The Color of Dragons

There weren’t always dragons in my world. But I brought them to life. No, I didn’t lay eggs and birth them myself. They were produced by the imagination of a mostly overlooked child. Or were they?

“We take to the sky, Jessica,” the first dragon - named Dota - said when I encountered it in the forest on a warm night in May.

The woods was the place where I felt most at home, far away from the energy of other people. I mostly wanted to be alone. I felt safe among the trees and creatures that lived there. Walking in the forest, my body relaxed and I moved easily, like an animal that belonged.

After that first meeting, Dota would faithfully summon me from outside my bedroom window. “Hop on.”

Without delay, I'd obey and straddle the hovering dragon with my thin legs. And off we'd coast, over the valley and the mountains to a new, much-needed destination. Me with wide eyes and held breath and the dragon with a knowing but watchful gaze.

The dragons were my parents, my teachers, my protectors. Most of all, they were my friends.

And the dragons always knew what I needed.

§

The initial time I spied a fantastical reptile was in the darkening forest. I leaned against the strength of a mighty birch, huddling beneath a blanket that provided minimal to no relief of my discomfort. Duke, the fuzzy stuffed dog my grandmother gifted me at a street arts and crafts festival was clutched in my embrace. It was the final gift I would receive from her, as she had died soon after that spring day.

During the short hike to my favorite spot, I took deep breaths, trying to absorb the serenity of the setting. Sounds of another argument between Mom and Dad had drifted up the stairs and beneath my closed bedroom door like a sneaky serpent, causing me to seek the outdoors. Between the familial drama and a terribly dreadful day at school, my nerves were frazzled. Of course, at the time, all I understood was that I was ripe to throw a fit – an unruly, uncontrolled fit – and lash out at anyone in my reach. Instead, I directed the anger inside, at myself. The more I did this, the grayer I felt. The lively, multi-colored joy of being a child with all the mysteries of the world available for exploration and experience began to seep out of me, like the spent paintbrushes I washed in the sink. This feeling lingered. I needed to figure out a way to continue to contain the simmering volcano in my own little body before it unleashed its wrath.

Realizing that solace wasn’t going to come easily, even beneath the moonlit branches, I took out my sketchbook and the little battery-powered light I kept for those moments in the dark. I flipped through the pages, remembering a time when all the colors from lemony yellow to sapphire blue lived at my fingertips. They appeared whenever I beckoned and landed in dazzling blazes of bliss, whistling and twirling across the page.

But when I reached the last page, my latest creation, the dark cloud surrounding me grew larger.

The art I had produced earlier that day, beneath the giggles and stares of my classmates, stared back at me in all its imperfection. After that, the rainbow hues whistled more quietly as I erased and began again at my desk. As the ashen cloud began to spread and dim my drawing, I realized that my unicorn looked more like a washed-out rhinoceros. So I tried a dragon, but it more closely resembled a common alligator. That's when I slammed my sketchbook closed and wished for the school day to end.

After dismissal, back inside the silent walls of my bedroom, the gloomy haze didn’t feel as all-encompassing, so I attempted the dragon again. And once again. But the lines and shapes didn’t come out quite right. It seemed the somber storm cloud had shadowed me, feeding on my frustration.

Even so, as I sat there that evening in my natural kingdom with tears blurring the sketch, the psychedelic violets, rubies, and emeralds looked magical in the spotlight of my flashlight. In fact, the image looked like it was undulating as I moved the beam across the page. With a sudden crinkle, the dragon began to roll and ripple before peeling itself from the paper.

Horror engulfed me when I noticed that one of the dragon’s wings was slightly longer than the other. I tried to shove it back into its one-dimensional sheet. But it flew up into the nighttime air, and by the time I got out of my makeshift bed, it had soared high into the star-infused sky. When it came back down to eye-level, pirouetting in the night-time air, it looked me in the eye before stretching its wings to an astonishing span well beyond my view. Soon it had stretched its amethyst and emerald-scaled body into double, triple, no – several times its original size. The deformity of its wing was hardly noticeable anymore as the creature winked at me with its golden eye.

“We take to the sky.” Its voice was a soft susurration, like stirring leaves in a balmy breeze. But the mellifluous speech held an air of authority and certainty as tiny flames flickered around its mouth. “Dota I am. Hop on.”

“You mean…” I pointed to its back, my small finger pale and quivering in the moonlight.

The nod of its magnificent head was almost imperceptible, but I understood that I was meant to ride the beast to….where?

After flying high above the familiar, I saw a forest of white filled with trees rustling bare, paper foliage. Possibility washed over me. These woods were mine, and I reached toward the bleached shapes with colors crackling at my fingertips.

When I woke up the next morning with a myriad of vibrant splatter stains masking my skin, I smiled at the splendor of the rising sun.