The Stolen Dragon's Egg

I found the image on pinterest.com without any reference.

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“It is a stolen dragon’s egg. I am watching over it.”  Her eyes were big and serious when she turned her back on me and started rolling the purple exercise ball to the corner of the overgrown garden.

         I followed her.  “Who stole it?”

         Exasperated she turned around, hands on hips.  “The naughty elves wanted to play a trick on the fairies.”  She skipped away, the dragon’s egg apparently safe in the abandoned corner of the huge garden.

         I stood looking at her.  Nothing made sense.  “I do not understand.  How are the elves playing a trick on the fairies by stealing a poor mother dragon’s egg?”

She was busy sweeping small rocks and dust to clear a path for the ladybugs at the ladybug crossing, just behind her cottage, under the trees.  She dropped the small pink broom. 

“The dragon fairies.  They will be in trouble once it is known that they did not properly protect the egg.  That is one of their jobs, you know?”

I nodded knowledgeably, but I really did not know.  Dragon fairies? “I see,” I mumbled, and left her to rearrange the delicate seashells in the big bowl in front of her cottage.

I walked to my overcrowded desk, where books, papers, pens, notes, research and other mundane constituents contended to get noticed or used.

I sat down with a heavy sigh and waited for the computer to open the document, which I must finish.  I lost interest in the waiting process and paged through my research notes. My eyes were drawn towards the paragraph written by Karl Barth, the Swiss Protestant Theologian, in 1936: “He will not be like an ant which has foreseen everything in advance, but like a child in a forest, or on Christmas Eve: one who is always rightly astonished by events, by the encounters and experiences which overtake him.”

While the manuscript on the computer screen waited patiently for me to create adventures and events for its characters I finally understood about the stolen dragon’s egg in my garden.

My fingers danced with renewed energy over the keyboard. 

‘ “You have just stolen a dragon’s egg?”  Her hazel eyes were big in her pale face.

He could not meet her eyes, and looked down, at the huge purple egg, with its strange rose patterns.  “I couldn’t find a dragon for sale.” Defensive.

Both their eyes turned to the soft flutter of wings against glass, where a fairy was captured under an upside down crystal glass.

The silence could shatter nerves of steel. It did not.

The rage of their mother did.

Her white hair flew in an angry wave behind her back.  The delicate folds of her whit silk robe trailed over the rough surface of the black floor.  Even in the dim interior of the cavernous basement they could see her golden eyes flashing.  Her musical voice was deceptively soft.  “We are the royal family … How could you …” The indignant fairy got up and banged with her little fists against the crystal walls of her glass prison.

The White Queen slowly turned her head towards the tiny prisoner.

Her looks could wither the strongest warrior.  Her full lips were pressed together in a tight, angry line.

With slow, measured steps she walked to the crystal glass and lifted it up.

The miniature creature with wings soared into the damp air, flapping her wings and swinging her fists.  The queen held out her hand and the fairy settled on the outstretched palm, with crossed legs and a scowl on her face.’

“Mommy! Mommy! Come look!” 

I jumped up and ran outside, to find my daughter sitting on her haunches in the middle of the lawn, pointing with a little finger at something next to the duck pond.

“What is it my darling?”

“Look!  The fairies made the dragon small so she could come here and look for her egg!”

I looked and looked – and then I saw it.  A lizard sitting perfectly still on the rock next to the pond. 

How sad that life, worries and being an adult has robbed us of our ability to imagine the unimaginable? How utterly gloomy, that many of us has lost the ability to see a fairy in the soft rustle of a leave on a windless day, or a diamond in the sparkle of the sun on a dewdrop, or the work of naughty elves when your pen disappeared inexplicably, or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  How very disappointing that many of us have forgotten how to really look at our world and appreciate every moment, every rustle of leaves and every silver snail's trail.

  I picked my daughter up and we sauntered over to the “dragon”.  It looked at us with inquisitive eyes.

I whispered: “Let us go and fetch her egg …”

It was an immense operation to roll the huge purple egg to the pond, from the other side of the garden.  We had to circle the ladybug’s crossing and had to go underneath the tree fairies’ hanging cottage, not to mention that it took great effort to manouevre the egg past a colony of snails watching us with avid interest.

We left the egg near the rock, where the dragon sat. 

“Look how happy she is!”  My daughter turned around and ran to the open French doors on the patio.  “Let’s go see if the fairies left me something to say thank you!”

I laughed and grabbed her.  “Let’s first swing you on your rainbow swing.  I think the fairies will need time to discuss what they will give you to say thank you.”  I kissed the perfect and soft lips of my own fairy-child.

Life would be so much more fun if one “… believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

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