forms of intimacy

dra

Forms of Intimacy

I’ve managed to escape the silver dragon with his scalding breath of fire. Even when I masqueraded as a knight in shining armor I always rode in with my eyes averted and my lance off at an angle.

Those days are gone. After that I went to live with the Mole People who burrow thru the dark regions of dream and who never acknowledged my presence, unless the earth began to tremble as the silver dragon thundered across the terrain overhead. Then we huddled together in a dark subterranean cavern. This is as close as I came to intimacy, the intimacy of fear.

Now and then I’d work my way to the surface, which highlighted the difference between me and the Mole People–they had no interest in starlight and the green smell of spring. But there was nothing up there that belonged to me either, only things that I longed for, the intimacy of longing.

At times, asleep deep in a tunnel, I’d dream I was a hawk high in the brilliant sky, circling the great silver dragon far below. He’d rise up and breathe fire when he saw me, paw the air. I’d deprived us both of our destiny when I went down into the earth with the Mole People, and seeing me caused him great agitation, the intimacy of unfulfillment.

And then the dreams stopped. The Mole People wrapped me in whispers and took me deep into their labyrinth of tunnels until I panicked, broke free and began clawing my way upward, bursting out finally into a white desert. As far as the eye could see in all directions, nothing but sun-blistered sand.

I waited sword in hand for the silver dragon, but he never came.

I was alone in the vast desert.

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