Seeing Dragons
John C. Mannone
Based on a photograph of clouds resembling a dragon, and the YouTube video on the human’s development of pareidolia
She swept down from the heavens, or did she really come from cloud-mist spewing from fissures in the earth—rocks shifting down to hellacious depths? Her wings folded, tucked tightly to her body, her dorsal lined with stegosaurus-like humps or fins for inflight stability. She rested on a stratospheric ledge, tail curled beneath her. And she wore her horns like a crown—queen of the atmosphere. Her countenance, not one of good disposition. She appeared annoyed, hungry, disgruntled as she lay in wait for her prey, eyes fixed over the forest.
Perhaps it was the stir in the wind that frightened them, but the humans scurried a split-second earlier, hid in the trees—they saw something coming out of the clouds, or so they thought but it could have been just another dragon-shaped cloud.
