2024-06-13 - see how i glitter

It was always some sort of luck to take bets on whether the shell outside reflected the dragon within. But in the case of the large, black egg nestled neatly in the sands among a smattering of particularly small ones, the temptation to speculate would remain, persistent and curious.

Most agreed that it would have looked rather large and stately among its littler peers, standing tall like a stalwart guardian or drinking in the admiration as if it were a finely sculpted work of art - had it not have been jostled onto its side with the pointed end rather comfortably buried in a miniature drift, placing it more on the level of its siblings.

The egg itself was stony and black, symmetrical and squat with an overlarge bottom and the texture and sheen of carefully polished marble. The shell itself was unmarred, yet gold winked, twisted and flecked in orderly, thick dashes, arranged single file in a large band around its middle. These glittered, suggesting something finer, perhaps more vain within.

There could not be a gold inside this egg; golds never had such strange shells. Still, the glitter struck some as portentious, and the overall effect was beautiful in spite of - or perhaps because of - the two seemingly incompatible natures, and the egg's resemblance to a fine and sturdy marble of Terran creations of the old and the noble.