*Today marks the start of the Chinese New Year. We enter the year of the Wood Dragon.
I was on my grandmother’s balcony, the same one that she often claimed she’d one day throw herself off, when she first handed me the dragon egg. The midday sun was harsh, the sea glittering in the distance. My grandmother said nothing. All she did, once the egg was resting in my cupped hands, was press a forefinger to her lips. It was our secret.
I didn’t know it was a dragon egg. I was only eight, so to me it was a large, smooth stone. But I knew it was just for me.
I might have just locked it up somewhere, but I carried it everywhere. I even slept with it. Though I may not have understood it, I never questioned this legacy of my grandmother. It was my precious stone to bear.
Many years later, not long after my grandmother died, I awoke to discover my stone had split open like a lotus flower. Perched on my chest, peering at me through ancient eyes, was a baby dragon. Our gazes met, and it seemed to give me a knowing, toothy smile.
I delighted in my dragon (I’ve always called it “mine” even though I was more the one possessed). Whenever it moved, its scales shimmered in iridescent hues of green, yellow, and black. Though tiny, it bore the grandeur of a mountain, the inscrutability of an ocean, the profundity of the stars. Despite my seniority I felt protozoan in its presence.
The dragon never exhibited anger, jealousy, irritation, or joy. Only its amber eyes divulged an intelligence and awareness whose source and intent I couldn’t fathom.
It did sleep, sometimes for days, occasionally weeks, but I soon realized that it did so only for my sake. Anytime I sought the dragon, it was awake. When other matters preoccupied me, it slumbered.
My dragon was low maintenance. It required no food or water. Nothing entered, nothing exited. It merely existed.
Yet it kept growing, and this was a problem. I couldn’t conceal it much longer. Fortunately, we discovered a cave, or rather, the dragon did.
I was walking in the woods near my house, the dragon perched on my shoulder, when it abruptly took flight. I pursued it, veering far from the path, until it disappeared behind a veil of foliage, which turned out to be a camouflaged opening to a cave.
The cavern had the hallmarks of a dragon’s lair: a pool of water, a stalactite ceiling, the vastness of a cathedral. The only thing absent was the pile of gold.
This cavern became its new home. And I spent countless hours there. As the years passed, the dragon kept growing, first larger than a rabbit, then a monkey, a goat, a tiger, an ox. On it grew, until it towered over me, a creature as magnificent as any born of the imagination.
One day, once fully grown, the dragon turned to me and lowered its head to the ground, silently inviting me to climb on.
Did it suggest we fly out into the world? That seemed like madness. I stroked its head but did not climb on.
Every time I returned, the dragon extended the same invitation, and every time I refused. Though I admonished it for doing so, the dragon persisted. It gave no external sign of judgment, but a sense of disappointment gnawed at me. As my shame grew, my visits became more infrequent. Finally, I stopped going to the cave entirely.
The years and decades passed. My life unfolded like many others. The wild ambitions of my youth failed to flower, and I consoled myself that such must be the fate of all youthful and naïve aspiration. I forgot about the dragon.
I had lost track of the decades by the time I returned to the cave. Life had been hard. My family and friends had left me or died. I was old and forlorn. My eyes were dim as I hobbled in. The dragon was still there, as majestic as before.
I felt a stirring of emotion, which I tried to suppress with a joke. “Don’t worry, I haven’t come for your gold.”
The coiled dragon, asleep all these decades, unfurled its serpentine body. It extended its neck so that its eye, bigger than my head, was next to mine. My legs felt weak.
“And lucky for you, I haven’t come to slay you either.” My laugh was too thin to echo.
The dragon appraised me with equanimity. Then it lowered its head once more, again offering a place for me.
I stepped back. “I am too weak,” I stammered.
The dragon reared and displayed its powerful wings.
“There is no more fire in my belly.”
A fiery jet surged up in an eruption of heat and light that exploded in flaming banners across the ceiling. I cowered. The dragon then turned to me, tendrils of steam wafting up from its nostrils, and lowered its head once more.
My skin was damp with sweat and dragon steam. I shook my trembling head and closed my eyes. “I’m too old. I’ve waited too long. It’s too late.”
Then a voice—I couldn’t say whether my own or the dragon’s or of my imagining—retorted: “You stubborn fool! It’s never too late, until it is.”
My eyes opened just in time to see the dragon’s jaws snapping down upon me, but too late now to do anything about it.
Where do we keep our dragons, do we dance in the streets with them, do we have a little box for them on our desk, do they scurry about in our dreams and memories, do we ever fly with them?
The voice is correct, “It’s never too late, until it is.”