Tags
Book Giveaway, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons for Beginners, Enchantments, Eternal Dragon, Lake Baikal, Month of the Dragon, Samhain, WAFDE, Weyrs
It’s Samhain – Halloween – and Month of the Dragon 2014 is at an end. I want to thank everyone who has joined in with words and pictures and an abundance of draconic energy.
MotD gets better – spreads the appreciation of Dragons further – every year, which warms the cockles of all of us here at WAFDE. And I hope between now and midnight you’ll drop by, leave a comment, and insure that your name is in the hat for signed copies of Dragons for Beginners and The Dragon Keeper’s Handbook. 
For Dragons, sidhe, and all other creatures who cavort with the strange or go bump in the night, Samhain is as close to a holy day as it gets.
Of course, at WAFDE, October 31 is a time for tricks and treats and baelfires blazing against the coming winter darkness.
But it is also a day for looking fore and back, for embracing both the future and the past. With the barrier between this life and the next paper-thin, on this one night even those disposed to disbelief find themselves surprised by Dragons at every turn. Thus another generation of dracophiles is born.
While welcoming new-opened eyes, we also look into the darkness and celebrate the lives of Dragons past, of those who have gone before.
In the spirit of these great creatures – and as a final story from the weyrs, I offer a tale of Dragon’s End from The Dragon Keeper’s Handbook.
There is an island in the middle of the Sacred Sea. On this island grows a Great Rowan Tree, its branches aching upwards, lost in the clouds. Round the tree, tails entwined, sleep six Dragon Guardians, one from each corner of the Dragon World. When a Dragon has reached her end of days, she makes her way to the Island of the Great Tree. With fire and fang and the roar of a thousand-thousand wings, the Guardians honor her centuries of passions lived and send her on her way, up through silvered boughs to the Kingdom of the Eternal Dragon.
Non-Dragon types insist this is just a pretty fiction, of course. And yet…
…Set in the crystal waters of Lake Baikal is the island of Olkhon. On the island grows an ancient rowan tree. ‘Round the tree dwell the six Enchantments of the Weyr of the Eternal Dragon.
There is always truth in Dragon lore.
When the day comes – as it will – that the well-worn nest long filled with a Mountain of Wonder lies empty, you will feel the earth sigh and know it is the poorer for her passing. Hold tight to the memories of shared years and blazing passions, to her spirit filled with the thunder of a million stars.
Imagine her soaring strong across the Sacred Sea.
Hear in your heart the roar of the thousand-thousand.
Then… let her go.
And come next Samhain, open your soul – welcome her spirit home.
A Dragon-Blessed Samhain to you all!
