Of course, over time, with more and more patches overlaid on top of the original fabric, it became harder and harder to discern what the plush had once been. Its own insistence on the placement and shape of patches meant that, over time, it assumed a shape that was rather different from its original plush form. It’s fair to surmise that the tailor and his wife, being old, naïve, and nearly blind, had failed to notice the increasingly violent demands and behavior of their creation.

But when their hut was destroyed in a massive fireball, and a dragon of patches rose above the smoldering wreck with a roar that proclaimed its lordship over all in the town and their valley, it became a larger problem. For no sword could cut the patches deeply enough, no arrow could pierce them to any vital spot, and while the patchwork dragon was theoretically as vulnerable to oil and fire as any other cloth, its immense size and the beating of its great wings meant that few embers survived long enough to set it alight.

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