Dragon

When I went to bed that night I was still a bit unsettled. I always needed ages to get over a confrontation, even the type that most people would classify as only a mild misunderstanding. I lay awake for what felt like hours, but just when I thought I would never sleep suddenly I was standing in an enormous elevator. Puzzled, I looked around me. That was when I saw it.

A dragon. A big red dragon.

He stood on the other side of the elevator, watching me through narrowed, yellow eyes. 

Although he seemed dangerous in a quiet sort of way, I didn’t feel in fear of my life. Nor did it seem all that surprising when he said to me, “Hello,” and thus proved himself to also be a talking dragon.

“Hello,” I answered. When I tried to smile this made him eye me with yet more suspicion, so I stopped. “Um, are we going somewhere?” I asked him.

“No. At least, not yet.”

“But we might?”

The dragon clearly didn’t want to answer this question. When the silence seemed like it might stretch into eternity, I told him, “I don’t understand why I’m here.”

“Because I wanted to know something,” the dragon replied. He gave me a speculative look. “Do you know who I am?”

“No.”

“Hmmmn,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I answered, relieved for some reason. “But what is it you want to know?”

“Your secrets.”

“I don’t have any—at least, I don’t think I do. Other than the boring kind, I mean.”

Amused, the dragon replied, “That’s where you’re wrong. Your secrets are the type I find most interesting.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because,” the dragon said, “they aren’t the kind you keep from others—they’re the kind you keep from yourself.”

“And what are those, exactly?”

“That you don’t love them.”

“Don’t love who?”

The dragon shook his giant, scaly head. “You’ll have to answer that question for yourself. But when you do, remember this: love is a gift. Not a right.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded, only to find myself in a field of flowers. The dragon had gone. When I looked up into the sky the sun nearly blinded me.

In the morning I didn’t remember this dream until I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. What had gotten into my psyche, I couldn’t say, but I hoped my subconscious had worked through whatever issue was bothering it because I didn’t want to see that dragon again. Ever.


--From my novel The Abduction Myth, which you can purchase as an ebook here.