096

The flame made it's way toward earth with something that suggested animosity. Call it moxy, or mojo or any 4 letter m-word you can think of, there was a deffinitive sense about its chosen course and the audacity with which it carried itself on the way down.
Fire is a tricky form of reality, it doesn't really think much, just burns. If you look deeply enough though, you'll find a minute spark of intelligence. You don't want to get it started, not if you don't have to, because once it gets going mentally just like when it gets going physically, if you let fire get enough momentum you're in big trouble.
***
"Two days ago an angry piece of sentient fire collided with a small town, Aspiere, it incinerated all inhabitants upon impact. 2 humanoid, and one reptile-like creature, possibly dragon, were witnessed at the origin point of the flame. Their current where abouts are unknown. What shall we do?"
Dr Esteval looked at his servant robot, Imov, with a cocked eyebrow and middling levels of contempt."We find them of course, there's possibly a dragon flying around out there."

43.

Dragons are rarely happy, and almost never dead. There is a possible correlation between these two indignities. Contrary to popular belief these creatures aren't immortal but rather false-immrotals, which is to say there are no recorded instances of dragons actually dying from natural causes, which is to say that dragons live for an inordinately, unfathomably, inconcievabley long length of time. What is natural or unnatural is a matter of debate, but old age seems not to adversely effect these creatures. Humans and all other life on earth have an infinite number of permutations by which they can suffer the negation of life. Dragons however are unique in this respect given that the only known method by which any have been sent to the great beyond was by the sword and strictly speaking only by a piercing of (one or more of) their great hearts. Dagons thus were one of the most prolific pests known to the ancient world. Which begs the question, where did they all go? -- exerpts from the work of Dr Malcom "Crazy Pants" Esteval

16.

The earth has a long, proud and storied history of Dragons [The Moon, not so much so.] Dragons famously dispatched by the likes of Sigfried and Bilbo and Bilbo's helper and probably many of the Knights of the Round Table live on now only in legend. It seems that possibly Dragons have been unfairly represented traditionally as gold hoarding man-killing whore mongering misanthropic reprobates. Nothing could be further from the truth. This archaic antipathy unfairly held by pre-modern hominids has largely been replaced by a progressive tolerant view of these ancient creatures, a position made possible probably because the idea of a fire breathing monster exists only in the abstract, the reification of which in the present with the resultant inevitable increase in accidental human combustions [sic] would probably reinforce the long held backward view of this leviathan of the sky and set back dragon/human relations at least 2000 years. Unfortunately, there are no known dragons on earth to give voice to this gentle (but unintentionally dangerous) creature's side of the relational equation in question. So, we are left to anecdotal - most of which are spurious - reports of their existence. Dragons are thought now to be completely wiped out by intolerant and ignorant humans/hobbits, however new evidence indicates that the last verifiable dragon siting occurred May 19, 1963 (I have pictures). It was black and silver, current whereabouts: unknown. -- Dr Malcom "Crazy Pants" Esteval, taken from his final journal entry.