The Dragon I Met

It's been a while since I've worked on a short story from start to finish, and I feel pretty good about the result. Interestingly enough, I wrote this specifically to NOT be read as part of our original breakout room for my library's 3rd annual Sci-fi/Fantasy Festival. We essentially needed a journal (with some entries) as a prop. We could have conceivably just dug up some random archives, but I guess I was feeling a little more ambitious than that and I wanted to create an actual narrative. I was aiming for a period piece-sounding voice in my narrator, although I fully admit my word choices were based on guesswork instead of research (I was going for flavor, not authenticity). I hope you enjoy it!


Entry One

The Traveler. The Romantics portray him as a seeker of fortune and glory. But they have never been the Traveler. The reality is weeks of blisters, pests, and unending gales of foul weather. Why should one ever become the Traveler? In a word: because. I should very much like to attest my insipid compulsion for travel to any reason other than ‘because’, but alas, no other reason has made itself known to me.

And so I lay on an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar inn, perplexed as to how the cost of such a pallet can validate the mere marginal increase in comfort to that of the wet grass outside.

The people of this village (its name has evaded my recollection, either due to drink or indifference) are a pleasant, if simple, lot. Their jovial folk songs about the many grim ways to die are rather distasteful and not to my liking, but I have to admire the passion with which they discuss the apparently rich and complex topic of gannets and their various nesting rituals.

One particular story that struck my fancy was that of a dragon that allegedly resides in the waters further north. A fairy tale, certainly, but one that captivated its audience (who undoubtedly have heard it many, many times). It seems there was a friend of a friend who encountered the beast amidst the conducive visibility of twilight coupled with the remnants of a few too many. Incontestable evidence; as far as the villagers were concerned. I’d never speak these words out loud at the University, but people truly have an affinity for their demons.


Entry Two

Never before had I anticipated spending an evening at a monastery. The Priest, who I happened upon, took pity (or amusement) at my bedraggled gait as I approached; in all likelihood, my appearance accurately reflected every cursed step I’d taken for the past several hours of hiking.

My overnight stay here has been courtesy of the implicit agreement that I will be assisting with repairs to the ceiling of one or more buildings in the complex. I’ve been searching for any reasonable rationale explaining why I might be ill-suited for such a task, but every thought I’ve had requires blatantly lying to the Priest. I suppose I must accept the burden.

I was fed, for which I’m grateful (and I should leave it at that). The evening conversation which followed was a test of my discipline. I find men of the Cloth a most intimidating sort. Perhaps I sense they have an expectation upon my words, to always return to the topic of Salvation. Or it may be the intensity with which they listen. In all my time at the University, I have never been able to secure the wandering eyes of any audience; but with the clergy, such focus comes readily as an unwanted gift. I found myself painting a portrait of my travels in a much more amiable light than even I expected was possible.

Probably out of defense, I mentioned the story the villagers told me about the underwater creature. To my surprise, the Priest knew precisely what I was talking about. Evidently the water beast makes an appearance in Christian texts as far back as the sixth Century. He told me of Saint Columba, an Irish Monk, who rescued a man swimming in the river from the creature (with the Power of God, of course).

To the educated, this is obviously nothing more than a tale. And when I asked the Priest if he believed the story, he quite proficiently evaded a direct answer. But I saw it in his eyes. The ember. Either he already believed, or some childish fantasy from within demanded he at least not dismiss such a fable.

I can understand why villagers might succumb to their own legends, but for a man of the Cloth to accept something so nonsensical? This intrigues me. Why do we answer the call of mystery encased in myth? Is this a failing of our species? Or is it what can be described as the taste of intellectual Ambrosia that attracts our sensibilities? I must consider this further.


Entry Three

My visit to the University of Aberdeen has been a source of rejuvenation. Founded well over three centuries ago, to what stories must these sacred halls be privy? This Titan of knowledge? This stone Goliath? Oh dear. I fear the fantastical creature to the northwest may be bringing out the Romantic inside me.

Ah, the beast. It pursues me wherever I go in this brave land. Over the past two days I have taken it upon myself to eavesdrop on the idle conversations of the schoolboys, and the beast has entered the exchange no fewer than six times; twice as the subject. Everywhere I travel, the people of all standings and professions assign a degree of respect and fear for the fairy tale of the river.

Perhaps there is some seedling deep within the human soul that falls in love with ancient mammoths. I did not understand this concept until I set foot in this University; my steps echoing through the massive stonework. I was compelled to personify the building itself, attributing a personality to it as that of a gentle giant.

I have thus decided. My journey must indeed take me to the northwest. I should expect to find nothing, and anticipate the detour will be most uneventful. But the prospect of returning home without seeing the birthplace of this fantasy will undoubtedly feel like a slight upon myself in the long term.


Entry Four

It appears this creature of daydreams has cast some manner of spell over everyone I encounter, for I have found no easier conversation to provoke with strangers than she.

Yes, she. I have partially surrendered my understanding of the beast to the various personifications that the people I have met have so passionately expressed. Surely some of them must know in the deepest wells of intellect that she is nothing more than a phantasm. And yet, they love her. And fear her. Perhaps there exists a shade of controlled madness where the two are one and the same.

But whatever this madness is, some call it frivolity, it is most contagious.

The rivers old
Hear tales paroled
Entrenched in vagary
Lest sailors shill
O’er sullen rill
Comprised of bel esprit

How doth she race
Neath stars embrace
Ensnared in apathy
So mercantile
She scouts her mile
Miraged eponymy

O fiend below
Nocturnal’s flow
Surpressed soliloquy
Though veiled in mist
Each gallant kissed
Revives thine majesty

No, dear creature, do not be so presumptuous as to accept this musing as a conversion to you; only an experiment. How do the romantics survive the laws of nature? And why do they exist at all? Does the poet seek the muse, or does the muse seek the poet?

Mere questions with no answers. I shall come for you Dragon.


Entry Five

How best to describe the lake? It is atrocious; there are no two ways about it. Staring as far into the grime as vision will allow (less depth than that of an arm’s span, were I so blindly courageous) I find myself equally confounded and enlightened. The latter in as much as the reinvention of the circumstances surrounding every friend of a friend’s witness to the creature. Should my mind build a serpent out of the various twigs and branches that float by at regular intervals, I expect I would insist they had eyes and a snout. Indeed, the very act of observing the momentum of a landscape painting (and not a very good one) would be more than enough to propel one into a welcomed madness.

It has been several hours, and I fear my impatient impulses have begun to long for the demon of the depths to poke its fantastical skull out of the mire and properly devour me where I sit, just so I may never feel the touch of miasmic dew on my skin again.

Of all the places to which I have traveled, this countryside is the least to my liking. Perhaps it is the result of my own hopeful folly, or perhaps this truly is a purgatory on Earth.

In either case, I’m convinced that the demon beast is the product of discomfort. I have known many attempted maestros and have studied even more. The most common trait shared among them is that of an unrest. What conclusion can be drawn other than a causality between displeasure and inspiration?

In fine, now that I consider this thought, I may have a newfound appreciation for those artisans who produce works of beauty. For if the material components of aesthetics are the mundane and the distasteful, then the poets and sculptors may very well be closer akin to alchemists, transmutating muck into wonder.

I fear I must rest now, and shall do so away from the surveillance of your domain. Fare thee well creature of the deep. Your secrets remain yours alone.


Entry Six

My heart is heavy. I happened upon one of the larger villages at a time when the marketplace was at its highest degree of bustle, when my attention was captured by a simple father and his young daughter. At first I thought her to be much too grown for her father to be carrying her through the crowded area, but I soon came to realize that her legs were no longer functional. Owing to an illness (I pieced together her narrative from the ensemble of conversations had with and about her) she would never walk again, and likely would not live into womanhood.

It was just next to the flower seller that the creature made its appearance. An acquaintance of the family greeted father and child with a previously unheard tale of a friend of a friend who nearly bumped into the beast’s massive tail while traveling beside the lake at night. The child’s face awakened with excitement, and she no doubt would have kicked her feet in giddiness were she able.

She turned to her father for confirmation on the story’s validity, to which he answered in the only way that he would allow himself; of course the story was true, every single word. She asked if some day they could travel to the river themselves and see the creature. Her father said in no uncertain terms that they could. And I am truly grateful that the tone of his endorsement was lost on her. She would never leave her village and her father knew it. But the promise itself was enough. She felt more joy from the prospect of the journey than the actual visit ever could have provided her.

I knew there and then if she had taken notice of me and asked me directly if I believed the creature was real, I would have told her it was. I would have recounted my detour to the waters earlier in the year, for the sole purpose of seeing the beast, and I would have told the girl the truth.

I had indeed seen the creature.

Not with my eyes, but with my heart. I’d seen the creature in her eyes, and in the tales of those who I’d met in my travels, and in the hopes of those who believed that their beloved gentle giant should grace their dreams with a glimpse that only they were meant to see.

I would never have clarified myself past the revelation that the creature exists, and I would never have felt as though I’d deceived her in any way. In the end, there are some things that matter more than fact. Fact exists in the world of perception. Ideas exist in the mind.

It is the mind that colors the journey of facts, processes them, and makes them bearable. In some rare cases it may be ideas that bring those without hope to life. Yes, the creature exists. It exists as a carefully constructed idea in and from the minds of many, and will continue to do so. I should surrender that the world of facts is all the better for it.