The dragon sat atop the mountain, his gold and green scales glittering in the morning sun like emeralds and melted butter. He watched the little people down in the village, going about their little lives. Cooking their breakfasts, chopping their firewood, harvesting their crops.
Children played with dogs and mothers scolded the ones who got too loud or stole pieces of jerky from the lines where they were drying.
He sat there watching them and thinking dragonish thoughts: "These little creatures, these men. They're so frail and so strong. One of them alone can hardly fend off a wolf, but get a gang of them and there's hardly anything they can't withstand."
He chuckled to himself, little clouds of smoke and steam puffing from his nostrils, "They're almost like wolves themselves, living in their packs,so fierce when protecting what they see as theirs."
He laid down on the edge of the cliff as the sun began to ease its way over the mountain so that the humans below wouldn't see his silhouette.
"If only they didn't taste so good." His stomach grumbled at the thought, and the memory of crunchy maidens and chewy knights tightly wrapped in their steel shells made his mouth water.
But dragons are nothing if they're not patient, and this one was old and wise. He understood that anticipation is a spice that makes any meal more savory. He would wait and he would think.
Days passed and the dragon lay there, as unmoving as the mountain itself. His mind, however, soared like a bird in a wild wind storm, for such is the way of dragons, to spend weeks in a kind of physical trance where the body is left to fend for itself as the mind is freed to roam. He thought of the loves of his life, the terrible battles he'd been in,the smells and the sights of the great, wide open world. His closed eyes danced to the waking dreams of memory. The taste of snow water from a mountain thousands of miles from here brought tears to his eyes.
But always his thoughts would trickle back to the present,and his stomach would grumble and gurgle (sometimes loudly enough to startle the birds that rested on his broad back) at the thought of that village down there, that village full of plump, juicy humans.
Well, enough time passed that he'd sorted through most of his thoughts and his stomach decided that enough was enough, it was time to wake up and do something. So he did. He opened his huge black and green eyes and rippled the scales along his back to dislodge the birds. Looking around, he saw that it was just before dawn.
"Ahh...perfect," he thought, "Most will still be sleeping and they will be slow to raise an alarm."
He stretched his long, powerful limbs, and arched his back, like the world's largest cat, and got slowly to his feet, unfurling his mighty wings. "Breakfast time."
Below, the village was just beginning to awaken. Some of the huts had thin spirals of smoke coming from the chimneys, a few yawning dogs wandered the dirt streets, waiting for the children to wake up. He leaned forward, spreading his wings wide. As he was just about to launch himself into the air something caught his eye and he paused, claws digging into the stone cliff to hold himself back. There was someone walking up the deer trail at the base of the mountain, walking toward him.
Looking closer he saw that it was a boy, no more than ten or eleven years old, and that he was carrying a covered wooden platter in front of him. He decided to wait and see what this was all about, so he pulled his wings back and settled down on his haunches.
It took the boy a long time to make it up to the top of the mountain, almost half of the day in fact. He arrived at the little plateau with scratches all over his arms and face where the branches had tried to stop him, his clothes dirty and torn and his face red with the effort of such a long hard climb.
He paused as he finally came into full view of the dragon and they both wordlessly studied each other. The boy saw the most magnificent creature of his short life. It was over sixty feet long from the tip of its delicately scaled tail to the barbed points of its horned head and it must have stood at least ten feet at the shoulder. Heavy muscles, thick as wooden planks, rippled and flexed beneath the plate-sized scales up and down its body, scales rich with a rainbow of greens. Its claws were like curved stalactites, each resting in a little pile of rubble where it had dug into the cliff. But what he noticed most, in fact about the only thing he really noticed about it, was the eyes. They were like green and yellow swirling suns of ancient power and thought. His eyes met the dragon's and it felt like his whole world disappeared, swallowed up in the eternal depths of those limitless eyes.
It was then that they began to speak, but without spoken words, their minds touched for an instant and an instant is all it took.
"Your name boy?"
"Jeffrey, sir."
"Well Jeffrey Sir...my name is Rathamutin sh'Kara Damathaina. What are you doing on my mountain?"
"Grey Snow is your mountain? Ratha...Rathamuff...Rathug..."
"You may call me Rath, Jeffrey Sir and yes, this is my mountain. At least, for as long as I choose to make it mine."
"Oh. I didn't know that Mr. Rath, sir. I was bringing you something to eat. I brought some cold mutton and boiled eggs and some honey bread that momma made yesterday. Oh, and some bacon too, but I ate that on the way up. Sorry."
"And how did you know that I was hungry?"
"I felt it. In my...in my dreams mostly. But sometimes when I was awake too. At first I didn't know you were up here, but then after the dreams I looked and I saw you. I tried to show you to momma but she said she was too busy for nonsense."
"And your father? What did he say?"
There was a pause, less time than it would take a mosquito to blink, but a pause never the less.
"Papa doesn't live with us. I never met him. Momma says he went off to the war, long time ago."
"I see...Tell me Jeffrey Sir, do you dream of my kind often?"
"Oh yes, all the time. And unicorns, and elfs and big wolfs. Sometimes I dream about the King's knights, the ones in the shiny armor. Real strong dreams, Mr. Rath. It's almost like I'm there with them."
There was another pause, this one slightly longer, about the time it'd take a dragon to blink.
"And what things do you think when you're dreaming, boy? What thoughts do you have?"
"Thoughts? Well, I guess I think like they do. When I'm dreaming about wolfs I think about sheep and running and other wolfs, when it's unicorns I think about apples and...and well girls. When it's dragons I think about all kinds of things. Flying and trees and books and music and paintings and frogs and snow, all kinds of things. The flying part is the best. It's like falling, and my stomach tickles."
And so they spoke, the boy and the dragon, for what seemed like hours and hours, though it really took less time than it does to eat a walnut or pet a cat. They spoke about dreams and flying, they spoke about shoes and trees, they discussed rocks and frogs, clouds and stars and yes, they even talked about girls. And the dragon ate the food that Jeffrey had brought him (even though he didn't like eggs) and he thanked him for his kindness.
As Jeffrey was leaving, the dragon said to him, this time using his speaking voice, which was smooth and deep and rumbling, like water slowly pushing boulders around. He said, "Jeffrey Sir, I have a gift for you, something to repay the kindness that you have shown me."
As he spoke, the dragon uncurled one of his huge front claws and, wedged tightly into the base of his claw was a gemstone, about the size of a mouse's head. He held his claw out toward Jeffrey, who took the gem and looked at it. He held it up to the light and turned it slowly, marvelling at the way the sunlight made little colored fires dance inside it. One second it would be a dangerous red, the color of hot iron, the next it would be the rich blue of a clear day.
He looked at it for several long minutes and the colors never once repeated, each time there was a new richness and depth to the gem. He turned to the dragon and said, "Thank you Mr. Rath, it's beautiful."
The dragon smiled widely, showing rows and rows of teeth sharper than winter wind and longer than the boy's arm. "The gift is inside of the gem, boy. When you get home, crack the gem open and see what is inside."
Jeffrey bowed deeply, as he'd seen his mother do the the village elders and began the long walk home.
When he reached the bottom of the mountain he didn't go home. He knew there'd be questions and scoldings and a lot of yelling "That's how adults do things," he thought to himself. So instead he went to a little place in the woods, his secret place and there he laid the gem down on a flat rock in the sunshine. He watched it sparkle and glow for a long time, not wanting to have to break it open.
But eventually his curiousity grew and he took a rock and carefully smacked the gem. At first nothing happened and he was getting ready to whack it again, when it suddenly split cleanly down the middle. And what was inside the gem? Thoughts, words, images, feelings, flavors,scents, sights and sounds. They washed over Jeffrey and became as much apart of him as his own legs; it was like his mind opened up and the whole world came rushing in.
The dragon had given him a gift for all ofmankind, something that we'd all come to know. He gave him poetry.
The years passed and Jeffrey became a man, spreading the gift that the dragon had given to him where ever he went, and this is how poems came to be in our world...
crown o' gems | darkwaves+larkwings sky
jewel@gleeful.com
a seraph production