The attack is done.  Once again I tried to do battle and lost.  Since then another has come and went and of course, I lost again as I always do.

I am sure soon she will get bored with me and move on.  I think she is just walking along with me until she finds something better.  To while away the days with me, I guess, she must find it somehow soothing.  I mean I must be of some value, Huh?  I am sure it will be just like Myra, Jenna, Victoria, and Valerie.  I can see they all made the best choices. . . . [a couple of seconds pass]. . . . . for me.

My number one goal in my life is fighting the Dragons of Hesse,  It is appearing that this will be my fight until I die either of old age, in an accident, in the jaws and fire breath of a dragon.  It is a world in which very few are privy. It is a world in which very few can see.  Nevertheless it is a world that is very real.   The dragons do live.  The dragons are real.  They can fly and breath fire and kill en masse.  They can surgically isolate their victim. and attach with methodical and measured precision.  They can attack for years with methodical measured deliberation until they need not use teeth, jaws, fire or talons.  They leave it for the victim to finish the job.

I first met the dragons when I was four years old.  It was in the far corner of the forbidden forest.  "Well, what were you expecting?  The entrance of the allowable forest or permissible forest?"  My parents were off doing other stuff and my sister whispered me away.

"Come here, I need to show you something!" She said,  "Quick - before mom and dad come back and want to know where we are!" 

With all the innocence that a four year old can have I followed.  I think I remembered sensing a hint of danger as she tried to coax me away.  The forest was dark and only my parents went there.  It was always cool and seemed to have a musty smell to it.  Entrance into the forest was by invitation only.  Rarely was I invited and it never really mattered until that day.  That forest was not of this world and both my sister and I knew it.

My sister was four years older than me and she had already ventured in and seen it.  But she had not really see it.  She actually had no idea what she was looking at.  Well she did but it didn't effect her but she knew it would effect me and she wanted to see how.


It was actually my sister who introduced them to me.  We met in my mom and dad's room.  My sister saw them too but she had no idea what she was looking at.  As soon as I saw them I experience a change in me.  My sister saw the change and she kind of laughed.  For me there was no laughing.  And as for the dragons, they weren't laughing either.

We went to the far corner of my mom and dad's bedroom.  In that far corner was filing cabinet. It was one of two where upon door lay flat to make a desk. There was the filing cabinet in the far corner and another at the other end of the door.  She opened the top drawer of the two drawer filing cabinet.  She pulled it out until it could be pulled no further.  She put her hand all the way to the back and then pulled it back out.  With it came a tremendous amount of smoke that had no smell.  It was almost like steam but it had real substance.  The particles of the steam did not dissipate or vanish.  In stead, the particles began to connect to one another making solid where once there was only air.  It took just a matter of seconds until all the particles connected and became two distinct masses suspended in space in my mom and dad's room.

They looked very much like "Puff" the magic dragon or rather an artist's conception of Puff. That is all I knew from the folk song by Peter Paul and Mary that my dad was listening to at the time.  I was awestruck.  The room became very big and my sister and I became very small.  My sister couldn't see it - any of it.  She didn't see the huge eyes.  She didn't see the massive mouths, the teeth, and the wings.  The wings.  The dragons seemed to be floating but they were not.  Their wings were flapping in full stroke



The wings seemed to be flapping in slow motion They were in the air because they were flapping their mighty scale covered wings.

I wasn't scarred at all.  Instead I was in awe.  I stood their transfixed on the two behemoths that floated in front of me.  And then simultaneously in one coordinated bellows they pulled in what must have been half the air in the room and expelled it back out with blue then yellow then orange flames that filled the room.  I did not move but just stood.  That is how I met Penlot and Rombuchuana.

Then in one of the most improbable moves I have ever seen, my sister simply grabbed at them with one hand no less and they turned to back into the steam that was really smoke.  The smoke collapsed back in on itself.  Then in one motion put it all back into the filing cabinet.  And then she closed the drawer.  The room lay just as it did moments before as if nothing ever happened.  Except for me standing looking ridiculous - like my pants were down around my ankles.

All my sister could see was my reaction.  I knew she had no idea what I saw.  She knew I saw something that was beyond her and she stood their mortified.  We both left the room.  Quiet and somber.  Penlot and Rombuchuana would be back.  The war lie waiting.














Penlot and Rombuchana were their names.