It was a mythical land, the dragon was merciless, and steadfast warriors set out regularly on reckless quests to slay it.

Its power to destroy lived, as with all such beasts, in its breath. It breathed not fire, but syllables.

These eggs of sound resonated so enchantingly that even just one had the power to madden its hearer on the spot. Some would-be slayers fell on their own swords and perished. Others simply dropped in a fatal swoon, limbs limp and eyes agog, never to be revived.

Eventually the Queen herself broached the beast, with armour and blade and, in a stroke of pragmatic genius, woollen plugs to stop her ears. The brutal battle lasted a night and a day. When the dragon gasped its last breath and the Queen claimed her hard-won victory, she unblocked her ears and walked among the mad warriors, whose bodies lay wasting on the path. The few whose lives still clung to them she entrusted to her own private healers. In time they were restored to vitality and sense, and they took up their lives once more among their people.

No one ever heard these fallen heroines speak of their misadventures. Still, it was said that at the dark of each new moon they gathered together in secret to speak their common language, built piecemeal from remembered remnants of the dragon’s awe-striking syllables.

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Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 77 of Structured Visions.