is rocked to sleep by it all: wind, voices, glass, doors. There is still salt on her soft eyelashes.

Beneath her blanket, she holds a tattered dragon in her arms, with felt scales and torn wings from her nervous picking at its seams. Her tiny chest rises and falls and they breathe together

in and out,

in and out,

in and out.