I had the good fortune to be in the Kralorelan Capitol for their new years celebrations and was quite enthralled by their parade ceremonies.
The major streets and thoroughfares of the grand city were lined by its scores and scores of residents. Banners of crimson and gold fluttered in the cool easterly breeze, lanterns hung from each doorpost and street sign, and streamers from the lintels of each building in the street. I was almost knocked aside by a hoard of children, bearing poles with miniature lanterns, caged birds and crickets, most chewing candy in their other hand. I bought a cricket for luck myself from a bent old crone on one corner, she muttered some unintelligible blessing and laughed at my feeble Kraloreli.
I could hear the drumming in the streets. Loud and long. Heard well before the drummers themselves appeared, sounding like thunder in the distance. Streams of bird were breaking skyward in advance of the parade, frighted, I thought first, by the noise. Then the Lions came into view in a halo of golden light, roars blending with the thunderous drumming of the soldiers chasing them. Lions they were not, but that is how I have to describe them, but glimmering, big eyed, huge mouthed and not mortal. Something else.
I felt the roar of one approaching Lion from half a block away. I felt something pushing though me. I felt exhilarated, light headed and fine. I could 'feel' in the corners of my vision the fleeting sense of something dissipating, something breaking to tatters, and flock of released birds were swooping and diving to carry of these intangible shadows. Then the thunder burst loud in my ears. The streamers I noted before were bursting into flame. Each pretty knot was exploding like a lightning stuck pine, the streamers crackling like a pine fire, but loud as an avalanche next to my ear. At each crack, tiny spirits leapt and darted from the houses along the street, darting into the crowds and up into to sky. As the Lions chased down the street, I looked and saw the spirits fleeing their approach. Ah... the spirits were being carried off by the birds. Those to slow were consumed by the Lions roars and halo. All the malign and malicious house pests were fleeing before these divine beings, their beauty and power to much to bear.
I didn't notice the dragon until it was almost upon me.
You would know cousin how I like to talk, but I could not talk then... and find it hard to describe now. It had lovely deep brown eyes like your horse, but patterned like a cat, or something like, or a snake, or an owl, or mother, but the were not brown but a rich purple. It gaze, its countenance was human and something beyond, something ageless and to be feared, knowing and powerful, kind and utterly uncaring. It passed me by. All golden scaled fur, warm to touch like a lover, soft like an alynx and a grass snake at once. Burning and icy and soothing to touch. The crowds too had held out their hands, suddenly, deafeningly silent in the drumming.
How long it was I could not say, nor how long I stood. Before I realised it had passed and disappeared, and the crowds continued to dance and the children released their crickets to scamper and scatter their luck into the cracks and crevices of the local houses, and the thunder receded, and the Emperor was gone.
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