by Judith Leigh Bailey
Revised December 2003
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In the beginning many young dragons do not know their heritage.
This is the prologue of one such.
It is the tale of a young woman who grew up just like any other;
She went to school;
She did chores;
She went to movies;
She had boyfriends, eventually married and raised a family.
It was a life like that of many of her friends.
She knew she ought to be happy and mostly she was.
But there was a yearning for more within her; more what, she did not know.
She only knew the hungry search for knowledge that drove her to read, and then to write.
Even though there was much she did not know.
Most of all she did not know her Destiny, except, maybe, from her dreams.
She wrote her questions into stories and sometimes the stories wrote back an answer.
This is her story.
It was a good intro; Jay was certain she'd finally found a format that could work very well. Most readers do not want to work at becoming interested in a story. Short lines, lots of concept; but not poetry. She sat back in her chair, re-reading the typed words:
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Rite of Passage, One
In the beginning, Xana did not know she wore a membrane. She only became aware of her own after seeing those encasing people around her. In fact it would be another Tale of Xana to tell about the day she first looked out to see the inside of her own Membrane.
But back to our tale . . .
Once upon a time there lived a sprite named Xana who lived with Unicorn and two younglings. For many days Xana had been happy. She began to read and to study and, most important of all, to think. Time flew by for Xana and the Unicorn and the Younglings.
One day the Unicorn said to Xana, "These days we have shared so happily together have been like precious stones, one after another. I treasure them, and I will look again at them as often as I am able .....but I must remind you that I am after all a Unicorn and must resume doing what a Unicorn must do."
And upon speaking these words, he set forth to do those things a Unicorn must do.
Well! Xana did not know what to do with herself without the Unicorn. So she sat down to wait until the Unicorn finished doing his Unicorn things.
She waited and she waited and she waited. Each day when the Unicorn returned, Xana would be happy. But each morning when he had prepared himself to leave their little garden she would cry to him, "Please hurry back!" and she became more unhappy each day.
One morning as she sadly waved to the Unicorn on his way to doing Unicorn things, she felt a shiver when she noticed her beloved Unicorn limping.
"What is the matter?" she cried in alarm. "Why are you limping like that?"
"Oh, that," replied the Unicorn, "That is nothing. I always walk like this on Tuesdays and Saturdays," and off he went on his Unicorn way.
Later that morning as Xana sat waiting for the Unicorn to return, she wondered. She tried to remember seeing the Unicorn limping in exactly that way on Tuesdays and Saturdays. And she could not.
But as she sat in their garden remembering, she was reminded of the day she had first seen her own Membrane. For a moment her whole world shimmered, like the faintest movement of lights flickering across the dark of night.
She brought her dim memory up into the bright morning light there in their garden. This time her world shimmered as though it would never stop. It made her so dizzy that for a short while she was frightened by her visions. By and by, she began to calm herself and as she calmed, she saw the wild shimmering calming too.
She found that to sit quietly, to think about nothing -- not about Xana, not about the Unicorn and especially not about the Unicorn being away so often --only then could she settle the wild shimmering of her world.
For, you see, once Xana brought that dim memory of her own Membrane into the full morning light, it changed into a solid form, never to return to the dimness from whence it came.
That evening when the Unicorn returned she said nothing of the shimmering. In fact she was so happy to see him that she thought of nothing else until the next morning when she again saw the Unicorn limping.
"Why are you limping today?" she asked. "It is only Wednesday."
"Oh, that," said the Unicorn as he limped away, "I always limp on the second Wednesday of the Third Moon." And off he went to do his Unicorn things.
Now, more than anything else, Xana wanted to be with her Unicorn, and as she sadly went back into their garden to wait for his return, she found her world shimmering wildly again.
Remembering how she had calmed the distracting shimmering the day before, she quietly began to think of nothing in that special way.
As her world calmed, Xana began to notice something strange about her shining Membrane, for indeed, it was the source of the shimmering.
"Why, I can see something beyond there," she thought in surprise, "when I am calm!" So she sat quietly all day, but seeing only the dimmest of forms, and only for the briefest of moments.
Each time the shimmering would settle into stillness, enough for her to see through its shell, she would happily clap her hands in joy, and think, "Oh, if only the Unicorn were here to see this too!" And she would be reminded that he was not with her, making her feel unhappy again. Then the shimmering wildness blocked her view and she was once again locked blindly within her Membrane.
That day she learned to see further beyond anything she had ever seen before. Still she said nothing to the Unicorn when he returned from doing his Unicorn things.
For many days, Xana practiced during her alone hours, trying to force her vision beyond brief glimpses. The Unicorn limped nearly always now, and no longer told her why. Each morning as she watched him limp away she would try to remember him without the limp, until one day she found that she could not.
That same day, she sat down to await his return, and to try once again to see clearly through the shimmering veil of her Membrane. Suddenly, so suddenly that she fancied she felt something snap within her, she found herself on the other side of the gleaming shell that had been her protective Membrane.
As she sat there with the broken pieces of her own Growing scattered around her, she was startled by the Unicorn bursting through their garden gate.
"Xana!" he shouted. "Oh Xana, look at yourself!" He was not limping any longer, she noted as she stood to look at herself as he had bid.
She looked -- to SEE more than she’d ever seen before. The colors and shapes were vivid and immediate. Wait! something very strange here, she thought, as her new wings slowly unfurled.
She was standing in her garden, pieces of broken shell lying about her feet, and her wings were shaking free from bondage. Wings?
They felt familiar.
Jay removed her hands from the keyboard, stretched, nearly reaching to the ceiling in her little office. Wings; what would happen next? Stories sometimes take strange turns, she thought, while the writer side of her was busy working out how to go forward from this point.
It was never possible to think about it, or even to try to imagine something. The only way it ever worked was if she actually looked at the character, to SEE what was being seen by Xana. Her task was to write it so that it could be understood. From bitter experience and many long dry spells of writer’s block, she knew she could not force a story.
The stories always wrote themselves.
Original copyright 12-28-2002
