Dragon Fly
I
Once upon a time, so long ago that it is out-of-memory now, in a land so far away that it no longer exists, there lived a prince who was ousted from his kingdom for being a pretender to the throne. When no one stood up with him to honor his claim, the Prince left his kingdom with a heavy heart. He spent years alone looking for another kingdom to conquer, a kingdom he could rule without surrender. The Prince trudged through the Forest of Dreams for years until one portentous day when he met a dragon. Having himself been raised by a dragon he was not alarmed at this meeting. He felt himself immediately drawn to her. The Dragon, having lived alone since she was very young, did not know that she was a dragon. There had been no mirrors in the Enchanted Forest where she lived so she had never seen herself. And Mother Nature had covered her ears with an impervious shell-like skin to protect her, so she would not be frightened by her own sounds when she was old enough to know her own roar.
II
The Prince courted the Dragon for merely a day, and the Dragon who had never known company or affection in the Enchanted Forest, fell immediately under his spell. Witnessed by the trees of the forest the Prince and the Dragon pledged their troth to one another and began living their spellbound life together. For their home the Prince hammered together a yurt and the Dragon, completely unaware of her gifts, transformed the yurt into a citadel. The Dragon was buoyant as she adorned the walls with colors that pleased her Prince, bedecking each of his rooms with the flowers that he most savored. Each day the Dragon found new ways to show the Prince her devotion.
III
Each day the Prince went off into the wilderness of the Forest of Dreams to hunt and gather, to bring back essentials that he would oversee for their little chateau. Each evening the Dragon turned these supplies into edible little delights for him. Each day as he left he turned his burnished silver key in the lock, promising the Dragon that he would soon return. Each day the Dragon waited alone for his return, lonelier than she had been in the Enchanted Forest where she had known no company at all. Each day when the key turned in the lock at night her heart skipped a beat in anticipation of his return. But the Prince did not always return each day that he left.
IV
The Prince often returned to their little chateau to the Dragon bemoaning her solitude. But all the Prince heard of this was the roar that soared out of her snout, drowning out all else in the Forest of Dreams. One day, no longer able to tolerate the bewailing of the Dragon, the Prince pushed the walls of the chateau with his mighty arms until it stretched out to become a fortress. He knew that the fortress would allow more rooms between him and the lamenting Dragon. The Dragon was ecstatic to have a new home to adorn, filling it with all manner of distractions that the Prince fancied. She soon turned the fortress into a castle as only she could do. But, alas, the Castle was only a larger chateau, still desolate in its expansion.
V
Each year the Prince made a bigger castle, and each year the Dragon became engrossed in making it a home. Each year brought bigger trinkets and brighter baubles to adorn each expanding room, the Dragon falling down weary at the end of each long day. But eventually the Prince no longer came to take pleasure in her labors, just as he had not done many times before. The Dragon sat by the elegant windows of her castle, looking out for the returning Prince who did not always return. In her despair the Dragon would roar until the walls of the Castle fell. But living alone she had become as blind as she had been deaf, and could not see the way to walk back out through the fallen walls into the Enchanted Forest. Or to use the bright golden key that Mother Nature had hung around her neck for every escape.
VI
Each day the Prince’s burnished silver key no longer turned in the majestic front doors of the Dragon’s Castle. One fateful day as the key turned in the lock long past nightfall, the Prince entered to the roaring of the Dragon. But there was no sound coming forth from her open jaw. Instead, flames shot out of her snout: cardinal red and honeyed yellow, bright turquoise and haunting emerald. Flames that hit the door where he stood and burned it to cinders in an instant. The Prince turned and ran, hiding in the Forest of Dreams to save himself. The Dragon continued to roar fire until the stone walls around her had all crumbled, continued roaring until the stones themselves had turned to dust. And still she could not stop roaring as she finally heard herself. She was heartbroken.
VII
Each day the Dragon waited for her Prince to return, but after the last ghastly day he had come home to her flames, he never returned. She waited, the tears rolling down her scales and burning them, leaving her pink flesh exposed to whatever came at her in the Enchanted Forest during the night. She waited, crying until the triangle plates fell off her back one by one, and she did not even know herself to be a Dragon. Her tears congealed around her weaving a cocoon of white timelessness. She did not know how long she stayed in the whiteness, but surely it was many years.
VIII
Inside the whiteness she learned of her past in the Enchanted Forest and the creatures that had turned her into a dragon. She learned why she had become a dragon and that being deaf and blind were the only ways for a dragon like her to survive. She learned the art of holding on to herself, and letting go of everything else. She learned that she was more than enough: beautiful enough, capable enough, healed enough. And when she had learned all that she needed to, she decided to come out of her cocoon.
IX
She struggled against the congealed tears, but there were no scales or spines to cut through the tough cocoon. So she let go of the struggle to be free. Anon, she felt the struggling of her wings, much lighter than she had remembered them to be. She broke free of the enchanted dark whiteness, and alighted upon a low branch close to the ground. She was no longer in the Enchanted Forest, but on a tree overlooking a small pond in Griffith Park. She flapped her wings, taking off into the air. She skimmed the pond, thinking she saw her prince; but there squatted on a lily pad only a familiar looking frog.
X
The Butterfly, for that she was now as she had been before her life in the Disenchanted Forest, saw her reflection in the pond. The golden borders of her wings, embellished by the hues of her flames, spread a mile wide above the trees; the colors of her flames finally encompassed and untainted through her own efforts. With a joyful smile she took off into the Sun filled azure sky.
