277.
The many dragons are still on Dragon Island, where you and I have only dreamed. No, I’ve never been. Never seen the craggy-columned basalt ring surrounding the flat-topped sparkling-granite Speaker’s Stone. Nor gazed upon the soft meadows dissolving into a hundred amorphous islands as the long arm of the Vorgas Fjord wanders into the oldest governing body/convention (the Alþingi), in the oldest place of government (the Þingvellir). Does a fjord make itself known? Does a fjord have its say? Does a fjord influence the politics of its day and of days gone by? Well, if ever a fjord performed such un-fjord-like wonders, that fjord would be the Vorgas Fjord.

I will tell you, and it becomes anyways apparent in cracks and fractures and cracks and crevices and nooks and nicks and nooks and crannies, that the Magic Realm had already at the time of our telling a long and healthy tradition of that most perfect of philosophical / metaphysical positions: a Something Deeperist faith in Pure Love. So why, you might wonder, were follies the likes of the now mopily and even a little ruefully sidelined Blaise Pirouette and the desperately advancing Momrath Bellingworth — or, I guess, Bellingworth Momrath as we originally had it and I suppose must continue keeping it — even possible?

But don’t you see? Haven’t you known ever since we met? A human can spend fifteen years obsessing over Something Deeperism and Pure Love and still lack adequate wisdom. So why can’t a collection of interrelated civilizations who’ve spent a couple thousand years musing upon and even formalizing and codifying Something Deeperism and Pure Love contain a number of reckless fools, careeningly indifferent to the Truth of Something Deeperism and Pure Love? Are not the infinite strands within a single mind an easier organizational project than the ten million infinite strands between ten million minds?

The dragons are, on the whole, pretty mellow, pretty gentle, pretty wise, passing sweet. A thousand years of safety, security, health, adequate wealth, study, reflection, meditation and a cultural consensus around and spiritual practices yearning after Something Deeperism and Pure Love are generally good for a body. Still, no dragon is his or her own idea — let alone the ideals of their books of law and love, and it is difficult to not succumb to some spiritual laziness when everything’s so safe and pleasant and easy for so long and wide and great. That is to say, not even the dragons are as wise as you and I mean to be when we feel the cool spring air and bright morning light on our face and in our lungs, when we look out onto the canyon so deep and redrock where we’ve come with our parents, cousins, and grandparents: a little day trip, a couple hours caravan in three big bug-faced vans; an infinite stretch of wonder wrapped up in companionship and dotted with chicken salad with green onions and celery chopped up fine and also pickle relish in there with the mayonnaise and complimenting the Pringles; yes, I believe it all adds up, I believe it all gels in the blue sky over the rocky desert abyss.

Author: B Willard
Editor: A Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson