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~
~ ~ Pyrene's Insatiate Mer-Monster ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ To
the Mermaid at Zennor
This
is a hideous and a wicked country, Only the saints, ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Cadgwith's Hatching ~ ~ ~ Egyptian Sphinx Egg ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ Inspirations ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Cadgwith!
You chose this name, and we all liked it oh-so-very much; such an /ugly/
name to give to a gold! Even if at first we had our doubts, it grew on us.
And we hope you're happy with our choice of it for your beautiful, ugly
gold. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ George
Bernard Shaw ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Cadgwith,
as you know, is a village on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, with little
lumpy thatched cottages, and small crabbing boats winched up onto the
shingle beach - a small harbour town that probably smells much like
Cadgwith herself does: all seaweed and salt... though more on that later. And
Cornwall itself: need we write anything? You know this magical, beautiful
peninsula better than any of us: walks on the sandy beaches in the midst
of winter, whilst the Atlantic waves surge and boom on the shore; the
heaps of white clay, and the chimney-stacks of the old tin and copper
mines, dotting the landscape; summer sun and icecreams and pasties and
clotted cream and souvenir shops selling absurd pixies. ...
The Lizard Underlain by a unique metamorphic rock ... http://www.cornishlight.freeserve.co.uk/lizard.htm Oh,
and the Cadgwith Anthem is a song recorded by the old
British folk group Steeleye Span - maybe there's a recording out
there somewhere we can find for you, Pyrene! Here are the lyrics, anyhow: Come
fill up your glasses and let us be merry, Chorus
As
we roam through the valleys Hush,
hush in the distance there's footsteps approaching http://rzdspc77.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/steeleye.span/songs/cadgwithanthem.html Also: ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Cadgwith
is themed not to the Little Mermaid, who made the sacrifice for her lover
of walking on knives all her life in order to have human legs, but for the
Mermaid of Zennor who demanded that it be her lover to make the final
sacrifice and sink into the depths with her. Since
it's a Cornish folktale, we'd hope that you'd be familiar with the story,
but here's a reminder: The
Mermaid of Zennor used to come every Sunday to listen to a young singer at
the church. She fell more and more in love with his voice until eventually
she put on human clothes, and sat in the church itself to listen. She was
seen by her beloved, who despite the attempts of the villagers to prevent
him, went into the watery world of Llyr with his new love. At
the 15th-century church in Zennor can still be seen a mermaid, carved on
the end of a wooden pew. ...as
if hung there by the wind http://www.thefae.freeservers.com/zennormermaid.html Also: ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Looking
like something the sea belched up, she’s all angular spars and
fluttering sails, dragging tail and sinuous limbs; huge and ungainly, a
ship run aground. Desperately awkward on the ground, she swims gracefully
through the air – and water! – despite her bulky body. Cadgwith is one of
those heavy-bellied lizards who looks best from a distance, or through the
haze of sky or sea. There is nothing pretty about her, nothing fey,
nothing faint, nothing light. She is as solid as the rock she moulds
herself too, and just about as immoveable. Still, despite her
great-seeming size, Cadgwith is not really that big. She just uses up
space – devouring it – as she devours life. She isn’t fat, she
isn’t big-boned or soft and round and fleshy. And she is, perhaps, a bit
too narrow in the flank and angled on the edges to be brawny. It’s just
that she Looms so, and is ever so awkward, and she is a queen, so she is
one of the biggest of her kind. She just doesn’t have as much bulk as,
say, Serath does. It is more spread out than that, and young as she is,
there’s a sort of tensile forgiveness to her great lengths. Of course that
seaweed-strewn hide of hers doesn’t help. It bunches up in the wrong
places, and wrinkles so around her great big feet. It has a life of its
own, that vast canvas of skin, on which every Flight she flies, and every
Song she sings, and every Clutch she bears will etch its mark. Perhaps she
will grow into it. Perhaps it will grow onto her. But perhaps, just
perhaps, it will always never quite fit what might otherwise be the more
nimble architecture of her form. The colors? Well
distill all the hue and tones of the town of Cadgwith with a bit more of
the sea, and the pale fires of sunset and throw it onto her leathery hide.
There is no pattern to her, no dominant hue, no swathe of brilliance. It
is as if the sea at twilight continues to froth and boil with the last
vestiges of the sun held up above the onrushing depths of night. She is
darker along the bottom than she is along the top. And her wingsails tend
towards that lovely, lovely sea-glass green. And the silvery luminescent
pearl breaking along her flanks and tail lightens some of the browny-gold
seaweed that marks the rest of her. But overall she sort of melts it all
together, like a blurry tidal-pool at sunset, and isn’t distinctly any
color at all. She’s neither dark gold, nor light, green-gold nor black.
Pearl and barnacles, aye, but not in overt patches or bright marking. Just
enough variation to the kelpy browny-green to make it interesting. Mind
you, she hates it when she lightens up in winter, losing some of the
darker hues and lovely undertones of autumn and hearth to fade towards her
pearly golds and paler green. The more she lightens up, the further her
spirit sinks, and a few trips south for Sun without Snow might be in
order. And oh – oh! – when spring comes again and her hide darkens and
her colors flow like rich velvet, oh is your Cadgwith Happy.
Summer has the sun. And autumn has colors to hide her from any
prying eyes – as does the sea – but it’s the muddy mucky grimy
switch from winter to spring that seems to lighten her step and lift her
now-pale wings. Did we mention her great big feet? No, they aren’t cat’s paws, or canine feet. They are a dragon’s taloned fist of claws and fingers, bred for catching things, ripping small and edible beasts apart, pulling the covers off one’s Rider, and holding up the great bulk of the body (hers, not yours). We put paws in there to suggest the padded over-sized sense of the Monster, like the fuzzy creatures in ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak. And the way felines use those paws for play, batting things around, smacking one another on the head, etc. Not that I think Cadgwith should go around smacking things on the head with her feet. :P (She might try that on Tiareth, that would be neat – tee hee!). But from the start I was fascinated with a dragon centered on her feet, big feet, instead of held up by her wings. A creature grounded in who she is, and who you are, Pyrene, and loving nothing more than getting her feet into you like toes into mud. Mud. Mud. Mudmudmud. Careful, Pyrene, for even now Cadgwith will try to mould you to who she thinks you should be. (But yes! Do please make’m and the rest of her whatever you want!) Sqvish! Despite her size,
Cadgwith can sometimes seem to melt into the very Weyr itself. Her often
hideous coloring offers a surprising amount of camouflage during most of
the Turn, 'cept in winter where nothing really helps her against the snow
and ice. But the rest of the time your dragon almost seems to just up and
disappear. I do not think Cadge is very fond of Winter. Water was not
meant to be frozen. It is difficult to swim in frozen water… but I
don’t imagine that will stop her from trying. She craves the sun though,
your Cadgwith, as if she were cold-blooded. And there is a monstrous
beauty to a queen caught baring her belly to Rukbat, half in homage, half
in demand. Cadgwith. Oh
Cadgwith! She may not be pretty. She may not be petite. She may not be
perky or persnickity or precocious. But she’s yours. And despite what
people might say, she’s not really Ugly. You know better. Cadgwith –
like Tiareth before her – has a sort of monstrous beauty that will
outlast the rest by their sheer charisma with or without conscious
cunning. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Cadgwith's
mindvoice is just so much more beautiful than the dragon herself, folding
around you like a water and rustling like ocean-dark silk: vibrant,
magical and mellifluous. A true siren's call, it ripples like the tide
with a dark sensuality that's directly at odds to her ungainly wrack of a
body. Mermaid-siren
her mental voice may be, but her physical voice would is nothing less than
a foghorn-siren: loud, abrasive and pervasive. She mews and shrieks like a
seagull, and at fifty times the volume, to be heard clear across the Weyr
bowl on a still day. Bejewelled as she may sound in your mind, promising
the sea's rich treasure, when she's hunting or in the fullness of a mating
chase, her calls remind you of the waves booming against the cliffs and in
the seacaves, or of a ship at sea, sounding its horn through the mists. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Dirty
British coaster with a salt-caked smokestack, ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ You
know that scent of a beach at the end of a long summer's day? All
warmed-up seaweed and fatty, vinegary chip wrappers; dollops of suntan
lotion and tangy salt…. well, that’s Cadgwith’s scent too. It rasps
like sand sprinkled in your cheese & tomato roll, tickles like water
splashed onto sunwarmed skin, and sings to you of summer sun and lapping
waves. There’s a bit of an undercurrent of rotting fish at times though,
when she’s been curled into her couch during the long winter nights
instead of sunbaking on her ledge; a harbour smell of seagulls and
crab-legs and engine oil (probably the way Cadgwith-the-village smells
too)… It’s unpleasant, but oddly comforting and addictive, speaking to
you of The Way Things Should Be, the total rightness in your life that is
Cadgwith. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ (Nuff feels compelled
to note that, for herself, she is writing this in hindsight without any
idea of who Cadgwith is now, nor what you have done with her, or how she
is played, and so does not wish to intrude on who you two have become. She
can only write about what might have been, when Cadge was first cracked.
And hope that you can find more of that which you love about Cadgwith in
what we write. But please yes please oh please just disregard anything
that doesn’t fit in with what your dragon has become.) There's no polite way
to put this: Cadgwith is demanding. You are the most important thing in
her life, and she'd willingly drag herself over sharp rocks for miles and
miles just to be with you... but she expects the same in return, and
doesn't even bother to ask, politely or otherwise. She can be a little
bit clingy, unwilling to share you with anyone, be it friend, lover or
family. This is especially true whilst you're still weyrlings, with so
many people and dragons in close proximity. Once you're moved into your
weyr, she can relax a little, safe in the knowledge that no-one's going to
be calling for you too much. Not that Cadgwith is
overly selfish… no moreso than most of her kind and color. She simply
expects to get what she wants, when she wants it, and anyone or anything
that gets in her way will be dealt with accordingly. Still, this doesn’t
really make her Bad. She seems to see what others cannot, hear what others
will not, sense what most would never feel, and know more than perhaps
she should. Inside her monstrous exterior beats a powerful soul, as strong
in giving as it is in its demands. She is highly empathetic, if not always
sympathetic, and has an old woman’s sense of wisdom that might not
always define what she wants or what she does, but it’s in there…
somewhere. Perhaps this, and her straight-forwards, no-nonsense manner is
what makes her charismatic as well, for she is, even if that really
doesn’t matter. Because she isn’t always right, and because she
isn’t very perfect, and because nothing every seems to go precisely how
she likes it to, Cadgwith might endear her self to others. Not as the
underdog, and not as some ugly little creature in need of pity, but by
simply existing as best she can with what she has, doggedly determined to
do what she thinks is right despite not being the best. I would imagine that
Cadgwith cannot do most things easily – nor is she completely inept or
anything – she simply has to work on it… or work around it. She’s
not the cheerleader type. She’s not the studious type. She’s not the
pot-head or the punk, or the shy girl in the back. She’s the slightly
too-big lass with her hair never quite right, her left shoelace always on
the verge of tripping up the rest of her, and acne that absolutely insists
on breaking out before any sort of social engagement. She’s always
dropping her books, leaving her homework behind, and missing the bus
because no-one notices she’s chasing it. But! But! But but but, she’s
also the one everyone wants for their best friend, because she’s so
endearingly normal. She’s funny and loyal, stubborn, intelligent,
occasionally witty bordering on bawdy, and never one to back down from a
challenge… even if she’s doomed to lose. She isn’t overtly popular
or pretty or fun, but her delight in life and others and you – of course
you, Pyrene! – is all the more special because she knows who she is, and
can live with that. And like it. Cadgwith has a very
strong sense of who she is. Should this stop her
from dreaming? Oh no, oh no. There is a bit of the bard in your dragon, as
befits her heritage from the Sea and the stories riddling her hide.
Perhaps no-one will ever hear her but you, Pyrene, but your monster holds
the heart of a poet. And, there are times, when the sun is warm and her
hide is all melted into a fused mix of hues and warmth around her bones,
that Cadgwith will want to curl herself up around you and just while away
the afternoon watching the clouds go by. (Nevermind that every bit of
fluff might remind her of a tasty-looking herdbeast). She too, can dream,
and in her dreams you fly together, as creatures that are neither human,
nor dragon, nor a mix of both, but as something more. Something
undefineable in human terms, but that Cadgwith can communicate in thought
and flavors as rich and deep as the sea that spawns them. Perhaps you are
swimming. Perhaps you are flying. But in her dreams you are one yet
separate, distinct yet fused together. And as such you explore the gestalt
or the world around you, tasting the other dragons and people and places
as if all the Pern were your oyster. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I don't know what
it is that makes me love you so ........... Now listen, honey I
Only Wanna Be With You,
sung by Dusty
Springfield ~
~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Cadgwith
proddy - what a fearsome thought! She's a fishwife at first, all grating
grumbles and raucous catcalls: << Pyrene, why is Rixesith looking at
me like that? He offends me. >> she might ask, accompanying the
silent question with a crosspatch screech and a clatter of wingspars
towards the offending male. With the onset of this jade's behaviour, her
hide takes on a certain soft glow, that's in complete paradoxical contrast
to her lack of ladylike conduct. Twilight gold turns to glossy moonlight,
the silvery shades of her tail repeated as subtle highlights across wings
and flank, neck and limbs. The air of mystery bestowed by the
phosphorescence lasts for a day or so, giving you (and the rest of the
Weyr) plenty of warning. Beware the eel, this gold, as she snakes towards
Flight. I
would think Cadgwith would use guile and cunning when first launching into
flight. She is so big. She is so slow. She takes a long, long time to work
into her stride – and oh what a stride it is, when she finds it. Long
looping circles, hugely powerful strokes of wings, vast distances covered
on moonlit sails. If a firelizard can flap its wings in Bitra, and cause
a sandstorm at Igen, Cadgwith-flights will rock Pern to its core. Floods
and famine, blizzards, avalanches, they’re all her fault. And all
because she wants a little action. And
she does like the action! No prude, this queen. She simply refuses to make
it easy for anything to catch her. Perhaps she tends towards Night
Flights, where she can pretend to be a Third rising moon: Belior, Timor,
and Cadgwi. Besides which it is harder to catch her at the start, when
it’s dark dark darker. But the sun is good too, all the better to blind
one’s pursuers with, after all. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Postscript
In
1812, the great showman P. T. Barnum exhibited what was claimed to be a
mermaid. It was displayed in the Barnum museum and drew large crowds. Its
preserved carcass has been shown to be a fake: half a fish and half a
monkey, cunningly stitched together. Cadgwith,
mer-monster and siren, is the genuine article. But if there's anything
written here than you're unhappy with, please feel free to play her as you
think she and you deserve. We’d like her to be the dragon that causes a
sea-change in Pyrene’s life, and maybe in yours, too. ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
From
The Tempest, by William Shakespeare ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ Credits ~ ~ ~ Dragon:
Cadgwith Pyrene's
gold Cadgwith
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