I love the internet.  I hope those technojinxed types are happy with their Archives and their Akashic Records and the like, because, frankly, when it comes to doing some good, solid research, libraries and loa are fabulous, but there’s just nothing like sitting down half-naked (Doloise is here) with a tall glass of ice water and Google (actually, I do like Bananaslug‘s take on it because there’s more poetry to the results, but you’re welcome to use your search engine of choice.)

There is a lot of stuff out there about Dragons.

And, of course, as I was saying earlier, it’s all true.  To someone, somewhere, with the right shiny tinfoil hat with their right arm extended, while they whistle Dixie when eating crackers and covering one eye.   Yeah, I believe in a fairly consensual reality, but I’d like to call it a consensible reality instead.  Everyone with me?

Of course, there’s the flip side of the websearch… everything else you could find out about everything else.  It’s the siren’s call of websurfing.  “I know you’re looking up references to Latvian deities, but look, here’s a page on the anatomy of a bird’s wing!”  I do not consider myself having any kind of attention deficit, but learning is such a pleasure to the brain I sometimes need to pull back my focus.

I am learning about Dragons.

Doloise read over my shoulder, or, at least watched the words on the screen.  I didn’t actually ask her if she could read, and at that if she could read English (or any other language for that matter.)  She would speak it for me because it is a matter of Hospitality, both my ability to provide it and hers to express her part, but she was created to work with me, so I could expect it.  Despite the many books that talk about this law, you can’t always claim it – words have power.  Those things that are willing to verbally joust with you are not unaware of this.  That’s why Doloise speaks a little more freely now; she’s picking up from me some exceptions to her rules.

I won’t say it’s been easy having a woman expressly made for me around all the time, especially as she’s willing to hang out and not bother me while I do one of my favourite things.  Part of me hopes that this self-control (who would know I banged a faerie chick?) is redeemable for “woman-points” later, but another part of me smacks that part for objectifying women.  So I’m getting beaten up and not laid, and really, it’s not fair.

I am not even getting my weekly porn night out of all of this.  (That’s another way the Internet is an improvement over the other methods.)

It’s all part of the job, and I should be happy.  I get to spend hours reading about Dragons.  Eastern Dragons versus Western Dragons versus history versus myth versus modern fantasy stories.  In some cases, like reading of Smaug, it was like visiting with old friend.  Fabulous.  I made a bag of popcorn.

(The rule of thumb on Eastern versus Western is usually in their attention to their purpose or their appetite.  Which is amusing, because I was taught that when it came to magic it was that Eastern sorcerors saw it as an ordinary tool, and Western as a special case scenario.  So Western mages don’t deal with Dragons except to avoid their appetites, and Eastern mages didn’t seek their wisdom because it would be like asking the postman.  A little too simplistic a view, but it kind of orients the implications.)

“That is not true,” Doloise finally says aloud.

“Which?” I ask.  “There’s a lot of stuff here that isn’t true.”

“They speak of Dragons as if they were singular creatures.”

“Are they like you?” I asked, leaning back.  It would explain some of what I had been learning.

“No,” she said, and then, she reconsidered.  “Yes.”

She smiled.

I wasn’t sure I liked were this was going.

“You have a lot less in the way of scales.”

“You have touched me very little to make that decision,” she said, flatly.  I considered for a moment.  She had been made for me, had I been neglecting something in their gift?

If going to bed with a community was strange, I certainly wasn’t getting into bed with a Dragon.