Dragon Magic

“Once,” said Sarah, no, Tara thought, Serryah, her name is Serryah, “when mankind still dwelt in its infancy, dragons dominated the skies, and stepped lightly upon the earth. I say we stepped lightly. Perhaps this is not entirely so. If we injured unknowingly, if we destroyed, from time to time, those who seemed smaller to us, and less significant, I must believe it was not with ill intention. I must believe we were less evil than careless. We house our bodies beneath the soil, but our eyes are ever turned upwards.

“For you see, we have a great fascination with the stars, and with the sky. No, it is more than mere fascination. We hunger for them. We yearn. I cannot explain it better than this. Our philosophers wondered if our nature, our abilities, your kind might say our magic, was tied into this relationship. I do not know. I only know that even I, who has lived so long among humans cannot help but feel pity. To be so earthbound…” Serryah stopped short, and inclined her head towards Tara. “I am sorry,” said the dragon.

“You should not be,” said Tara. “We cannot help but be earthbound. We work the earth. We were born so.”

“We thought so also, for a time,” said Serryah. “We were so busy looking at the stars, that we didn’t see the infants growing on the insignificant earth beneath us, didn’t see them rise and change, didn’t seem them look to the skies, as we looked, and yearn as we yearned.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tara. “Humans are as we ever were.”

“No,” said Serryah, “no, once you were so much more.” She tipped her great head to the sky, and did not speak for a long moment, as though she were burrowing deep within her many, aged thoughts for the proper response. One moment stretched to ten. Tara waited, watching her dragon watch the movements of the clouds above, and the sun in its daily path, and perhaps a dozen other things Tara could not imagine, and she thought, She is doing it, even now. Finally, Serryah said, “I could not help but admire. You destroyed my civilization, unknowingly, I believe, but destroyed us nonetheless, driving us deep beneath the ground. Where we were arrogant, you were violent, but it was not man’s violence that destroyed us. It was his creativity. While we saw the sky and reached for it, man saw the sky and drew it downwards. Did you know,” said Serryah, “that your turbine was once one among many, among thousands, among millions?”

“I cannot believe it,” said Tara.

“A peculiar human idiosyncrasy, disbelief,” said Serryah, “and yet it is so, nonetheless. Imagine your streetlamps multiplied. Imagine buildings the size of your town, buildings that grew so high they seemed to pierce the heavens. Buildings covered with lights like your single street lamp.”

Tara tried. “I cannot,” she said.

“I know,” said Serryah. “And yet it was so. It was quite remarkable. Something about these things contributed to the destruction of my race and still I cannot help myself. From the air, you see, it appeared that the humans had brought the sky to earth. It was magnificent.” Serryah barked a little, deep in her throat. A laugh, perhaps. “I see you now, wallowing in the dirt…” she did not finish this sentence, but merely sighed. “I do it again. I am sorry.”

“I do not offend easily, especially in the face of something I can hardly imagine,” said Tara.

“You are good,” said Serryah.

“I don’t know,” said Tara. “Maybe I am honest.”

“It is the same thing,” said Serryah. “Everything the humans did, it was all powered by turbines. Turbines like yours. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Tara. “I work the turbines, like everyone else. I understand them as best as I am able.”

“This is my greatest hope,” said Serryah. “You are a human. You share the blood of the turbine creators. Perhaps somewhere you hide an understanding of their technology that I will always lack, like somewhere, the last of the dragon magic resides in me.”

“Technology?” said Tara.

“Your people had no magic, as we do. They were forced to create their own. Like the turbines. And the lamps, that come on in the evenings, but don’t rely on fire. Human magic.”

“I think I understand.”

“It destroyed our own. We began to fall to the earth. At first, there were those among us who believed the falls to be isolated occurrences, merely the careless acts of individual dragons who confused one sky for another. But soon, we all fell, and could not fly again. Unable to fly, many of my kind began to burrow, deep within the earth. They thought, if they placed some distance between themselves and the unknown harm they might outlast it. We outlasted so much, in the past. It was not to be. We died off, one by one.”

“Except you,” said Tara.

“Except me,” said Serryah.