Bio-engineered, bred true, alive: the belt's great working animals, courier and cargo lines, herders and surveyors, bone-white and bell-harnessed. Their hide carries the same fine typeset as the Magi's ceramic, denser at neck and flank, subtle on the wing membranes: the written genome made visible. The world's saying about them is the closest the culture comes to scripture: the whites breed true because they were written true. Written beings, both of them, ink on white, the robot and the animal, the made mind and the made body, and both wear bells.
A dragon's eyes are deep teal, livery-matched, iris and pupil and patience: the eyes of something designed by people who wanted to be looked back at. Their ceramic route-bells are transponders under the bell law, ringing for whoever is near and speaking, by radio through the ceramic, to whoever is responsible.
Dragons are sparse by design and by temperament. They are working animals, never skyline decoration, and never war-beasts: you see them at the Starport, on the routes, in the country, and a dragon over the capital is an event a child will narrate at dinner. Their keepers form the oldest order, and the bond between a keeper and a working dragon is the belt's favorite subject for songs it pretends are about something else.
