Of course most of us do not have either the apparatus or inclination to nurse a human child. We are mostly reptilian, serpentine, not given to Mother’s milk, but as many of you know we she-dragons possess powerful magic.
If a dragon wishes she may allo-lactate with some perseverance and even one distant mer-mother or griffin in the family.
You will need to consult charts and checklist for nursing in appendix b.
The dragon sighed. Sounded complicated.
Smash something?
Use words
Strong as stone
Words like justice and naked
Truth
Heavy as the grave
Turn and face
The monster of loss
Spectral hunger
For a fame without weight
Women sell their souls
Like dogs in the broad daylight
We will not survive;
Our souls might
Is a cage
Bars of iron and carbon
Our bones and the teeth of
The dragon who bore us
Sown into earth
Dust we are and dust we shall be
Through the steel barrier
Of memory
We eye freedom in chains
And paw at the irretrievable arrow
In our ribcage
It started with the baby tossing a new testament into the toilet. It went downhill from there. Everyone has times when they feel hopeless, when they feel lost. I write this, but I don’t know, some people seem pretty darn self-confident.
Sigh.
Sometimes I wish I could unspool things, undo them, un-live them. I cannot, so instead I write about them to attempt to make sense of them. Sometimes it goes so dark even writing feels futile–no one is listening, no one cares
About what? Inappropriate magazines at grocery checkouts. So bad I avoid taking my kids to the store. I complained, others have complained. The magazines got worse. The store is owned by Christians
About what? My son looked for his favorite PBS show on yahoo video and was sent to a page with two clips from the show and an array of hard core porn. I complained but what good will it do?
Really. I believe that no child in this country should be exposed to porn of any kind and I feel like a voice in the wilderness.
This is an election year. Is anybody listening? Does anyone care? Our children are not safe in the grocery store, at church, looking for educational shows in their own homes. Our children are not safe.
Oh, and the new testament? Jesus descended into hell before for me. He knows the territory. He knows what He is doing.
He knows this stuff hurts…
Like hell.
Introduction
Greetings, my name is Naga Proserpina Doxia but please, call me Auntie Naga or even Auntie P. We dragon folk can be a cantankerous and saturnine bunch. I aim to change that, I am to change a lot of things.
That was how the good book started. The Dragoness flipped through it’s pages looking at chapter headings, the intricate illustrations and diagrams, pages with neatly organized lists of things: this treasure trove of information.
It was as though Auntie P had anticipated this very situation– the lone haunt, the solitary dragon, the sleeping infant. The world entire.
When she found it she knew. The title (poorly translated from the Greek) was “The Draconian Guide to Raising Humans”
Now, while the Dragon herself felt that Draco was a positive figure in the aggregate history of human government, she was not sure how his stringent moral law would help her find nourishment for a baby.
So she was vastly and conspicuously relieved when she opened the book (only slightly singed) and found original talon-drawn illustrations and a surprisingly maternal self-portrait of the author–Naga P. Doxia. It appeared that this esteemed authoress and dragoness had pioneered a little known and even less understood movement to foster understanding and community between dragons and humans.
Dame Naga had put forth the idea that when human population experienced paroxysms of orphanage, dragons should fill the gap. This was a controversial prospect from the outset. The dragon communities felt that their benevolence would be mistaken for usurpage or worse yet, kidnapping. They were a solitary and cloistered folk, and the scrutiny and prospect of intrusion and misunderstanding filled them with a grim and slithery fear.
And the humans? They took immediate and vociferous umbrage at the idea entirely!
Yet, Doxia had persevered, doggedly pursuing her trifold goals of fostering understanding, writing about her passion, and adopting actual human children. It was the last of course which drove and illuminated the others.
It was a thoroughly engrossing read.
Several soft blankets
Bolts of fabric of varies types and weights
Several sets of ornate nesting dolls
A compass and a globe
Several deep rugs and tapestries
A silver brush
None of this seemed to quite fit the need of the moment. What did this tiny child need now? Surely not a compass or a brush or even nesting dolls. He needed to nest like a tiny bird. He needed to be held and loved. But sometime quite soon he would need nourishment. What would she do about that? What else would she need to provide for him?
She continued to search through the things she had gathered. Finally she found the scrolls, the books which lay in a haphazard pile next to several piles of doubloons and other coinage scavenged mostly through dim sun-spooked dives into the wreckage of ships downed by storms, rocks and buccaneers.
Books. This would take some time. Could she find some treatise or guide about raising this small child?
She would need to find something quickly. She began to sort through the books, careful to breath slowly, as softly as possible so that she would neither disturb the child nor singe the books.
The dragon was aware of her deficiencies–her reptile bulk, her scaly and inhospitable limbs. She had fierce clawed mitts where a Mother’s hands should be. At best she was barely adequate for the task of parenting a human child. While the little one slept in the crook of her arm she began to search through her vast piles of objects for anything that might help her to nourish and sustain this tiny child whom she already loved deeply.
She knew what it meant to live a thousand years. She could see beyond the curve of each horizon.
As with all dragons, she was a searcher and until the child changed the focal point of her immaculate sight, she wandered to and fro collecting the glinting treasure others failed to see.
She looked in unexpected places. It was never enough. No matter how much or how costly the gleaning, once acquired it only served to remind her of her empty soul, her brooding heart.
Until the child…
Carrying Light 