Of Dragons and Sandragons

You were waiting when I got home.

As I opened the front door you took me by the hand and said,
"Come, please come. Let's play at Sandragons."

And so we did, ever so many times, on ever so many evenings, and loved it.

But this is no game; this is a story.

It is a story about a Sandragon. A real, true, live one, as real as time, real as a number.

"Oh. A Sandragon. But, what is a Sandragon, really?"

You mean you never saw a Sandragon? Well, that is no surprise. For of all the types, clans and tribes of dragons there are, Sandragons are by far the rarest and hardest to see.

If you look around carefully, you may see all sorts of dragons, but almost never a Sandragon.
You may see
- blue and white dragons, twisting and curling in your palm as you sip your tea;
- a green dragon, snarling under an archangel's heel, a spear at his throat;
- a silver dragon on a maiden's tether, skewered by a mounted knight's lance;
- blood-red dragons, guarding mounds of gold, deep underground, in the abandoned halls of Mountain Kings;
- paper dragons bobbing and dancing in concrete gorges between fire-crackers and towers of glass and steel.
You may meet Fierce Old Dragons quite easily and quite often.
But you will almost never see a Sandragon.

The reason for this is that most dragons belong in paintings, or stories which begin: "Once upon a time, many years ago, in a far-away land". But Sandragons live in a world which is harder to see, always there, right here - a world that is far away yet near, now and then, both in the beginning and in the end.

If you close your eyes and look just the right way on the right night you may be lucky enough to see one. If you do you will recognise it straight away, for these are the most splendid of all dragons. Not be the biggest or strongest, but without doubt the sharpest and fastest, most elegant and wonderful. Their colours will vary a little from one to another, with mood and surroundings, but a Sandragons' hues are always those of their home: the deep and distant Dreamdesert. A dark burnt-earth streak runs down the ridge of a Sandragon's spine, merging to crimson and imperial purple along its flanks, fading to the pink of dawn and tawny shades of sand below. Morpho butterflies' wings may be as razor-sky blue as a Sandragon's. A scarabs' armour may reflect as petroleum-green as Sandragon claws, but you will never find such enchanting and brilliant colours anywhere else. Of all dragons, only Sandragons can out-fly the very arrow of time, only they breathe such bunsen-bright flames.

The desert they live in is vast as an ocean, with files of dunes which would rank as Alps to you or me. The very air there shimmers like the blast from a furnace. It dries the water in your mouth as you breathe and is rich with the perfume of blazing sand, desert shrubs and dry grasses. That heat is vital to Sandragons. They need it as we need water. Without it little by little they lose the energy to soar across the sky, to generate the fierce blue flames which are their banner and arms.

At night-time, when the Dreamdesert sands leak the day's heat away into space, Sandragons retire deep into caves, where they curl up to sleep, sighing tongues of flame over their scimitar claws to keep them warm.

There is also another difference between Sandragons and most of their kin: Sandragons are playful. They love working tricks with words, numbers and anything they can find in the sky or on the earth. Their games do get a little out of hand now and then, and someone does get a little scorched now and then, but never very seriously. For any creature able to survive the heat of the Dreamdesert can survive a lick or two of Sandragon flame.

So, now you will know a Sandragon if ever you see one.