Dragon Kin

25

Alicja

"So you're back," said the dragon behind me.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to bother you," I said, feeling weak and powerless.

Stretched out in front me was the vista view of my waking world. Men were standing around, ready to kill — as soon as they figured out what needed to be killed.

I was running and hiding from them, under things like books and flower vases.

"The furies are on me," I whispered.

"I don't recall you committing parricide," the dragon mused.

"I don't either," I said. "But they are on me, and I'm losing."

I was trying to get under the bed, with the men awkwardly trying to keep me from doing so. It was kind of comical, in a burlesque way — the way I clawed at the ground and then at my blouse.

The men suddenly stood up and Victor came through the door. He rushes to me. He's so terribly concerned. Kind of handsome though, and kind of romantic... I mean, if I wasn't screaming and clawing at my hair.

I meet his eyes, and I stop. I stop screaming, and clawing. Like I've been turned off. My body is tense, straining, vibrating with madness. But I'm not willing to look away from him. I've found him. My anchor. If he will stay, I can stop this.

I trust him.

He said he would come, and there he is.

I trust him.

"Bond is strong," the dragon said, behind me.

"Is this the change, or is this me?" I asked.

"I believe, the question you ask is the reason you are like this. Being unable to know the difference. How could you know if you were now the one changed?"

I nodded, "It's a rabbit hole."

"Wonderland," the dragon agreed.

"But I don't want to go among mad people..." I quoted in a whisper.

"Most of the change is acclimation," the dragon said, as it shifted a bit on its ledge.

"Sure," I agreed, my voice becoming academic. "...because this world is different. And the energy comes from this world. From a dragon of this world," I reasoned, building a premise.

"Dragons are symbols, and hold more than actual power, they hold cultural power," the dragon added in the same tone I used, adding to the premise.

"But do they?" I asked, beginning to pace. "Are they the source or the storage of these cultural consistencies and changes?"

"Ah," he reasoned, "but what is it to be both?"

"If that were the case, and the power of the dragon bond were actually handed down, rather than evolved, i.e. derived from a mutation of the human genome, then that would suggest the acclimation you claimed would also include memories and cultural lessons."

The dragon showed agreement, "What Jung would have called..."

"The collective unconscious..." I finished.

"A collection of information which would acclimate you into what you needed to be, in order to live here."

"It's not replacing me, it's adding to me..." I whispered.

In the room, still locked in an eye to eye struggle with Victor, my body relaxes and dreams begin. New information, gathered from the day begins to shape and sort and connect to my previous information, making connections, and lines of memories. I'm asleep. Asleep and dreaming normal dreams.