The Dragon

 

 

Moros sat alone, more or less, in his cell.  The whitewashed walls of his former self gazed steadily back at him with intensity, and a complete lack of compassion comparable to that with which a child might fry scrambling ants with a magnifying glass.  The young boy he shared the room with smiled shyly when his heavy gaze turned on him. Moros’ impassioned, consuming dusk-blue eyes reflected the frightened, furtive stare of the boy whose life he had helped to reinforce.

It would be slightly unfair to describe this boy, Sawol, as lanky, since that would be far too stout a description for him.  Skeletal.  That seemed to sum up the shaky state of his young appearance, almost too well.

Moros had been, in the very least, cautious in taking the room offered by the cunning staff members of the juvenile detention facility.  He had been forced, through a great misunderstanding, to relinquish his freedom of dress and other such revered privileges to which he had become accustomed.  He dismissed the offered notion that it had been because of his rather objectionable lending of a writing utensil to another felon.  He preferred instead that it was a careful conspiracy to blemish his otherwise pristine inmate record.

Besides, the idea of helping a young boy who had tried – and likely would try again – to take his own life was unsettling to him.  He had been a roommate for three days.  That first night had been cloyingly tense.  Moros had constantly wondered whether his unstable companion would suddenly force his head through the bars at the foot of the galvanized bed frame, and flip himself over, snapping his neck and journeying on to the next plane.  Though it took several hours, Moros eventually gripped his thoughts and convinced himself that it would be a very long three days if all he did was envision the gruesome methods by which this frail lad might do himself mortal damage.

An hour or two into their internment together, Moros simply nudged the boy aside, ignoring the startled, fearful stare it warranted, and dealt out cards for what he assumed would be a very quick game of Gin Rummy, providing he could wheedle his roommate into the game.  Tactless though it seemed, even as the words came from his mouth, Moros said, “If you’re going to kill yourself, you might at least have the decency to wait until I’ve gone.” 

Wincing at the callous sound of his own voice, he amended his statement with, “Gin Rummy?”  His voice had somehow metamorphosed into something akin to that annoyingly cheerful 7-11 clerk just pouring a cup from their 5^th pot of coffee.

Startlingly enough, it worked. 

He managed to find out that the boy was a rather interesting fellow, who was merely going through one of those adolescent phases or other.  Sawol did not actually have the courage to end his life just yet.  Subsequently, Moros began to teach him every gambling technique he could image, in hopes of building his confidence. 

That is how Moros spent the remaining three days of his one hundred fifty five day sojourn in the wonderful world of high-security detention.  They played cards, listened to music over their intercom, and bullshitted – mostly about girls, since Moros had not seen one for some time.

At six a.m., January the 29^th, Moros would leave the facility after his trying stay, and oddly enough, with rather mixed emotions.  He had vowed to himself never to take life for granted again – his or anyone else’s, regardless of the multitude of statistics one might stack-up to indicate otherwise.  During his time in the pokey, he had managed to find parts of himself that he previously ignored, or had been forced to suppress by his seventeen years of parental conditioning. 

It came as quite a shock that he had not done so well as he thought at surpassing that conditioning.  He learned, as a matter of course, that there are things he is frightened of, things he is proud of, things he is ashamed of, and a host of other things, each as much a part of him as the limbs he controlled.  The knowledge or awareness of those things had been somehow missing from his life before.

Perhaps the oddest was the discovery that he was more than a little agitated over rejoining society.  Well… perhaps frightened would be a more appropriate description, he admitted, though his still-surviving ego struggled with that description.  It seemed his ego was still a bit pissed at him for breaking it down and ignoring it over the past five months.

He thought he would surely feel out of place in a carefree environment again.  What’s more, he felt genuinely unable to ignore the emotions that sought to override his ego and control him in a significantly changed, fascist manner.  He often wondered whether each emotion might be regarded as a different personality, making him feel rather schizoid.  That was usually when he remembered that the state’s team of psychoanalysts that drilled him for the reasons of his violent outburst said that he was, after all, safe to be at large.

No one understood him, and no one would try.  Thus, his grin stretched thin with the savage look of survival lurking deep in his eyes.  Yes, he had survived he decided, ignoring the likelihood that it was just his ego poking around again.  Yet, it wasn’t the trials of his jailing, or the struggle for his freedom, or even the shame of his actions. 

Moros had survived himself.

His crime had been attempted murder, though no record would say that.  He was charged with second-degree assault on a technicality found by his forthcoming young attorney.  But nothing could hide the truth from his mind, though he somehow continued to skirt the issue of his guilt.

His emotions had trampled him into the hard earth of insanity.  The remaining quagmire of his mind threw him back, as he struggled to sink deep into its recesses and nothingness.  His emotions had turned him against himself and took him over, lashing out in savage, murderous actions.  But somehow he thwarted that control and found his way back to reality as though by accident.  It had been too late, but in a sense, he had managed to save his brother’s life.

His younger brother, Lufu, had borne the brunt of his discombobulation.  For five months, Moros tried to find empathy enough to relive the experience through his brother’s mind, and each time found himself—not surprisingly—unable to survive the fright he found there. 

Lufu had survived.  He was stronger.  His will for understanding had overcome the nightmares of seeing his own brother’s blood-smattered face raging over him, clutching the knife that had severed the arteries of his arm.  Lufu would not be living at home with him when he returned, and that was something Moros disliked to image; the implications were staggering.

Moros knew that his brother had been living with the neighbors, struggling to avoid any contact with anything that would bring back the nightmarish memories of that night.  When he thought of it, his eyes dripped freely like an automatic coffee maker, steadily, until there was just nothing left inside.  No, Moros would be leaving, but he was more afraid for himself out there, than he was happy to be leaving.

 

They called to have their fluorescent lights turned out, but left the radio playing through the intercom speaker, as consolation for Sawol.  Moros liked the boy.  Even if he hadn’t, Sawol was the kind of kid you just naturally worried about.  To be fifteen and face the threat of yourself was frightening even to Moros as an onlooker.  Sawol must have been more afraid, not knowing which was better to trust, life or afterlife.  So, the radio played its tunes that reminded Moros of the last five months of his life, and he found no sleep in his reminiscence and worry.

Morning did come however, precisely when Moros decided that a little bit of sleep would do him some good, streaming through the steel mesh-covered windows and consequently his eyelids.  Soon after, a few stale strikes at the two-inch thick, steel door found both of the cell’s occupants awake. 

Sawol wept as Moros embraced him awkwardly… the kind of embrace that turns into what seems an odd, manly back whacking.  Moros offered to visit.  Sawol declined.  He said that he was safe now, and wanted to remember Moros as he saw him then.  Moros made a bland attempt at trying not to understand what he meant, and found it quite simple to do.  He picked up his single shoebox of belongings: his toothpaste and brush, two decks of cards, and a few books.

His father hugged him roughly in that same, male manner as he stepped into the bright corridor.  A last glance around showed him the other inmates down the hallways opposite his trudging sleepily to get their breakfast.  He always remembered their slept-on hair, bouncing on their heads with each shuffle, like disgruntled peacock feathers.  A few of them smiled.  Moros thought they might just be happy to be in detention.

Chapter One

 

 

 

Following the immense trials of the last year and a half of his high school days, Moros somehow managed to get himself into a university where he was studying one or the other of the liberal arts.  This is where he found himself on the morning of February 1^st, three years after his release from detention. 

The buzzer of his alarm clock grated in a similar fashion to fingernails on a chalkboard, only amplified.  He woke to that goringly unnatural sound, buzzing away – he chuckled to liken it to the voice of a lifelong, hundred year old smoker, bleating a sustained E-major.  His dorm room was cramped from the immensity of needless things he had lugged up two flights of stairs, only to pack in haphazard stacks, taking up most of the room.

As it was February 1^st, he would be trying very hard to re-create the setting in which, three years ago, he had declared to himself that he would never take freedom for granted.  This was his bi-annual ritual, which fell on the day of his arrest – Labor Day – and the day of his release.  All of this was because he did indeed take his freedom for granted, almost immediately after his release.

On such days, he secluded himself from society and, for all practical purposes, meditated.  He ate quickly, sitting alone in a corner of the elaborately bland, tastelessly catered dining hall at its opening.  After breakfast, he went searching for his truck in the high-priced campus parking lot, during which he had that same argument with himself… that it was stupid to have a sixty-dollar permit when he never drove anywhere.  As usual, he countered with the notion that since all the truck did was park, then it was worth it to spend the money generally allotted to driving for parking.

When he located the vehicle, he drove around the campus and started north toward the hills, which surrounded the entire valley in which the lovely hick town of Ellensburg (“with a U”) sat wholly unnoticed, particularly by those mountains.  He started up the foothills with a quick glimpse back at the green valley which had once, hundreds of thousands of years before, been a massive lake.  When he could go no further, about a mile past the ominous sign that warned him of the “Primitive Road Ahead”, he bundled up against the biting winter wind and trudged through ankle-deep snow up the hill.

The hours of hiking wore him down, especially since from the beginning he could see snowmobile tracks and kept wishing he had one.  Around three, when he saw a puffed-up little tent, pitched near a small fire, he approached it, calling a general greeting to whomever might be daft enough to be inside.  There came no answer at all, as he stepped over a log set near the fire. 

He sat on the log, relishing the scant warmth of the dwindling fire and pondered who was crazier, anyone who’d pitch a tent here, high in the hills and snow, or the man who voluntarily walked into this frozen world with no such shelter at all; not even a match in his pocket.  He decided he would probably fit nicely into that tent.

He called again; certain there must be someone inside, given the fire.  As he peered at it, there seemed to be a shadow moving inside.  Moros held his breath to hear faint stirrings within.  Slowly, the zipper rounded the top of the door like a soap-opera tramp’s dress, dropping steadily to the ground.  A dark, bushy thing emerged, then looked up to reveal two dark dots and a nose nestled deep into a frizzled beard. 

“Greetings,” the bushy thing said.

It asked him inside to get out of the wind, which whipped at him with a ferocity that threatened to steal his ball cap and whisk it over the edge of the mesa.  Moros crawled through the narrow opening into what seemed like another world.

The man who had greeted him was dressed in a curious smock resembling an old, rough sheet.  He wore ancient-looking, worn sandals on his bare feet, despite the snow outside.  He sat himself in a cross-legged fashion; the best way in this confined space.  The bushy-headed man stretched here and there for various pouches.  It seemed he was brewing tea.

“My name is Oxus,” he said, startling Moros from his silent survey of this little world with his smooth baritone that flowed like clouds.

“I am Moros.  Thanks for inviting me into your tent.  It is very kind of you.”

“Mayhap I’m trying to make up for a lack of kindness in the world,” he replied with a careless shrug, but his wry grin and thoughtful gaze made Moros smile.  “Would you like some tea?”

Moros thought about the fact that he really rather despised tea, given his strong sweet tooth, but opted to accept the mug from his host.

“Oh, you’ll like this tea,” Oxus said, as if reading his thoughts.  “It’s all natural, made from herbs and roots and things that I collect on the mesa.  I’m afraid I’ve made a ritual of drinking it before sunset.”

“But,” Moros thought to be sure of his calculations, “sunset isn’t for another two hours.”

“Precisely.  So we must drink the tea soon.”

Moros agreed with himself that this was an odd fellow.  The exotic flavor of the tea however, made him smile.

“Why is it you have decided to visit with me today, young Moros?”  Oxus’ gaze was calculated, stern and sharp, like a piece of paper that cuts, though you have barely touched it.

“Actually I’m taking an annual hiatus to put my mind and soul at rest and realize my self-worth,” he replied, surprised at the mouthful as it jumped from his lips.

Oxus’ nod was not one of surprise.  “Your aura indicated as much.”

Moros returned his steady gaze, though his thoughts were not so steady at the moment.  My aura?  He decided that perhaps his day of reflection this time would be rather occupied by his new and certainly queer acquaintance.  The tea tasted strangely like the smell of dirt.  When he looked up again from the mug, Oxus was staring at him.

“You are a very odd fellow,” his bearded companion told him flatly.  The gaze that followed was eerie.  It carried a feeling of I know something you don’t across the small space in the tent.

Moros laughed somewhat nervously.  “Funny,” he replied, “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

Oxus leaned forward a bit and peered into Moros’s eyes.  He smiled, apparently finding what he was after, and sat back.  “I am glad you have stopped in this afternoon.  I’d resolved to make my journey alone again today.”

“Which journey would that be?”

“The very same that you are on; or said you are on.  The only difference is that I make my journey every day.”

Moros took another long draw from the mug with an interested gaze at Oxus.

Oxus grinned, splitting the tangle of his beard.  “You like the tea.”  Though it was the place and time for a question, Oxus made it sound a statement of fact.

“I must admit I’ve never really liked the blandness of tea.  But this is strong.  That’s not to say that the flavor is a particularly enjoyable one…”

“It gets better.  You’ll forget all about the tea soon enough, and relinquish the experience of it in search of a far more consuming one.” 

Just when Moros thought he knew what his companion was talking about, Oxus would spring something on him that revealed otherwise.  Oxus seemed to note this with a certain wicked sense of joy.

When they finished their tea, they went outside and rekindled the cold fire.  The wind seemed to have died out a bit, and the plateau was comfortable above the distant, green valley, spotted with contemporary man’s marks, which seemed remarkably silly surrounded by the Earth’s buildings.  Moros felt a bit odd.  His stomach muscles were tight and straining, and he felt jittery, excitable; he likened the sensation to that of being pulled over on the highway.

“Soon the sun will set, and it will be a most glorious evening.  But for now,” he paused, reaching inside his flowing white smock and bringing forth a small, leathery pouch.  He pulled out a long wooden object and a silvery tin, which he opened to reveal something green. 

“We shall smoke of the herb of the dragon, in preparation for our journey.”

Moros found himself thinking, perhaps from this moment on, his life may somehow change in a frighteningly profound sense.  Then he felt embarrassed for having such a discussion with himself.

Oxus took a small bit from contents of the tin, and offered the tin across what seemed a dwindling space between them.  Moros smirked, seeing the delicate, very artistic rendering of a dragon in relief on the hinged lid.  He inspected the dried hemp buds, glistening with tiny crystalline sparkles among fine, reddish hairs.  It’s strong aroma wafted over him, like passing a dead skunk on the road.  He crinkled his nose at it.

Oxus laughed at this reaction, taking the tin back, exchanging it with the pipe.  The deep, red wood was carved into the likeness of a sleeping dragon, its tail the opening and a small bowl-shaped chamber between its ears containing a slightly charred bud from the tin.  Moros put the pipe to his lips and lit the proffered lighter, sucking lightly at the sweet taste of the weed.

Marijuana was an old acquaintance of Moros’s, and he rejoiced with violent coughing at being reunited with it.  They smoked the rest of that bowl and re-loaded for a second round.  By this time, Moros was feeling cautious.  He attempted to sit on the nearby log with the antics of an old man with a bad back, carefully bracing himself with his arms.  When finally seated, he looked west to where, behind the massive jagged peaks of the Stewart range, a brilliant, crimson sun was dropping.

The snow on the mountain gleamed with the colors of the rainbow, creating shapes with the light of the descending sun as though the Aurora Borealis had flown south for this winter day to visit them.  The shapes seemed to act out a play, one of nature, telling the Mother’s story.  Moros mused that he could almost hear the lights, until Oxus spoke.

“Ah,” he sighed.  “Soon we begin our journey.  I must prepare you for what you will find,” he said like some crazy professor, his voice sounding higher of pitch behind the slightly wavering finger he held up as punctuation. 

Moros nodded.  His mouth was parched, and he decided he did not want to speak after hearing the fluid sounds from Oxus’ lips.  As he pondered the words of his new companion, he could hear the sounds of the animals around him, echoing in his mind, each echo sliding down or up in pitch, as though played on an organ.

“Do you know of the dragon?” Oxus asked just as Moros began to be confused by the sounds of his mind.  Oxus’ voice soothed him, and thoughts of hypnotism tickled at the edges of Moros’s suddenly overactive mind.

“Ah… lizard, sort of… with wings…” he managed, still distracted by the strange echoes.

“There is less lizard in a dragon that there is of everything else,” said the bearded man cryptically.

“Huh?”

“Let us try an easier topic.  Do you know who you are?”

Moros pondered this question a moment.  Of course I know who I am, he thought, the words in his mind echoing into different sounds altogether, until the thought itself confused him.  That must not be what he wants, he decided, ignoring the building winds of cast-about thoughts, layering new ones into its force.  At last, he said, “I am an animated body, material of a material world.”  As he spoke, he held his arms wide to indicate the vista around them.

“Interesting,” Oxus said, sounding surprised, though it was hard to tell at the moment.  “That is a most surprising, not to mention appropriate, analysis; present time considered.  But all of the importance of what you said is in the animated body part.  We are astral beings, not physical in nature.  What we are calling physical is actually mere ideas created by our minds, which describe to us what is happening in terms that our adolescent consciousness can grasp.  Understanding this is the first step on the path to the dragon.”

They sat silently for some time, as Moros’s mind drew him deeper into its own recesses, like dark, unused cellars, uncovering lost treasures.  He found philosophy there, mostly, as he stared inwardly at an image of himself.  That image was currently split in two.  One half representative of his positive outlook on the world, the other of his negative outlook, with a brief nebulous blending between.

“However,” Oxus’ voice came from somewhere far outside Moros’s universe, “the dragon is not what you perceive it to be.  Think back to your great mythological figures.  Odysseus was a man, blessed by the goddess Pallas Athena.  However, Pallas Athena was a figure created out of the dilemma of explaining the peculiarities of love, just as each of the Greek and Roman Gods were, for their particular episode of life.

“Jesus Christ was a man who lived life surrounded by the voices of the One Almighty God, which were in his head.  Now, debate it however you like, but Jesus Christ has become the Son of God, regardless of the validity of his claims or circumstance, because people believe He is.

“Beowulf was a figure created by blending the actual, historical figure of an Old English warrior-king and the mythological figure of the God of Seasons, Beowa.  But before any of these figures came to be, before even the settlement of Europe, possibly even before what we call the protoIndoEuropeans, there was the Dragon.”

Moros was confused, and he wasn’t quite sure if he could control his features enough to show it.  His mouth wanted to smile, despite the unsteady influence of his thoughts, and he felt like leaping into the air with a massive shout for joy, or anguish - he was undecided.

“The Dragon has endured the test of all time.  He is the mightiest of all things, for he is everything.  Tales of Merlin the magician have brought our Anglo-descended beliefs to what they are about the creature, but those tales are broadly delineated.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Moros said, trying very carefully to avoid looking at the now spottled, empty visage of his new acquaintance.  Oxus ignored this comment as though it was never voiced, and perhaps it wasn’t, present circumstances considered. 

“I have seen his scales.  I have witnessed his love and compassion, as well as his rage and frustration.  Picture the dragon.  In order to find him, you must be able to perceive his existence, somehow.  I have found that the blankest slate you can observe is the best place to catch a rare glimpse.”

Moros could only barely understand Oxus’ words.  They blended with everything there was to hear out on the broad mesa.  He managed to find a relatively blank slate however, as he stumbled off the log and lay flat on his back, staring into the night sky, still purpled with the close of the day.

Moros never paid much attention to the stars.  He was amazed at how much sense they seemed to make.  He saw that they were delicately placed in specific, logical settings in a universe of infinite logic.  As he focused on them, he saw the figures of his tiny planet’s history splayed-out on a universal stage, living out their lives just as he was.  Though their time was stopped, or perhaps occurred in exceedingly slow motion.

Moros considered that.  He decided that time had stopped for him as well.  This was his time, he was in full command of his existence, and he vowed amidst the echoes of his thoughts to make the best of it.

The Dragon, he thought.  He quickly flipped through the images of the great, scaled beasts he knew from folklore as dragons.  None of them looked alike.  Do they have wings? he wondered, and conjured up a slate on which he began to imagine the proportions of a winged dragon.  They would have large, thickly muscled hind legs, he decided.  Perhaps a lizard’s tail, with or without protective, spinal plates.  That didn’t matter, so he left that part a blur in his proportional, three-dimensional image.

They would have a prominent girth, not fat, but fully developed with a slightly lighter-colored underside consisting of soft-textured skin.  Their arms would be slender, but powerful and proportioned not unlike a human’s, with similar pectoral muscles.  The shoulders blended ambiguously with another set of larger, stronger limbs, attached to a second set more powerful pectoral muscles.  These limbs stretched longer than the arms, and folded backward in comparison to the arms, resting along the latisimus dorsi muscles of the back, which were, in turn, layered to support both sets of frontal limbs.

At the tip of these upper limbs, was either one or two talons.  Also, a secondary length of cartilage stretched from beneath the knuckle of the talon for nearly twice the length of the limb, and bent in a semicircular shape toward the tip.  From this cartilage hung a wing of fine skin.  This was semi-transparent and resembled a leaf, with blood vessels and veins running throughout.  This wing connected along the side of the body, and was in actuality a formation stemming directly from the latisimus muscles.

The cartilage could be folded back along the spine, like the wing of a waterfowl, in the instances where wings were not required.  The spine ran the length of a long, slender neck, which rose a good distance above the dual sets of chest muscles into a snakelike head – flat on the underside, and bony on the top.  Unlike a snake however, the dragon would have a long snout, protected by thick, triangular-shaped skin flap, bent over the nose.

It would have a wily brow.  Its eyes would be frontal, though toward the sides of the head.  Its ears would function like a lizard’s, with a simple cavity, though some species may have developed ears like a dog or cat’s, so as to hear more clearly from distances.  It would have a lizard’s tongue and formidable canine teeth, as dragons are omnivores.

There! thought Moros through the clatter of his echoing mind.  That is what a winged dragon would look like.  From his perspective however, the dragon he imagined came alive.  This was strange, thought Moros, since in his own mind, his was the only perspective, wasn’t it?  Needless to say, it flew from his mind into the sky, nimbly avoiding Orion’s sword and seeking shelter in the cup of the big dipper.

“Whoah!” Moros cried aloud, but received no response from his companion, or at least didn’t hear one.

He turned his eyes back to the sky, recalling the striking animation of the dragon he created in his mind.  Curiously, he reached up and tipped the big dipper, but found nothing inside but empty space.  Frustrated, he turned his attention to the dwindling fire, sitting up again with tremendous effort on the log, though it poked him uncomfortably.

Moros decided he had never quite seen a fire so interesting as this one.  Cartoon images danced in its glow and walked around the embers, charring the wood in their path, chanting in tiny, crackling voices, “Burn… burn… burn…” Suddenly the small burning figures turned to face him and he saw dragons in their eyes, flying in complicated formations and breathing-out the flames around them.

The peculiar transition from sitting on the log watching cartoons to being in the fire was lost to him.  Though it was suddenly obvious that he was engulfed in the flames.  The flames bit at him with a cold chill, like blustery wind, and he shivered.  He peered out of the eyes of the little burning cartoons, and saw himself staring back, sitting on the log, and accepting the dragon pipe from Oxus. 

Thanks, he thought, and watched his mouth say it to the bushy bearded fellow in the white smock.  How very strange, he thought to himself.

Then a massive, scaly claw snatched Moros away from his vantage.

Chapter Two

 

 

 

Moros gazed up at the underside of the huge beast that clutched him loosely about the waist with one automobile-sized, hind foot.  As he did so, he noticed a curious lack of wind as the dragon flew at incredible speeds, judging from the positions of other dragons below and to the sides.  He realized, gazing up at the neck of the beast, barely able to make out its snout, that he was notably unafraid, which seemed mildly shocking.

The dragon’s arms hung at its sides.  Its four-fingered, clawed hands rested in a partially cupped state, but occasionally scratched at a certain spot of discolored scales, each of which were the size of Moros’s hands.  He unconsciously and continuously repositioned himself against a sharp pain in his side, which reminded him of a sliver you couldn’t see, but agitated anyway.  He looked down to see the claw that held him, and realized that it could squish him like squeeze-cheese with very little effort.  He tried to push at the offending digit with his comparably miniscule hands.

At once, the beast’s head hovered next to his, its neck sharply craned to see its struggling captive. 

“Is there a problem?” came a voice like the supernatural roll of a resounding thunderclap, shaking his tiny frame in waves of ultra low frequencies.  Moros gaped, dumbfounded, at the more than three foot head of the dragon, its eyes set on him, its brow furrowed in a curiously human expression.  His eyes went blank as he gawked in surprise.

“Y… you can talk?” he said.

“Come now.  Of course I can talk, haven’t I always?” the dragon said to him, paying absolutely no mind to where it was flying, which, under more normal circumstances, might have bothered Moros.  But he decided that being carried in the claw of a dragon could not begin to approach normal under any circumstances.

“What do you mean by that?”

“What do you mean?”  The dragon paused, as if waiting for an answer.  Its eyes squinted into a look akin to suspicious scrutiny.  It continued though, before Moros could put together an intelligent response.  “Look… master… I’m not one to complain… and not that time is feasible here…” Moros looked around the indicated dense, black nothing that surrounded them.  “But I have not seen you in some while.  I knew when you said you were going to earth to be human that you would forget us.  Humans have no sense of anything but the physical.  That’s so dry.”

Moros didn’t attempt to decipher all of that at the moment.  Something concerned him though.  There was a faint impression that in some remote area of his mind, he might actually almost understand what the dragon was talking about.  The whole idea of course, was insane.  Regardless, he shook his head in dismissal.  “Just tell me where we’re going.  Alright?”

“Where we’re going?”  It sounded disappointed.  It actually shook its head for a moment… in what seemed a disgusted manner.  “Being human has rotted your mind, master?”

“Who do you insist on calling me that?”  Moros was beginning to get frustrated, and thought that since the dragon was the only being around, he would take it out on it – ignoring, for the moment, the obvious risks.

“Is that not what you are?”

Moros thought for a moment and was surprised to find his mind free of the echoes he had struggled with earlier.  He found that he rather liked the serenity of the lack of noise.  “Alright,” he finally said with a purpose.  “If I am your master, what is my name?”

The dragon raised its head skyward, and shook the ponderous thing again.  Then it paused, and the droning flap of its wings ceased as they glided through the blackness, through which Moros could clearly see, as if it were an absence, rather than darkness.  When the dragon turned its head back down toward him, again it wore a curious look.

“You are master.  There is no such thing as a name for you – only master.”

Moros pondered this as he wriggled about to avoid the annoying pain in his side.  “Is there some other way we can do this?  Your claws are digging into my skin,” he said.

“I was wondering why you did not just fly.  Then I thought you were going to return to your human body, so I came to get you.  We have missed you here.” 

Moros thought he saw a semblance of sadness in the creature’s massive face, even as he argued vehemently with himself about how idiotic he was being. 

“I can see now however, that you are still affected by the time you spent as a human.  I think it was a silly thing to do…”

This Moros heard as he fell away from the dragon, which had simply dropped him.

“Aaaaahhhhhh!” he cried, falling, or… it seemed like falling.  He saw the dragon receding from him.  There appeared to be no ground however, when he looked.  Suddenly he was not so worried.  “Now what do I do?” he asked the big dragon, whose aqua-colored upper side was to him as it sped after its falling charge.

“You are worse than a newborn,” the dragon commented.  “Just spread your wings and fly, it’s so simple, I bet a human could do it.”  Moros ignored that statement and decided that stranger things have happened.

He threw his arms out from his sides and was suddenly moving forward, instead of downward.  He looked around and saw majestic, pearly wings stretched out eight feet from either side of him, slightly larger than his companion’s.  When he looked down, he saw his hands, hanging idly at his sides, great white, scaled claws at the end of thick, muscular arms.  He found it a simple task to move them.  He could, he quickly learned, even move his long, pristine tale, the very tip of which was jet black.

“Oh master!” the dragon said, slipping up below and to his right.  “You’ve chosen my favorite form.  I’ve always envied and admired your beautiful white skin, and your strong, wonderful features.”

Moros cocked an eyebrow at his friend, but it rose into surprise as he noticed that the dragon he was seeing was a spectacular female specimen.  “You are not so bad yourself,” he said to her, hardly considering the idea behind that statement.

“Master… please.  You are playing at a joke.  But I know your humor,” she said, as if shaking a scolding finger at him.

“I am not,” he returned defensively.  “So… Where are we going, anyway?”

“We are going to your place,” she told him.

“My place?”

“Where you usually go… when you go.”

“How long will it take to get there?” he asked.

“I thought it was where you want it?” she replied, looking at him in a strangely different manner.

Moros looked down and saw a large, suspended formation of some sort, like a floating mountain of dark stone.  “Look.  There it is,” he said, surprised to still find surprises where he figured he probably shouldn’t.

“Then I am sorry to have to leave you.”

“Oh no you don’t.  You’re coming with me.”

“But master, you do not allow anyone in your place.  Besides… while you’ve been gone, I have stumbled upon it once, and I do not know how to get in.  At least I couldn’t find an opening before it disappeared.”

“Well… there’s an exception to every rule.  I’ll find a way in,” he said confidently.  “By the way,” he added, cocking an eyebrow in cautious question.  “What is it that you consider me master of, anyhow?”

She turned to him with a humored glint in her eye, looking as though she might laugh.  “Everything,” she replied simply.

Moros struggled to ignore that comment, which in effect made the very idea more difficult.

The stone structure, which seemed moderate from above, proved to be immense.  It was much larger than anything he’d ever seen whole.  It was like looking at something like Atlantis hovering over your back yard, dwarfing not only your house, yard and neighborhood, but the entirety of whatever city you might find those things in as well.  They searched endlessly, it seemed, for an entrance, and never found one.  Finally, the white and the aqua dragons alighted on the structure itself and sat, pondering.

“If indeed, I am master, as you say,” he began suddenly, looking at the aqua dragon, who had not taken her eyes off him since they landed, “then I would not have an entrance that anyone might use.  In fact,” he thought aloud, pondering some statistical probabilities regarding some absolutely improbable things, “I would probably just be able to will myself in,” he said.  “Don’t you think?”  The last of his words however, echoed hollowly down a dimly lit, massive corridor, in which he now stood.

“Master?  Master!” he felt, rather than heard, the faint booming of the aqua’s voice.

Moros concentrated for a moment, and suddenly she stood next to him.  She looked at him with a shocked expression, but said nothing as she turned to inspect her surroundings.  As Moros surveyed the long corridor, he felt rather oversized, though it easily accommodated him and his companion.

“Would you like to consider a different form?” he asked, thinking he sounded strangely like a salesman from Nordstrom’s.

Her head swung about slowly and her eyes grew wide.  “I have never been but dragon.  I have never wanted anything else,” she stated flatly.  “But I will do as you do.”

He changed back into his human form.  Strange, he thought, I tried to have a different body, and got the same one…  He realized instantly however, that a body was the same always, and to change its shape was not to change its essential structure, which was an inherent by-product of the mind and personality.  How incredibly simplistic, he thought, willing his friend to change as well.

It was not at all what he had expected.  Her human form had deep, dark red-tinted hair, a soft, fair complexion, full lips and sultry eyes.  She was what he would call ‘petite’, but rather approached his size.  Her full breasts were a mere suggestion beneath loose-fitting clothes, and her tight, aqua leggings showed toned legs.  He was taken completely by surprise, and following the nature of surprise, gawked rather rudely at his companion.

She stood very still, as if afraid to see the change that occurred.  Then, slowly, she looked at her hands and body, deliberately inspecting, much to the embarrassment of her company, all of her parts.  “Is this what humans are like?” she asked, her expression almost obscenely innocent.

“Yes,” he answered, his stare fixed to hers.  “You are beautiful,” he added, to ease the nervousness apparent in her face, which was, in truth, a direct result of his attentions.

“You seem much more attractive than you did in that form before… but you have not changed,” she seemed to be figuring the logic, which would suggest that as a human she found his human form more… stimulating.

“That is the nature of the shapeshift,” he told her.  Hearing his own voice, he thought he sounded too confident, but he hadn’t even thought about what he said; it just erupted as truth from his lips.

His stares brought crimson waves through her cheeks, and she turned as if to walk down the corridor.  “What are all these doors?” she asked, turning only her head back to him.

Moros nearly laughed at her antics, reflecting that he certainly did not mind the view of her backside.  “Oh,” he said after a pause, seeing the flush of red returning quickly to her cheeks.  “There is nothing interesting in there for you,” he said, wondering at how exactly he knew that. 

He knew however, that behind the first door was a room full of instruments with which one would measure the amount of solidity a fiber must have to mesh successfully with another to form any fibrous material.  He scowled to himself in abject disbelief at this revelation.

“What?” she asked, nearly turning out of concern.

“Oh… nothing.”  He tried not to laugh, but wasn’t quite successful.  “Come,” he said, offering her his elbow, then having to place her hand there to adjust for her innocence.

As they walked down the corridor, she mused, “I like this body.  It’s very soft… and full of wonderful feelings.”  She blushed immediately. 

They continued walking for a while, and then Moros turned abruptly and opened one of the massive doorways, stepping-in with his companion in-tow.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, as they stepped onto a solid, shiny black floor.

“I am called T’ressa by the others.”

“That figures,” he grinned.

“What does?” she asked, focusing a steady, curious gaze on him.

“That you would have a beautiful name as well,” he shrugged, but couldn’t help his smile.  Without warning, he found her smile irresistible, and kissed her.

When he stepped back, realizing what he’d done and not wanting to offend her, he found her gaping, ashen-faced at him.  “What?” he chuckled.

“What was that?” came her incredulous tone in response.

He smiled warmly.  “That was a kiss,” he said.

“That was very nice.  Might I kiss you?”

He was pleased, and startled.  “You, my dear T’ressa, may kiss me all you want.”

She did.

Eventually, they stopped experimenting with kisses and turned to look at the room, which consisted of a floor.  Just a floor.  The rest of the room consisted of the same black void they’d left outside, with the exception of the doorway.

“What is this place?” she asked, holding his hand.

“This is the viewing room,” he said.  “From here we may see, do, or go to any thing, place, or time we wish,” he said casually.  His own words surprised him as much as her.

“I don’t understand.”

He suddenly realized that she couldn’t.  She had lived all of her life in the void.  She had never seen anything except his place, as she called it, and time was non-existent in the blackness.  “T’ressa?  How long have we known each other?”

She frowned.  “That is silly.  We have known one another forever.”

It took him a moment to understand that she was not exaggerating.  Shocked, he asked her, “What do you do?”

“I don’t understand,” she answered, sounding oddly like a monotone computer voice.

“If you have never been anywhere, or seen anything, or even experienced time… then what do you do?”

“Oh,” she exhaled heavily, relaxing.  “We wait.”

Somehow, Moros didn’t think that was the answer he wanted.  “Wait for what?”

“We wait for you, master.”

He shook his head and scowled.  He didn’t like the idea of the beautiful woman before him calling him master.  “T’ressa… would you please call me Moros?  At least for the time being.”  She nodded.  “Now,” he continued, “why do you wait for me?”

She shrugged.  “Because you are always going here or there, to do… things…  Experience things, you always say.  If you ask me, there can be nothing of interest anywhere else.  Everyplace is the same,” she said, sounding a little unsure of herself, despite the declaration.

“What about this?” he said, indicating with his arm a scene that suddenly appeared all around them, excepting of course, the floor and doorway behind them.

Her first reaction was to bring her arm up to shield her eyes from the light.  She put it down when her eyes adjusted.  “It’s so… bright!” she cried, then was silent for a long moment.

The scene below was of a large field of green spring grass and colorfully hued flowers.  Birds sang all around them from the nearby trees, and the sky was light blue with fluffy white clouds.

“Is that a real place?” she asked in a whisper.

“Of course.  That is Earth, where I have been on my latest journey.  There are variations, of course, but all of it is beautiful in its own way.”

“I could never have imagined such a beautiful place.  It’s more incredible than any of the stories you’ve told us about the places you’ve been,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.  She wiped curiously at them, but was more intrigued by the scene itself.

“Would you like to go there?” he asked with a wry grin.  She turned toward him with a shaky smile.  She bent and kissed him affectionately, and he smiled in return.  “We will go then.  But as dragons,” he said mischievously.

They quickly made the change back into the forms of dragons, and stepped through the image that surrounded the strange, suspended room.

Chapter Three

 

 

 

Imperceptible to Moros was the change in the substance of the air between the void of the black to the ethereal, Earth atmosphere.  Fortunately, they were only a few hundred feet above ground.  As they entered the image, T’ressa plunged immediately.  She plummeted with an earth-shaking bellow that Moros knew must have been heard for miles, and barely managed to obtain a rapid, haphazard glide before colliding with the field.

The white dragon, gleaming in the bright sun of mid-afternoon, dropped to her side quickly and found her unconscious.  After a few moments of worry, her massive, vertical eyelids opened to reveal glazed-over eyes, staring into nothing.  She groaned in-sync with the focusing of her pupils, and struggled to her massive, wobbly feet.

“What is this strange heaviness?” she asked, looking over her sore body with careful detail.

“That would be gravity.  It’s a little something used to keep the constantly moving universe in order.  I’m sorry.  I did not think to mention it.”

“I think I will try again,” she said fiercely.  “I want to see all of this place.”  She was still squinting at the brightness of the field and the sky.  But without another word, she crouched low and sprang into the air, spreading her wings as she did.  She took a few uneasy flaps before growing accustomed to the change of speed and distance that the heavy air affected, and calculated for the gravity… this time.

“This is not so bad,” she said, loud enough for him to hear, not to mention anyone else for a five-mile radius.

Moros leapt into the air himself, and caught up with her, gently trying to explain the idea that there were no dragons on Earth, and that their presence would surely cause a commotion. 

“I do not mind,” she said.  “A little trouble now and again keeps one on their toes.”

They glided easily through the earthen air, having passed well over the field and now traveling briskly over a thick forest.  As they came to the edge of the tree line, and could easily see the mountains to the west, Moros looked over at T’ressa with a grin. 

She was flying toward the ground at an alarming speed, stretching her massive feet toward a herd of what appeared to Moros to be privately owned cattle, given the stretch of seasoned, wooden fencing.  By the time he reached her, she was tearing into a second cow, her muzzle stained with deep, warm blood. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, dropping to the ground at her side.

“I had a strange feeling… inside,” she said, rubbing at her underbelly.  “When I saw these things here, I felt they would ease the discomfort.”

“That would be hunger,” he mused.  “But if you will kindly look to your right, you will notice a small building.  In that building is the owner of these cows.”  He paused long enough to grin in a frightening manner, baring all of his massive teeth.  “Not that he could stop us, but it is generally considered courteous not to eat someone’s private property.”

“But these creatures have a mind of their own…  How can a mere human consider these his?”  She cocked her head and eyed him curiously, but he could find no sufficient answer to that question.

In that light, they quickly devoured a small meal of two prime cows each, during which they failed to notice a small gathering of people who watched in horror as the two giants casually snapped and crushed the bones of the comparatively miniscule bovine animals.  When they finished, they hurled themselves into the air and proceeded westward to what Moros knew to be the Cascade Mountains. 

 

The gathering of humans watched the flight of the huge white, and slightly smaller blue-colored dragons in frightened regard, then ran to where they had fed on four of their cows.

 

When they reached the mountains, they turned north, and made their way along the snow-covered peaks.  During this time, Moros wondered if they would encounter any planes, knowing that they would, eventually.  Given the distance and area to which they were flying, encounters with their metallic counterparts would be inevitable, it seemed.

They were both tired by the time they reached the destination, a small bluff overlooking a large valley in which a small human population had erected some of its rather unsightly buildings.  Moros carefully guided them around the areas where he knew there would be planes, and hid from those he saw flying about.  They landed on a bluff at the northern side of the valley, next to a small canvas housing which he knew to be Oxus’ tent.  There they stood looking over the vast green of the valley below.

 

Awakened by an indiscernible noise, Oxus sat up in his tent, and heard the sounds of something very large outside.  It had been a tiring few days for him, and he was not ready to deal with more press or police.  Reluctantly, he peaked out of the crack in the doorway and was blinded by the sun gleaming off a massive white… something.  He crawled curiously from the tent, and suddenly found himself unable to move from the cold, hard ground as he saw what it was that stood outside.

The great white turned his head to the tiny, bearded man who blinked in fright at the huge visage through bleary, reddened, and sleep-deprived eyes.

“Hello Oxus,” said the white to the startled man, who cowered in horror at the bellow that was more likely to be called a strong wind.  Then he realized that the wind had a voice, and the voice said something he understood. 

“Er… excuse me?” he stammered.

“Do you not remember me?  I am Moros, and this is my friend, T’ressa,” he said, taking a step back to allow the small human to see the blue behind him.

Oxus stumbled like a newborn foal to his feet, his mouth hanging and his eyes like great white disks.  He backed comically into his tent, which proceeded to collapse inward in a melody of clanking items, pulling the comedic man with it.  The two dragons chuckled lightly, and Oxus had the fleeting impression that they would eat him, given those rumbling grunts and massive, bared teeth.

“Perhaps we would take another for so that you might be better accommodated,” Moros said, still chuckling. 

Oxus somehow missed the transition that followed, but found two people standing where there were just hulking, frightening dragons.  He seemed almost more surprised to see Moros than his dragon form, and hardly glanced at T’ressa at all.  He dropped to his knees and stared at the ground while Moros and his companion looked on curiously. 

“What are you doing?” Moros asked, surprised to find the face of Oxus turned pleadingly to him, tears rolling freely down his face.

“You have come to punish me, haven’t you?” his voice was quiet, accepting.

“For what do you require punishing, friend Oxus?” T’ressa asked, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder.

Oxus’ expression changed dramatically to one of cool calculation.  “Where have you been these last few days?”

Moros’s face reflected his friend’s.  “I have been on hiatus.”

“Where have you been… precisely?”

Moros cautiously weighed the expression and demeanor of his friend, deciding to choose his words very carefully.  “Here and there.  You need not worry about that.  I know where I have been.”

Oxus stood carefully, slowly, and tucked his arms into the folds of his soiled smock.  “I do not know where you have gone, but I know what happened to you… three nights ago.  If you will remember, I offered you some tea, which you drank.  Then we smoked of the herb of the dragon.  You spoke little in that first hour.  Then you stopped speaking at all.  In fact, you seemed to be altogether missing,” Oxus delivered with an accusatory glare.

That stare gave Moros a feeling of displacement, as if he was talking with a stranger.  “What do you mean?” he replied with a hitch in his voice.

“You appeared to have some nasty reaction to the tea, or… something.  You wandered off a few feet, and I found you completely still.  Unbreathing.  You died before I peaked and I have had a very rough time coming to grips with that.”  His expression shifted back to careful watchfulness, as if expecting some sort of paranoid delusion to attack him outright. 

“Naturally I assumed you had returned to punish me.

Chapter four

 

 

 

They remained with Oxus the human for a short while, before returning to their dragon forms and leaping into the air.  Oxus watched them go, feeling somewhat more at ease than he had of late.  He knew that the police would find him, deciding that he had lied about having found Moros in the state in which he had brought him to town.  But he also knew that what he had just witnessed was no hallucination.  He had looked into Moros’s eyes and they were real.  Then the dragons were gone and he began to wonder whether it had, indeed, been real.

 

Moros and T’ressa found themselves standing again in the room with no walls, though now it was black and showed no scenes of Earth.  They returned once again to human form, and went through the door into the corridor beyond.  Moros knew that he must go back before long, but was reluctant to say so to the young woman standing next to him.

They followed the passageway, past uncountable doors, before Moros finally picked one and entered, followed by T’ressa.  Inside the room, there was nothing but black walls, floor and ceiling, and a bright, spherical object pulsating gently in the center.  The sphere seemed to float there by some mysterious force.  Moros stepped toward it.  He looked back to see T’ressa standing by the door, gaping wide-eyed at the sphere, then at Moros.  He turned back and stared into the white pulse of the light emanating from the volley-ball-sized orb, then felt himself pulled to it. 

 

T’ressa watched, horrified, as the light of the orb bolted out to her master and melted him into a pool of color.  The pool hovered motionless for a moment, as if it were an early morning mist about a bog, then was assimilated into the orb.  Suddenly she stood alone, gaping at the now lifeless orb.

 

As Moros felt himself pulled into the light of the sphere, he resisted strongly, in some strange sense feeling as if the light was chastising him.  When finally he realized that he was afraid of something with which he was somehow very familiar, it pulled him in freely, and the universe erupted in an explosion of everything imaginable.

Light and color blended with blackness.  Time became the simple deduction of a minor thought function, serving simply to classify the unreasonable, and he found himself able to search out, find, and be or participate in any time he could conceive.  The distances of space were an incorrect calculation that he had assumed in his time on earth, and he found that he could bridge any gap there as well.

“Where am I?” he thought to himself.

“We have been rejoined, but only briefly,” came the answer in his own voice, though it was somehow different, as vast as the infinite universe.  “Surely you do not still cling to the human perception of one universe,” the voice said.  “Let go, and observe all that is around you.”

Moros observed. 

He witnessed a massive universe, full of uncountable creatures who all worked toward a common goal – perpetuation.  In their perpetuation he saw their life cycles, birth and death – or at least what the paradigmatic comprehension of death was for them.  He found that death was not what the paradigm suggested.  When each creature died, it simply learned about something it thought impossible to live through. 

After its death, it awakened again, as if it had been dreaming, and found that everything was the same, except that it had learned the secret of living through the experience that had killed it – or more appropriately, killed its ignorance by allowing it to see through its fear of that which killed it.

He found it interesting that when a creature learned to live through its death (which amounted to a simple process by which that being allowed its fear to manifest itself, by the constant belief that it could) all of the creatures that it lived with before its death continued on, until whatever it was that they feared in that plane of existence killed them and they might move on to another.

He followed this process until he found a single creature in the universe, which had lived through every fear, and had no more.  That creature then proceeded to destroy itself, eagerly awaiting the next plane.  As it died, its lifeforce melded with the energy created by the separating of its mind from its material body, and grew into a tiny universe. 

Moros looked into this universe, which he thought would be empty, and found it no smaller than the other, only overlapping and equally a part of the other.  The creature that died to create that universe went on, and was born as an infant of the smallest denomination of life into the next, essentially a single-celled organism.  There it found everything strange and incomprehensible for a period of time, before it could transform and exchange its knowledge of the previous universe into knowledge of this one.

Moros traveled through this universe, and found that it was merely a tiny portion – a cell so to speak – on an organism that lived in a universe that was actually the body of yet another creature, and so on through infinity.

He went on until he met a man who had recently been born into a new universe.  Now it was merely a baby, which could not talk, could barely see, and expressed incredible amounts of frustration at being almost completely unable to comprehend the universe in which it now lived.  Moros called it God, since it had created the universe in which he had most recently lived himself, and smiled at the strange logic, which had showed him God’s new universe.

Then he could see the macrocosm of his universe, swirling and twisting and convulsing at a rate of time much faster than that of God’s new universe.  It looked a lot like an amoeba.  In fact, he found that it was something quite like that, in a massive body of fluid that was few universes greater than it.

Moros found himself wondering about the life and death process, having just witnessed the re-birth of what might be considered by some as the Supreme Being.  Suddenly, not unlike a universe-sized movie screen the scene before and all about him exploded in an expedition of life.  He witnessed a coupling, an exchange of cells and DNA, so to speak.  From there, cells, two small portions of each being involved in the couple, blended and reacted with each other, growing into something different.

The two cells from the parents (a word he understood and thus used to describe the coupled beings) melded into a single, new cell.  Tiny fragments from each joined to form whole units from their proportional parts.  These units complemented each other, like pieces of a puzzle, and gave the cell characteristics.  Those characteristics were denoted by which half of each tiny two-part puzzle would dominate in order to form the whole.

When each of the two-piece puzzles were formed, the single cell then came to life and lived an entire lifetime as that organism.  When the lifespan of the single cell came to a close, it split into two cells, remaining a single lifeform, and thus lived a life as two cells.  Those two cells split millions of times, and each time lived a life as a different organism, each made up of that specific amount of cells.

Moros was amazed to find that he recognized most of the cell-formations from his life on earth.  The first had been a single-celled amoeba, like he had studied in biology.  Then as it grew – as the cells coupled to create more cells – it changed into more complex organisms.  He watched as every single organism known on earth grew, lived, and died in its universe, spanning thousands of years.  Suddenly he was aware that the host of organisms that grew – growing and losing or gaining limbs and other parts –worked its way up the chain of life, to eventually become recognizable as a human fetus.

Moros saw that there were thousands of time scales, overlapping in synchronicity with scales of space, combining to form an elaborate scheme of universes, which existed in-turn inside the womb in which the human fetus now grew.  As each organism lived, thus a universe lived, and as it died to form an organism on scale measure larger, it entered a new universe, a new time, which evolved at a slower pace than the previous.  The thousands upon thousands of years it took the organism to evolve into a human fetus, was to the fetus a few months. 

The fetus continued to grow, inside it the couplings of smaller organisms continued to evolve, in turn allowing it to grow and evolve.  Finally, after a span of nine months relative to the universe of the human fetus, and billions of years to the now equally numbered single-celled organisms within the body of the human, it was finally born.  The combined evolutions of all of those organisms within it, had reached a state in which the human body was able to function in its universe, and thus it was born.

Moros reflected on the overlapping quality of the universes he had seen, contemplating that if universes of every scale were infinitely overlapping, then those single-celled organisms which first grew from the parent coupling would, by now, have begun universes of their own.  He checked on this theory.  It was difficult to see at first, but he found it regardless.  The single cells had developed and coupled, creating more cells.  Each cell that coupled created a new being, which grew inside it.  Like the human baby inside the human mother, tiny single-celled mothers housed infants consisting of the parts of cells, which grew into larger parts of other cells, and so on.

Moros marveled at the impossible complexity of it all, and marveled even more at the notion of having seen and understood it in his own way.  He could almost feel each death of his ignorances as they occurred, knowing that in some plane of existence, in thousand of universes, he was dying, but consequently understanding an equal number of truths.

Each time the single billions of beings grew into something greater, understood more about their universe, a new being, a new universe, was born.  Each of these infinite number of beings, and universes, and bodies, combined in understandable means to form the lifeform which had first been born of the parents, and each time a new universe was born inside that lifeform, a new understanding was born for it.

As a human, it underwent hundreds of understandings, all results of the attacks of the ever-changing elements of its environment.  It developed sicknesses, diseases, and cancers.  Each of these resulted in a kind of mutation.  Finally, in its last instances of human life, a certain cancerous tumor grew and developed into a massive growth in its back.  Some time after its human societies began to ignore it and perceive it as dead, those tumors grew and grew, eventually changing into winglike protrusions.

As time progressed, the changes kept coming and it kept changing.  Moros recognized thousands of animals he had seen on Earth.  The cells kept growing and growing however, and the body of the being got bigger and bigger.  After it had been through a series of some of the largest animals Moros had ever witnessed – some he had seen before, some he had not – the mutations resulted in slightly different effects.

Its harder portions grew harder, until eventually, the body became unmovable.  At this point Moros assumed the adventure had come to an end, he had seen more than he had ever thought possible.  Yet, as he began to see the unbelievable pain of unmoving joints and hardening cells, the body finally crumbled and rejoined the earth. 

That was when he noticed a nebulous glow, hovering cautiously over the crumbled form of its body in which it had lived uncountable aeons.  As if confused, it slowly moved away from the crumbled form, only to return shortly thereafter.  Thus, a new kind of birth came for the lifeform, which Moros had observed for the eternity of its lifespan. 

It began as a single-cell, and developed over billions of relative aeons, through as many universes, into its new form, created of forces that required no physical body.  It was now a pure lifeform.  All of its accumulated knowledge finally allowed it to exist free of all of the tiny lifeforms which had once made up its shell and all of the different bodies in which it had lived.

Eventually, the return trips of the lifeform to the dust that remained of its last body grew shorter and shorter.  Finally, the glow of the essence of the being launched itself into space, where it traveled for many hundreds of years.  As it traveled though, it collected dust from its passing, which grew hard and crusty with the effect of hot suns and the subsequent cooling from void space.  The dust shell accumulated, virtually unnoticed by the being as it floated through space, carefully avoiding what danger there was for it.

But as more and more dust collected, the shell grew larger and larger.  Eventually the being grew to understand the workings of gravitational pull, feeling those affects on its ever-growing mass.  It was sometimes pulled into star systems by larger planets, becoming trapped in some.  Finally, it grew too large to resist the pull of a particularly large star, and began to recognize the other planets around it were in a similar predicament.

Traveling endlessly about the star, it was unable to break free of the dust or the gravity.  It was now the size of a planet itself, and understood the relation between planet and star.  Over aeons it concluded that the star that held him would, at some point, work itself into a nuclear reaction so strong it would explode, taking with it the crusted coverings of the planets closest to it.  Unfortunately, being the last to enter the system, it was thus quite a distance from the star.

It did happen, eventually.  The explosion freed the beings trapped within the first five of thirteen planets.  It had nearly freed the sixth, but there was a certain amount of crust left.  Soon that sixth being began to produce reactions, using the heat and energy from the star’s blast.  It melted and burned the crust from the inside out, creating massive flames and reactions on the outer crust.  As it burned its way through, the flames grew, and finally, it too became a star.  When it freed itself from its crust, the explosion would free the other planets, and soon enough, that last planet would be free.  It was only a matter of a mere few thousand thousand years, and it waited anxiously.

Moros’s view of the star system blurred.  He felt a strange pulling sensation, as if he were sucked through space like water in a drain.  The scene, as he watched, appeared to come together in a bright, massive blur, then faded into a small, glowing, spherical shape.  Moros felt vaguely sorry that it was fading.  He felt a certain bond with that glowing sphere, which had by now become the sphere he had found in the black room of ‘his place’.

The sphere continued to pulsate.  It beckoned, and he felt compelled to go to it again.  But something held him back.  There was a feeling of un-rightness about his desire to go back.  He had other things to do first.  Shaken, and confused by his adventure, he inspected himself and found that he had returned to his physical form.  He turned to find himself alone, and frowned.

Then, the orb’s pulse shifted, the change was a feeling he had, rather than any otherwise notable change.  He turned about, and watched it explode.  It grew at a rapid rate and began to take on a defined shape.  As he watched the shape resolved itself into T’ressa’s form, and the ball hung in mid-air again behind her.  Its glow was now a dull, grey, stone-like color.

T’ressa stood intensely still.  Her mouth hung slightly open, which she seemed to ignore completely.  Her eyes were wide with what appeared to Moros to be shock.

Moros understood that expression on such a base level that he reflected it.  Still, he felt more enlightened than shocked.  Everything he had witnessed seemed to make sense in a way indescribable, as though the word ‘sense’ itself had no meaning until now.  Without a word, he took her arm and led her from the chamber.  They were suddenly outside the massive structure she called his ‘place’ again.  He gave her a light kiss and a warm hug.

“I must return to Earth,” he said quietly.

She wanted to protest, but something in his tone told her that he would not listen.  With some resolve, she resumed her dragon shape before him, and flew away.  As she went, he heard her rumbling voice.  “At least I too will have something to do while you are gone,” she said in a growling chuckle.

Chapter Five

 

 

 

Moros sat down on the dirt of the floating mountain of stone that was his ‘place’ and contemplated how to return to earth.  The observation room was out of the question, as it seemed plain to him that while he and T’ressa had visited Earth, it was an Earth of a different dimension and time, one where he had died.

While he pondered, he came to realize all of the wondrous things he could do here.  He began to create ideas in his mind, and was a little less surprised this time around when they became real.  He created the stars of the Milky Way, the sun, the planets and moons.

Apparently, the creation of these things in the black void was quite an attraction to the dragons, who came near to watch, as anomaly after anomaly appeared.  But the dragons were caught, pulled inextricably toward their master.  At the fore of the hundred different dragons, each varying in size, was a massive red.  It was easily the rival of Moros’s white, and it was with a certain caution that he watched them all hurtling toward him.

Curious, he thought, watching as the dragons came toward him, obviously by a force they could not withstand.  Some came backward or sideways, but most simply whirled out of control in his direction.  They came faster and faster, and Moros grew concerned.  The red had righted himself and screamed with a rumbling bellow that shook his frame and set off the hollers of many other dragons.  In the panic, Moros was increasingly more confused.

Still the red came on, its gaping jaws open in a scream, hurling right for him at incalculable speed.  Coming dangerously close, the dragon reared back, ignoring those he backed into behind him, and Moros threw up his arms with a scream of his own that nearly equaled the red’s.  The dragon crashed down, and behind it came the others.  The red of its hide completely encompassed Moros’s vision, and crushed him to the ground from his sitting position. 

Everything was dark.

Tiny sparks of light gathered in his vision.  Pain that rivaled any pain he’d ever heard of pounded in his head.  He realized his eyes were closed, and he opened them cautiously, finding the stars he had created above him.  There were no dragons to be seen or heard.  He sat up, prepared once again to contemplate returning to earth. 

A crackling sound caught his attention, and he looked down at the ground to see a small makeshift hearth in which a few bright red coals still burned amidst a pillow of ash.  A grunt came from his left.  He turned to see a white bundle on the ground.  His vision was blurry and confusing, and there came other sounds, strange and echoing.  The white bundle moved.

“Moros!”

The bundle resolved itself into Oxus.

“You’ve been out for hours.  I was beginning to get worried about you.”

Moros opened his mouth to speak, but found it too dry for the effort.  Oxus handed him a cup of water with a distorted smile.  His eyes were red circles, bouncing around the general vicinity of his nose and forehead in time with his pulse.  He took a drink and felt it wash through his body like ice in his veins.

“I have been on a most interesting journey,” he said to the bearded man in the dirty white smock.

“Oh?”  Oxus did not sound surprised in the least.

“I met the dragon,” he said quietly.  “I was the dragon.”  His voice was severe as Moros looked as best he could into those constantly roving, red eyes.

Oxus did not overlook his young companion’s determined gaze.  “What do you mean?” he asked, sitting on the log before the dying fire.  “First,” he said, holding up a hand as Moros took a deep breath, “let me tell you that you were unconscious for hours.  Yet, your eyes were glued to the fire the entire time.  I was watching you when you came to.  You let out a sudden scream – a blood-curdling thing – then fell backward, off the log.  Suddenly you stood up with this dazed expression.  The rest is happening now.”  He paused for a moment. 

“Please.  Continue,” he said, leaning toward Moros intently.

Moros drew a deep breath.  “From what I remember, I was… pulled,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “into the fire.  Then everything was black.  Before I could even consider my predicament, I was grabbed and carried off into this black sort of void.”  He shook his head with a shaky grin, then continued his story.

“I looked up and saw the underside of a massive dragon.  It grabbed me and carried me off.  Then it started to talk.  It called me master and said it had been waiting for me.  It said that I had left some time ago to become an earth person, to ‘experience’ earth.  Then it dropped me and told me I could fly. 

“I became a dragon myself.  Then we flew to this place… she called it my place.”

He took another sip of water before continuing. 

“Suddenly I had all these powers, and I, sort of… zapped us inside this floating mountain.”

“Your place?” Oxus said.  Moros answered with an excited nod.

“Then we came to Earth as dragons, and found you.  You said that I had died, and had come back to punish you for allowing me to die.

Moros told Oxus everything he could remember.   “When I was separated from the sphere.  That was when I had to re-create Earth and everything, so I could come back.  The dragons were pulled toward me, and a big red dragon crashed into me, knocking me over.  When I opened my eyes I was back here.”

Oxus was pensive for a long, silent moment as Moros eagerly awaited his response.  Finally, he said, “Who was the other dragon that returned with you to Earth?”

“The same that carried me off.  Her name was T’ressa,” he answered with a distant gaze.

“Her name?!”

Moros nodded somewhat somberly.  “I gave her a human form while I was there.  She was the most beautiful being I’ve ever seen…”

They sat silently for a long time.  After a while, Oxus broke out his dragon pipe, and they smoked some of the herb of the dragon.  Moros noticed the effects of the herb instantly, though it was much less intense now.

“You know, Moros,” Oxus began quietly after letting out the air from his draw on the pipe.  “I don’t understand all of what you explained to me, but I think you did meet the dragon.  That is further than I have ever gone.  It must have been frightening for you at times.  I know I feared for my life a number of times, and I had only a glimpse of the dragon.  It must be a wonderful feeling to be one with the dragon.”

Moros looked up dumbfounded at him.  Should I be frightened? he wondered.

“You know that you cannot tell anyone about it, don’t you?”

“Why is that?”

“Think of what someone might say.  They would think you insane.  Many would consider you sacrilegious.  There are a million reasons not to repeat what you have told me to the average person.  You may find some people who will listen, but they will think it very odd.”

“But I saw Everything!  I understood the way of the universe!  I was the dragon!  And you say no one will listen?!”  Moros felt suddenly very helpless.  He wanted to scream and fight with the world.  Then he had an interesting thought and began to chuckle.

“I’m glad you’re accepting the truth of this world, Moros,” Oxus said quietly, feeling suddenly guilty for the entirety of the human race.

“Oh… I think I will spend my life trying to tell this tale to the world.  And if they do not believe now, they will eventually.  The longer they disbelieve, the longer it will take them to evolve into pure lifeforms.”  Moros’s stare into the flames of the dwindling fire was somehow wickedly calculating, sinister in every way.  “The joke will be on them…”

“Yes, but then, the human race has forever made itself the butt of the universe’s jokes.  The problem is that we try to refuse evolution, try to live forever.  I may not have been the dragon myself, but I know enough to see that by trying to evade death, all you do is bring about more pain to yourself, and less understanding.”

Moros was surprised by the rather astute observation Oxus offered, and wondered if he understood more than he let on.  They sat and watched the sunrise, chuckling occasionally at the misguided human race before they fell asleep where they sat, allowing their dreams to teach them things they would not remember. 

 

Somehow, Moros knew that he had been given a gift… one of understanding.  His gift would bring him hardships, but through its very nature, it would bring him pleasure.  His only problem was that he was forced to wait and live-out everything he already understood, otherwise he would only bring unbearable pain to himself.  His slumped form slept, nevertheless, with a bright grin across its lips as the sun shone full on his youthful face.

When they awoke, the two new friends spoke again about Moros’s adventure.  Oxus once again admonished him to be careful with his revelation.

“But it’s all so logical!” Moros protested.

“Perhaps to you.  But I doubt you will ever be able to explain it as well as you understand it.  I believe you… and I did not understand much of what you said.  It seemed to be missing many key pieces of logic to me.  And if you happen to mention that you drank my tea, not a single ear will listen, except for something amusing to hear.  The secret of the Dragon is that only a very few ever come to understand even the smallest portion of it, although they are an intricate part of it themselves.”

Moros felt sad.  He had learned something so profound it was actually the universal truth.  Oxus was right, he realized.  People only understand what they can see anymore.  He felt as if he held a key that was necessary for everyone, but they did not even see the keyhole.  Poor sods, he thought to himself.