On a silent night, a calm and cool night, a Dragon lays slumbering. Her thoughts are like a deep pool of water, and tendrils of smoke coil out of her nostrils. It is soon to be her time of reckoning, her time to spread her wings and make a fateful journey, but she doesn't know it yet.

A spot of light erupts in the night sky. The Dragon's eyes flash open, cat-like, roving back and forth along the landscape. A bright star glimmers in the sky, flooding her dark shape with light, calling her forward, calling her out. She sits up, lifting her head to regard that single, bright star. Her tail coils and twists along the ground behind her, throwing up dust. The star calls her in a way none could ever explain. It is as if sudden meaning had thundered through her soul, lanced into the very fabric of the world itself. Such a cosmic creature could not help but be aware of the magnitude of an event like this one. She spreads her wings and leaps into the air, seeking the star. Silently in the night she flies towards it.

Heedless of the people she passes on her way. Shepherds in a field, tending their sheep. Travelers from a far country on the road. All of them looking at the star, moving towards it in their small human way. The Dragon sees them, and seems to recognize her common purpose with them, even though she has left them far behind a moment after spotting them.

Before she reaches the place of the star, she sees ahead of her a strange winged creature—it hovers, shining wings cupping the air back and forth. Its face is of light. The Dragon lets out a cry to it and sets down—she finds herself on the roof of a building, old but built well, built by humans. Built by humans. Many humans are inside, and the Dragon, wings still outstretched, crans her neck downward to peer at this building. An inn. A small stable is around the back of it. Above, the star hovers. She looks again to the star—its meaning is unmistakable although it could never be put into words. Something new is happening. Something important.

The figure of a young woman runs out of the inn. She pauses on the doorstep, her feet bare, as if she is suddenly not sure where she is or if she belongs there. She looks up, and meets the blue cat-like eyes of the Dragon that gaze down at her. The woman's own eyes flash with a bright fire. The Dragon reads her name in them—Brigid, of fire. Brigid gives a secret smile—and then she has run away into the stable. The Dragon senses suddenly the importance of the path this young woman has just taken. She, too, is timeless, and ancient, like the Dragon. But here, barefoot, a small innkeeper's maid, she has gone into a stable, a place where the beasts of burden that humans keep live. The Dragon is about to see that what is cosmic comes out of what is small and humble.

And yet she stays on the roof. Shepherds come to the inn, and bypass it for the stable. The foreign astrologists come as well, their eyes on the star. They do not even come to the inn but are always gazing at the star. The winged beings with faces of light surround the Dragon, on the roof of the inn. The Dragon turns her head to regard them, her wings still outstretched.
Down in the tiny, crowded stable, humans gather. Above the roof of the inn, cosmic winged beings congregate. The Dragon includes herself with these cosmic beings—until a sound from the stable catches all her attention. The cry of a baby splits the air. The star above flashes its light, and the Dragon leaps, without thinking. She leaps down to the ground and her wings scrape the dirt. One step, then another, blending into a fluid motion as she steps through the doorway to the stable. And then nothing is the same.

Brigid kneels in the straw next to another young woman, named Mary, who sits up to wrap a baby in clothes. The cow lows softly, the animals breathe and munch their hay. Brigid wipes off her hands, her fiery eyes on that new child in Mary's arms. Mary looks up at the Dragon, and smiles, but the Dragon is aware that something has changed. She cannot feel her wings or her tail. She cannot feel the fire under her tongue. For the moment, she is stripped of all that, and, barefoot as Brigid, she steps across the straw, looking. Always just looking. She understands on a deep level that something profound is happening here, and she is quiet, silent, watching.

The three astrologists kneel before Mary and the new baby. Their skin is dark, their eyes deep, and they are richly dressed in robes. In their hands they hold before them gifts which they offer to the baby. The winged beings above—they're angels—sing, echoing a cosmic harmony. Brigid's eyes glow with a fire. Men stand around; Joseph, Mary's husband; the shepherds, bereft of their sheep but not seeming to mind; the astrologists with their gifts, the Dragon, shed of her scales, only standing there in silence.
The baby looks up and chuckles. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. For a new babe, tiny and in swaddling clothes. What child is this? The Dragon is struck, numinously, and her gaze will not leave this human child. With an intensity born of the ages of the universe, she challenges the tiny, vulnerable infant.

But the child has met the challenge with love. The angels joyously sing their praise. The scent of frankincense stings the Dragon's nostrils. And Brigid, her hands still warm from Mary's birth canal, turns to the Dragon with another secret smile. And the Dragon feels something fall away. She feels the shock of finding herself, barefoot, scaleless. She looks down at Brigid's hands, and, tentatively, holds out her own. Her own are almost blue, translucent in the dim light, weak, dull. Brigid's hands are red with internal blood and fire. The Dragon looks again at the astrologists, at the baby, at Mary. She looks at Brigid again, and for the first time in her life, she falls down in a deep bow, her forehead against the straw. Brigid reaches down and helps her up, and together, the two of them, looking for all the world like two dark-eyed Hebrew women, though they are not… together they step out of the stable.

The angels make a halo of light around the inn and the stable. Brigid lifts a hand and points. Above the angels, the dark sky and stars seems to twist and swirl and flow. It takes the Dragon a moment to see just what exactly is going on—but there is something up there, an image, and yet not an image, and nonetheless strangely recognizable in an expression of its cosmic vastness. It twists and moves inexorably, circling the halo of angels.

It is our Mother! The Dragon is shocked to realize this, but Brigid holds her firmly, grasping the Dragon's hands in her own. The Dragon's eyes are cold and blue, like the starlight, but Brigid's eyes, meeting hers, are warm, orange-red, golden—and very insistent. The Dragon falters, and allows Brigid to lead her back into the stable.

Squallor, cramped and closed space, but warm, and filled with an indescribable light. The Dragon is still struggling to accept this and what it means, what it must mean. She doesn't know. She turns her head to regard Brigid and finds herself looking down—at what appears to be a small young woman. The Dragon lifts her head, but finds there is no room to spread her wings. Her blue eyes flash, and gold light, from an unknown source, begins to edge her ebony scales.

The Dragon lays down in the straw, bowing her head to the tiny child in Mary's arms. Brigid kneels beside the great creature, placing her hands behind the wings. The Dragon's wings tremble, and her body follows the motion. She twists; ebony scales come loose and litter the straw. Outside, above the inn, the angels' chorus swells.