Rosie was black and beautiful, long and lithe, with a patch of white on her neck, on the tips of her paws and end of her tail, but she didn’t have wings and couldn’t breathe fire because Rosie wasn’t a dragon at all. She just thought she was.
Rosie was a three-legged dragon, black and beautiful, long and lithe, with an equally long snout, a patch of white on her neck down to her belly and white on the tips of her paws and end of her tail, but she didn’t have wings, scales, horns, and she certainly couldn’t fly or breathe fire. As you might have guessed, Rosie wasn’t a dragon at all. She was actually a grey hound, the oldest and perhaps most noble of dog breeds, and she’d lost her left leg from cancer instead of some epic battle with an evil knight, but because dogs have no idea what they look like or what they are anyway, whether they are whole in their bodies or something else entirely, Rosie can think she’s a dragon and just as easily become one. After all, she was the queen – or at least the princess – of her domain, she had a horde of treasure – or at least a large pile of toys – and legions of followers – or at least her family and a younger brother in the form of a black and white whippet, who most certainly wasn’t a dragon, more of a little old man than anything else, named Carlitos. If these things made her a three-legged dragon in her mind, who would or perhaps more accurately, could tell her differently? Certainly not her servants, of which I am one.
Though Rosie was the undisputed ruler of her domain, the lord of a territory she carefully marked and patrolled, leadership wasn’t all fun and games, or in the case of a dog, sleeping most of the day, eating whenever and practically whatever she can, demanding her servants worship her properly with plenty of petting and stroking, and playing occasionally when the mood hits. Heavy is the head that wears the crown as they say, and the feeling is no different if you are a human or a dog that thinks she’s a dragon, whether you have two, three legs, or four. Like it or not, Rosie had responsibilities that she took very seriously, realizing in her own dragon-dog mind that if you wanted to do something right, you frequently had to do it yourself even when you had servants for those tasks like she did. Chief among these responsibilities was to protect what was hers and in the enchanted forest where her lair stood eternal, there were no shortage of intruders that needed to be dealt with on a near constant and therefore, constantly annoying basis. Deer, rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and chipmunks were the most frequent nuisances, daring to enter her lands and approach her sacred abode without seeking permission first, but they at least, were easily chased off, especially when you thought your bark was a roar complete with flames coming out of your throat. The occasional bear or even worse, a human who wasn’t yet her servant were a little tougher, but nothing can stand before Rosie the three-legged dragon for long, and so she spent her days, confident that all was well under her protection. This was true even as it flummoxed her to no end how much time she had to devote to this task – why could the humans or Carlitos, as her servants, bound to do whatever she needed, whenever she needed, not simply do it for her – and how the task itself all too commonly interfered with her afternoon and many another nap, causing her to leap from wherever she was laying comfortably and fly – that is bounce on three legs – into action.
To be sure, little did Rosie know that she was protected as well and even as the queen of her domain, her servants, the humans, did everything possible to keep her safe, either from herself at times for fear she would get lost, chase a skunk, or get into trouble with the other animals that stalked the land. In fact, the area of the forest she most frequently patrolled was bound by a fence she fancied as the castle wall with a moat, and when she barked at these intruders from within, scaring them away, none of them except the smallest could reach her in any event. Though was perfectly safe from the intruder and they from her, and needn’t have bothered herself at all, having witnessed these occurrences myself on many occasions, Rosie never seemed to wonder why the deer would sometimes just stand there, gazing at her with a rather confused look. While she barked in their faces and paced the lengths of the fence, flying in circles across her well manicured lawns, they would barely move at all. Staring at her instead, their heads would be tilted slightly sideways, an almost quizzical cast to their eyes for a deer, as if to suggest they were as safe from the dragon-dog as she was from them and they knew it, preferring to either humor her or outright taunt her. Confronted with this, we might imagine that in her own mind, Rosie took the failure of the deer to immediately run away as a sign of obeisance, a homage to her power, as though they were kneeling prostrate before her, recognizing the error of their ways and only then making their way out of her domain, but we can not say for sure. If humans were known for rationalizing their failures, we can only assume the mind of a dragon-dog is impenetrable to anything except their own majesty and glory. The only thing she knew was that none of them ever dared actually enter her lair and one by one, or in a group, rabbit – which she preferred to chase and try to eat frankly – or bear, she chased them all away as was her practically divine right.
Perhaps needless to say, the fence Rosie thought was a wall and a moat wasn’t the only thing about her domain that she romanticized appropriately. What was an authentic, honest-to-goodness dragon’s lair in her mind, where she hoarded her treasure and was waited on by her servants – though oddly, the little old man Carlitos never seemed to be doing the waiting himself and was instead waited upon, just like her – was actually a suburban manor house, not a real cave, cavern, or abandoned castle as they frequently had it in the stories. Like most modern houses and unlike any actual dragon’s lair, at least that I’m aware of, Rosie’s home was heated, air conditioned, possessed of all the modern conveniences, and filled with electric light, but being a dog who thought they were a dragon, these were things entirely taken for granted, the same as the humans who waited on and doted over her, immutable facts of her existence, not something to worry about save that she needed to rule and protect them. In fairness to her, perhaps that taking for granted isn’t entirely unique to dogs anymore than the desire to rationalize parts of her existence. Many humans we know barely spare a thought as to what makes the lamp come on when the flip the switch.
Fortunately or unfortunately, this taking for granted lasts until one day you flip the switch and the lights fail to come on, leaving you wondering for a moment what happened before immediately counting the minutes until the power is back, fretting over how you ever lived without it. Rosie, of course, had never flipped a switch in her life – such things being far, far below the concerns of a three-legged dragon – but this didn’t mean that she wasn’t forced to deal with the situation when the power went out from time to time and the comfortable routine that defined her days began to fall completely apart. Like many things in the lives of dogs, humans, and dragons, Rosie didn’t realize anything was amiss at first on this particular occasion, and didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. All she was aware of at first was that her human servants had left for a time doing whatever humans do when they are outside of the house and going wherever into the great beyond they go, hopefully to bring her back more treasure and food, but while she slept comfortably for a while save for some terrible rumblings outside, something odd began happening the moment they arrived home. Though she heard the car – or whatever it was humans usually get into when the leave, a large, loud, heavy, fast, scary, awful thing as far as she can tell – arrive at her lair long before it actually pulled up thanks to her vastly superior dragon hearing, it was not followed by the regular, rather rattly and creaky opening of the cave – that is the garage door – as it normally was. In addition to that oddity, the humans didn’t seek entry through their regular opening either, from where they kept those infernal motive devices. Instead, as she and Carlitos gathered at the opening itself – Rosie in front of course, rearing up and down on three legs, both excited at her servant’s return, ready to scold them for leaving her for so long, and careful to realize they might have arrived with some kind of unknown threat – they entered behind her, through what we would call the rear door, surprising both her and Carlitos.
Though they were forced to circle around the house to greet the servants at this unusual location and perform the ritual obeisance in a far more awkward spot, barely getting a pat on the head rather than a full throated worshipping, their surprise and the sense that anything was amiss was soon forgotten in the excitement at the reunion – once again as dogs, humans, and dragons all frequently do – but sadly, this naivety couldn’t last much longer. By the very next day, Rosie the three legged dragon would find herself in the midst of a full blown adventure, one she certainly did not want to undertake and yet leadership has its duties. For that matter, the sense that things weren’t quite right persisted throughout the entire evening after the servants arrived back at the lair. They helped her conduct the nightly patrol as usual — when she would fly low and slow enough to the ground around her domain that a human could keep up, fancying themselves as fast as a three-legged dragon – and Rosie retired afterwards to one her many thrones – that is the living room couch – for some well-deserved rest, but then she began noticing two rather uncomfortable if inexplicable things followed by a third, even more horrible than those which came before. First, it was much, much hotter than it should be in her normally cool and refreshing lair. As she lay there, she found herself looking even worse than Carlitos, tongue out and panting uncontrollably, unable to cool down for much, much longer than usual, even while lying down and doing nothing. Regardless, she was a dragon after all and would not have let this bother her much if it weren’t for the other strange occurrences. Second, it was also much darker than usual and getting darker by the moment. Where there would normally be all sorts of wonderful, shiny, bright glowing things floating at strategic spots, making it seem like the middle of the day even late at night, there was nothing, only the darkness creeping in as the sun sunk further and further beneath the horizon.
If there was one thing Rosie was afraid of – though she was loath to admit it – it was the dark. To be honest, there were actually two things, or even three as we will soon learn: The dark and loud noises, like thunder or fireworks, which she viewed as interchangeable affronts to her serenity and silence. This particularly terrible evening, one seemed to accompany the other. Memory for a dog, even one that thinks she’s a dragon, isn’t the same as it is for humans, but even in Rosie’s admittedly hazy, food obsessed mind she had a dim recollection of a certain time of year far worse than all others. The loud rumblings that vexed her so, prompting her to bark and pant, stalk about her lair and even find a place to hide, usually came and went randomly, disturbing her for a brief period, but then passing as if nothing happened in the first place. There was one day of the year, however, that stood out above all others for reasons she couldn’t possibly understand, when it seemed the entire night sky was on fire and loud, loud rumblings for hours on end, which as you might be aware, seems an eternity for a dragon-dog. This day was the very worst by far for her – and if Rosie had any ability to anticipate the future – she would dread its coming by the hour, but of course, even when humans dread something, it never prevents that something from happening and sure enough, every year the same thing occurred over and over again. Rather than retiring at the end of the day for a restful pre-bedtime nap, Rosie was forced to defend her lair from forces she couldn’t possibly understand, explosions in the night and sounds that could shake the windows she peered out of, over and over again, from near and far. In her opinion – not that three-legged dragons have opinions in the human sense of the term – it was by far the hardest day that ever was or could ever be. For some reason, however, her human servants were always happy and excited about this horrific turn of events, as though they were celebrating something important. Rather than defending the lair or cowering in fear, she’d see them staring up at those lights in the sky as if they meant something, even causing some of the lights themselves, but could make no sense of it. Why was she the only concerned about this mortal threat to her kingdom? What if the noise and the lights came right into her lair? Why did even little Carlitos not seem all that bothered?
Regardless, none of Rosie’s previous experience either as a dog or a three-legged dragon prepared her for what was about to happen. Between the lights off in the lair plunging them into almost complete darkness, the rising heat, and more whatever it was crashing right outside than anytime she could remember, there was no rest to be found for a period too long to contemplate, as if there would be no rest ever again, and incredibly, things were about to get even worse. Normally, our three-legged dragon would awake the next day after a brutal night to find things returned to normal, but this time, she would start her morning figuratively face to face with her greatest challenge yet, or at least the greatest challenge she could remember in her limited dragon-dog mind: She had no idea what it could possibly be, but it seemed something had happened that was dramatic enough for her servants to abandon the lair and all of her treasures, leaving it completely undefended for the first time. Surely, the deer and rabbits would overrun the place in an hour? Didn’t they realize this? The impossible conclusion didn’t dawn on her immediately, however. Instead, it stalked her like a ghost until the very end. She had some inkling something was afoot when her servants spent the early part of the day unloading the massive treasure chests that stored all of her food, those shiny, miraculous things that loomed like monoliths in one of the most important chambers in her lair, meaning where she was fed, moving the previous items to some other kind of container and packing them with frozen water rather than feeding her. Her servants could be strange, however, and under normal circumstances, she might have dismissed this until it became clear that they were packing other stuff as well all sorts of stuff, even her own special food. Once they began loading it all outside, going into and out of the lair far more often than usual, she had no choice except to conclude that they were definitely leaving and once they started calling for her to come outside – that is putting the infernal device around her neck and dragging her along against her imperial will – they were taking her with them. The worst of it all, however, was when they actually got outside. Not only were they abandoning the lair, they were planning to journey by car to do so. If there’s one thing Rosie the three-legged dragon hated more than the dark and loud noises, it was traveling by motor vehicle, and yet that was exactly the journey she was forced to contemplate. Carlitos, however, was already in the car and ready to go. What was a good three-legged dragon supposed to do except rise to the occasion, however much she hated, even feared it?
TO BE CONTINUED…
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 