Pyrrhiscale

Pyrrhiscales are found in temperate woodlands and along river corridors where low-hanging branches and caves provide shelter. Naturalists tell that the pouch evolved to lure nocturnal insects and small arthropods close enough for the lizard to snatch. They are solitary hunters by night and roosters by day, tucking their lighted throats against bark to warm themselves or signal mates. Folklore among riverfolk says a Pyrrhiscale's first glow is a soul-light; fishermen hang nets with tiny thorns to catch the insects attracted to packs of them. The hedge-scholars of Kestwell Abbey keep a single tame Pyrrhiscale, recorded by the naturalist Merek Hallow in the pamphlet 'On the Flicker-Beasts of Lowfen' and used to light cramped library stacks where candles smoke the vellum. Predators — owls, foxes, and the occasional weasel — avoid young Pyrrhiscales when their pouches flare, an instinct that villagers have long used to keep their poultry safe at dusk.

A Pyrrhiscale is roughly 2 feet from snout to tail tip but slender and lightweight, weighing only a few pounds. Its skin is smooth, slightly translucent near the throat, and strewn with pebble-like scales along the back that give a faint iridescence. The neck pouch sits as a folded cavity lined with thin, membranous tissue that fans outward like flower petals when expanded. The membrane is speckled with tiny bioluminescent cells that pulse in bands; when expanded, veins and muscle ripple visibly. It has narrow, angular eyes rimmed in darker scales, a short curved beak for snatching prey, wing-membrane forelimbs like a gliding lizard rather than true wings, and a long whip tail used for balance. Size reference: about the length of a forearm of an adult human, easy to perch on a shepherd's staff or the rim of a doorway.