ThursdayThirteen - Why I Love Dragons

This Thursday Thirteen are a few thoughts on flying, and why I love to fly with and write about dragons.

1. 
   I come from an aviation family. My father trained as an airplane mechanic, then became a flight engineer.
   
   
2.  I always wanted to fly.  My farm had a back 40 acres planned for a landing / takeoff strip. When in school my after-school activities included private pilots training.
   
   
3. Despite the legacy of the Women Airforce Service Pilots who served as ferry pilots in World war II and the trailblazers of the  Ninety-Nines Organization, which included Amelia Earhart as one of their founders, at the time of my search for the sky, the main path to a uniform and wings for a woman was as a stewardess. Let's just say I was strongly encouraged not to become what several family friends (all flight crew members or stewardesses themselves) called a glorified waitress. Good thing I listened. You can only dump hot coffee on someone so many  times before you get fired. (just kidding.)
   
   
4. I was fortunate that I have lived where airplanes were a common sight. My childhood farm was in the traffic pattern for Newark Airport. On clear days the planes flew low enough you could tell their airline by the tail insignia and colors. There were two small airports within a few miles.
   
   
5. Later, my home was not only across the water from the Twin Towers, but beneath the flight pattern for LaGuardia Airport. More than stars twinkled at night. When walking the boardwalk you could track the ribbon of light formed by the stream of planes heading towards the airport.
   
   
6. A tale written by the young me was put to paper while watching fighter planes land at Clark Air Force Base in the Phillipines. Of course that was before the area was buried with volcanic ash by Mount Pinatubo, shaken by earthquakes, and battered by sheets of rain from Typhoon Yunya. Decades later that youthful effort was unearthed from the bowels of a drawer, reworked and expanded to become FIRST MISSION, FINAL DAY in the anthology, Hearth and Sand: Stories from the Front Lines and the Homefront.
   
   
7. LIVE OR SURRENDER TO TECHNOLOGY, a story based in the near future, honored my father with the tale of a man's final flight. Passengers on tomorrow's trans-continental orbiter discover what can happen when humans abdicate control. When the artificial intelligence pilot changes the flight schedule, one passenger, a holdover from an earlier time in aviation, shows the resilience of human spirit as he overcomes the errant technology to save the doomed flight.
   
   
8. While on my childhood farm, I would watch hawks gracefully soaring above the fields on the thermals.
    

9. 

   Image by kamyk293 from Pixabay

   Flight slipped into my tales in another way besides dragons. Fire and Amulet featured a mythical bird called a helwr. The large black birds with lethal curved talons were inspired by eagles and hawks. Helwr's large orange eyes seem to blaze with energy. The birds also have a sense of loyalty and duty. When Tywyll's mistress was kidnapped, the bird marked her captor with a talon across the cheek. Then it searched for years to find his mistress. More on Tywyll can be found at the post H is for Helwr.
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. 
    And then there are the dragons. In the Dragshi Chronicles, for special humans, the path to dragon wings came from being born with a twinned dragon soul. Once the dragon awakened, the human and dragon share a single form in time and space. The humans gain long life spans and the freedom of the skies. The dragons get a friend to translate the world of humans.
    
    
11. If you are small enough and have a dragshi friend (or been in service to the dragshi) they may make a cage of their talons so you can fly with them.
    
    
    
    
    
12. Another way to achieve the freedom of flight is to have a true dragon willing to put a nugget of his magic into a tearstone. Those possessing the jewel and the appropriate knowledge can take on dragon form. For more, read Fire and Amulet.
    
    
13. I did draw a line about one thing pertaining to flight. I prefer to watch a hot air balloon floating across the hillside rather than going up in one to be subservient to the winds. A standing joke in my family dealt with parachuting  and was the comment, "Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane." To a man, they would prefer to land the plane.
    

I hope you enjoyed this Thursday Thirteen. I hope you will come back again. If any of my published titles intrigue you, click on the cover in the banner or for the series, the pull-down menu for blurbs, excerpts, a free read of the first chapter, and of course, buy links.

And of course, be sure to visit the other thirteens.

~till next time, you're invited to hang out with mages and fly with dragons. Helen