How Is It That Dragons Can Fly?
How Is It That Dragons Can Fly?
A Lecture given at Carlsbad University, in the Twenty-first Year of Bright Queen (Anno Domini 2599)
Br. Zhilogous Baca OSB, Curator of the Nueguan Archives
Since the emergence of Dragons in the Empty Earth during the last decade, many attempts have been made to eradicate them, or conversely to tame them. My talk today is not concerned with either option; what I wish to do is to explain how it is that they can fly at all.
I will use two sources to explain this intellectual predicament: my own observations as an amateur ornithologist, and my background in Landesten studies, my specialty in Nueguan archival work.
First, I want you to consider your favorite flying bird. Perhaps it is a crow, or a gull, or a hawk. Note their wingspan; each and every one of them has a single wing at least the length of its body, or longer (in the case of the gull). Combine those two wings, and you have a general calculation of 'flight requires a wingspan of at least two body lengths'.
Now consider every sighting of a dragon in the last ten years; think of all the highly accurate drawings made by trained observers. Not one...I repeat...not one of those dragons had a wingspan approaching even one-half of its body length. Some were measured at less than a quarter by the King's Guardsmen who lived to tell the story; some have essentially no wings at all, just web feet with claws.
Yet they all fly!
A Lecture given at Carlsbad University, in the Twenty-first Year of Bright Queen (Anno Domini 2599)
Br. Zhilogous Baca OSB, Curator of the Nueguan Archives
Since the emergence of Dragons in the Empty Earth during the last decade, many attempts have been made to eradicate them, or conversely to tame them. My talk today is not concerned with either option; what I wish to do is to explain how it is that they can fly at all.
I will use two sources to explain this intellectual predicament: my own observations as an amateur ornithologist, and my background in Landesten studies, my specialty in Nueguan archival work.
First, I want you to consider your favorite flying bird. Perhaps it is a crow, or a gull, or a hawk. Note their wingspan; each and every one of them has a single wing at least the length of its body, or longer (in the case of the gull). Combine those two wings, and you have a general calculation of 'flight requires a wingspan of at least two body lengths'.
Now consider every sighting of a dragon in the last ten years; think of all the highly accurate drawings made by trained observers. Not one...I repeat...not one of those dragons had a wingspan approaching even one-half of its body length. Some were measured at less than a quarter by the King's Guardsmen who lived to tell the story; some have essentially no wings at all, just web feet with claws.
Yet they all fly!
posted by Zinc Chameleon @ 10:26 AM
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