Growing up, we’re always told what we can’t do. Places we can’t go and words we can’t say. Getting older we’re told what isn’t real, Santa Claus, unicorns, dragons. They tell us: be more realistic, get your head out of the clouds, and grow up. She seemed to break all the rules, I suppose that’s what I liked about her, she could go where she wanted and do what she wanted. In her world, she didn’t have rules holding her down and when I was with her I felt the same. 

When I was a small child I had a fascination with the sky. I’ve always admired the freedom of the clouds and the way they dance, forever changing. One day, when I was alone in my thoughts, she fell from the sky. A dragon shifting between solid scales and fluffy clouds flying through the sky on an unpredictable path. It couldn’t be real, right? But why not? She was there just as much as I was and when I played, she played. So we played. No one else could see her, I didn’t understand but I didn’t have to. Nelina was her name. From then on she was always there, at times she would fly off but I would always see her again. She brought back what she could find, small lost items, funny-shaped sticks and stones, and wooden trinkets. With these, we would make great puppets with detailed stories and staffs with ultimate power. We would play until we couldn’t anymore, and then we would lay, curled up, on an island of shade.

I had other friends of course, and they too had dragons of their own. I couldn’t exactly see them and they couldn’t see Nelina, but we would tell each other all about them. We did all sorts of things, somedays we would fly off and leave the fields behind, others the playground itself would twist into castles, pools of lava, or pirate ships. Even when the day was over, Nelina would come to me in my dreams, protecting me from monsters and leading me on adventures. 

The only rule we couldn’t escape was time. More and more we would play without our dragons, till eventually we didn’t even play, not really. She was still there of course, when I would come home she would tell me stories of her adventures and I would draw or write what I heard. But as I grew up she seemed smaller and less fantastical than she did through the little eyes of my previous years. I don’t know when it happened or when I even noticed for the first time, but one day, she was gone. She had left me, or I had left her, in truth, I still don’t know. Not only her but many of my closest friends were gone too, still, I don’t know.

When did our nightmares change from fighting monsters to failing chemistry? As a child, we long for the freedom of growing up, becoming the maker of our own lives and our own rules, to do whatever we want. But how many adults do we see climbing that tree that was “too dangerous”? How many times do we see our parents dancing on the dinner table or jumping on the bed? I still see Nelina in the clouds from time to time. Every once and a while she again will fall from the sky and we will play.