The Rumour of the Writerly & Kindly Drakes

[DRAFT version 1.1]

Once upon a time (and in a cave, of course), on some lonesome shore of the Isle of False Monsters...

Agatha the Kindly Drake had let herself in to the cave of her kin, Emerii the Writerly Drake, to see what it was Emerii had been writing today.

Now that Drakes could no longer roam quite so freely, for fear of the Huntsmen, they were mostly left to visiting each other under cover of moonless nights and inclement weathers. Agatha though had taken a chance and ventured out on a sunny Autumn morning. She was tired of feeling so isolated, and needed some fresh air and sunlight.

She found her cousin, unsurprisingly, at their small writing desk. This was in the brighter corner of the cave, which had a small hole in the wall, where the sun would occasionally peak through and illuminate the desk, so that Emerii could see the words now and then. The desk was, naturally, atop a small pile of treasure (since drakes do not use chairs, but treasure piles for sitting).

"Hello, cousin" Emerii said, as Agatha wound her way in, and took up the visitor's treasure pile near the cave entrance, which Emerii had amassed there for visitors of varying size. Emerii had not looked up as Agatha had come in, busy as they were with their latest masterpiece. "What news do you bring from the wide world without?"

Agatha finished coiling comfortably upon the visitor's hoard, and shook the autumn leaves from her wings. "I do not follow the news, as you know. The People are being People. I was visited by the Owls from the valley this morning. They say Hoo to you. What are you writing this morning?"

Emerii dotted some punctuation at random into a run-on sentence, and placed their quill awkwardly into the tiny ink pot set into the desk. This took a few moments - Emerii's talons intended for rending and not writing things - but People (who were Emerii's target audience) preferred scrolls and letters of a reasonable Person-size, and so Emerii had done their best to write small. After a few failed attempts at putting back their quill, they finally managed to get it into the pot. "How nice of the Owls. Please tell them Hoo Hoo for me, when you see them next".

Emerii snaked their long neck about, searching for where the next blank parchment had gone. Sometimes Emerii's wings would slow-flap on their own accord, sending sheaves everywhere while they wrote.

Agatha pointed a talon at where Emerii's errant parchment had ended up - squarely upon the helmet of some long-dead knight (still clutching an enchanted axe in its bony hands). Agatha sometimes wondered if the man's family still expected him home one day.

Emerii carefully plucked the parchment from the man's helm and brought it to the small desk, carefully flattening it. "Thank you, I lose these all the time. I should pillage a drawer from the nearby village... something to keep my papers in."

"Oh now, Emerii", said Agatha, "we must be careful these days. It is no longer wise to venture so close to the People's places. They are unusually agitated and apt to do something entirely too rash. Even for them". She was not at all wrong.

Emerii took care as they picked the quill out of the pot, and got to work on the next page. "I am writing an epic. Or perhaps it is a saga - I am still unsure what makes a fanciful or protracted untruth either one or the other."

"Perhaps it is both" Agatha said, wiggling her great bulk about to make herself comfortable upon the sitting hoard. A silver crown from some ancient king bent beneath her left haunch. The royal head upon which the thing had once rested had been already un-bodied years before, by some angry mob (angry about injustice, in that case, in case you were wondering). "Dear dear, I bent this nice hat" Agatha apologized, almost to herself.

Emerii did not mind if their treasure became bent or broken - this mostly made it more comfortable to sit upon. A good sitting hoard took many years to make right. Emerii had been working on their hoard - which they divided into smaller sitting piles - for a good many years now, and was proud of how inviting the cave had become for visiting. It was mostly Agatha who visited Emerii these days, though. She was of course correct - it had become entirely unsafe to go outside, most days.

The next sentence was causing Emerii some trouble, and they flicked their long tongue about while thinking.

"Perhaps it is both" offered Agatha.

"What, both fanciful and protracted?

"No - well, yes. It is both of those things, I am certain. I meant, perhaps it is both an epic and a saga." Agatha had decided to try on the bent crown, and pretend to be a monarch. It would not stay on her head though, which was shaped like a drake's, after all, and not well-suited for hats.

Emerii stopped writing, and looked up with concern. "Wait, how do know that my story is both fanciful and protracted? I have not read it to you yet. In fact, it's not even one-seventh written, if even that."

Agatha shook her head (though kindly, since she was a Kindly Drake). "Emerii, my dear cousin, everything you have ever penned is both protracted and naught but full of fancy. That is your style and also your nature... and so I am only making an informed guess that this current project of yours will be more of both of those things."

"Oh, I see."

"I don't mean to be mean-sounding. That is not my intention, or my nature. For one, I rather enjoy an excessively long tale, containing many unbelievable events and myriads of characters, all intertwined -"

"Well, I am pleased to hear that -"

"- though I also meant to add that I might be... in the minority of sorts, as a reader these days, in those regards."

"Oh. I See." Emerii repeated, endeavouring again to put the quill back into the pot. Agatha must have come to say something they needed to properly hear. Emerii folded their great paws together upon the desk (completely covering it), and began again to listen, but better.

Agatha breathed out a few loops of smoke, before proceeding. She did not want to hurt any feelings. She loathed hurting things like feelings. "It's just the times, my friend. They are full of change and uncertainty now... and People - who are your intended readership, if I am to understand - are entirely unclear what our future holds for them, and so have less time and interest in leisurely pursuits (such as epic sagas) than they perhaps once had."

Emerii was not clear on where Agatha was going quite yet.

Agatha continued, "Even the nobility and the wandering-and-armed-ne'er-do-wells - who have traditionally had the most time to spare for leisurely pursuits such as reading and warfare - are finding themselves, these days, much too pressed for time. They are in a fight for survival, as a species. They barely have a moment to rest these days, what with all the flooding and monster encroachments. Much less, time for reading lengthy novels which are meant to describe - well-meant though they may be - how they got themselves into their current predicaments."

Emerii's wings fluttered, a bit indignantly. "Why bring up warfare? I am writing a historical epic or saga, not writing a war novel."

"But your book has a war in it as well, among all those other things, does it not? There is always a war going on in the backdrops of your stories."

Emerii did not immediately answer. "Again, you have not read it yet."

"Because it is unfinished... I know." Agatha stopped trying to get the bent crown to stay on her head, and put it back on the pile, where it rolled itself into a cranny between an iron pot and an old, singed boot.

Emerii became lost in thought for a time, looking at their little desk, and then at the scattered parchments arrayed all about them, and then everywhere in the cave - at the great heaps of ideas and and opinions woven into tall tales of woe and sacrifice and heroism and villainy and indifference... and every one entirely uncompleted and going nowhere, except on and on.

But to what end? Emerii thought this out loud, not intending to.

Agatha always knew what Emerii meant to think, and shook her head again, sadly. "I do not know why People need to create such catastrophes in order to learn their best lessons. That is just their nature, I suppose. I suppose it makes them more interesting to be around."

B.B. Butterwell's Compendium Allegoriian by B.B. Butterwell is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal