I was waiting for a collect call from Dorothy Hall to let me know Aurelia had arrived at her destination safely.   Then I remembered Faith.

So energetic.

So much energy.

She never said no.  She always seemed to manage to fit everything in somehow.

I felt a bond with Aurelia.  I don’t remember not feeling it.  It changed as

she changed and I changed but it was strong.

I always said I knew Aurelia loved me very much.  I was aware of a characteristic she shared with my dad, a directness about communication.   I knew they both loved me very much because they damn well sure would tell me if they didn’t.

Eastern Youth Passes.

Two sisters close enough to trust the other with their children for hours, days, months and years.

Aurelia hid Reese cups in the secret compartment of the secretary in the living

room.  I think the desk is at Alice’s house now.  Hershey’s with Almonds

too.

In the kitchen – Nestlé’s Quick, corner kitchen cabinets and a refrigerator

with a button to push that would open the door.  There was a pool table in the sun room.  There were radios in almost every room.

Most family’s have a family doctor or family accountant… we have a family

body repair man – “don’t worry.”

Snow tires for Christmas. For my birthday a box filled with individual containers of Chile and Vegetable soup for me to take to work so I would eat right and save money.

Going to the officers club for free hors d’oeuvres at happy hour after shopping at the PX to get bargains for the whole world.

There was a closet off the kitchen that contained cartons of cigarettes.  Specific brands for all the smokers she knew.  I don’t think they paid her for them. I think she just purchased them because the price was so good and why should friends and family be paying so much more.

Clean up the back stairway.

Work on the third floor.

Work on the basement.

Clean out the garage.

Vacuum. Vacuum. Vacuum.

Babysitting gigs and dog sitting jobs.  Handing out flyers and catering parties

for Epsilon.  Aurelia was all about finding a place for me in the work force.  She encouraged me and provided a school loan for me to attend what seemed to possibly be a silly course in Harvard Square to become a travel agent.   All I knew is that I was working at whatever job I could to buy airline tickets and so she thought my idea of getting the training that would lead to free airline tickets was something to pursue.  It worked out pretty well.  We talked often about my work over the years. She was always interested about the company I was working for and would listen to me go on about customer service.  She made me feel so proud about what I do.

Fast cars

Boiled ham from the Purity Supreme

Nectarines and plums

Scali bread

Mayonnaise

Fried dough

English muffins

Corn toasties

Parking on the ramp off I93 in Boston to bring home crates of asparagus or strawberries or cantaloupes purchased at record low prices late Saturday afternoon when Haymarket is about to close down.

How many miles along the eastern seaboard has the whole family traveled to spend time together?

Aurelia said to me:  “We had a good time didn’t we darling?”

She taught me how to fold towels and to always change the lint filter – that it

was important.

She taught me that I want to be like her.   I’ve been told that when those we

love pass on we have an opportunity to become more like them.  During the last month of her life in Andover I thought about that a lot and when I’d sit with her I let her know I will be okay and I will always feel her love in my heart.

Keep your eyes open to see Aurelia multiplied by all those who loved her and have the opportunity to share her Aurelianess with the world.

February 27, 1926 – June 14, 2007

On Thursday, June 14^th, Mary Aurelia Mobbs, 81, died peacefully in Andover surrounded by all of her children and several of her grandchildren. Aurelia was formerly of Winchester and Andover and of Pinehurst, NC.

“Lee” was born on February 27^th, 1926.  She attended Limestone College in Gaffney, SC for four years and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1946.  She went on to become a Second Lieutenant of the Medical Corps in the United States Army at a time when it was unusual for a woman to be an officer.  She was stationed in San Antonio, TX and later transferred to the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC.

On May 29^th, 1950 she was married to the late Dr. Robert Fredrick Mobbs formerly of Woburn, and thus began the great adventure.  “Doc.” Mobbs’ primary profession was medicine but his passion was pesticides and their impact on people’s health all around the world.  She created the loving space for their family while Doc would go off to fight the battle.  Their partnership allowed them to balance this lifelong quest with raising five children.

Aurelia’s heart, and her home, was always big enough for those with personal challenges – those with a hungry soul or a hungry stomach.  The invitations to her table were based on need not on status.  She saw this as her call and responded to it all her life.  To those who experienced her hospitality and care, she was an amazing example.

She maintained a youthful and energetic presence well past her eightieth birthday.  Her love for tennis continued beyond most of her younger partners.  The North Carolina coast provided a relaxing retreat for Doc and Lee and served as a gathering place for frequent family reunions.

She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry George Smith of Gibson, NC, sister of Reginald Smith, Zelma Gardner, Iris Keith, the late H.G. Smith, the late Lois Webster, and the late Lemar Smith.  She is survived by her five children, Betty Mobbs and Stephanie Deady, both of Andover, Rick Mobbs of Willington, NC, Melanie McDonald of Aberdeen, NC, and Alice O’Leary of Winchester.  She has nineteen grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

A celebration of Aurelia’s life will be held on Wednesday June 20, 2007 at 4:00 PM at South Church in Andover.  Refreshments will be served after the service in the fellowship hall.  A second celebration will be held in Holden Beach, NC in July at a time to be announced later.  Contributions in her memory and in lieu of flowers may be made to Merrimack Valley Hospice, 360 Merrimack Street, Lawrence, MA 01843.

A Fearless Activist in a Land of Thugs

2007, Human Rights Watch

Natalia Estemirova in 2007.

// //

NATALYA ESTEMIROVA is gone now. Her executioners forced her into a car in front of her home in Chechnya and sped away with her on Wednesday morning. She managed to shout that she was being kidnapped, her last known words documenting the beginning of the crimes against her, just as she had documented crimes against uncountable others.

//

World View: Andrea Kannapell and Ellen Barry discuss the murder of a civil rights activist in Chechnya.

//

Natalya Estemirova, the Chechen human rights campaigner who was killed.

Her killers worked quickly, as if on orders. They drove to a remote place, shot her and left her near the road, killing her in exactly the manner her friends had long feared would be her fate. Her purse was nearby. Her killers did not want it. This crime was about something else.

Ms. Estemirova was an essential member of a tiny circle of the premier human rights investigators in the entire Caucasus — a woman of immeasurable courage, precision and calm. She was a researcher for Memorial, the human rights organization, in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital.

I will step out of character as a reporter and declare it: she was both a trusted source and friend of the last several years, a time when the foreigners still trying to understand Chechnya shrank to an inadequate few.

She was compassionate, meticulous, gritty, patient and driven at once, possessed of a strong stomach and light touch, a counselor and a hunter, someone who knew what she knew and understood what she could not prove.

To the families whose pain she worked to relieve and whose stories she forced the world to see, she was a resolute champion. To the men whose crimes she exposed, case by case, with a quiet composure, she was a confounding enemy, a feminine nemesis they could neither fathom nor dissuade.

She wandered the ruined republic wearing a skirt, blouse and heels, lipstick on, carrying her purse and presenting a straight face, perhaps warmed by a slight smile, to masked gunmen and victims alike. She could seem as proper as a chief librarian, ready to add to her archive, both on paper and in the mind, which revealed the Chechen wars for what they really were. How did she dare?

This was Chechnya, after all, a world of violence so sinister it can be difficult to describe in a newspaper. Thugs dominate this land. Experience has taught them that fear will bend opponents to heel. Who was she to chase them? Why could she not be persuaded to quit? The answer is now written, though everyone who knew her knew it long ago: only death would stop her. All her friends could do was trust her to dodge it, as she had, somehow, for years.

A QUESTION hangs over her execution, the most recent in a series of killings of those still willing to chronicle Chechnya’s horrors. Is the accounting of the human toll now over? Without her, will Chechnya become, like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, a place where no one risks asking hard questions openly?

Chechnya is a tiny spot on Russia’s big map, home to only several hundred thousand souls. But its past two decades offered lenses into factors driving modern war: nationalism, oil, religious intolerance, racism, tribalism, blood codes that demand revenge, irregular fighters and ill-disciplined conventional units, outright banditry, poverty, official corruption and, for good measure, traveling Islamic mercenaries and a government rooted in a personality cult.

Her world could not be much worse. First it matched pie-eyed separatism against crude Russian tactics. Then it hosted insurgency, terrorism and state-directed rights abuses on an extraordinary scale. Lately it morphed into micro-Stalinism under Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the former rebel turned feared president.

Ms. Estemirova’s office became a kaleidoscope of the macabre.

She was, improbably, a one-woman parallel government, providing services that the real government was unwilling to offer. She found the incarcerated. She hunted for hidden graves. She built cases against perpetrators, even when she found, as she often did, that they wore government uniforms.

Grozny was a wasteland, physically, morally, psychologically. Ms. Estemirova was almost otherworldly. She inhabited a separate Chechnya, a region where dignity might prevail.

Russia fell silent to the wars. State-controlled television did not broadcast her findings. Most Russian journalists avoided her. Her truths were not welcome. In Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia , she was a nonperson. She was undeterred. She took her findings directly to prosecutors, having done their jobs for them, and requested investigations.

Sometimes she found allies in government, in part because she possessed an integrity born of independence. Unlike many voices that rose against Russia’s Chechen policies, Ms. Estemirova was not enamored of the rebels. She lived through separatist self-rule in the late 1990s. She saw they were corrupt and brutal, too. She did not choose sides. Her work pointed elsewhere: to facts.

Facts drove her. She had trained as a historian, and once history erupted around her she wanted both to document the suffering and crimes and give Russia a chance to address them, thereby stepping toward the modern world. The Kremlin was not interested.

Her files were stuffed not with innuendo or sweeping judgments. They contained facts, each one carefully checked. They were a damning accumulation. A Chechen friend, a heavily scarred former fighter who knew something of the ideas and the men that brought Chechnya to debasement, offered an explanation of how she managed to carry on. She was a fighter apart. Bezstrashnaya, he said: “without fear.”

Did she see what awaited her? Her friends would say: Yes.

WARNING her was a constant. But asking her to leave Russia for her own good was a conversation she would cut short with sighs. She was shaped by a mission inextricable from her life, even if it predicted her death. She even turned the concerns back around.

It is you who should be careful, she told a pair of us last fall. Call me tonight so I know you are safe.

All the while she calmly confronted the authorities, while people around her dropped out or were killed. Over the years, and again recently, Ms. Estemirova and her co-workers were summoned to official meetings to hear blistering complaints about their work.

The message was crude and clear: Stop. It is difficult for an outsider to grasp how awful these meetings must have been.

She was called before President Kadyrov, head of a government that ran torture centers where, as her records showed, detainees were subjected to beatings, stompings, electric shocks, mock executions, sodomy, burnings by gas torch and, in the end, for some, execution.

Mr. Kadyrov, survivors said, participated in these crimes with delight.

Many victims have not been seen since. Mutilated remains of others turned up — limbs broken, faces smashed, skin charred, heads and torsos shattered by bullets fired at close range — the characteristic human refuse of Chechnya’s wars and its governing style.

Almost inevitably these cases were documented by Ms. Estemirova. Almost no one was ever charged. And now Ms. Estemirova, the lead investigator, who refused to quit when told it was time to be silent, is gone, taken from life — and from Russia — the same way.

I have heard that it is the convert in the choir that sings the loudest. My mother grew up in an energetic southern church. Over the course of years, and many diverse locations, she sampled other denominations, always seeking a fit for herself and her family. Later, in a time of crisis, she awakened to a Christ consciousness and a very personal sense of Salvation.

Meme came to faith in a personal way, the way of direct knowledge, of a sudden cascading conversion experience that sustained her and renewed her in all the days of her life to follow. She naturally wanted the rest of us to join her in her new-found faith but those were times before any of us had come to similar junctures in our lives, and we really did not know what to make of her or, at that time, the clarity of the path she had found.

At 17, I could not yet see that she was struggling with life and reaching for hope. That she was struggling to hold fast, deeply engaged in the difficult work of becoming a useful instrument. She was committed to the hard work of fashioning a life that felt right to her, a life we would all be proud of, and of evolving into a person able to see God in all places, circumstances, and people. It was that calm, kind, accepting, and democratic outlook that characterized her; that, along with her humor, empowered her. Without her prayers and prayer chains and intercessions I doubt I would be here to tell these stories. If I have a regret it is that it took me so long to see her as the person she was and to recognize her shining spirit. I am grateful that in these last years I was able to see something of the lanky girl within, and to recognize the awesome, funny person she had cooperated with her Creator to become.

Meme died as she lived: unafraid, and ready for the next chapter. She died at home, slipping away as she said she would: when we least would expect it. The wasting effect of the particular kind of cancer left her too weak to communicate those last few days, and the medication sedated her, even as it made her breathing easier. He family gathered round knowing that her time would soon be here. To give her some privacy we left the room and in the five minutes of private time – which was all my youngest sister, Stephanie was willing to grant her – she gathered and arranged herself, and made her escape.

In her weakened state it must have taken great effort to gather herself as she did. In death, her face held a calm repose, and a particular beauty. Within the face of age I could suddenly see the open face and expectant eyes of the shining beauty my father had fallen in love with. That is the way she left us.

Six weeks before she died she was on a riding mower, cutting the grass. Three weeks after that, bundled against the wind, she went for a ride in my brother-in-law’s jaguar and the next day she left for a weekend in New Hampshire.

Her illness progressed with astonishing speed. Her suffering was mercifully short, yet she still had time enough to feel complete with everyone in her life. Hospice provided wonderful support, incredible support. They provided equipment, nursing care and attention, all the necessary medications, and shared with us their knowledge, experience and round the clock availability.

My four sisters and I are blessed with lives flexible enough that we were able to be with her the last month of her life. This has been a heart-opening experience for all of us.  That is, of course, nothing to take for granted. These are times of national strife, family strife, hard deaths, violence, sudden and inconsolable loss. The notion of a “good death” is profound as we acknowledge the comfort and the privilege we were blessed to have in our journey with her. Meme’s having stayed with us as long as she did gave us time to recognize each other as family, to reunite, to work out the difficulties and to celebrate the strengths of this family she and Doc made. We are grateful to her, and for her spirit, which will be with us whenever we gather together but also with each one of us individually in the very personal, sweet knowledge of acceptance and salvation we found in her love.

Marcia was a native of Wellfleet Mass, a ninth generation Cap Codder. She was a painter, a ceramic and enamel artist, a sailor, gardener, art teacher, wife, daughter, sister, friend. She was married to Roger Cole. She died April 1 of this year.

I never thought I would be writing this. I knew Marcia since high school where she was a year behind me and oh so far ahead. I used to check in with her once or twice a year but have been out of touch for these last years and just now when I was looking on the web to see if I could find a current email address I found instead that she had died. This is so sad. Marcia seemed to be made of light. She was a lifelong beacon and inspiration to me and probably to many others.

In high school we had the same tuned-in art teacher, Marcia Sewall, who inspired us to both to careers in the arts. I bumbled my way into mine. Marcia took a more direct route, maybe knowing from the start that she was born to be an artist and a teacher. She taught art in the Kittery, Maine school system for 28 years. She touched and brightened the lives of I don’t know how many kids and teens and grown-ups. I can’t begin to describe her grace and humor, the beauty she radiated and she found in nature and in the people around her.

This picture prompt does not do her justice but it is one of the ones that stands out for me tonight. I hope your week is a good one. Goodnight, Marcia Ryder.

He enjoyed a long career as a practicing physician and surgeon and was an active researcher into the toxic effects of environmental pollutants. For some thirty years, beginning in the 1950s, he served as an influential legislative consultant to Congressional members, a member of the Massachusetts Pesticide Control Board, and a Medical Examiner for the State of Massachusetts. As a U.S. Army Reserve officer with the rank of Colonel, Dr. Mobbs commanded the 331St General Hospital, Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Dr. Mobbs was born Oct. 23, 1918, in Springfield, MA, to Clarence Herbert and Alice Roche Mobbs. He grew up in a largely Irish-American neighborhood of Woburn, Mass. He was a graduate of Tufts University and BU Med. School and from there joined the navy.

In 1944, while serving his internship at Bainbridge Naval Hospital, Bainbridge, MD, he learned the price of protest. There he witnessed emergency room attendants violently subdue and kill a hysterical patient. He complained about the unnecessary use of force. Commanded to withdraw his complaint, Dr. Mobbs refused. He was confined to Bethesda Naval Hospital and held under observation. His release and discharge were obtained only by the intervention of James Michael Curley, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. This incident shaped his commitment to speak truth to power and advocate for the underdog, motivating his environmental advocacy for decades to come.

Upon his release from the Navy, Dr. Mobbs trained in surgery at Charlotte Memorial Hospital, in Charlotte, NC, and later, at the VA Hospital in Louisville, Ky.  He set up his first practice in Aberdeen, NC in 1948 and in 1950 married Mary Aurelia Smith. He was drafted into the Army in 1956 and commanded the U.S. Army Hospital in Toole, Utah. Upon completion of his term of duty he continued to serve in the Army Reserves. In the later part of his career Dr Mobbs enjoyed a general surgical and family practice in Wilmington, Massachusetts.  His principal hospital was the New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts. He enjoyed working with families, treating all kinds of complaints, and seeing patients from birth through maturity. Patients remember him as a kind and attentive physician.

Over his lifetime he waged a lonely battle for corporate accountability, taking chemical companies in particular and industry in general to task for the release of toxins into the environment and unsafe chemical consumer products into the marketplace.

In 1948 the sad and mysterious death of his patient and niece, 3 year old Mary Hue Keith, of Aberdeen, NC, led him to suspect that the fallout of dust from pesticide mixed by neighboring Taylor Chemical Company was dangerous to workers and families living nearby. Dr. Mobbs was among the first to sound the alarm about the public health dangers attending the unregulated manufacture, distribution and use of chemical poisons, pesticides and food additives.

His findings often put him in conflict with the powerful interests of the chemical industry and, sometimes, his neighbors. Ironically, he occasionally found himself at odds with the very people he was concerned to protect, as his whistle-blowing was seen as a threat to local industry and employment.

Fifty years after Dr. Mobbs first voiced his alarm, Aberdeen, NC, became the site of one of the largest and most expensive EPA Superfund clean up efforts in the country.

While never achieving high public profile or recognition for his work, Dr. Mobbs nevertheless influenced public opinion and public health legislation and policy. Rachel Carson used him as a source for material for her best-selling book, “Silent Spring”, which drew public attention to the problems of chemical contamination of the environment.

At Senate Health Sub-Committee hearings in 1954 he emphasized the deleterious effects of the substitution of the word “useful” for the word “essential” in the Food and Drug Law as applied to additives. Dr. Mobbs also suggested that pesticides be kept at a zero tolerance levels in food and tobacco, a suggestion later developed into the Delaney Amendment of 1958. That amendment stated, “the Secretary (of the Food and Drug Administration) shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals.” That clause expired quietly with the signing of “The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996.”

Dr. Mobbs also warned of the health and environmental dangers of plasticizers and dioxin and decried the use of Agent Orange. He pointed out the cruel irony of the government’s denial of benefits to Vietnam veterans who were victims of Agent Orange while indemnifying chemical companies for losses incurred in the U.S. because the products were deemed too hazardous for use. He later offered $1,000 to any person in the United States who could produce a tissue sample free of cancer causing chemicals manufactured by Dow Chemical or Monsanto. The challenge went unmet.

In 1987, his career was cut short by a massive stroke. No longer able to work he turned his attention to family, his true love and passion. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Mary Aurelia Smith Mobbs, of Pinehurst, NC, his five children, Rick Mobbs, of Wilmington, NC, Betty Mobbs, of Andover, MA, Melanie McDonald, of Aberdeen, NC, Alice O’Leary, of Winchester, MA, and Stephanie Deady, of Andover MA, as well as eighteen grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Dr. Mobbs will be remembered as a family man. He and Mrs. Mobbs have been active in the local community, members of a local supper club and supporters of Moore Force, an environmental group.

The family will gather Sunday, Nov. 16, 2003, at 3.p.m.for a service at Bethesda Presbeyterian Church, U.S 1, in Aberdeen.  All are welcome. Rev. David Hudson will officiate. A service was also held Nov. 1 at South Church in Andover, Mass.

Memorial donations be made to The Brandon McDonald Foundation, PO Box 1149 Pinehurst, NC 28370, a foundation set up to assist Dr. Mobbs grandson who suffered a spinal cord injury last summer.

callie guerin

Is it teeth
are there teeth
Or is it an imagining of a fear?
What is pleasure
is it attainable?
by giving and seeing
taking and leaving
or is it beauty
unfolding
appreciated
and balanced
who takes the fire?
and are they watching?

The Dragon Prince

by Openhand

on September 11, 2008 at 10:25 pm

The woman had been climbing and walking for many days, deeper and deeper into the mountain range, before she was forced to stop by exhaustion. She paused often to catch her breath, or to eat from the small package of rice balls and root vegetables she had prepared for her journey. Her going was slow, because of the thin air at such altitude, her advancing age, and because she was pregnant. Her hair was jet black and long, with thin wisps of silver shot through it. Her undergarments were silks, but she was made bulky by thick outer furs, warm boots and mittens such as a highland shepherd might wear. Even though her face was lined with age, any who saw her would know she had been extraordinarily beautiful in her youth.

She had been following a path marked by signs she had been taught to read by her husband before he died. Claw-marks on trees or rocks led to secret ways that initially seemed impossible to traverse. And lead her they did, through crevices to passes, from ledge to valley. But now she could go no further.

Her child was calling to her from inside that it was time to come out of her womb. Within the narrow crags where she stopped, she made a sort of nest for herself in which to give birth. It was cold, but her labor warmed her furs and the air in the little alcove where she sheltered from the wind. It was not an easy birth, for she was no longer young, and the child had stayed longer than normal and had grown large. As she labored, she took some blood from herself and finger-painted signs of ancient strength on the rock face, symbols to serve in place of the midwives she should have with her. She made low crooning sounds as the waves of birth-pressure came, singing and opening herself to invite the child into the world.

After hours of pushing as she knelt, she gave one great cry that echoed in the canyon above, and the child was born, a boy. The woman lay back, delighted but exhausted. She drew the child into her furs to her breast, closed her eyes, and slept. As she lay there, her blood ran out upon the furs and the ground, and her body slowly became cold. She awoke briefly, and realized that she was dying. Her soul was so grateful for decades of contented joy with her husband. Knowing she would soon join him again, now she willingly gave their child life even as she left hers, fulfilling their old bargain. In the peace between worlds, she knew what she must do with her final energy. She took a bit of her cooling blood and wrote one more symbol upon the chest of her child, wrapped him back up to her breast, and shut her eyes for the last time.

Wu Shou Long, have you ever seen such a thing? They do not come from eggs, but are born wet from their mothers! You were right to follow the echoes of her birth-shout to this place.

Li Shou Long, indeed this is amazing, but what is more amazing is that sign the human mother has written on the wormling’s chest. I had thought we should eat them both before her blood cooled, but now I think we should take the little thing to Lau Long and ask him what it is.

Wu Shou Long paused and scratched behind his ear, and blew smoke through his nostrils. I had grown hungry smelling this blood, but to see a human give birth was a show not to be missed. When we return home to tell them the tale, our cavemates will be sorry forever they were not here with us. Perhaps bringing the wormling to show off will make for an even better story. We can always eat him later, and the others will be even more jealous.

They both climbed down into the crevice. One of them grabbed the child up in her claws, while the other sniffed the mother, deciding she was too cold to eat. Then both flew back to their lair in a cliffside, only a few mountain-peaks away.

Strangely, the human child, bare to the mountain winds in the claws of the second dragon, did not cry.

Lau Long, honored one, we bring you a strangeness and a treasure-story, and ask for your wisdom.

The old dragon was pure white, while one of the two young dragons before him was pale green, the other a bright yellow that was almost gold. He lay with the length of his body warming above a steam vent that came hot from the earth’s core. His head rested on a ledge against the cave wall. It was known that he rarely spoke at all any more, but he was still King of the Dragons, and he lived on because he had no heir. Decades ago his son the Dragon Prince had disappeared, thought to have been killed by his own foolishness, either flying in high winds and dashed against a cliff-side, or killed by human hunters who used the dragon claws and hearts to make their fruitless “immortality potions.”

Wu Shou Long spoke: We observed a human woman giving birth today, This show kept us from eating her immediately. She made strange signs with her blood on the walls of her birth-cave, but when her wormling came out, she made this sign on him before she died. Tell us, Lau Long, is this not the writing of the Elders?

Young dragons did not care for anything but flying, competing in daring acrobatics, and gathering treasure in raids on human settlements. They ranged throughout the countryside in search of trouble. Only after the fire within them cooled, if they survived their youth, did they become interested in learning from their Elders the deeper wisdom of dragonkind. As their scale-colors deepened in hue, groups of males and females might then leave to start their own cliffside, or decide to stay, content within the caves of their youth.

Lau Long’s eyes widened slightly when he saw the sign on the newborn human child’s chest, but he did not say a word. Slow tendrils of smoke emerged from his nostrils, and his chin lifted as he indicated the young dragon should bring the child closer. He sniffed it several times, and then sighed a great sigh, and his entire body seemed to relax again into the warm steam. He lowered his great head to rest once more on the ledge in the cave wall.

We thought to eat this morsel in front of our worm-mates, and make them jealous to miss such a story and such a delicacy—began the second young dragon, but Lau Long’s silent stare stopped her cold.

Wu Shou Long said, Then may we keep this one as a pet, Lau Long? This will also make our worm-mates jealous, a coup of wealth they cannot duplicate in their treasure hoards no matter how hard they try to compete. And it should be fun to play with.

Lau Long’s eyes narrowed at Wu Shou Long, and then closed. Wu Shou Long looked at his worm-mate silently, and they both scrambled out of the Dragon King’s cave, taking his silence for assent.

Wu Shou Long’s mother met them at their home cave mouth, as she always did, bothering them by checking them for arrows, wing-tears, and other blunders of youth. When she saw the little human baby, she hissed in surprise, and they proudly told her the treasure-story of where they had found it, and how they had taken it to Lau Long.

As she stared at the sign on the child’s chest, her eyes widened as the old Dragon King’s had, and she said, I claim mother’s right to your treasure, and will take this human child for my own horde. He is too small and fragile to be your pet, and you would surely injure or kill it through your clumsiness or stupidity. Had you even thought how you would feed it? He has no teeth to tear the meat you would toss before it. I will give him back to you when he is stronger.

The two young dragons protested mightily, but one flame from their mother’s mouth swept them from the cave back into the open air. They flew off to tell their story to their jealous worm-mates, making the best of the situation.

Back in the cave, the mother dragon stared at the human newborn, which stared fixedly back at her. She took it further inside, to the hot sands where her latest eggs were warming, and set it against her. Each day I will fly far to the plains in the East, she told it, and catch for you some animal whose blood will nourish you. But first I shall lick this sign from your chest, for I think Lau Long was wise not to let those wormlings eat you, but there are others who would not agree.

When, in some months, her latest eggs finally had hatched, she nursed the human child against her as she did her own new wormlings. She protected him from their claws, and they came to accept his presence as just another of her children. He drank her red milk as he had drunk the blood of the animals she had brought to feed him. In time, he grew strong, walked about on two legs, and knew language.

For their part, the dragons who had first found the child, Li Shou Long and Wu Shou Long, forgot all about him. They lived in the eternal present of young dragons, which was both their strength and their folly. Those very few dragons who survived to adulthood learned the value of memory and experience as their rashness and heat faded into a cool, deep wisdom.

As the human child grew, word of it passed to the other caves in the cliff-side. Adult dragons flew from cave to cave, discussing the peculiarity of the golden mother dragon, Wu Long. Some of the dragons grew angry, and others jealous, that their ruler Lau Long had allowed this human child to come into their midst without killing it immediately. After all, the human hunters had killed so many of their dragon children, there was nothing in them but hatred for the two-legged race. Yang Long, the purple dragon matriarch, led the other dragon families to Lao Long to protest.

Lao Long, honored one, why have you let this abomination into our cliffside? Wu Long hides the human child like part of her hoard, but we all have heard how she lets it drink of her red milk, and play with her wormlings as one of her own. How will those wormlings know to stay clear of humans if one is growing up with them? They will all be killed! What kind of example is this for our other Great Mothers and their children? The green, blue, orange, red, silver, and purple dragons all protest! How can you let the Golden Mother Wu Long shame us all like this?

Lao Long raised his head, and surveyed the audience of indignant dragon mothers until his gaze rested on Yang Long. Her purple scales blanched under his gaze, and she suddenly felt ashamed, taking his silence for disapproval. Well, she said we can abide one human child in a cave that we will never see, because he cannot fly. He has no way to get from cave to cave, and he cannot ever come down from this height. Soon Wu Long will see her folly, and will surely do the right thing and eat him up before he causes trouble.

With that, Yang Long led the dragon mothers out of Lao Long’s cave, and they flew home to their wormlings. Lao Long sighed once more, and lay his head back on its ledge.

But Yang Long did not count on the human child’s worm-mates when she said he could not fly. When each wormling reached the age of flying, their mother was moved by instinct and tradition to push him or her off the ledge, for them to fall or fly. Very rarely did any but the weakest wormling actually fall, almost always the wind caught their wings and they found themselves flying—first in alarm, and then in purest joy, only coming back to their home cave like arrows when their hunger grew too great. Later, as they weaned, she would take them East to the plains, so they could learn to hunt with claw and fang, and kill their own food. When they were injured, she would lick their wounds until they healed. As they matured, they would go on their own forays, in small groups, and later alone, building their treasure horde, and competing with their worm-mates.

One day when Wu Long was taking her wormlings to hunt, one asked her why they must always leave the human child, who the wormlings had taken to calling Soft Brother, behind. Wu Long was self-conscious enough of other dragon’s opinions that she did not want to be seen carrying the child outside of her cave. But when two of her wormlings excitedly said they wanted to carry him to the hunting ground, she relented. Soft Brother had the wiry strength of a child that had grown up in a nest of dragons, and he was not afraid of heights. He wanted to see how to hunt, and gladly put his arms out for his worm-mates claws to carry him.

On this hunting trip, the young dragons together brought down a large beast. But when it fell, it crushed one of the wormling’s wings who was a moment too slow. Soft Brother was glad to help lift the carcass off his worm-mate so she could remove her wing, but it was clearly broken. The poor young dragon could barely fly back to the home cave, even with her mother’s nose pushing and catching her when she faltered. When they were safely home, Soft Brother looked at the wing, and knew that no amount of licking by her dragon mother would heal it. He touched his worm-mate’s head, and then took the wing-bone and made it straight. The little dragon cried out in pain, but did not bite. In time, the wing healed. By then the two had become very close, having spent much time alone together in the home cave while the others went hunting.

Soft Brother, how is it you knew how to make my wing whole again? If you had not, I would have surely fallen and died— for no dragon who cannot fly can survive long in the cave before she is pushed out.

Scaly Sister, I just looked at your wing, and saw how it must be set to look like other wings. It was nothing.

Soft Brother, you are too modest, and truly have the heart of a dragon even if you look like a mongrel dog. And she darted her head forward to nip his ankle, even as he playfully dodged and kicked at the air near her head.

Thus it was between them.

But the hunting trips with the human boy had set Yang Long to angry gossip again. She brought all the many colored dragon mothers before Lao Long once more, and asked for a full hearing before all the dragons. When they were all assembled in the great cave, Yang Long made her case:

Lao Long, honored one, we protested that this human child was among us, an affront to all Great Mothers who have lost wormlings to human arrows and swords. But this teaching him to hunt and taking him about the countryside on wormling mischief is beyond bearing. He cannot fly, he cannot hunt with claw and fang, and he has no scales. He is not a dragon, even if he speaks like one. He should be pushed off the ledge like any other wormling, this is the right thing to do.

Yang Long and all the other dragons knew that if they pushed the human child off the ledge, he would fall to his death. But it was right that any wormling was not fully a dragon—and could not long be left in the nest—without being pushed out. Tradition and instinct were strong in this case. Many dragons hissed and bellowed their support of what Yang Long had proposed.

Soft Brother and Scaly Sister exchanged glances. They did not want to part. Scaly Sister worried for her human worm-mate who had saved her from certain death by fixing her broken wing. Most wormlings do not survive their first mistake, and Scaly Sister thus had the beginnings of wisdom in her. She spoke to the assembled dragons:

Soft Brother has been our worm-mate since we were in the egg. He drank the red milk of our mother alongside us, and took our claws and tail-strikes and became strong. He has a noble dragon heart, even if he has no scales. He fixed my wing when I would surely have fallen. This should be enough to keep him among us.

Lao Long, the ancient white Dragon King, looked for some time at this young wormling after her little speech, but said nothing.

Yang Long, taking Lao Long’s silence for assent, drove her case home: This one you call your brother cannot be a true brother unless he is pushed from the cave. We all know this to be right. Golden Wu Long Mother, you must push him with your nose from this cave this instant. We all watch you with approval or disapproval, to see what you do next.

Wu Long looked at her strange, small human child, and felt the instinct pull her forward to nose his chest. Soft Brother showed no fear as he walked forward to the edge of the cave. Scaly Sister gave a plume of flame and a howl in protest, but all other dragons were silent and waiting. Lao Long, behind them, raised his head high off its resting-place so he could see.

With one last nudge, Wu Long pushed the human child off into the bitter empty winds. He fell without a cry, and Yang Long gave a triumphant grunt, as if that had taken care of the problem. All the dragons except Wu Long and Scaly Sister turned back from the ledge to face ancient Lao Long.

But as they stared into the mist below, Wu Long and Scaly Sister exclaimed in surprised unison, drawing all the dragons’ attention back to the ledge and the sky outside. Wu Long began trumpeting and blowing long plumes of fire into the sky, and Scaly Sister leapt about and called her worm-mates to the ledge to see.

Before the assembled dragons was an astounding sight—a small but spectacular wormling dragon, with scales of every different dragon color, a rainbow of green, blue, orange, red, silver, purple and gold. The human child had transformed into this resplendent young dragon as it fell.

Ancient Lao Long broke the astounded silence, speaking for the first time in long dragon memory.

When I lost my son, the Dragon Prince, I knew that he had not been killed in some exploit, but that he had fallen in love with a beautiful human woman from a province to the South. He had chanced upon her alone at her bath in the pools of a warm riverbank. When she saw him, she stood unafraid, overcome by his beauty as he was by hers. They met many times, and he flew her on his back in secret passion during the full moons. In despair and shame, he eventually came to me with his problem. He did not know that this was not the first time our races had joined, bearing lines of great human rulers, artisans, teachers and martial heroes over the centuries.

Because I loved him, and saw how completely his heart was already joined with hers, I told him of the ancient dragon magic of transformation, with the cost that he could never assume his dragon form again, never fly again. That he would choose such sacrifice was a mark of his deep love. So I gave him my blessing to relinquish his bloodright as Prince, and to marry this human woman with part of my horde as the dowry. I asked only that he send me his own first-born son to be my heir, which he took his time in doing. He did not want to give away his own child, and they used human women’s arts to delay the quickening of a child. But they delayed too long.

He did not realize that as a human, he was subject to age and disease that we would not be in our dragon form. When he realized he was aging, they finally made a child together, but he did not survive to bring it to me. He taught his wife to find the paths to our home, and taught her the Elder symbol for Dragon, which she painted in her own blood on the child’s chest so that I would know him. But the child’s scent alone would have told me all. May we honor forever the memory of his human mother and her sacrifice in bringing him home to us.

Golden Mother Wu Lao has raised my heir, and he has grown strong on the milk of dragons. Once a century such a rainbow dragon is born, destined to rule because he carries the lines of all dragon families within him. And now for the first time in both our races history, he also carries human blood, and can change at will from form to form. Because he knows what it is to be weak, he will be a compassionate ruler. Because he knows what it is to be human and dragon, the age of his reign will help heal the ancient enmity between our two races.

The dragons hung their heads low in honor of the young rainbow Dragon Prince, who landed lightly on the cave ledge. He crawled forward, his gaze and his head low before Lau Long, and said:

Grandfather Lao Long, your scales were once rainbow like mine and my father’s before me; now you have turned white with age and wisdom. Thank you for welcoming me and for helping me find my true history. I will fulfill your prophecies with all my power. It is so good to be home.

You seek life, and a godly fire
Gushes and gleams for you out of the earth,
As, with shuddering long, you
Hurl yourself down to the flames of the Etna.
So by a queen’s wanton whim
Peals were dissolved in wine- heed her not!
What folly, poet, to cast your riches
Into that bright and bubbling cup!
Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth
That bore you away, audaciously perishing!
And I would follow the hero into the depths
Did love not hold me.

Johann Christian Friedrich Holderlin

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Lovingly my dragon pressed its body against me, sucking in the fearlessness of my brave little soul. “Yes, I am brave.” I whispered. I am just like Peter Pan, and Robin Hood and all the brave heroes.I looked at the book in my hand and thought that there must be characters in there waiting for readers. I wondered if a single one expected a brave reader who resembled Peter Pan. “I am a character in my own self and my life is my very own book.”I thought as I disappeared into the book.