Alan Foster: The Metrognome and Other Stories

It moved slowly forward. Somehow the bed held its great weight without collapsing. Wings fluttered, irritatible in the confined space. They blotted out the ceiling and obscured any hint of the pale, sickly plaster or the weak incandescent light.

Then Ehahm-na-Eulae was over her, and she could have reached up and run her fingers over the thousand teeth, some curved, some straight, some hooked fanglike backward. The great eyes no longer moved independently. Both stared down into hers. Ehahm-na-Eulae moved a little nearer, only its tail dragging on the floor as a mesmerized Pearl listlessly dropped the cigarette. The dragon opened its mouth, and she felt fire wash over her, clean dragon flame, light at first but rising in intensity. It didn't hurt at all. She'd known it wouldn't. It cleansed and didn't hurt at all.

She embraced the flame and Ehahm-na-Eulae of the dragons and line of dragons that was ten thousand years old, as old as the forever freeing flame that engulfed her for the first and final time, purified and cleansed Pearl who was only seventeen.