Rooftop Dragons

An apartment complex U-shapes around a tiny garden of slender trees and trimmed bushes. The alleyway walls are etched in vines that bloom the perfect tea-leaf in the spring, and circle up under the gateway arches on either side of the building, finding their way up to the roof, where time itself sits perfectly still, unable to find its voice in the shape of such soft feathers.

When the sun sets, the sleeping minds bleed their dreams into the world as streams spitting into an ocean, but the twisted antlers of the comatose serpent rip into the unseen and dam the streams, pooling it into a delectable pond of random memory. Forever it sleeps and pools and pools, growing and shedding with it until the coiled body might spill over the parapets, like a cup in clenched fist.

They say that it’s not every roof that gets such a guest, but that it happens far more often than you’d want to believe. Dragons themselves being the dreams of a decapitated giant, remembering the ghoulish glares of the world serpents devouring its kin whole. They come crawling from his scalp and into his blood, hungry and thirstily slurping up mouthfuls of the red. They taste his memories and lose just a moment of energy as their bodies rapidly speed into a heat-spawned death.

The lucky ones make it to Endsville and find it in their minds to rest.

Beautiful..

Arcane scholars seek rooftop dragons to find the Pool of Dreams gathered. The juice is pulp and butterflies, and catching it in hand or mouth is a shock of life to the system. Ramping up the brain inside of a softened skull. Ripening it up to crack open and grow the yellow flowers inside.

The blade-kin, flaymakers, and clay dolls seek to dip their weapons in so that they may grow old and give birth to new weapons. Sword begets sword of cosmic fluid that rips through the air by molecule to create a burst of sun and draught. The staff twists inside itself to form an orb of dull, beaming night, eating color and light from the eyes of those around and growing new ones on itself, so that it may become sentient.

The Moon Cats watch these places from the gardens, keeping tabs for their Queen.

This is why there are no Landlords in Endsville. When a vacancy pops up, the antlers of the dragon spread dreams to those seeking. You may pay your rent to the neighborhood council, but you pay the dragon first. If there’s one up there, that is. Have you even gone up to take a look?