When Dragons Lay PART 2 of 5

Rite of Passage: a Fantasy in 5 Parts

Jul 02, 2025

FROM PART 1:

Once, on a day that was bright and made one assume everything else in the world was shiny and bright as well, she crawled onto his back, the most inciting thing one could do to a dragon. Someone positioned on his back was the only way he could be slain, of course. That is, no face-to-face confrontation would go well for a confronter. Even if the assailant were lucky enough to drive a sword deep between his eyes, it would breach his inner primitive mind and release the inferno vapors to create hellscape. The dragon-slayer would know immediately what the vivisectionists had learned as their final lesson in life. There would be no winners.

No, to survive slaying a dragon required a shameless ambush of an attack from its backside, to drive the deep plunge of a sword between his shoulder blades deep enough to reach his obsidian heart.

Ezzie, astride, laughed, but a spinal reflex originating deep in the primitive dragon's brain twitched her off as cattle do flies.

No, no, pretty little gnat, off of me. But why? Because it is the position for dragon-slay. Even from me, your little gnat? From anyone. Oh, Dragon, I would never dragon-slay. Perhaps, little gnat, but dragon-slay is when dragons lay.

She slid down the final scales to the ground, her feelings wounded, no less than a dragon-slay, she felt, except it was a type of cut from a dull-bladed sword--though just as deep.

Don't you trust me, Dragon? she asked. I do. But only up to a point, right, Dragon? She had learned the concept of limits and she found boundaries painful. He felt her pain of rejection, no longer sequestered--to just her--as their communication was always empathetic.

No, little gnat. I trust you. All the way, Dragon? Yes, all the way, Ezzie. Then may I?

Just asking gave him another chance to reconcile those limits and a chance at redemption for how he had cut her with the dull-bladed sword. He suppressed his reflex and muscle memory.

Yes, please. Quickly, now child, before I change my mind.

She hand-over-hand grasped the rising scales of his long tail, almost flying, singing happily the entire journey while his black heart lightened a dozen shades. Soon she had resumed her position.

They won't dare attack a dragon with me on your back. Ha! they won't even see you, little gnat. But I want you to take me home, unless you go there without me. Why would I go without you, Ezzie? To burn them, Dragon, of course. Why? For throwing me away. We don't know what happened, Ezzie. No, we don't, but they do and they haven't come for me...so they don't want me. It seems they're happy with what they did and how it turned out. They never wanted me! I was set out here for a dragon to gobble. But I didn't do that, gnat. No, Dragon, you didn't; you're one of the good ones.

After a pause, I'm the only one, he said in fatalistic hot pokers she felt in her mind.

The only dragon left, he continued, the last of our line, for there is no female.

There was a pause.

Dragon, I know dragons to live forever. Yes, they do, Ezzie. Then why are you the last? Did they all die? Yes, Ezzie. But how is that possible when dragons live forever? No, gnat, not if you kill them. He regarded her tenderly.

I have learned the beauty and specialness of what the female is and what she means. The Creator is a hermaphroditic being, cleaved into male and female. It is the longing for them--to rejoin--that makes them ache when apart, that makes life without the other empty and ridiculous; and that makes them God when they join again.

He knew she didn't understand. He wasn't quite sure himself, but he felt the tugs on his heartstrings knowing that if he were to be slain, it would be as if dragons had never been. He was sure that females were holy and special. And joining with them meant apotheosis, a word that explained it so much better than how he expressed it.

You're alone, too, like me, she whimpered pathetically.

And then she cried, and he loved her for it, because it was suffering he saw, coming to him, when usually any suffering he celebrated came from him.

The years passed, but he knew she was approaching that "human" age when she would become fully woman, with hopes and dreams and expectations and a longing to be God-like. And he knew none of it necessarily had to include him.

The forest remained theirs alone. The game they hunted was theirs alone. The time each day was theirs alone, but for her, it was no longer enough.

One day...

Take me home, Dragon! You haven't disturbed me with that request in the longest time, little gnat. Does it disturb you? It used to, gnat. Why? Because some things are left undisturbed. So, it's not disturbing if it's undisturbed? Yes, the beast replied. Dragon, those are two meanings forced into one with not enough room for the two of them; they circle upon themselves to mean nothing. Gnat, not meaning to do something doesn't mean it's meaningless. Oh, now you play with me, with words, and with the sentiments with which they haunt me, Dragon. So this is to be our discussion, our arrival at a decision--contradictions? Nonsense? Meaningless meanings? Before, when I said you could go with or without me; now I say I can go with or without you.

He reared up his scaly head to look at her, straight down into his folded wings where she was snuggled in her favorite position. Their conversations without tongues also meant eyes were not needed. But he needed to look at her--into her eyes--now.

Gnat, he said, I tell you now that you are right that you weren't wanted. Dragon, you have knowledge kept from me? Yes, little gnat. She struggled against him unnecessarily for show, jerking this way and that, climbing out of his wing's embrace as roughly as she could. Her indignance was loud and clear. She slid to the ground. And why have you alone been privy?

Now she spoke with words, articulating sharply, out loud. "Tell me, Dragon. Leave nothing out."

The dragon became flustered, and he let her know it by exploding a large tree beside them, incinerating it. She didn't flinch. They sat for an hour as the large tree was consumed, sparking and popping until it looked like a crooked bituminous stick black as pitch. Do you, beast, think that's the only thing that explodes? We each burn, do we not? Now tell me, Dragon. Leave nothing out, she repeated sternly. He was silent.

"Tell me now!" she vocalized sharply. Forcefully and loud.

TO BE CONTINUED…PART 3