The dragon before her is imperfectly perfect. It looms and it shrinks, an edifice of contrasting angles and conflicted ideals. Flat planes of worked bronze and copper, each curving away from scrutiny. Sharp twists of jadeite conceal and protect; even so, Smolder is not content. Not yet. She uses snips and rasps to nurture the hollow beyond, grasps files and shears and adds weight to the void. Her vulnerability is vast, because it has to hold so much. It's the thing that Smolder admires the most about her. It's the thing that Smolder would change the most if she was looking in a mirror and the hollow was her own.
She beats and twists, ignoring the glittering equipment of the workshop in favour of her own tools. Her throat is soon irritated by the constant need for control; the flames of a dragon are like the dragon itself—wild and carefree, and yet tame them she must. Smolder strikes the incandescent metal until her hands begin to feel numb, and then she carries on striking it anyway. For pride is yet another tool for her to use, and for all of the lessons she is still enough of a dragon to find satisfaction in how much better at her craft that makes her.
Smolder stops and plunges the metal into the slack tub. The colours of the sun are betrayed by water and steam; through the fizzing, swirling dance she can see life bleed from the metal. She tries to ignore the looks from her classmates as she takes the delicate curl in her hands and kisses it with yet more flame. Rasping tongues dance across her scales, and they shine the way she knows the metal will once it's been polished and buffed. There's something about the association that makes Smolder smile. Sometimes it's reassuring to be the one lighting the way, to guide others through the mirages of body and mind. It's a rare enough pleasure for her to recognise it for what it is, and Smolder commits it to memory with the rest of the treasures too precious to be allowed material shape.
She wonders whether her choice of form is wrong. Will it be seen as a preference? Or for the deeper meaning she wants it to convey? It's a debate potent enough to still her hands, and she swears loudly as the metal within them yields a fraction too much.
The dragon before her is imperfectly perfect. The imperfections are her own.
Smolder can only hope that she understands when she sees it. She beats yet more metal into submission, painfully aware that the perfect representation will be the most fragile, a form liable to shatter from even the slightest pressure incorrectly applied. Smolder can only hope that she can read the message within the twists and curves and plates and points. She hasn't made her into a dragon because she prefers her that way. She has made her into a dragon because that's what she is. She is strength and she is courage, she is wisdom and she is vitality. She is avarice and she is fortitude. She can wear so many layers, but her virtues are her strongest forms, and her most consistent. She is the fragility that Smolder has begun to admire so much—the kind that is buried deep but still visible, the sun beyond the clouds. She is her heart, beating in a cavity exposed to both predators and lovers alike. She is brittle fragility and she is surging hope.
Smolder stands back and wipes her brow.
She is a pain in the ass to sculpt.