1. Slinky, metally dragon, a few centimetres long, like a liquid blob of mercury; its claws are filed for sharpness and it has a tiny muzzle piercing, from that shop in the city, the one that also does dragons if you ask in the back room. It lives in a lighter, drinking the lighter fluid that it is fed and dispensing flame when required. Sometimes it sticks its shiny head out if the night is dark.
2. Chameleonic dragons, recognisable only by the body heat they leave behind in their resting-places. They have a fraught relationship with cats, who like to chase them off to get at the warm spots. Over time, as a defence mechanism, they have come to look more and more like tiny cats themselves, and sometimes pose as them for disguise and to indicate that the spot is already taken.
3. Bright-green whisper-light slip of a dragonling, often mistaken for a dragonfly. Slips into ears, sings songs when you are sleeping. Sometimes the earworm is actually an earwyrm. Biomass-fuelled, best not to ask.
4. The dragons that make the sparks that fire the engines. You may hear them passing in the night sometimes. There are thousands of dragons per vehicle, each smaller than a thumb and covered in soot. They keep their eyes closed against the onslaught of smoke, but when the engines are shut down in daytime they come out and bask on the rusted metal surfaces of the vehicles and if you happen to go near them then you will see a thousand tiny red eyes leap open at your passing.
5. Ambitious mini-hoarder dragon, brown. Nests all over the Alps. Likes to sleep on a single euro, which is also roughly its maximum carrying capacity. Occasionally gets inserted into vending machines by mistake, where it gets dramatically overexcited by being in close proximity to multiple euros at once and is at risk of starting a small fire.
6. Book-dragon. Roughly the size, empathy and texture of a pen-lid. Burns a hole in a book to make its nest, though it will also make nests in the rafters with chewed paper like a wasp if it has the space and time to do so. Very appreciative of the books that it destroys. They taste delicious. Seriously, you should try them too. You can tell a library that is infested with them by the trails of silvery dust that they leave; also, by the smoke.
7. Firefly lights flickering in the darkness of the old railway tunnel. Of course they are not fireflies at all, but tiny, bat-black dragonlings; they escape from the dragon-fired trains that go that way sometimes. The lights are the fires of their endless petty fights. If you follow the tunnel far enough it has a branch line that was never finished and there really is a light at the end of the tunnel, a shifting, glowing one like the dappled light of a forest summer; but instead it is the chaotic whirl of dragon-fire from an enormous nest; and never go up there seeking gold because these dragons prefer blood.
8. Molecule-wide, impossible dragons, smaller than the tiniest thing a flea could imagine, darting down wires; they are liquid metal, they can outrace electricity, nobody ever taught them physics so they feel no need to be beholden to it. They can infest your brain, making of it a new web of dragon-sparks. Some say they give you anger and some courage and some say that one must be struck by lightning to get dragons. But I think it is enough to catch a glint at the corner of your eye, enough that the dragon lives a bright dot in your vision for a minute or so; and from then on the only sign is a tendency to turn or leave the lights on at night, so that the dragons, slipping loose into the air, can play games with the tardy photons while you sleep.
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