There's No Dragons Here: A comet passing by in the night sky, Knowledge gained from rivers and what lives there. There is one story that is Fiction. C

Rob and I are friends from high school, and we are both musicians. After one night of practicing, we just felt like grabbing a beer and going for a walk. We walked for miles, discussing musical ideas and enjoying the night's air and scenery. Thus was born the "Midnight Beer Walks." Not for exercise, not for destination - just for the rhythm of the night and therapy it offered. Five, sometimes eight miles of uninterrupted conversation. The kind of talks that only happen when the world is asleep and the earth is listening. My house was located on the rural suburban edge. Light to no traffic. No streetlights. Just the wind blowing through the trees and our hair. That silence gave us space; not just to speak, but to hear ourselves think. We discussed everything; music, politics, heartbreak, and dreams. The beer was incidental. The walk was sacred. One night, Rob's car wouldn't start. I drove to pick him up. After our walk and drive back home, he fell asleep somewhere along the way. The roads were empty, the night thick with stars. I stopped at a red light. His eyes quickly opened. He sat up, looked straight ahead and said, "There's no dragons here." He then closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep seconds later. I didn't say a word, just stared at the road ahead and wondering from which corner of his mind that sentence had come. It was absurd. It was profound. It was Rob. Forty years later, a psychic friend - well-known and deeply intuitive, mentioned dragons. She claimed they were absent in our location. That something about the land had pushed them away. I froze. That sentence, buried in my memory, came roaring back. There's no dragons here. Rob had said it without knowing. Or maybe he did. His experience "Consciousness of My Life, Leaving," and nearly freezing to death near the end of winter, is included. The echoes in the silence of those old roads, in the rustle of leaves, in the breadth of the earth at night, call out. Because when it's just you and her - the world, she speaks in a different language. One that doesn't need translation. One that knows your name.