"Let your heart guide you. It whispers so listen closely."

~ Littlefoot's Mother, The Land Before Time (1988)

The Sun, the Moon and the Wind: A fairy tale

By Ivo Steadman

Once when I was sick and stuck in bed for days, Ivo told me a fairy tale about a dragon and a little boy. The dragon was not named Puff and he lived in the Philippines, not Hanalei. And he wasn't at all a nice dragon. He had ill intensions for the little boy.

"The dragon should be named 'Ivo'," I interjected.

"No, Ivo is the knight in shining armor."

"I thought you said the boy was victorious!" I protested.

"He is, with the help of the knight."

"I want him to be independently victorious," I grumbled. I hated that he always had to intrude on my stories.

"Alright, alright. I see that you are the modern princess and not the damsel in distress type of boy and will alter the plot accordingly," he sighed.

"And why am I always a little boy in your stories?" I demanded. "I'm fully four inches taller than you and I was nineteen when we met!" I was 23 at the time and very sensitive about my youthfulness vis-à-vis my older, vastly more clever, dominant lover.

"Perhaps I imagine that you were docile as a little boy," he said pointedly. "Now do you want your fairy tale or not? I have papers to grade."

"Do I get to be independently victorious?"

He sighed again, heavily to show that he was put upon. "Alright, yes, I shall stay out of this one."

"And the dragon lives?"

"Why do you care if the dragon lives? It isn't a nice dragon."

"Because I don't like killing things."

"Alright, alright," he capitulated, thinking furiously as he was suddenly having to rework the entire narrative. "Now can we proceed?"

I smiled at him and snuggled down in the covers, happy to have gotten my way. For once.

Once there was a - … young man named Tim who had survived a most terrible shipwreck. His entire family, all of his classmates, everyone who had made his childhood living hell were burned alive in the flames, their frightful screams drowning out the pleasant song of the whales.

He floated for days in the warm sea clutching the only remaining piece of lumber from the tragedy, a keg of beer. The construction of the barrel as well as the distribution of its contents was such that the corked end bobbed along the top, permitting our castaway to imbibe the golden brew within.

"How did I get it out?" I laughed. "It isn't as if I had a straw!"

Ivo frowned at me.

Which he was able to siphon out with a straw that had been tossed carelessly by some ignoramus who failed to appreciate the half-life of plastic and the environmental hazards of throwing rubbish into the sea.

I snorted. He continued.

Thus was Timothy not merely unafraid of his predicament but actually quite cheerful. Had he been rescued by the golden prince Ivo, he would have been found singing pirate ditties about rum and what have you.

"You said it was beer," I pointed out.

"Yes but the song goes, 'Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum', not 'beer'," he explained.

"I could write my own songs.."

And other songs he composed during those long water-bound hours.

"You are an excruciating story teller!"

He ignored me and took great pains to underscore the next episode.

Alas ill will befell the young man. He was found not by the prince whose love for him would have been boundless but instead drifted drunkenly towards a remote island in the Philippines where a rather nasty variant of the Komodo dragon lived. This particular dragon had eaten all of his siblings, his parents - indeed the entire population - and had grown to such enormous proportions that he was in constant agony, the joints in his legs sorely taxed to propel him about the small island. The dragon's name, by the way, was Martin and he was a lugubrious soul.

By this time, I was dying laughing. "Does Martin drink all my beer?"

"Hush! Do not interrupt creative genius when it is on a roll. But as a matter of fact - "

Our Tim knew he was in trouble as soon as he reached the white shores of the Island of Woe –

"'The Island of Woe'?" I mouthed, shaking my head in disbelief.

The Island of Woe – he cleared his throat –

Our Tim knew at once that he was in grave danger as the shoreline was littered with hundreds of empty kegs, for while his keg contained his precious amber liquid, the other kegs onboard had held whiskey and rum which have a much higher alcohol content.

He had just begun the herculean task of lugging his lager

"'Lugging his lager'," I repeated in an undertone. "If this is your attempt at alliteration, it's awful!"

lugging his lager across the white dunes when didst come the dragon, staggering a bit which heartened Tim as he realized that he had a chance of surviving the encounter. He had the goods, after all. He had only to bargain with the dragon for his life. Unfortunately, Martin was rather hung-over as well as out of his mind from the gouty pain in his knees and the whiff of spirits made reason abandon him completely. He made to seize the barrel and down its contents in one gulp!

The thought of Martin, who is rather enormous and dragonish, with the keg and the straw on the beach was too much for me. I howled.

Ivo looked very pleased with himself.

So there they were in the unhappiest of situations: a drunken Tim, determined to keep his keg; a drunker Martin, equally as determined to claim it for himself; and, tragically, no Ivo to lead them to an equitable resolution.

(I hit him with the pillow but I was thoroughly enjoying my bedtime story.)

Ah! But our Tim was a clever boy and never more so than when battling for booze. He drew himself up to his five foot ten and three-quarters inches –

I am actually 5'11" but Ivo, at 5'7", refuses to give me that last quarter inch.

- and stared the shaggy beast –

"Dragons aren't shaggy," I interrupted.

"And you know this how? We have recently ascertained that birds are related to dinosaurs and actually now believe most species had feathers. "

"Yes but you said this was a Komodo dragon, which has scales!"

"No, I said it was 'a rather nasty variant of the Komodo dragon'. In this case, the woolly sort."

There is just no winning an argument with Ivo in his field. I was stuck with a furry dragon.

"Now quit interrupting! I am losing my train of thought." He glowered at me for effect. "Where was I? Ah, the 'stare-down'."

Tim and Martin stared each other in the eyes, the former's unfathomed pools of promise, the latter's bleary and tired from age.

"So it's the 'promise' of the potential of my youth you want," I surmised. "But, hold on - how in the world are we staring at one another? How big is he? I can't very well stare him in the eye if I am standing on the beach! Or am I standing on the keg to augment my stature?"

"Quit introducing logic into fairy tales! But since you brought it up, I'll have you know the feared velociraptor was the size of a turkey."

I was trying to imagine the remake of Jurassic Park with turkeys but Ivo's continuation interrupted me.

Tim stared at him from atop the keg. The dragon, rising to the challenge, opened its mouth to barbeque Tim on the spot, but our hero placed a single digit on its snout and said calmly, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. The heat you emit is enough to evaporate the contents of this keg in fewer than six seconds, roughly the time it would take to roast me. And then where would you be? Without beer or company to get you through this miserable existence!"

The dragon was very surprised but recognized the wisdom of Tim's words. His was indeed a most unhappy endurance. He held his breath.

"I put it to you," Tim continued, his confidence bolstered by his success thus far, "that we have a great deal in common. Here we are - stuck on this god-forsaken island. We both of us like our drink, in varying quantities. We neither of us have anyone to call our own. And wherever is the profit in being alone?"

Even in his muddled state, this made sense to the dragon.

"We two might well be able to pass a very companionable existence here – me, composing my novel, you, my captive audience."

I was near convulsions. Ivo's lip twitched ever so slightly.

"Who knows?" Our Tim was completely caught up in the moment. "We might find fruits yonder in those trees from which we could concoct all sorts of umbrella drinks, like they do in Hawaii!"

The dragon was leaning on his elbows, his snout resting on his claws so that the smoke from his nostrils trailed upward like that from the peace pipe into Tim's glowing face. And Tim discovered that, like a puff from the peace pipe, the fumes had an effect on him similar to weed. Perhaps it was the prodigious amounts of rum and whiskey the beast had consumed, now etherized into veritable cannabis, but our Tim was soon high as a kite and never is man more creative than when stoned.

"We could build a bar! We call them 'pubs' in my country -," he was draped over the dragon's flattish head, admiring the shifting shapes of the clouds – "from the palm leaves and wood. With your brute strength and my brains, we could have the finest establishment in the Sulu Sea!" He was very animated despite his relaxed state and it was catching. The dragon was literally misty-eyed with gratitude, failing to recognize that he was being offered a lifetime of slavery rather than a partnership. So long as he was allowed to partake of the alcohol – preferably in a coconut shell – he felt it was a good deal.

"We shall call it," Tim proclaimed in a very grand manner, "'The Sun, The Moon and the Wind', signifying—metaphorically - the various states through which our clientele shall pass as the day draws to its end and their minds reach saturation."

My side ached from laughing so hard. "Ivo, you are outrageous!"

He bent over to kiss me. "But you liked it?" he asked anxiously. He loved to tease me but he wanted to make certain he hadn't offended.

"I did," I agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing my thumb over the stubble on his chin. And then I said, very spontaneously, "And I love you." I really did love him, despite all our differences. No one could make me laugh at myself as Ivo did.

He grew misty-eyed, leaning into my touch and no papers were graded that evening.