A short segment from "Metheous Sighs"... where we meet the dragon siblings, Trask, Husht and Whisk.

Three Little Dragons

Three tiny drakes tottered unsteadily behind a large green dragon. A smaller version of the large dragon walked with an increasingly firm gait, occasionally catching up with and bopping into the ancient one’s lumbering back legs. Each time he would emit a little grunt or growl, a bark of some type. When the little male wasn’t running into his father’s legs he could be heard making a soft trilling.

The mighty dragon’s massive tail swept to and fro over the tiny trio, the wind ruffling their still wet wings, as they journeyed away from the site of their hatching. Bits of shell lay drying in the morning sun.

A line of humans gathered the shell and carried it up a large hill, following a winding path that circled around and around up to a complex of stone circles and structures. Some of the Tall Ones would softly rise above the ground and float smoothly upwards to the peak, thus bypassing the labyrinthine pathway.

The second little dragon in line wore a bit of shell on the top of his pointy yellow head. His eyes were each a different color, his wings a bright coppery red, torso a sparkling gold, his chest and crest a gleaming white. His attention constantly captured by birds taking flight or bits of leaf tossing about on the breeze, the rustling noise in the great oaks to one side, the leaping of rabbits as they scurried into hiding places, unsure of their status with the hatchlings. It seemed that wherever his eyes looked, that is where his legs would turn.

Many of the rabbits looked out of their warrens and boltholes, from beneath hawthorne trees or low shrubs. One, bolder than the rest, moved onto the path where the dragons passed. He watched the large dragon walk away and turned to gaze sadly in the direction of the Tor before returning to his tribe. Slowly the rest of the rabbits joined him on the green grass. No one jumping, no one playing, no one really did anything.

The third little dragon in line, pale blue with streaks of sapphire, did not want to be third in line. The graceful little blue only stayed, it seemed, to keep track of the wanderer, nipping at the colorful brother’s flanks and heels nudging him back in line behind their father. The blue dragon chased back and forth with its tiny wings spread out, helping to maintain balance.

At the base of the hill, a tall, taller than most, very slim human stood holding a staff of yew. A snow white owl circled above him. The bird landed gently at the top of the staff, without a whisper or tremor. It seemed that the others could not or would not see them. At his side lay a large sapphire blue dragon, very still.

The tall one, pale and white himself, spun his hand in intricate design and wove the tip of the yew staff in a circular pattern, sending the white bird into a tight spiral around the dragon.

At the same moment, a gateway of stone appeared in the side of the Tor and the stillness of death left the draconian form. She rose up and turned to watch her children as they walked away from where she had lain. It is widely known that dragons do not cry, so it is an unexplained phenomenon as to where the water came from, dripping from her beneath her eyes.

Standing below her, three women in white robes and flowing gowns held large chalices that caught the water.

With a soft touch, the tall man laid his hand on her shoulder. With a deep sigh, the once mighty dragon turned and entered the gate, walking slowly into the cavern. Without the tall man noticing, the tallest of the women in white spoke secretly in the dragon’s ear. “Trust,” the woman said, “Faith.”

As they walked out of sight into the Tor, the group never looked back. And as the four dragons walked out of sight of the Tor only the little green one stopped and looked around, as if hearing something. His blue scaled brother caught up to him and nipped at his nose to turn him about.

“Acsk!” barked the little green. “Sssht!” spat the blue and then scampered off to find the wanderer.

One more glance around and the green turned and stumbled in a rush to catch up with his father, who walked slowly with his head down, low to the ground. A trail of small pools of water marked the path that the ancient guardian of the Albion forests took away from, away from…

*************

Many winters passed, summers too. Penwick seemed to remember only the cold days. In the evenings he would settle in the midst of a circle of standing stones and breathe fire into them. The little green one would already be at his side, always there, and together they would lie down. A slim blue form would drop silently out of the sky, catching for a moment the heat and thermal currents rising from the warming stones, hesitating in the air a moment longer. The wanderer would come strolling in when tired enough. All night long the stones would return the heat keeping them warm, the dragons and the tall folk that had taken to walking with them.

Penwick did not mind the entourage; in fact he barely noticed them most of the time. They had to be quick and flit and jump to avoid being accidentally flicked by a careless wing snap or flattened by a thoughtless tail twitch. Penwick seemed to be partly missing, as if he no longer felt complete.

The folk could often be found playing with the younglings. The green earth drake they all called Tr’ acsk especially delighted them and he followed them about while they tended the trees and plants and crops. He would always help them clear new areas for seeds or bring down old trees to give space to new saplings. True he was clumsy, but he was still young and small so that no one really gave it a thought. Though many tried, no one, not even Penwick, could teach him grace.

The soaring blue air drake seemed to have inherited all the grace of their mother. Blue did not know this. Blue noticed the stumbling of the green brother quite often and did not know what to make of it. In later times, the blue dragon would speculate that somehow the green brother had not fully developed in the egg. In truth, none of the three fully developed in their eggs. Their mother spent the last of her vital force to spark them to life. She died before they completed the process. There were, in fact, potential changes in store for each of them that only their mother’s energy could cause.

Blue would land in the evening feeling the warmth of the circle, watching the humans separate off into groups near individual stones, families of men and women and boys and girls. Blue would often distribute food to them all, fish pulled from the cold and distant sea to the west. Father would scold Blue if he felt the youngling dragon flew too far to the west, but Penwick did enjoy the large ocean fish that came from that region of the planet.

“Not too far west!” Penwick would say sternly. “It is against the agreement of the council to inhabit the western lands; it is the land of the second men. The New Men.”

Blue did not know what their father meant by “council” or the difference between the humans that were with them and the “new” humans. Penwick was not given to elaboration on the subject. Thus the blue dragon would sometimes spiral high above the Isles and gaze off to the setting sun lands wondering, “What is there?” or “Who is there?”  “Do they think about us the way I think about them?” And sometimes a thermal updraft would catch under the sky blue wings and spiral the young dragon higher than normal. At those rare moments it seemed like a voice could be heard, higher above, at the reaches of the atmosphere, talking in words not easily understood…

Penwick would teach. The Tall Ones would gather at night with the dragons in the circle. On the new moons, Penwick would speak of beginnings. How Gaia came to life and how she created Dragons. How another great planetary being from far off joined with Gaia and how their joining brought heat and water and the thought of life. How Gaia herself spun from the father Sol and how sister moon spun from Gaia’s own joining. He would speak of the rise of life and the world tree that once covered the land and still lived in the earth in a form much different from those primal days. He would tell of time passing and how things change and of how the only thing they could all rely on was that things change and pass. He spoke of the changes of the past and changes of the future. At times he would speak of changes in the present, during their lives and his own. Often the teachings ended there. Penwick’s mind would become still and quiet. The gathering would silently move to their private spaces to contemplate all that he revealed.

On the full moons, Penwick would speak of endings. He would tell of times past when Dragons and Gaia spoke to each other freely, of times when all dragons knew all dragons. He would speak of the first humans and the two brothers. He would tell of the way that desire brought about a war. He would tell of the death of dragons and the great sacrifice that one gave to return others to life, only to fade and change and pass away from life. He would speak of the flood that washed away the scars of dragon fire and nearly the remnant of the First Men as well. He would speak of dragons now gone or missing, he would speak of Tethys and her ocean. Penwick would speak of the might of love that changed two into one and the exile of the one into the ice.

In truth, no one much understood the tales as they were told. In the retelling the humans added much in their attempt to understand. All around the world similar moments occurred and the humans could be forgiven for not telling the tales as they truly happened. The chronicles and histories appeared difficult for the dragons to tell, for the dragons were long lived and the pain of the events still lay close to them all. For Penwick, fresh pain made it all sharper.

Tr’acsk would sit or lay in the curve of his father’s forelimbs. Often he would drift to sleep before the tales were told. Blue would sit facing forward, still and alert, searching the nuances with growing thought in a mighty brain, committing every detail to memory. Sometimes, during moments of drama or description of fearsome events, the humans nearby would stir and raise their voices. Blue then turned steadily and with smooth grace, casting a cold eye in their direction and say, “Hss, Sssht!” Instantly silence would reign save for the deep rolling voice of the Ancient Dragon as he wove the spell of the gift of story.

The wanderer never missed these moments, but always stayed to the outer edges of the stone circle. Often he would sit outside the circle itself, silent in the dark. The absence of light on the new moon nights gave him anonymity and disguised his changing scales. He felt no embarrassment by it. His changing colors were a source of questions and mystery, however, and he tired of the same comments over and over. Already the three siblings witnessed several generations of humans come and go and each new child would learn about him and seek him out, the Rainbow Dragon. Stories were told based on his past coloration and legends grew and died. He grew weary of it all and as they all grew older his brothers taught the humans afresh not to comment on him. The humans still did comment. In truth, he felt apart from the others because of his changing colors. He did not call it embarrassment.

So it came about that he kept to himself, avoiding others to avoid the comments. The humans often said you could only know the presence of the wanderer by the whisking noise of the breeze as he swiftly flew away.

*************

Centuries flew by and the world changed little for the three siblings. They grew larger and ranged farther, meeting the uncles and aunts and sometimes cousins. Always they would be welcomed, always they would be loved, and always they would feel different, apart from what they perceived as normal for Dragoncy. It wasn’t what others said, but what they did not say that made them feel this way.

Early on Trask simply stopped asking questions. This made everyone more comfortable and then fun happened easily.

Early on Husht learned to sit in high places and be very still, listening.

Whisk learned that if he could get everyone talking about a lot of different subjects someone somewhere might let something slip.

The question they always wanted answered yet learned never to ask, “What happened to our mother?”

Early on the three siblings stopped seeking an answer to the question.

*************

And as decades and centuries turned into millennia, and as the New Men spread unchecked across the earth with their small wars and large reflecting the broken energies of Dragoncy, and as the First Men knew less and less of the energy of life and grew smaller and smaller in stature to prolong their days, the three dragon brothers stumbled and wandered and stayed above it all, avoiding the new humans when possible, protecting the First Men of old and the Giants when necessary.

And life found a way the way it always does and life went on, seemingly unchanged, until one day, when Metheous sighed…