The rumor goes that a dragon the size of a large whale appeared out of a portal off the coast but was immediately shot down by a battleship’s cannons.  Most people dismiss it as nothing more than that.  There’s no such thing as dragons and once someone points out that a dragon coming from a portal to another world would technically make it an alien, “alien dragons” becomes a shorthand for laughably ridiculous conspiracy theories.

And yet I find myself in a fern-shrouded forest, not far from the coast where the alleged sighting happened watching a dragon silently move between the trees.  This one is more elephant- or giraffe-sized rather than whale.  It’s surprisingly hard to track with the way its green scales blend into the moss-coated tree trunks and lush undergrowth.

I duck back into the metal bunker, fearful that the dragon may have spotted me.  I ask the human representative stationed there if they think it saw us and how protected this bunker is against fire.  They tell me that the dragon definitely knows we’re here, and that dragons spew poison, not flames.

As if on queue the dragon sticks its head into the still-open bunker door.  Sparkling blue motes of light shimmer around its head.  There is a moment of utter quiet and stillness, and then the dragon departs.  The human representative tells me that the dragon just granted us its blessing.

A red portal opens up and the otherworldly ambassador we’ve been waiting for finally arrives.  She looks like nothing so much as a child-sized orb of white feathers clad in a ornate green and orange robe with two spindly dark green (nearly black) arms and two equally twig-like legs that all resemble bird legs.  None of these limbs look capable of supporting her weight.  Perhaps that is why she rides a living chair.  This ambling conveyance consists of a feathery bowl with a high seat back, situated atop four gangly legs longer than I am tall.  The legs and feathers of the living chair look so much like the ambassador’s that it is difficult at times to tell when she ends and it begins.

The ambassador is brusque and imperious with her greetings, discarding pleasantries and getting straight to business, right up until she catches me staring.  She asks why I’m gawping at her so like some provincial local who’s never seen one of her kind before.  It is true that I haven’t.  I tell her that I am enraptured by her beauty and that of her robes.  That is also true.  She seems to appreciate the flattery.