Paksworld

Since I’m up after midnight, but finished with what I can write (the last sentences in the work file prove that I’m too tired for creative stuff) I suppose perhaps I should say something about the dragon.   (If I have already done this in some previous post–blame it on post 1 am braindeadness.)

There were always dragons, in Paksenarrion’s universe, but they weren’t in the first books because they were (to the people then) something from way back in the past.  “There aren’t dragons anymore,” people said to one another. “There were, but Camwyn Dragonmaster sent them all away.”

Dragons find that hilarious at best, insulting at worst.    Camwyn did in fact have conversation with a dragon and live to tell about it, but the notion that a human–even a human believed by others to be a saint–“mastered” a dragon, let alone all dragons…ha.

Dragons in Paks’s world are Elders,  same as elves (and their iynisin kin) and rockfolk.   Humans have not seen dragons in the Eight Kingdoms since before Gird’s day, but that does not mean none of them ever visited.  There have been stories, mostly misunderstood.  Before that came the legends, now mostly forgotten or remembered only in fragments–the boy who broke the dragon’s egg and burst into flame, for instance.  (It didn’t happen exactly like that.)

The dragon who showed up in book 2 startled me–I wasn’t expecting a dragon.   I thought maybe a dragon might show up later in the group, near the end, when Certain Stuff may happen if the whole group of books doesn’t take a hard left and dive off the cliff into something else (which has been known to happen.)   But there the dragon was, and the dragon did what these dragons do, which is challenge people.

The specific talent of dragons is wisdom, as the specific talent of elves is beauty, and the specific talent of gnomes is law, and of dwarves is rock-sense.    Dragons apply what they consider wisdom to their judgment, where gnomes judge by Law as handed down to them by the One Lord.    Dragons have a peculiar and sometimes difficult relationship with rockfolk, relating both to how dragons use rock, and dragon reproduction…if dragon fertility were unchecked, there would be nothing left in the world but bare rock.   Dragons themselves know this, and preserve other life by curbing their own.   They are never careless and never rude “by accident.”

Dragons and elves have an even more difficult relationship.   Elves consider themselves wise, and in some ways they are…but dragons do not consider elves wise enough.   Elves, dragons  contend, can be seduced by beauty or by harmony (another aspect of beauty)  into not seeing far enough into the consequences.

No one comes from an encounter with a dragon unchanged.  Dragons ask uncomfortable questions, and act on principles no one can quite fathom.   Even if the dragon is met in a less recognizable form…it will be unsettling to remember that meeting.    Three important characters have now met a dragon…one remains, who must meet a dragon before the whole story ends (unless, as mentioned, the story does something wild and crazy.  Wilder and crazier, I should say.)