Two of my favorite creatives here on the Stack,
The Circus Dragon and Sean Nordquist
will be running this ‘dragons & pirates’ short story contest all through September.
(details and entries here)
I have already bookmarked the page and can’t wait to binge all the great stories that have already been submitted!
As for my entry, I’m more ‘dark’ than ‘cozy’, but I tried.
I decided to share a vignette set in Dimidium, my Fantasy Universe, showing a pivotal event from my MFC’s childhood and her father’s early days as a ‘free Captain’.
Enjoy.
‘Shallows’
Fear gnawed at the edges of their silence. Three days since the Stormchaser had struck—the first day they'd been optimistic, the second determined. Now, on the third night, with the spring tide having failed to lift them and every kedging attempt useless, salt and worry had crystallized in the corners of Ambrose's eyes.
The lamp swayed with each groan of the trapped hull, sending shadows dancing across two maps that couldn't both be true. Forty fathoms. The siren script curved across the old vellum, marking depths where the Guild chart showed nothing—the passage erased, cut out of the lower corner. Three months' profit, wasted on a lie of ink and vellum. His knuckles whitened against the table edge.
The bronze ridge stretched beneath their stern—their keel wedged between massive formations where the siren chart promised deep water. The ship sat perched twenty feet above the seabed, caught between ridges, half the hull exposed to air, the rest grinding deeper with each swell. The pumps wheezed their four-hour rhythm, fighting water seeping through strained planks.
"Papa?" Aria stood in the doorway, her mother's bone comb tangled in her dark hair. Four years old and already she moved with the ship's rhythm. "The big rock is warm."
His stomach clenched. She'd been playing on the exposed seabed during low tide, exploring the volcanic formations while the crew worked to free the ship. “These rocks hold heat, little storm."
“It’s not rock-warm. It’s alive-warm." She pressed her hand to her chest. "Like here.”
The lamp flame guttered. Through the porthole, he could see the massive bronze ridge their stern had wedged against. Bigger than all surrounding formations. Smoother, too, where barnacles hadn't taken hold. Steam rising from vents along its surface.
Warm.
Footsteps on the ladder. Torres, moving with the careful balance of a man who'd been at sea longer than Ambrose had been alive. Blood crusted under the first mate's fingernails from working the pumps.
"Cap'n." Torres glanced back toward the crew quarters, then stepped closer. Two men had already drawn knives while dividing rations. "Low tide in three hours. With Keth pulling against the twins, it'll be the lowest we've seen. Some of the men—not me, but some—are talking about climbing out, making for Ember Atoll on foot."
Twenty miles to Ember Atoll's black sand shores. In this heat, without enough water for their crew of twenty-five.
Torres's voice dropped further. "Mood's turning ugly. I've sailed with desperate men before. They start thinking about... who's essential and who's not." His eyes flicked toward Aria. "Small shares, if you understand me."
Ambrose gripped the table edge like a lifeline.
"Tell them to wait. Let's see what this tide reveals. And Torres—" He met the older man's eyes. "Thank you."
Torres's jaw tightened. Outside, someone was crying—the young one, Tam, who'd signed on for adventure and found only brine and bleeding hands.
-
The seabed stretched bare as far as they could see.
For the first time, the full scope of their predicament in front of them: the ship perched on a narrow shelf of rock, fully hemmed in. The ridge towering against the morning sky, partially submerged even at this lowest tide. What emerged was larger than a warehouse, but clearly more lurked beneath. The newly exposed surface had an odd texture—regular patterns that weren't quite natural, weren't quite carved.
Aria had already found her way down, nimble as the crabs scuttling between pools.
"Should've stayed with Guild routes." Havers spat tobacco juice into a tide pool. "Least their charts show what's really there."
"Guild charts keep erasing passages they want to control. Whole sections vanished since last season—marked 'unnavigable' when traders used them for generations."
Havers snorted. "Yeah? Maybe they've got reasons they don't print."
Aria squealed with delight in the distance. She'd found something in the deepest pool at the base of the bronze ridge—her carved wooden bird, lost yesterday during exploration. It floated just out of reach, caught in an eddy where the formation met the seabed.
Havers muttered, “Well, least someone’s finding what they came for.”
She stretched for it, fingertips breaking the water's surface.
The ground shuddered. The ridge shifted—just a few feet, but enough to send new waves surging through the pools.
Torres grabbed the ship's rope. "That's not—"
A roar of steam burst from the ridge. Not vents. Nostrils.
Havers screamed.
-
The tide pool erupted around Aria's hand.
An eye opened beneath the surface. Larger than the child herself, amber as old honey, with a pupil that contracted in the morning glare. The eye was set into what they'd thought was part of the ridge—but now Ambrose could see the curve of a massive skull beneath barnacles and algae.
Steam billowed toward Aria, hot enough to blister. Her hand snapped up—instinctive as breath. Water rose in front of her, as she stumbled and fell. Gravity forgotten, the scalding mist met her water wall in a hiss of protective vapor. Blood began trickling from her nose.
"Papa, look!" She turned towards him, careless of danger, wonder shining in her voice.
The ground rolled beneath them. The Stormchaser groaned, her stern lifting as the massive creature adjusted itself. Men fell into tide pools. The ship's mast swayed drunkenly.
Ambrose paled. They'd been wedged against its back for three days, wood grinding against ancient bone.
The dragon's head lifted from the water with geological slowness. It had been there all along—neck curled back alongside its own body, resting in the shallows. Water cascaded from scars along its skull. One wing, visible now beneath the surface, was twisted at a painful angle.
A real dragon.
It didn't belong here. Not alone in volcanic shallows, wingless and stranded. They were legends, distant shapes against mountain skies. To see one this close, this broken, this impossibly massive...
More steam rose—defensive, confused. The dragon had been sleeping for decades, maybe centuries. And they, small little creatures, had spent three days grinding wood against its spine, waking it up, and now the smallest of all was…
Aria's wooden bird floated closer. She reached for it, and the water reached with her. Blood darkened her lips as she grinned, closing her fingers around the toy.
The massive eye fixed on her—pupil dilating. Something passed between them in that gaze, a recognition Ambrose didn't understand but felt in his bones.
Magic.
The dragon's throat rumbled. The sound traveled through stone and water and bone. Torres dropped to his knees. Havers, shaking, raised his harpoon toward the massive creature.
"No!" Ambrose shouted, but too late.
The iron point struck scales with a bell's ring. The dragon didn't flinch—the weapon was nothing to something this vast. But a vent near Havers screamed open, releasing concentrated steam. He fell back, clutching his scalded arm.
Ambrose slid down the muddy slope, catching Aria as her knees gave out. The water fell like cut strings, splashing across stone. Her eyes stayed focused but glassy. The wooden bird remained clutched in her limp fist.
"Heavy," she whispered, voice thin as morning mist. "Papa, I found my bird..."
Panic clawed at his chest. Blood kept trickling from her nose, darker now, and her skin felt wrong—too cold despite the volcanic heat. He'd seen men die from pushing too hard against the world's edges. Magic, when turned inward, burned the bearer first.
The dragon watched them still. Its pupil contracted, expanded, tracked from ship to child to man. The gaze lingered on the keel pressed against its back, on scales worn through to softer hide beneath.
Steam gathered around the dragon. Moisture spiraled in patterns that shouldn't exist. The creature's chest expanded with effort that sent damaged scales rattling into the pools.
Pressure built beneath the Stormchaser. The dragon compressing steam, making atmospheric water dense enough to lift wood and iron. The ship tilted, sliding incrementally along the creature's back toward the tail, where the formation dropped off into deeper water.
"The sails!" Torres caught on quickly. "Angle them to catch the steam!"
Men scrambled up the rigging like spiders, calloused hands bleeding fresh on hemp rope. Canvas snapped taut as they hauled lines, the mainsail bellying full with air that reeked of sulfur and salt.
The ship groaned—timbers protesting as she slid another precious foot along the dragon's ridge. Barnacles scraped away in rusty streaks, leaving gouges in the creature's bronze scales.
The dragon's gaze seemed to track their movements. Its next burst came more focused—a controlled hiss of steam that filled their sails like the breath of gods.
Hours passed. Each push of power drew pained whistles from the dragon's lungs. Its good wing spread for balance, the ruined one trying to mirror the movement and failing, sending tremors through its whole body.
When the Stormchaser finally slid free, splashing into navigable water, the dragon's head drooped with exhaustion.
The crew hauled Ambrose and Aria up in the bosun's chair, her small body limp against his chest. By the time they cleared the rail, she'd begun to stir, eyelids fluttering. She reached towards the massive shape still visible in the water below.
"Thank you for helping my family," she whispered, breath barely there. Then, with a child's directness: "Where's yours?"
The dragon's eye dilated. Its head tilted slightly, nostrils flaring. Nothing moved except steam rising from wet scales. Then it turned away.
The bronze ridge settled into stillness, stone once more—except where lost scales exposed pale, vulnerable hide.
Wind filled their sails.
-
Back on deck, Torres had already separated the men. Six stood apart—Havers with his scalded arm, and five others who'd been talking about "necessary sacrifices" during the worst of it.
"Port Velen's two days south," Torres said, not looking at them. "Independent port, no Guild officials. You'll get your shares there."
"The girl," Havers started. "What she did—"
"The girl played too hard in the sun. She's tired." Torres's voice carried the kind of quiet that preceded storms. "Heat does strange things to vision. Makes men see impossible things."
"But—"
"Strange things," Ambrose echoed, finding his voice. "The kind that sound like madness when spoken aloud."
That night, after Aria's fever started, Ambrose retrieved the pendant from its hiding place. Four years in a locked drawer, wrapped in the same oilcloth the siren had used. The stone seemed to drink light rather than reflect it.
Fear trembled through him as he fastened the chain around Aria's neck. The moment the stone touched her chest, her labored breathing deepening into normal sleep.
"Your mother wanted you to have this," he whispered. Truth and lie tangled together. "This is what I'll tell you, and you will promise to never, ever take it off."
-
Three weeks later, docked in a smuggler's cove among the Serpent's Crown islands, Ambrose sat hunched over parchment, crossing out lines for the fourth time.
To whoever leads the Mistmantle Clan in the Southern Reaches,
I don't know your protocols for contact from outsiders. Don't even know if I should be writing this.
A great one rests where the thermal vents break surface, fifteen miles southwest of Ember Atoll. Bronze-scaled, with a wing that won't heal. It saved my ship when it had no reason to help strangers.
My daughter asked where its family was.
Maybe he chose exile. Maybe circumstance stranded him. But if any of your people know of him–coordinates follow.
Captain Ambrose of the Free Ship ‘Stormchaser’
Delivery would cost a month's profits through mountain traders, but he couldn’t begrudge that.
Outside his window, Aria played with her washing basin. The water in front of her perfectly still, and a frown on her young face.
The pendant at her throat caught no light, gave no warmth, and held back tides that wanted to answer her blood's call.
In the volcanic shallows, an ancient dragon slept—newly scarred, and dreaming of the child who'd asked the only question that mattered.
-
(TWC: 1994)
© 2025 E.M. di V. - writing as Morgan A. Drake. All rights reserved.
What fool throws a spear at a giant dragon 😂.
I think it’s cozy. A brush with danger, a little sad. But the dragon and the child are heartwarming and make up for it.
I didn't plan on reading this today, but when a friend says it's good, you trust them. I unequivocally agree.
There was just enough of your prose visible that I could appreciate your brushstrokes. Metaphors used sparingly; you trusted readers to fill in the gaps. The story telling is stellar. Little things like Aria's bone comb in her hair, her reaching for her wooden bird...
Then the dialogue itself was excellent. Used sparingly, enough to layer on tension and build character scaffolding, again, to let readers fill in the gaps.
I have no qualms with this story qualifying for this prompt contest, not that it's my call or anything. But it's a damn good story in its own right.