Where I Was From

Dragons

My mother called to ask me why people believe in dragons. I said I ought to be able to help her out since I went to the Renaissance Faire yesterday, but in all honesty, after a total of three visits to two different Faires so far in life, I still have no idea why these places exist. I'm mostly there to stalk the harpist and buy jewelry.

The most likely explanation I could find for the invention of dragons in so many ancient cultures was that komodo dragons with steaming breath in the cold might have inspired some overactive imaginations - makes sense enough in Asia, but what about the Europeans? I don't think there were any large reptiles in Europe back when dragons were more than just an inspiration for bad flash tattoos. Maybe they were entirely fabricated threats to distract from the real threat of human invasion: Visigoths and all that. Maybe people need an embodiment of evil crawling out there in the dark so they can disown the fact that we're all quite capable of doing horrible things. Maybe we're not up to breathing fire and eating knights out of their armour like silver lobsters, but isn't it so much easier to hate something that is all evil, all the time, than to think your own friends might turn around and hurt you?

This came up last night, long before the phone call, when I sighted an old nemesis at a movie theater. I hadn't seen her in the flesh in seven years and the real drama between us all ended something like two and half ago, but the sight of her made my pulse literally quicken. I turned away so she wouldn't spot me. I was actually afraid of somebody who hasn't even been physically present in my life since the New Orleans fiasco when I was eighteen.

This is how it feels to watch for dragons. So what if she's just a former romantic rival who might not even bear the grudge any longer? All I really know is that a dishonest man we both once loved used to tell me vicious half-truths about her, and I'm sure he told her similar fictions about me. She might envision me breathing fire, too.

posted by Leah @ 4:31 PM