When you wish upon a star, it's thoroughly necessary to ascertain whether you are a magical beast.

Stars are a bit like metal filings to magic. They gravitate towards power centers.

It can be quite horrifying for a little gnome, a creature notoriously known for being made of magic, to look up at the night sky, and make a wish, and see a hundred thousand little winks, and suddenly one big huge flash, and then there's a crash and all that's left of the gnome is a rather large crater and perhaps just the charred top of a pointy little hat.

Dragons, however, are a bit different. Very rarely will you see a dragon getting smooshed by an incoming meteorite. Dragons are old, old beasts; they have been around long enough to know the stars, and how they work.

Dragons will talk to the stars for centuries. They ask how their children are doing, they inquire as to the local weather, they nod along with the stars as the stars complain that things were better in The Olden Days. (The dragons cannot know whether this is true, as, even though dragons live a long time, never has there been a dragon who lived long enough to see a star both come into being and depart again. But dragons have found it is best to just take a star at its word.)

After a near lifetime of friendship, one star might notice the kindness of a certain dragon, and whisper to him in the night, something along the lines of, "If you don't tell anyone... I reckon I could make one of your wishes come true... but you have to remember to keep it on the hush-hush, because it's hard work, this wish-granting thing, you know, and I don't want to have to do it night in and night out."

And the very old dragon will invariably pretend to be completely modest and insist that they deserve no such honor, when in fact they do feel that they deserve much more than one measly wish for listening to the star's neverending nightly griping. But the star grants them the wish, minus the squishage, and the dragon takes it, and usually squanders it on gold or food or some other trinket that the dragon isn't around much longer to enjoy anyway, due to having used up all of its time courting the star. And the star sighs and is disappointed, and may then have wised up and learned to never give another non-squishy wish ever again.

But every so often, a dragon comes along, straight from the egg, who is genuinely concerned about the stars; their eyes are bright and shiny whenever they are allowed to look up at the night sky; they mourn when an old star fades, and they take note when a new star is born. They laugh when the stars dance out a little flickering jig with their lights, and they think in their hearts that it would be wonderful to be up there with the stars. But they never put it in their hearts to wish such a thing, because they genuinely believe that they deserve no such honor.

Those are the dragons that the stars cherish. At the end of this special dragon's life, long or short, the stars come down to the ground, and they lift the dragon up, up, into the blackish blue to live with them, where scales seem to catch on fire with brilliance, and eyes stay alight with joy, as they become a part of the white-on-black tapestry that they so love.

Because only the purest hearts can burn brightly enough to keep up with the rest of the stars. . .

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I made this little guy out of polymer clay. I baked and painted him and glazed him, and then I added forty separate shining Swarovski crystals which I had prepped him for before baking. He has them randomly scattered on his body, head, a couple are on his plates and tail, he has his paws outstretched to hold more, and one has even been caught in his ear and, in his joy, on his tongue.

FORTY. That is a lot! He is very pretty and I am very proud of making such a cute little dragon.