It was cold on the day that we saw dragons; it was one of the coldest days of the year. Lake Michigan lay frozen along its flanks. The air recalled some Nordic myth: one about a chill so strong and so pervasive that words themselves froze in the air and fell—glass-like—to the ground. I remember that story: the one about frozen words. The ones that survived the winter thawed out and were heard during the spring. I love folktale and myth logic: words can freeze, sparrows and other birds can push the sky back into position; furniture can talk, much to the chagrin of talking yams. There were no talking yams on the day that Corey and I met Carin at the Westin Hotel just outside of the loop. There were no heroic birds pushing the sky back into place, but in Carin’s warm and vibrant company, Corey and I heard of thieving hyenas (bringing their friends to the fringes of a barbecue,) fabricating elephants, and your average, every-day giraffe just walking by: as they do if you happen to live in a part of the world with giraffes walking around. There were dragons on the day that Carin visited Chicago and met Corey and me. They were brass lamp-holders, lending their useful grace to The Drake: a venerable hotel on Chicago’s Gold Coast. We’d planned on going to the lake, to photograph that deceptive inland sea. The lake had other ideas. It had grown restive during the earlier weeks of winter and so its concrete-encrusted shores were covered with the treachery of ice. It was too cold to reach the lake, anyway. Corey’s coat—perhaps in protest to the temperature—committed a small act of mutiny and refused to zip. And so, ziplessly, Corey (and Carin and I) headed for the nearest bit of comfortable warmth we could find. As it turns out, such comfort accompanied the decadence of Key Lime cheesecake in a franchise branch that resembled the innards of a deep-space Leviathan class starship from Jim Henson’s Farscape. I was surprised to learn that Pilot did not steer the place to some odd destination, while various Hymerians, Humans, Peacekeepers, and others meandered the half-deserted corridors of a living starship in all of the colors of copper and marble. Pa’u Za’an didn’t show her blue bottom to a flatulent Hymerian Dominar with prodigious appetites and a swanky hover chair (he refuses to walk.) The only strange people were of local origin. But still, the branch of the Cheesecake Factory at the foot of the John Hancock Center recalled one of my favorite science fictional starships. With cheesecake. As Carin is from a country far more interesting than anything I’ve experienced on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan, I’m sure she probably wouldn’t have been surprised to see alien characters running around, arguing, and scheming. She would have—most likely—photographed them, and possibly talked a particular, very small Dominar into posing on his anti-grav cusions. Instead, she laughed and talked, talked and listened. She presented gifts to Corey and me, and to Kate (who couldn’t make it due to a job engagement.) She laughed a lot, sharing stories of strange new life on a world that should be familiar to most humans. (Get her to tell you the one about being stalked by one of the deadliest scorpions around. Actually the scorpion was more interested in sauntering than stalking. But still, get her to tell you that story, or the one about the elephant pretending to eat, while charging (very slowly!) Now, I see a fanciful dragon holding a light globe, and I think of South Africa and of friends there, of one particular friend with the kind of laugh that warms up a room. I have it on good authority that dragons like warmth and so it’s only fitting that I post this dragon now. Perhaps he will bring warmth to the city (and future trips to South Africa) in the same way that he brings light to the Drake Hotel. As always, thank you for viewing, reading and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.