Here Be Dragons

If the tilt of reality suddenly shifted and opened the door to the improbable, what would I hope to see come through to inhabit this world with us? Easy. Dragons. Because I have no sense of self-preservation maybe. Or because I'm taken with the notion that I am a dragon (according to Chinese astrology.) More to the point, though, there's value to casting your gaze to the sky when a shadow passes over and shuddering a combination of awe and dread. It keeps the human animal humbler to be reminded that there are forces in the world that cannot be harnessed or tamed or controlled. While I'm not entirely keen on having friends and family predated by a hungry dragon, watching a massive winged force of nature soaring the skies might be worth a few 'accidents'. Certainly, I'd be one of the dumb ones going out to look for the dragons' caves/nests/roosts. Just to catch a glimpse. On par with courting a tiger.

Maybe what I'm really looking for is something to strip away the illusion of control the human race so loves to pretend to have. I have no data to back it up, but I maintain that humans are better for having something bigger and more awesome than themselves to envy. As a species we drive harder when we're challenged. And having a dragon eating your sheep and burning your neighborhood might qualify as challenging.

Dragons have good qualities, too. Some of them bear incredible wisdom and are invested in helping humans. The fun would come in trying to parse out which dragon was which. I don't know. I'm not sure I can fully explain why it would matter to me that dragons made it across the threshold from myth to real. Only that I'd love to see one with my own eyes and experience the shiver that would come from watching a majestic, enormous apex predator claim the skies of this world.

Given the forces arrayed against humans - hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquake, volcanoes and the other assorted ways the planet has to kill us, do you suppose we already have dragons of a sort?