Mercury Bloom — Orchid Mantle Dragons

The story of Mercury Bloom

A fictional story inspired by the artwork.

The botanical hall keeps its orchids under glass until the dragons come in from the hills. Their arrival is easy to miss. A dragon with its wings folded can lie between two planters, showing nothing but a pale rim where the light reaches the edge of a wing. The gardeners look for a shift in the shadows before opening the doors.

Mercury Bloom gives each dragon a way to occupy the hall. Some stand high enough to watch the rafters. Others crouch beside the stone benches and tuck their tails away from the path. Orchid shapes recur around the wings and tails, while the different horn profiles help distinguish the designs at a glance.

The keepers once assumed the dragons followed the opening of the flowers. They started keeping records and noticed that the oldest plants opened a little later each year. The dragons kept arriving at the same time. Their earliest visitor now spends most of the morning waiting beside a pot whose buds are still closed.

The keeper on the late shift finds that pot empty one night. In the cold glass room behind it, a flower has opened in a patch of ground that nobody watered. Its petals match the markings on a young dragon that has never entered the hall. By dawn the other five are waiting outside.

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