February 14th, 2013

Dear Master Jack,

Lady M (the person I am living with) told me about you, and I was very moved when I heard your story.  In my experience, not many people are able to summon up courage and good humor when they have been unwell and are recovering. I understand from what Lady M told me that your recovery may take a few weeks. Since you will probably have some time on your hands and since you like to read, I thought I would share my story with you. I think that you may find it interesting.

My name is Gryf Frenthfar Baugh. Frenthfar is the name of my family, and Baugh is the name of my clan. All dragon families belong to a clan. In my clan there were ten families, and we were a strong community; we raised crops, traded with other clans (and a few humans), taught our younglings, and shared our knowledge and talents with each other. In other parts of the world dragon clans are bigger or smaller than ours was. Some of the dragons in the cold countries at the top of the world are single family clans, while some in India have more than twenty families in one clan.

My family lived in caves high in the Welsh mountains. The little town of Bala was in the valley below, and Lake Bala was one of my favorite places to visit. Our clan had a large Clan Hall that our ancestors had dug out of the rock. In addition to the hall, which is where we gathered for meetings and celebrations, there were some smaller rooms. Some of the rooms were used for storing supplies, one of the rooms was the school room, and there was also a library, a bathing room, a music room, and an art room.

My family lived not far from the Clan Hall. My great great grandmother and grandfather had dug the family caves in a mountainside so that there was a large entry way, a kind of porch if you will. In the spring and summer we would sit in this space in the evenings and look out over the mountains, watching the sun set.

I hatched in the late winter in 1484, soon after the New Year celebration. My parents were very proud because our kin in China had told us (see Note 1 below) that it was the year of the Golden Dragon, which meant that all the dragon chicks born in that year would be especially lucky. 

I was the first egg in the clutch to hatch, my brothers and sisters coming into the world in the weeks that followed. My first real memory was of my mother. I remember looking up into her face as she cradled me in her arms and sang to me. I saw firelight flicker on her gentle face. Her horns glowed and the warmth in her golden eyes made me feel safe. My mother was a very lovely dragon with deep red scales, and her wings were tipped with black, which was very usual.

When my siblings hatched out of their eggs I had to get used to not being the center of attention any longer. At first their arrival was very unwelcome, but once they began to talk and play I found them more interesting and it wasn’t long before I was happy that they were there. (See Note 2 below)

Though I was the first chick to hatch, I was not the biggest. My brother Neirin hatched two weeks after I did, and it was soon clear to everyone in the clan that he was going to grow up to be a very big and burly dragon. Which he did.

Eirin hatched next and she was a delicate and very pretty little dragon. She was quiet and shy, and liked to play by herself with her playthings. Eirin was gentle, patient and kind and when she grew up she became a very skilled healer.

Rhys arrived soon after Eirin, and he was a troublemaker almost from the moment he hatched. Rhys was curious about everything and I cannot tell you how many times we had to rescue him. In just a month Rhys managed to fall down a well, set fire to his bed (four times), get stuck up a tree (three times) and he drove Grandfather Frenthfar to distraction so often that Grandfather decided that he needed to take a vacation.

Tesni, the last chick in our clutch, was a bright cheerful little creature. She was beloved by everyone, and she seemed to bring warmth and light with her wherever she went. No one could stay annoyed with her for long, even when they wanted to!

Our clutch was the first to hatch that year and so there was a big celebration a month after Tesni had hatched. We younglings could not fly yet, so our parents put us in strong baskets and flew to the Clan Hall with the baskets gripped tightly in their claws. There were no problems until Mother picked up Rhys’s basket and started to fly to the Clan Hall. The adults should have known better than to put Rhys in an open basket!

Best wishes from your friend Gryf.

Note 1: Unlike humans, we dragons were able to communicate with others of our kind quite easily, and we often got letters from our kin in China, India, Persia, Africa, and Europe. The clans living to the north in Finland and Russia were not big letter writers, but we did hear from them every so often. Perhaps you are wondering how we were able to do this. Well, dear boy, the answer is a simple one. Most of us can fly, and we can fly long distances quite easily. Traveling dragons would take letters with them, dropping them off at Letter Stations. Then the letters would get picked up and taken on to the next Letter Station and so on until the letter reached its destination.

Note 2: Dragons chicks develop very quickly. They are able to walk around in just a few days, and can communicate well in a few weeks. When they are born, their wings are small weak things and they don’t start learning to fly until they are at least six or seven months old.