My parents' house was robbed a few weeks ago, evidently in broad daylight. The thieves knew what they were after--silverware and nothing else. The job was neat, quick, not too thorough, and overall creepy.

Our good friend Doug told this tale from his days on board ship in the later years of the Vietnam war. Boys will be boys....

I intended to write a story; it was to be a story of a powerful dragon, called Word, who outlasted all attempts to conquer it, though there would be one warrior who would alter the tale forever, of course. The dragon was neither malign nor benign but simply vast, maybe unknowable, and champions fell and died at its base the way climbers die on forbidding mountains, and for the same reasons.

Before the story began,... read more