The strange attraction to dragons

[KekPafrany]

Indeed. Such things seem attractive when we believe we are completely safe from them. Take wolves. I have never seen one 'in the flesh'
(...)
Hmm. This also brings bushrangers to mind. Kind of like pirates of the bush, they were/are often glorified and have been/are often written of sympathetically in Australian texts. No doubt the further from their presence in history that we journey, the higher in esteem we seem to view them and their antics. Held up at gunpoint tomorrow and the majority of we Australians would not be so ambivalent I'm sure!

I am lucky to be able to tell: I have petted living wolves more times in my life. They were tamed, hand-raised and playful. I am charmed by their sounds and characters. I can't and won't say, they aren't dangerous, I just don't love them less because they live in my home country too. Wild wolves tend to avoid humans, as long as they can. I have more chance to have an accident with a badly attended domestic dog, than a wolf..

Dragonds.. Well, Hungarian children from 80s were lucky with dragons: There was a great tale with a dragon, Süsü, who was exiled because he wasn't evil enouh and he had only one head, (everybody in his family has 7-12 heads per capita ). He found a human prince as friend and a home in his kingdom.

But he was more dragon-like than the "dragons" in the other tales: those were like just men, usually bad men. I remember an other tale, where the main character had to free a girl (princess maybe) from an evil dragon - but the dragon had a 5 legged horse and the young boy had to find a 6 legged mount one to be able to do his heroic run-away with the girl.. Don't ask me why do a dragon need a horse, any kind of horse.

I know I am more attrackted to wolves and other canines since my childhood, than to any other creature but I love dragons. They mean somehow the base of fantasy: Dragons need magic and they mean the magic itself.