Once upon a time, there lived a fairytale kingdom run by gigantic Dragons.
The Dragons lived peaceful lives, waking up in the mid-evening, stretching out in a leisurely fashion, taking off from Cyanide Island and flying over the vast ocean looking for fishing boats to devour. (Oh, sure, you could devour all manner of boat, really, schooners, yachts…but fishing boats had all that bonus sashimi, you know.) Until, one day, they realized they had a problem.
You see, a short time ago…a hundred years? Two hundred? When your lifespan is five hundred thousand years and you know you’ll eventually take a big gulp of air (or whatever it is Dragons breathe) and set off, flying, for a new planetary system, you don’t always pay much attention to trivialities. But a short time ago (surely not more than three centuries)—they realized that the monkeys were becoming problematic.
They were conducting a great deal of tribal warfare. The Dragons approved of this, since, while they didn’t have tribes, they knew that if they DID have tribes, and if they were a lot more stupid, they’d be fighting all the time. And since the monkeys had both the idiot thing and the bonus extra I-don’t-trust-you-because-you-might-not-trust-me thing going, the Dragons considered them to be perfectly sensible, for morons.
The Dragons did notice that the Humans were behaving in appropriately idiotic ways, but they were also having quite a lot more progeny than the Dragons. (To be fair, of course, have you ever tried suppling baby formula for a being eleven feet long and covered in claws?) They realized that the Humans, if left unchecked, would take over the World.
This seemed, to the Dragons, like a fantastic bargain.
They hired a few Bards (and wasn’t it refreshing to chat with them for more than just the couple of minutes it takes to cover them in the appropriate sauce?) to spread word of the many ills facing the world. It had an environment, art, culture, ideas, natural disasters, human economic systems…all of which weren’t maximally helpful to Dragons.
That’s not what they told the Bards, of course. They just substituted the word “Human” for “Dragon”. The Bards ate it up, because what would their audiences want more than to have the adrenaline thrill of horrifying (but electrifying) Darkness, encroaching?
Honestly, the humans loved it.
They ate it up!
It was fascinating, and they spent the next few centuries building industrialization and factories and so forth. Many sentient beings believed they were causing the destruction of the Earth.
The Dragons looked closely at the World from their alternative-dimensional home. And they began to see that it was full of just fascinating problems.
“Do you think we should go and fix all the problems,” said the Head Dragon to the Not Quite Head Dragon, “Or burn and eat them first?”
“I think we should fix all their problems,” said the Dragon.
They’re on their way now, friends. Don’t give up hope.
By the way.
I’m sure they can’t possibly think that our problems are ourselves. Certainment non.
_____
“It’s a little-known fact, but Unicorns are something like 20% paint, and their horns are stolen exclusively from endangered species.”
― There and Never, Ever Back Again
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