The point is that that was the first day it seemed to me possible — a human talking to a dragon. That it wasn't just craziness and desperation and darkness. The craziness and desperation may have started it . . . but it had a future. Talking to each other had a future. There is pretty much no bigger wow than that.
So I told him — them — because Gulp had moved to lie down by Bud and was obviously "listening" too — about finding the dying mother dragon who'd only just given birth, and how Lois was the only one of her dragonlets still alive. How I'd tucked her down my shirt without thinking about it, and run away. How I'd made myself doolally trying to keep her alive, and without knowing how to keep her alive, and my only excuse was that she'd survived. I told them about the Institute — I can't begin to imagine what my pictures of the inside of the Institute must have looked/felt/smelled/something — else/whatever to them — and about the human laws that made what I'd done so dangerous. That part didn't go in pictures so well, but I tried. (So you try making a picture in your head of laws. All I could think of was that big famous picture of the Constitution, with John Hancock's signature taking up half the space. So, I skipped over the law thing a little.)
I told them that the Institute existed only because they, the dragons, existed, and that we were doing the best we could and knew how and although that wasn't very good it was the best we could, and that we were probably losing too, and that if anyone ever found out about Lois that would probably be the end of the line because the people who were against the Institute kept imagining that we were doing something like Lois, although we never had before; and that if they did find out, and especially if they figured out who her mother was, they'd say that she was the daughter of a rogue killer dragon and genes will tell and she had to be destroyed twice, first because she was illegal anyway and second because of her mom.
What I didn't try to tell them about was the dragon dreams. And that's funny too, because I planned to, to the extent that any of this was planned. Once I was telling the story I would've told them about the dragon dreams, how I felt that especially at the beginning they were helping hold me together, like rope, or a straitjacket — and I sort of hesitated on the brink, with a tentative picture of Lois' mom as I saw her in my dreams, and there was almost this pause where I swear everyone understood everyone else, two dragons and one human — I don't suppose even Bud got even 10 percent of all the rest of it, the question was what fragments were he and Gulp fishing out of the nutso deluge and what were they doing with them?? — and it was about this thing I knew was crazy, about Lois' mom, this is the place where we understood each other — and then while it was over in just long enough for it to have been a pause, it was like that was all that was necessary. I didn't have to tell them. Lois' mom in my head, keeping me together. Yes. Of course. Oh. . .
I was losing it pretty bad with the pictures by now but they probably picked up the hysteria. I told them I didn't know why Lois had survived, and I sure as hell didn't know why I was able to talk to dragons, even the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest bit, or they to me, to the extent that I or they were talking, but we were, weren't we, communicating, even though it was kind of messy, and we were probably creating a new all — singing all — dancing Day-Glo definition of "blunderbotchandscrewup."
But I'd got it that Gulp was sending me trees, right? I assumed it — the communication — that it was happening — had something to do with Lois — with Lois and me. Something to do with having to be so all-berserkingly involved with her to keep her alive — probably it was just standard op for a mother dragon and her dragonlets, but it was whopping-meganormous-vast, incomprehensible new ground for a dragonlet and a human. I wasn't even a grown-up, you know? Although maybe that meant I was like squishy enough to adapt, when a grown-up would have been all stiff and solid and filled up and couldn't. Maybe the success of the involvement though was why she survived — either that I didn't know that I instinctively knew what she could or couldn't eat, for example, or that the bonding to Mom — and any mom would do — is as important as what a dragonlet eats — or who the mom was.
So her side of the adaptation process was why she made so much noise — why she tried to talk like humans talk. I'd pretty much always secretly believed that she was, you know, intelligent, more like humans are intelligent than like dogs (or mynah birds) are intelligent, but I also knew I was loopy from the strain of the relationship that was keeping her alive. . . . But I also thought about Mom and Katie and I figured it's just part of momming that you think your kid's wonderful. Even if you're a human and your kid's a dragon.
So I'd kept a low profile about certain aspects of just how Lois might be wonderful. That she might be dorky-checklist-human-IQ-test-intelligent wonderful. Which would presumably mean that dragons were dorky-checklist-human-IQ-test-intelligent. Which is way too scary, you know? Well, you do know, because a lot of people out there now are reacting like we've declared the earth is flat after all, or that being a heroin dealer is a life — affirming socially responsible career choice, by suggesting that dragons will talk back to us as soon as we get the common language problem sorted out better. My suspicion about Lois could just have been that I was suffering from momness, and maybe that would have been a good thing, or at least easier, simpler, and a whole lot less scary.
Till now. Till the last five days. Since Gulp had brought us here. No, before that. Since Gulp had apologized for almost killing me. I'd known then, beyond any so-called rational doubt, but I hadn't taken it in. My taking-it-in faculty was fully occupied with the daily fact of Gulp's visits. And I was probably too used to not facing this with Lois, in case I was wrong. Or maybe in case I was right. Martian lichen or no Martian lichen — vervets with language or no vervets with language — philosophies of humanness and that Earth is a community, not a police state, or no philosophies of etc. — it was still too big, too strange, too far away from the way I was used to thinking. Too impossible. It wasn't just being underground with a cavern full of dragons that had freaked me out so badly, you know. At least the guys who found out about the lichen oil Mars, it was happening on Mars. This was happening here.
And now comes the show-stopper, the super jackpot question, the one if you get it right they don't just give you a huge ugly new house and an even huger uglier new car, you will also be expected to solve world hunger, kiss babies and walk on water, so think carefully before you answer: If dragons are intelligent like humans — or more like humans than like dogs or mynah birds or vervets — and just by the way, dragons are up to eighty feet long and can spout fire at will — why are dragons a dying race and humans dominate the planet in a sawing-of-the-tree-limb-you're-standing-on kind of way?
I still don't know the answer to why dragons are dying out, just to get that over with since it's usually the first thing that pro-dragon people ask me. (The anti-dragon people all still keep saying, How do you know they're intelligent?) I think I don't know because it isn't an answer like that there's something in the water that shouldn't be or isn't that should be, or like that. I don't think it's even the restriction of usable territory. They could've expanded a lot more than they have in Smokehill and while, no, okay, I don't know how intelligent they are (How intelligent are you? How intelligent am I? At what point does this become a dumb question?), I think they're quite intelligent enough to have been clandestine about it if they wanted to be. Okay, maybe they have been, and presently unknown underground mazes all over Smokehill are stuffed with dragons. But I don't believe it. (Or anyway not unless they've also bred a sheep that lives in the dark and eats rocks.)