Fantasy Romance
There was an incident.
Involved a small child. A 25lb cat. A nasty-tasting bottle of carbonated water. And an iMac.
The Apple Care specialists have a three day wait list.
I am really starting to think I’m being haunted by technology ghosts.
Not sure if I need to make offerings to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or both. Probably both, and I hear they both accept plastic.
I’ve been contemplating adding dragons to my world in the form of their own series of stories, but I’m wrestling with establishing a dragon hierarchy.
Why do I need dragons? Well, that’s self explanatory!
Why do I need a dragon hierarchy?
Because I fell like I can’t have every dragon in the world be a supremely powerful being with almost godlike status, though they all may think they have such status. Much like cats.
Organizing dragon “classes” along the lines of size makes some sense to me, and the larger the dragon, the more powerful it would be.
Depending on the source of your dragon lore, dragons do seem to come in all sizes, from some not much larger than a pixie, to some the size of a castle or small mountain. If a mountain dragon could swallow a pixie dragon without really noticing, well, yeah, it makes more sense that the mountain dragon is more powerful.
I’d post some cool pictures of different dragons, but I’m not sure that’s allowed as most aren’t creative commons. So, here’s link to my dragon page on Pinterest. You’ll quickly get the idea.
There’s a great deal of dragon references in my current series of novels. I try not to do an info dump, but you’ll see that while most people pay homage to Dracor, the god of justice, (who happens to take the form of a great gold dragon), most people also think dragons themselves are extinct.
Dragons of ages past are known to exist, and it’s widely believed they were made in Dracor’s image, but they succumbed to vanity, pride, and greed. Dracor smote the worst offenders, then cursed the remainder with nothing but male offspring, dooming the race to extinction.
Unless the dragons can figure a way around it, but I’ll leave that for the story.
While the readers may not know it, I know the original dragons, known as the Shard of Dracor, still exist. At least one of them, anyway. Humans have given these original dragons the name Embershard as that’s what the draconic words sound like in the human language.
These original dragons are the size of mountains, supremely powerful, and highly territorial. They hated the humans and elves when the gods made them, seeing them as either rivals or insignificant playthings. As they were the first among dragons, the other races of dragons followed their lead.
I’m not sure my first dragon story should start with an Embershard. Seems like he should be at the end of the dragon series, otherwise the others might seem less interesting.
And, I have yet to find an antagonist for an Embershard. Andertaemosian, Ander to us mere humans, believes he’s the last of the Embershard. And he may just be right. So what challenges the first creation of a god?
I’ll let that percolate some more, but I have a few ideas.
Thinking I’ll start the dragon saga with a distant cousin of the Embershards. A dragon that’s more the size of a large house than a mountain. Still terrifying. Still frightening. Still powerful. But not quite so over-the-top-powerful.
Yes, I know Ander is polishing his scales. Of course he is. Vain dragon.
Not sure if that works. Can you have varying sizes of dragons and make the world feel whole and real? I’m not sure. I’ve seen the color of dragons used a lot to delineate this. Anne McCaffrey did this and so does D&D. But that doesn’t feel right to me. I love the idea of a variety of colors of dragons, perhaps once considered jewels of the sky.
I could go with the dragon vs wyrm vs wyvern. But I sorta want them all to be like the traditional European dragon. Think Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. While I love the grace and beauty of the Chinese dragon, especially in the Zelda Breath of the Wild game, they need a different setting and context to shine.
Know of any good resources for creating dragon hierarchies? Could you believe in size as the determining factor? Or do you think Anne McCaffrey and D&D are on to something with color?
Our Maine Coon has decided that my laptop is an offensive creature and should never claim my lap. It has been quite difficult for both my writing and my work.
Why do I care what my kitty thinks? Ah, you are also unaware that adopting a Maine Coon is quite similar to bringing a small mountain lion into your home. I was once, too.
But let me explain how this happened.
Several years ago, we lost a kitty to lung cancer. It was very hard as we’d had him for many years, and it came fast. From the time he started showing signs of being sick until we had to make the very hard choice was less than a week. In that time, he’d lost 1/3 of his body weight and couldn’t breathe without great difficulty.
We were also three weeks away from the birth of our second child.
We had a second cat, and he was incredibly lonely with the loss of his brother. So, I did a lot of research on cats to see what kind would be good with kids. The internet was all but unanimous in saying a Maine Coon was great with kids and perfect for families. The internet is seldom in that much agreement, and when I learned my mother was friends with a Maine Coon breeder, I figured it was fate.
So, I called my mom’s friend, put our name in for a kitty and sent her the deposit.
She did tell us that Maine Coon males were around twenty-five pounds, sometimes more, and were we okay with it.
I thought of my sister’s twenty pound cat and figured, yes, sure.
Some of you are thinking, five pounds is a large difference. It’s 25% more cat than your comparison point.
Others are laughing at my naiveté. You see, the size difference between a fat 20 pound cat and a full grown Maine Coon who is not even remotely fat at 25 pounds is, well, you can see the picture above.
Yeah. The cat carrier we had for him? He doesn’t fit. We had to get him a dog carrier. He doesn’t fit in any cat bed we’ve bought him, but he has commandeered the toddler sofa. He can’t sprawl out in it, but he fits. Mostly.
He is a beautiful, majestic creature. By and large, their reputation as gentle giants is well deserved. He has been amazingly good with the kids, and it helps that he almost outweighs them. See, they can’t pick him up even if they want to, so there’s no carrying him around the house by his upper half without supporting his lower half.
He loves to be part of the family. There is no hiding under beds for this cat. Nope. He greets guests at the door and demands worshipful pets. He then sits down in the family room so he can be one of the crowd.
Some have told me he reminds them of a dog in a cat body.
But no. He is still an Egyptian god. Just ask him.
When he is displeased, it is not like displeasing an eight pound cat. Oh no.
He hates my curling iron. The other morning, he reminded me of this by sending it careening across the bathroom. He then looked at me, and I swear he raised a brow, challenging me to do something about it.
Normally, he’s good about being brushed or having his claws clipped. When he’s not, it takes DH to pin him while I clip.
This brings us back to how large and how sweet he is when I was trying to write on my new laptop.
Imagine being curled up on your recliner, snuggled into your favorite blanket. Now, imagine your Maine Coon has also decided it’s his favorite blanket, but only when you’re warming it for him.
Now, imagine the cat you see above coming bounding across the room on thunder paws and launching himself onto your lap.
He landed with enough force to send the recliner into the wall behind it and knocked the breath out of me.
He then proceeded to curl up on my “lap”, spreading himself from just under my chin to down across my knees. He then rolled over to give me his tummy to rub as he purred.
Fortunately for my new computer, I got it onto the side table in time. Barely.
So, while the computer survived, writing was done for the night.
And my Maine Coon claimed his rightful throne. Just ask him.
How about you? Have any pets that are less than fond of your electronic devices? How do they respond? What do you do about it?
At the end of June, kidney failure claimed my darling kitty. He’d been my companion through some trying times, and as pets do, loved me unconditionally through them. Including DD1 and DD2 that he was teaching how to pet him properly.
I was not ready to get another cat, but our remaining kitty was suddenly quite lonesome as DH and I work all day and the girls are in daycare. Lonely to the point of launching himself through the house the moment someone came home to greet them, and then sticking to them like glue for the rest of the night.
We decided to welcome another addition to our family, and our first stop was the Humane Society. I was originally looking for a kitty who was a couple of years old but still liked children. Our search was going poorly when a co-worker told me about a friend of hers with kittens.
I wasn’t sure I could tolerate kitten antics, but of course, a few kitten pictures later and we were deciding it was fate as we made arrangements to go out and see them. There is nothing quite like kitten silliness to bring a smile to your face.
DH and DD1 originally wanted the grey one, but we agreed to go out and meet them.
These have to be the healthiest, most robust “barn” kittens I’ve ever seen. The little girl wanted nothing to do with us, but both boys were pretty friendly. After a few minutes, the orange one rubbed up against DD2 and let her pet him. Over the next half hour, he climbed over the girls, played with them, and let them pet him.
He came home with us.
I am surprised how much he loves to cuddle. I had thought a barn cat would be standoffish, but he cries to get picked up. And he’ll cuddle into the crook of your arm, on your lap, on your chest . . . wherever he can find a spot!
While I wasn’t sure I was emotionally ready for another kitty, it’s amazing how quickly your heart opens up when you have a little ball of fluff purring happily on your lap.
I still my miss my kitty a great deal, but kitten antics can’t help but make me smile.
