Saturday, April 11, 2009

Ressurecting




Warning! This is a very silly post! If you choose to read it anyway...you have no-one but yourself to blame.

I am getting ready to write fiction again for the first time in a long time. There are probably not too many people left who read this blog who know that at one time I was writing a story called Tragedy. I was very, very excited about it, probably more excited than I have ever been about anything and was very sad when the story eventually left me. I tried and tried to bring it back and couldn't and it broke my heart.

I think I am ready to try writing again and I hope this time that I don't make the same mistakes I made the last time. First of all, I want to have this one planned out a little better before I officially begin it so I don't lose the thread in the middle. Secondly, my Tragedy story amused me but I didn't really have my whole heart into it.. I did when I started but somehow when I was writing it, it changed and became merely a vehicle for some clever, fun, cerebral sort of writing and I somehow lost the core of it. I don't want to do that with this. You never know I might resurrect Tragedy some day and finish her though she will probably be a short story and I will use this following little segment to base my story upon. I think that probably X is the only friend that I have left that would remember this story. This was my favorite.

NOW, Brian used to be part of a dragon singing quartet. If when you hear this, you are imagining something akin to a barbershop quartet, you couldn't be more wrong. First of all, there is nothing in the world like the singing of a dragon. The voice of a dragon is powerful and disturbing in a way that you simply couldn't understand unless you've heard it. Some would call it hallucinatory. Some might call it wierd but if they think it's weird then they don't really get it.
The dragon pipe is the perfect accompaniment for a dragon. Dragon pipes are a wind instrument as the name suggests, which comes in 16 pieces which can all be put together in different combinations. Depending upon which mouthpiece and which chamber or chambers the dragon adds and how many, a completely different sound can be made. It is the most versatile instrument ever made and humans and others have tried to fashion their own but theirs don't have the same effect. The chambers are too small and they simply can't achieve the same resonance.
Now, the group could have been a huge success but they weren't together long because, I ashamed to say, they fought all the time like children. So they went their separate ways. John took over the family business of raising gourmet steer, oxen etc...bred specifically for the palates of discriminating dragons, as the advertisement said. Perry and Bart began experimenting with a new form of music in which the traditional and new music of all races were mixed. This music became become very famous, you may have heard of it. It is called Dragon fusion. One flew across the ocean and was never heard from again. As for Brian, he took a sabbatical to explore different religions and to dabble in the occult.
But tonight 4 of the 5 members were meeting by prior arrangement (they met once a year, somewhere or another) in a pub frequented by dragons. Due to the fact that Dragons need quite a bit of liquor because of their great sizes( though not as much as you would think, dragons become intoxicated easily!) not all pubs were able to acccomodate them. This pub happened to be near one of the Dragon's lairs, Johns, and kept liquor for him there as a courtesy. It ended up being very lucrative decision on their part, as he was a very good customer! As a matter of fact, the other dragons noticed that John had gotten quite a paunch since they had last seen him, though they were all too polite to mention it.
So there they were, reminiscing about the old days, all the time getting drunker and drunker, merrier and merrier. Having rather loud voices, they were overheard by people and others in the pub who were all drunk as well and they began boisterously encouraging them to perform a few songs. The dragons were reticent and bashful at first but finally agreed to sing just one song.
So while 3 of the dragons, Brian, Perry and Bart, began to sing a plaintive ballad, John flew home to get his dragonpipes. It was a beautiful summer evening with twilight about an hour away. They were feeling very sentimental and once they started, they couldn't stop, it was like old times and it turned into a concert that was talked about for years!
After singing several ballads, accompanied by the dragonpipes which were assembled to sound haunting and flute-like, the dragons rested and and prepared had another drink.
Then John re-assembled the pipes to make a sound that was similar, though more melodic, to that which a foghorn makes. While John played the dragonpipes mournfully, the dragons began singing a sort of martial song. Now, one of the things that is so impressive about a dragon concert is that dragons sometimes fly in intricate patterns while they sing. Dragons are taught these complicated formations from the time that they are young, it is a favorite past-time in their culture and these four dragons were exceptionally good at it as they had a very strong telepathic link. Consider yourself very lucky indeed if you ever get to the opportunity to see dragons fly like this.
So, while John played deep, low, booming notes on his pipes the dragons rose in the air and began arcing gracefully back and forth, criss-crossing each other and crooning while they went. Then as the tempo of the song began to pick up, John began beating his tale against a barrel to provide rhythm and the dragons began to scream in loud agonized voices that seemed to stretch across the sky leaving ragged echoes. Their swooping became larger and grander and faster and then, one by one, they began diving straight down out of the sky into the crowd howling and blazing and wailing eerily and then pulling up at exactly the right moment before they crashed into the people who, as you might imagine, quickly sobered up.
Then the dragons flew off to a distance to let the crowd recover and hummed ominously while John reassembled the dragonpipes. When the crowd had grown hushed and expectant, John began playing his dragonpipes again, making an murky, warbling sound, similar to the sound made by whales underwater. The dragons answered with druidic-like chanting and swooning harmonies and began flying in closer, chanting all the while. This time the dragons flew around and around, always opposite each other so that their voices were coming from all sides and began to scream with ragged emotion, the echoes seeming to wrap around the audience and enter into them.
They were singing as the sun went down and when it was dark they began streaking across the sky, their flames flying behind them. Dragons have a trick of being able to eat certain rocks which change the color of their flames, John had gotten some for them when he went to his cave, so they tore across the sky with Sapphire and and Emerald and Scarlet flames seeming to burst out of them while John's piping grew more and more frenzied.
They were all magnificent, but none so sublime as Brian, for he had seen Trinity and had come undone. He had not only seen her but felt her because he seemed to have some sort of telepathic link to her which normally doesn't happen between human and dragon. And he was singing to her, and for her, he was inspired by her and hoping that she would understand.
When the last echo had faded, the audience paused for a moment and then went wild, yelling and screaming, stomping and throwing their hats in the air. Each and every one of them were to remember this to the end of their days as the most incredible thing that they had ever seen, but none of them were ever able to describe it.
Trinity had noticed Brian as well, he had stood out to her brilliantly. She was deeply moved his songs and felt that she could fall in love with someone who sang like she felt if only he weren't a dragon. So when the concert ended, Brian hungrily caught her eye and Trinity moodily waited for him, waited for him to free himself from the other dragons and the rest of the audience not really knowing what she was waiting for.
And then they began to talk and she knew why she had waited. They talked all night until the sun came up, thus setting the pattern of their affair. They had so much in common! They liked the same books and the same music! They shared the same wicked sense of humor and sense of drama. They both liked to stay up all night, they both found danger romantic and safely dull. They each had a propensity for accidentally setting things on fire when they were mad and that had to be more than just a coincidence. And they could communicate at a level deeper than any words that can be spoken.
Their love was very bittersweet, as their relationship could never be consummated due to their size differences. Theirs became a courtly and satirical sort of love. She called him her troubadour and he called her little dark one. She wove him garlands of flowers to wear around his wrist, (it would have taken her too long to make one big enough for his head) and he brought her pretty trinkets and baubles.He wrote her poetry and she slept curled up inside the circle of his arms. She felt safe for the first time in her life. And most of all, with him she could fly and after that she was never the same!

I would like to point out that I know that at one point in the story, that it sounds like the dragons are farting. I will change that if I ever decided to submit it for publication but for now, as I am rather fond of the image, I will leave it.
Also, something has changed with blogger and I don't know how to manage it and I'm too lazy to figure it out. I don't know how to take these pictures out. When I go into the edit mode instead of getting the computer mumbo jumbo that I can then delete, the actual picture is up there and I don't know how to delete it. So that is not the picture I want, well it was but it's too big. Maybe later on when I feel left-brained (how about never!) I'll come back and see if I can do something with it. Unless anyone wants to tell me how to do it! (Hint! Hint!)