...of all the saurions we ever dubbed "dragon" in some ways the pteranodon was the most appropriate, but the name felt wrong as soon as we used it. As much as the smaller pterosaurs the pteranodon was elegant, and they were all flying lizards really quite large enough to be impressive close to. But none had the majesty or the anger one imagines of a dragon.
Until the end we saw only a few pterosaurs and even the pteranodons seemed to acquiesce to the more forceful land based saurians, content to soar above us and observe, but even in the worst mêlée never became tempted to close with us...
...skimming over the lake, scooping vast fish from the shoals just below the water, the first time we saw any flying saurians in anything approaching a frenzy, but little did we...
...around the volcano, specks of black silhouette wheeling across the dark, fiery sky[1]. By now human and saurian alike could sense things coming apart, and Yeats' poem was high in all our minds. The souls impressed into saurian bodies were starting to dissociate: the pterosaurs had lost their placidity and screamed their despair through the ash, occasionally one maddened creature diving upon our baulking mounts. The soul of the true demon...
...nothing that came in such numbers or moved so lightly in the sky could claim the name dragon, though we all had a certain affection for them. We seemed determined to fit the name to one of the species we saw and other dinosaurs fit a dragon attitude better, even if none had the airborne tonnage the western idea of dragons evoked...
[1] It draws together a lot of clichés, and probably doesn't work for anyone else, as I can't quite capture the feel and haven't given a full outline of the metaphysics of the journey, but the image behind this paragraph was one of the few I've written which have given me shivers.
Until the end we saw only a few pterosaurs and even the pteranodons seemed to acquiesce to the more forceful land based saurians, content to soar above us and observe, but even in the worst mêlée never became tempted to close with us...
...skimming over the lake, scooping vast fish from the shoals just below the water, the first time we saw any flying saurians in anything approaching a frenzy, but little did we...
...around the volcano, specks of black silhouette wheeling across the dark, fiery sky[1]. By now human and saurian alike could sense things coming apart, and Yeats' poem was high in all our minds. The souls impressed into saurian bodies were starting to dissociate: the pterosaurs had lost their placidity and screamed their despair through the ash, occasionally one maddened creature diving upon our baulking mounts. The soul of the true demon...
...nothing that came in such numbers or moved so lightly in the sky could claim the name dragon, though we all had a certain affection for them. We seemed determined to fit the name to one of the species we saw and other dinosaurs fit a dragon attitude better, even if none had the airborne tonnage the western idea of dragons evoked...
[1] It draws together a lot of clichés, and probably doesn't work for anyone else, as I can't quite capture the feel and haven't given a full outline of the metaphysics of the journey, but the image behind this paragraph was one of the few I've written which have given me shivers.