The echoes of her cries sounded hollow. Here, she realized the greatness of the dark chamber before her- its height outrivaled the tallest of houses in her town. How could this cavern, a mere slit before her on the ground, be so terrible an expanse? 

“But the old god is large- he dwarfs even the greatest of fortresses!” She remembered.

Granting her limbs a moment’s rest, the woman craned her neck back and peered her eyes into the darkness. Veins of the dimmest glow lit through cracks of the mountain’s core that walled and floored the very cavern. Here, she made out a widening space, not unlike a sparse courtyard further down the chamber. 

Raising, she propped herself against a wall and began her cautious tread. Every step echoed hollow, like a pebble tossed in an empty cobble street. Her shred shoes squleched rivulets of water, and she felt the smoothness of the floor betrayed all her cuts over her soles. She ignored the sting and pressed on.

Each step was an act of caution and courage, for she feared the floor, being too smooth and fine, was the work of cruel magic, and would give way into empty air. Or, she feared, her steps would wake the old god and make her out an irreverent intruder. 

The rain stopped. The clouds parted, and the moon emerged again. The cavern was not impregnable to leaks, the woman discovered. Drips and streams of water glistened all over the walls, lit by the moonlight shining through broken shafts- they appeared like silver over black, glossy granite. 

The ceiling appeared before her, and the woman realized her insignificance. Would the old god heed her, a puny mortal? 

She reached the end of the expanse. A wider wall stood alongside. And in its center, jutting out, carved out in an extensive relief, was an arch, carved with designs and symbols from the oldest of times. Only in precious books of her elders had the woman recalled such imagery. 

But now, the moonlight shifted with her as she drew closer, and the moonlight fell upon who slumbered within the relieved arch.

The old god. 

The breath stopped in the woman’s throat like a cork stopping the mouth of a jug. 

The drawings depicting the old god, they appeared as crude children’s scribbles compared to who laid before her. 

His repose had his neck arched back, nestled neatly into the arch’s outer rim, with his head, as his chin rested on what could a great forearm, laid in sleep. The massive form of his body, great and terrible, laid wound within the recesses of the arch. His wings folded against his broad back like gathered sails tied against a stretching pair of masts. 

Save for his wings, his entire form was shingled in magnificent scales, shimmering like an inscrutable hue of abalone and obsidian, morphing with the moonlight and the slightest stirring of his breathing. 

She heard his breathing, and tears of relief pricked her eyes. 

“He’s not made of stone- he’s not an idol- he’s alive and breathing! O, please wake!” Her thoughts pounded frantically. 

Like a blacksmith’s hammer against the anvil, now did the woman’s heart beat in her tired, tight chest. 

The moment now- the old god could slay her, or grant her the freedom she sought. 

She approached the slumbering god. She stood before his massive head, right before his snout, a warm breath whistling through his curved nostrils. He was truly the oldest god of these gods- the dragons. 

Remembering the reverence of her elders of rites past, she quickly shod off her shoes, casting them far aside. 

A tremor shook every fiber of her body, but the woman reached out with her hand. Her palm barely touched his snout. 

She winced, bracing for a blast of fire, a roar deafening, or a blow that might send her broken like a twig under a boot heel.

Instead, in the cup of her palm, his snout felt warm like the top of the oven. It grew warmer, and a glow lit, like an ember stroked in a fire’s birth. 

Awe replaced terror within the woman. She stood fixed in place, as though her foot became part of the stone floor underneath her. 

A glimmer of a golden light, almost sun or flame-like, shone through an opening slit of his heavy eyelids. Slowly, his eyelids flickered, and his eyes opened, revealing fiery orbs of light. 

Stirring, the old god drew back his massive head, the woman’s hand, only the size of a pair of his scales, remained fixed upon his snout.

The light glowed within, growing more brilliant with each breath, like a blacksmith’s bellows fanning the brightness of a forge’s flame. And like a forge’s fire, the dry heat from the old god’s fire-like light warmed the chilling dampness of the woman in her drenched rags. 

He spoke.

“You woke me.”

His voice resonated like the mighty thunder that rumbled in the valley and rattled the bones and teeth of those who heard it. The cavern chamber shook with a slow, deep-rooted tremor, stone rumbling under his utterance. 

His voice’s power knocked the woman back. Her knees buckled, and she fell splayed on the floor. 

Awe robbed her voice- she opened her mouth, but a dry squawk of panic was all that sounded out. 

The old god turned aside, emerging from out of the arch that enclosed him, and faced her. Lowering his head, he leveled his eyes with hers, now widened with a terrified wonder. 

He knew he slumbered long. He knew most forgotten him, setting him aside in their books and lore. And though he knew what the world of man showed, a cruel tangle of power and oppression, luxury and poverty, the ever-going battle of the strong and weak.

Before him was one most deemed weak, but in his clarity, he saw the ragged woman as the strongest. 

“I know who you are-” he continued. The woman remained frozen, wide-eyed and mouth agape in awe.