It was morning. She only knew because of the light that crept around the windowsill coffee cups; the shades drawn over the windows prevented any other light from entering the cabin. The rock barricade offered a semblance of security. It was low, but thick, and inhabited by the only venomous snakes in the region. She once had friends. There were the friends she had made in childhood and then acquaintances from her middle life. But they all faded into the dust when she talked about her visions and premonitions. Saraiah heard the rumors about her sanity and the talk about an intervention. So she ran.
That was 30 years ago. At first she wondered what the people she had known were doing, but over time she lost interest. She had what she needed in her little house with its garden, goats, and chickens. What she couldn't grow she could order once a month from a town ten miles away. She placed her orders under a false name and paid with an automatic bank transfer. Boxes containing her orders came to a common box set up by the village where her address was registered. She rode her bicycle into town in the early mornings to collect her mail and her groceries and rarely saw any other human. On those rare occasions where she did intersect with people, she quickly rode away. After a couple of years, people left her alone. She preferred it that way. If she thought about it, which she rarely did, she hadn't spoken to another person in two decades. She supposed that made her officially a hermit, but she preferred to think of herself as solitary. It sounded much tidier.
Saraiah's garden and animals took much of her time, and she spent the rest of each day drawing the visions of her dreams and writing their meaning. Her drawings covered the walls of her small cottage. When she was satisfied the illustration and explanation was complete, she would pack and send it to the one person who believed her to be a prophet. That person would publish the work to her followers whose subscriptions provided her the minimal income she needed. Even that person didn't know her full name or her history.
This day she planned to fill in the details of her most recent vision: a dragon holding a blue marble in its claws while smoke billowed from its nostrils. She had a sense that it was about to breathe fire over the marble, but was withholding its destruction for a moment. As she blended her blue pigments and resins to add to the marble, she thought about what it represented. She understood the dragon as the symbol of anti-good, the bringer of torment and anguish, and she was certain the marble represented the earth. What Saraiah could not reconcile was the image of a fire-breathing dragon holding back its fire.
Dragons, in her experience, represented evil and destruction. In her visions, dragons never hesitated to wreak havoc and were indiscriminate in their violence. But this time was different and she pondered as she painted. Finished for the moment with the blue of the marble, Saraiah turned to the eyes of the dragon, hoping her pencils and brushes would reveal some hint for the monster's pause.
Laying out gold, red, and green pigments, Saraiah pondered her vision, focusing on what might have been reflected in the dragon's irises. She closed her eyes and uttered a prayer, asking the Giver of Dreams for clarity about what stayed the dragon's flame. She trusted her hands to paint what her mind could not articulate, allowing her to create things she didn't know she saw. It was the details that sold her pictures, but she knew the power was not in the image, but in the interpretation of its meaning.
Saraiah's meditation was broken by a crack of thunder and the bleat of panicked goats. Carefully and quickly, she covered her work and dashed outside to herd her animals into the shelter on the far end of her property before the rains came. The first big drops kissed her head just as the last chicken clucked into the coop. Surveying her garden, Saraiah decided it was sufficiently protected and she hustled to the cottage door. As she opened it, she gasped as a disembodied hand the size of her head halted her. Looking beyond the hand, she watched as her artwork lifted off the table where she had been working and blew toward her. She was used to visions, but this was happening in real time and for the first time since she had run to this place, Saraiah was afraid. She ducked just as the painting began to blow past her into the storm that was raging in earnest.
Dripping wet, Saraiah watched as the hand caught the painting of the dragon, now a living thing of oscillating green, gray, gold, and flame. She crawled over the threshold and watched a battle of hand and dragon unfold before her. The dragon had dropped the blue marble as its fire-breath reached through the fingers that held it in its grasp. As Saraiah watched, the hand squeezed tighter and tighter until the dragon collapsed in on itself and disappeared in a puff of smoke. With that, the hand vanished, the storm ended, and Saraiah looked up at the most vibrant rainbow she had ever seen.
Weeks later, after the market had not received an order and no one recalled seeing the quiet woman, a deputy made his way to the property. Chickens and goats roamed free from a collapsed shelter. The little cottage seemed to be intact. Looking in the door, he saw a tidy room, with nothing out of place, but no sign of the woman. As he turned to leave, he noticed near the door, a small blue marble.