2DREZQ

A couple years ago I began a short story about dragons-then a popular series of books about dragons hit the market. Sigh...I didn't like the idea of looking like a "me-too" author, so I set the whole thing aside. Here is the opening scene. There is a great deal more to the story, though it is yet unfinished.
What do you think? Is it salvageable? I suffer from a common authors shortcoming; I'm to impressed with my own work to see the problems.
At any rate, I hope the read isn't a waste of your time.

D'Rez


I had intended to write this story starting at the beginning. Following the command of the Queen to Alice to: “Begin at the beginning and continue on to the end, then stop.” The problem with that is this: where, exactly, does any story begin?
Do I start with a war that ended millenia before man came to the idea of warfare? A war that raged hot and cold for over a thousand years, with mankind playing the part of terror-struck witness? How about the story of rise of the civilization of man? The history of our ancestors, who were watched by the survivors of that other war, that is a tale worth the telling I suppose.
Perhaps I should tell you of bad luck, poor timing, and the malice of a creature who did not wish to see possession of the world pass uncontested into the hands of men?
I have decided: The story of how and why I came to know this tale is, in my not-so-humble opinion, worth telling itself. One story half-told without the other, so to speak. Thus, with a few brief detours where needed, we begin where it began for me: A small cabin in the mountains of Eastern Idaho, not far from the Montana line.
It doesn't matter how I came to be living in that cabin, though we may get to that later. All that matters at the moment is that I was living there alone, 7 kilometers from any neighbor. I was standing by the bookshelf one moonless night trying to choose a book to begin in lieu of a nights sleep. Sleep was a thing hoped for but seldom experienced anymore. I had refused any further chemotherapy or radiation, and even with the drugs, the pain made sleep an infrequent visitor.
So there I stood. In my left hand I was holding a water-stained copy of Holden's “A History of the Black Death”. In my right hand was a newer novel, a fantasy. “The Dragons Heart”. That was when I heard the voice.
Now you might think that hearing a voice in a room where there is no one else to speak, alone in a cabin miles from anyone might, at the very least, startle a person. That is what I would have thought. All I can tell you is that it did not. Perhaps it was the mix of painkillers and fatigue. Maybe the approach of my of demise made me open to the idea of conversation with unseen companions. I don't know.


“That's an interesting combination.” that was all he said.


If you want to know what his voice was like; step outside some late fall evening just after sunset, when the wind is rustling the leaves still high up on the trees, but isn't so much as touching those already on the ground. It's a sound not quite comforting, yet somehow settling any restlessness in the human soul. It was a deeply male voice, without being bass. Hollow, like an echo, yet rich and resonant somehow. That is as close as I can come to what I felt that first night.


I didn't even turn around.


“I guess you'll have to explain what you mean. I don't see any connection here.” I said.


“No, you would not. No human living today would remember those days, but I do. It was much worse than your books tell. You came very close to losing your world.”


If I hadn't been afraid before, I had every right, I think, at this point to be afraid now. If no human remembered, but my unseen companion did, then he must not be human. I'll admit it, I was a little frightened.


I'm sure you're saying to yourself at this point that anybody can hide in the corner and claim to not be a human, but I somehow knew deep inside that he was telling me the truth. I felt deeply at that moment that he would only ever tell me the truth.


I could have turned and lunged for the double-barrel shotgun hanging over the fireplace, I knew it was loaded with 4-buck. But what, exactly, would I shoot at? The air? What I did was turn slowly and look across the room. The screened window was open halfway. That had to be where he was. The ground fell away from that side of the cabin in a moderate slope. Even a grown man could sit or kneel below the sill and remain out of sight from inside.


“I don't see how it could have been worse than it was described. Whole villages disappeared. Organized agriculture and civilization almost ceased to exist. And what do fire breathing dragons have to do with the plague?”


“Dragons couldn't breath fire, that is a myth. They were mighty creatures. The ability to breathe flames was just an invention of storytellers who never faced a dragon themselves. Any human who ever saw a dragon up close would know a dragon didn't need such gift to be fearsome.”


Intrigued by the calm certainty of these statements, I felt the initial flicker of fear in my chest fade. I stepped over to my chair and sat down facing the window.
“If we are going to discuss mythical creatures as if they could have been real, they couldn't have flown either, not the way they are portrayed in literature. Mister...what shall I call you?”


“You couldn't pronounce my name in my native tongue. It translates in English to 'Valorous Traitor'. Others have called me 'Val'. I don't object to the name.”


“Thank you, Val. I rather like that name. If I may, Who or what are you, and how is it that you come to speak to me in the night?”


“Who or what...exactly the sort of question I would expect from man. You and your kind spend so much time searching for the source of things that you never hear the truth of things. I had hoped you would be different than the rest. Your initial reaction to my voice gave me hope. Perhaps I have made a mistake.”


At the last few words his voice seemed to fade. I had sense that he was departing, I realized I was feeling alone, alone like I had not felt since coming to the cabin. Had Val been with me, unseen all this time? I felt panic. I suddenly did not wish to be left alone. I realized that in the sound of his voice I felt my pain and weariness ebb a little. Now it came slamming back.


“Wait! Don't go! I'm sorry if I offended you! Please stay!”


It must have been only 30 seconds, but it seemed far longer. My pain and fatigue seemed to substitute for vision; sensing Val rather than seeing him. He hesitated some distance away, then turned and drew close to the cabin wall again. I felt the panic fade. I would not make the mistake of asking him to explain himself again.


“As to flying, yes, dragons did indeed fly, though not as often as you might suspect. They traveled by air only when the distance was greater than they could walk in a few days, or when it meant crossing seas. Flying for them was more than just an exercise in aerodynamics, as your aircraft are. For a dragon flying was a way of becoming 'of the air' more than 'of the earth'.”


“I don't understand.”


“Perhaps if you considered the question this way: Why must men have machines to fly?”


“That's simple enough. I can't fly because I am to heavy. Even if I had large enough wings, I can't generate sufficient thrust to get off the ground. Birds are lightly built, with muscles designed for the job, and even they consume huge amounts of energy to power those muscles. A dragon-sized bird would be a case of diminishing returns-to large to fly. I suppose you could say gravity is the problem”


“Ahhh. You look but you do not see. You take every physical approach you can think of to use energy to move through the air in a way that opposes gravity. The dragons knew that this was far to wasteful. Even creatures as patient as dragons would not take thousands of years of suffering and invention to create machines to do such work, not when there was a better way.”


“I am not a believer in magic and, barring that, how could something so heavy fly?”


“How it worked is one of the few things I cannot tell you. Humans who cannot do certain things can usually still understand how those things are done by other humans who can. But to understand how a dragon could fly, you would have to have a dragon's brain. The best you can do is to think of it this way: To walk or to lie down or to run or fly or burrow into the stone of the earth, a dragon only used as much gravity as he needed.”


“You mean dragons could manipulate gravity?”


“I said exactly what I meant. They did not manipulate anything. They only used as much of what was there as necessary for their own purpose, and left the rest. When they flew they used their wings for thrust, not support, for they needed none.”


I believed Val. I couldn't grasp the concept any more than I could grasp the concept of superstring theory (I've tried!), but it just made sense somehow. I wanted to ask Val if he understood how it was done, but this seemed to much like questioning the source, so I sat in silence for a minute or two and tried to imagine what it would really be like to simply fly. To be able, by an effort of will to soar in to the skies.


“OK, I can accept that. Dragons could fly if they wished. They couldn't breathe fire. I notice we are talking of dragons exclusively in the past tense. Am I to assume that Dragons are extinct?”


“We talk of dragons in the past tense because dragons are of the past. When you speak of dragons, though, to say they are extinct is to fall into an entirely human concept of being. Dragons were a creature 'in between', and they could never be entirely any one thing. It is more accurate to say that dragons are no more, that in all the world there are no dragons.”


It seemed strange at this point to feel what I was now feeling: Sadness. Saddened to hear that a creature that I had always believed did not exist, did not exist. Or more accurately: 'was no more'. I said as much to Val:

“That makes me sad. I guess I have always secretly wished that dragons were real.”


“They are 'real'. But you should not feel sadness. Men today, when they think of dragons as anything other than myth, think of them as they were when man was new; that is, indifferent to the affairs of men. I was that way long, long ago. At the end, though, indifference is not what the dragons felt. At the time of the Black Death the dragons were changing, and so were their enemies.”


“Enemies? Dragons had enemies other than men?”


“No creature of this world is without enemies. Even humans fight every day against attackers so small they drift within your own bodies.”


“That's true, I suppose. But if dragons are no more, yet are not extinct, will they ever be again?”


I would answer that question, but first you should hear the whole story of how you almost lost your world. Then you might better appreciate the truth.
You should sleep. You are more tired than you realize. I will return another night, when the time is right and we can speak of dragons again.”


With that I again felt Val become more distant, but this time it was not the departure I had felt before. I realized that I was actually not just tired, but sleepy for the first time in days. I laid down on the cot and was sound asleep in moments.