The Door Into Shadow totf-2
Page 30
Astronomers — and, of course, sorcerers and people with the blue Fire — are cognizant of such lunar functions as node crossings and regression of nodes, apogee and perigee and advance of the perigee point, librations and nutations, and eclipses both lunar and solar, such being important to their work. But (and very sensibly) no one has ever particularly cared about what the lunar calendar does in relation to the solar one. The only real notice taken of alignment between the two is in mention of Nineteen-Years' Night, when the Moon is full on Opening Night and wreaking with sorcery or Fire is particularly potent.
There is a tendency for Moon cycles to be referred to by name, the names
j fiering from area to area. For example, the first full Moon of Spring, and the days following it from waning to dark to new crescent to full again, is ually called the "Song Moon" in Arlen, while some Darthenes call it the лUnicorn's Moon," and some others, the "Maiden's Moon" or the "Mad Moon " Special note is taken of the Harvest Moon in most places, both because fthe shortening of its rising time and in memory of the bloody harvest cut at Bluepeak during one of its risings an age ago; the full Moon that follows the file:///G|/rah/Diane%20Duane%20-%20Tales%20Of%20The%20Five%2002%20-%20The%20Door%20Into%20Shadow.htm (153 of 155) note 22
Harvest Moon is always the Lion's or Eagle's Moon, in Earn's and Healhra 's memory.
Since the memory of the times before the Catastrophe has largely been lost, years are counted from the coming of the Dragons and the destruction of the Dark, and noted by number and the abbreviation for pai Ajnedare deruwin, "after the Arrival." Example: Segnbora's birthday is Spring the 57th, 2098 p.a.d.
ON DRAGON ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
The Dragons are perhaps purposely vague about their very beginnings. "Thinking about a time before their own consciousness," d 'Welcaen reports, "makes them nervous." But the earliest Dracon memories recall a time when the Homeworld was populated by plant-analogs and other life forms. There was a food chain, and Dragons had use for the internal organs which now exist only in extremely debased vestigial forms. Somewhere along the line — possibly due to changes in the Homeworld's orbit, or in its star's characteristics — the planet's seas began to evaporate, and its atmosphere to strip off. The Dragons report this as taking many thousands of their lifetimes. Converting this time to human standards is difficult, and gives answers ranging from one to six million years. This may seem like quite a while, but it isn't really, for an organism whose average generation is from four to six thousand years. The Dragons had to adapt in a hurry to the changes in
their environment.
Already silicon-boron based — and what their atmosphere and "seas" con-sisted of is still a matter for conjecture — the Dragons' evolution went in the most efficient possible direction. Their anatomy began adjusting itself toward extreme lightness, for maximum efficiency in soaring in search of food. As food got scarcer due to increased irradiation, wild mutations got more com-mon — including one that became most successful: the alteration of silane rings in the black wing-membranes, so that they became in effect giant solar cells, using the already-existing neural pathways for conduction of generated bioelectricity. Dragons born with this mutation, needing no normal food, thrived and multiplied, and soared further and further sunward for food. The increased irradiation induced more gene changes and mutations in brain physiology, so that the "highflyers" found themselves able to manipulate "force" — magnetic fields, gravity wave-Jields, and other instrumentalities less classifiable to humans. Organs used for digestion, respiration, and elimina-tion slowly went vestigial, until finally the "late model" Dragon was left— an efficient, flying energy-storage machine, spaceworthy, tolerant of extreme high and low temperatures (as had become commonplace on the Homeworld),
and able to express that energy as Dragon/ire and use it as tool and wea-pon.
The reasons for that particular manifestation are debatable, but dWelcaen suggests that Dragons feel about their mouths as humans feel about their hands. Dracon psychology says that language is the primary means of effective sur-vival: which perhaps explains why, even after their development of under-speech, the Dragons never gave up communication by way of vocal speech. Even their tongues still work after all these centuries — though they're not necessary: Dracon sound generation long ago went over to non-acoustic mech-anisms like those of whales. Fluid-Jilled or stressed-solid-Jilled cavities stimu-lated by "muscle" contraction, or catalytic chemical reactions, or neural/mem-brane synergies, or all three, allow Dragons to communicate with precision and stunning variation in almost any medium except empty space, and also permit the super-prolonged hisses, three— to eighteen-tone chords, and choral-verbal speech for which they 're best known.
Dragonfire, according to dWelcaen, is strictly a "psi" phenomenon allied to "manipulation of force, " and as complicated for a Dragon as breathing for a human — a Dragonet can flame before it can talk. The skill is almost wholly a constructive one these days; the times when a Dragon would have to melt several tons of lead-bearing stone over itself to protect it from a stars term, or blast its way out of the covering again, are long past. A. Dracon name for the Sun that shines on the Middle Kingdoms is hfa-Aass'te're, "the Shallows" — a pale, cozy little star, tame and safe compared to the mad fire of the Homestar in its last days. These days Drag&nfire is for show, and for nn's'hraile, in a particularly heated argument; for imilding; and, when words fail at last, for mating fights, when hottest Jire decides who will reproduce, and who will go very suddenly mdahaih.
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