...except it's not.

[corrvin]

One of the exercises we did to build posture at school was this: Imagine there is a string connected to the top of your head, and someone is pulling up on it.

The string is not real. Or, rather, it exists only in your mind. The good posture and the health benefits from it are physical and concrete, however.

What if there were something deeper, something more real than our bodies, and there was something we could do that created an effect more solid than physical reality?

There's prayer. There's meditation. There's magic. And-- there's sex.

Sex is darker, deeper, than anything, rooting out the reptiles of memory and self-doubt, taking a guide who mimics the calls of the most elusive branch-creepers and burrow-diggers, luring them out into the half-twilight.

And when you find it, the creature that's been leaving tracks and scars across the landscape of your mind, when you stalk it, when you pounce and land upon it, claws pinning its scales to the earth, and pick it up in soft paws-- when you do all that, and suddenly it turns its eyes upon you and speaks in your own voice-- what then?

You can't redeem it now. It will savage and devour you if you try.

Let it age and mellow, come back for it when it's old and wise and crafty, and then, if you've learned what you can, you'll be strong enough to seek alliance.

For tonight, though--here there be dragons.

---

And tonight, my mind was on obedience. It seems some things are stronger than love, stronger than the drive for pleasure, and the lesson I stole from the dragons tonight is that before I can be mastered, I have to master myself first. It's hard to hear someone else over the echoes in your head.