As I stepped into the meditation field, I was already, instantly and without thought, in my dragon form. I smelled the sweet scents, could feel the breeze across the sensitive parts of my snout and in my wings.
I actually struggled not to get ahead of Akir as she continued on. I opened my wings and lifted my face to the sun, letting myself feel the warmth on my scales and on the skin of my wing membranes.
As I stepped into the clearing, the grass gave gently beneath my claws, the ground was firm and reassuring beneath my paws. I swished my tail gleefully through the grass and flowers, content to know that even if the bees buzzing there were angered they could not sting me through my scales.
As Akir directed my attention to the heavens, I could smell the air up there. It called, tantalizing. “Come to me, dragon. You belong here.” As Akir described the sensations of wings sprouting, I became that much more intensely aware of my own. I could feel the blood humming in them as they anticipated flight.
Then I leaped, and instantly there was nothing but me and the air as my wings cupped it, drawing me inexorably upwards. Climbing, climbing, climbing, I let out a roar of sheer delight. Never will flight become stale or routine.
I circled in the sky. Down below in the clearing, I could sense Luigi longing to come up with me. Yet he could not overcome his fears. Giving up, he called to me to continue without him and he would see through my eyes.
We approached the glittering clouds-that-are-not-clouds and I excitedly thrust my snout within them, letting them tickle me with their magic and with the sense of suspended water droplets suddenly running across my scales. We entered.
As the magic orb took shape before us, I circled it, flying slowly, watching the colors shift and change within it. I thought of opal, and how its fire flashes as the light rolls across its surface. Yet this, as Akir brought it to life before us, was something more. Something with power.
I could scarcely contain myself, to not leap ahead of our guide and plunge through the portal before the countdown ended.
And then, I passed through. I found myself once again within a field, a forest clearing. And that is when something I did not expect happened.
Akir said to take this time to fully embrace our truest selves, and so I surrendered to my deepest dragon as I have never permitted myself to before.
I found a rock near the middle of this beautiful forest glade and settled upon it, letting my front paws dangle over the front lip of it and my claws rest lightly in the dirt. My wings opened of their own accord and spread wide, catching the warmth of the sun on their backs while the gentle breeze caressed their bottom sides. I lifted my face to the sun and closed my eyes.
Then I suddenly leaped to my feet and pranced to the edge of the clearing. Following instinct, I rubbed my cheek and horns across the bark of the tree, causing some of it to crumble free. I rubbed again, and then again, and then I rubbed my neck across it until my wing shoulder touched the bark. I pushed against the tree in this way and scored the thumb claw of my wing along the bark.
I was beginning to purr and trill as I began to repeat these actions on a neighboring tree. A dragon’s humming.
Then, I paused and looked back to the clearing. And began to rumble, deep in my chest. A sense of intense euphoria rose within me as I unleashed my infra-sound “purr”. Slowly I let it build until it rose in my throat, and then I released a mighty roar of pure joy.
I pranced then, back to the rock in the center of the glade. I wrapped my claws about a sharp edge of it and broke it off with tremendous ease. Then, I popped it in my mouth and crunched and crunched until it was fine gravel. Then I spat it out into the grass.
I sat there for a long moment as, for the first time, thought briefly returned to me. I wondered why I had just done that, and then it came to me: this was how my kind “brushed” our teeth. By chewing stone.
Not content to let my thoughts become too human just yet, I surrendered once more to my draconic instincts and let them guide me. I began to prance and trill and rumble and purr throughout the glade. I dug in the grass, ripping great furrows in the earth with my claws. I snatched up small pill bugs and other crawling things with my tongue and ate them whole. I flopped down in the tall grass and began to roll around, stretching my wings out and letting the blades of grass scratch and brush over my wing membranes. I rumbled and purred and growled in pleasure of simply being here, in this moment.
Then, I leaped to my feet and bounded to another tree at the edge of the glade. Seized by a new instinct, I reared up and gripped a branch in my teeth and began to twist back and forth, sawing my teeth into the bark. It fell into my mouth and stuck to my cheeks and tongue, and tasted like tannins and the hearty, earthy flavor of wood. I released the branch, and grabbed another, repeating this activity.
Suddenly my more rational mind broke through again and I wondered at my destructive acts. Why had I dug up the soil? Why had I damaged this tree? Why had I eaten those bugs, who scarcely would even be noticed by my digestive system? This was all so different from how I have always viewed my dragonself, my species. We were always a measured people, thinking about the future and the big picture. Yet here I was acting like some great cat marking their territory.
After pondering this for some time, I decided to leave it, and go back deeper into the dragon instincts again.
I continued to prance and purr and growl and trill throughout the glade until the time came to be brought back into the mundane world.
Since that time, I have pondered over my actions in that sacred place, and I have yet to fully understand what happened. I have a hypothesis only:
I was not exploring my dragonself as I was. I was instead exploring my deepest, purest self. That self is still a dragon, but is free from all of the social expectations and training my species has imposed upon itself over countless millennia. I was indeed my purest self, unfettered by any constructs of civilization or culture.
For now, I am content to test this hypothesis. Perhaps in the future I will undertake this meditation again (or another like it if Akir wishes to do another in the future) and see if it leads me to deeper understanding, or new answers.