Cerebus Syndrome

I think I must be a terrible angst-monkey. I'd fully intended to make Damsels & Dragons basically light fantasy, along the lines of Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest books, but my desire to stick dark nastiness keeps rearing it's ugly head. Okay, yeah, I'm still going to stick the Norwegian Drow (Ya, da Spider God vill be drinkin' yar blood, ya-betcha!) in there somewhere, but I just came up with a horrible, horrible idea for explaining why there are no male dragons in the Valley, and it involves Jeremy growing up, and changing from Cute Naive Mildly Annoying Kid, to Large Adolescent Dragon That Is Scary as Sh*t. And worse, being somewhat aware of what's happening and fearing the change because he doesn't want to lose his friendship with Isolde.

Bascially when dragons reach adulthood, a sharp dicotomy occurs between males and females. Females retain their intelligence and ability to co-operate with each other. Males become super-territorial and their intelligence becomes overridden by their instincts. The Valley was created for no small reason to protect female dragons from their male counterparts. Most males can't stand each other long enough to share a kill, much less mount an organized attack on the Valley, so any arriving singly will be rapidly driven off. It's also the males that give rise to the rampaging dragons of folklore, which keep knights like Lance gainfully employed. Currently the male-to-female ratio is running about 1 to 10, and the females woud like to keep it that way.

Which leads to the following quote from a conversation between Isolde and Mom.

Isolde: But if male dragons are so terrible, how on earth do you ever make love with them to create eggs?

Jeremy's Mom: We don't call it "making love."

Yech.

The Ninjas are Blooming

Ever since we moved to Columbia seven years ago, there are two things I can count on. The local developers will build housing out of my price range on any piece of vacant land in the area, and come Spring the Ninja Biker will appear on Rt. 175.

I call her the Ninja Biker, because inevitably she'll be on a black ten-speed, wearing black biker shorts and a black sport top (in chillier weather a full black Lycra bodysuit), black sneakers (with black socks) and a full face, tinted black motorcycle helmet. I can't imagine how the devil she breathes through the thing when she's going up a hill. She must not have too much trouble with it though (she's the only woman I've seen in public with a well-defined six pack).

So I spotted her for the first time this year on my way back from my WW meeting (19 pounds down so far, to 169.6 lbs.) Surprisingly she'd ditched the motorcycle helmet for a regular bike helmet, but had kept her anonymity by resorting to a black Lycra mask over the bottom of her face.

I was never more tempted to pull up beside her and ask if she really thinks she should be showing off her kinks in public like that...