awakening

As you drove down the 5 yesterday, you saw a man standing on the metal rail that divides north from south. He was unkempt and you wondered if he was a hitchhiker, because you saw no car (it's hood open and someone peering intently at it) anywhere near. As you drove past he raised one arm and then the other to the sky, as though calling down the heavens. You wondered what he was doing, but you quickly dismissed it from your mind. I can tell you, though.

He was calling upon the dragons. The dragons lie curled up underneath California in an uneasy sleep. Sometimes they fidget and partially wake, and the earth rolls or shakes and buildings fall upon themselves, but the dragon slips back into slumber and the ground quiets. The great dragons lie deep underground, and if they were to wake, perhaps it might be the apocalypse. This man upon the center divider of interstate 5 was invoking the dragons, under all the ancient names that he could remember, the syllables harsh as he said them. He was calling them to wake. If they do not, if California is calm and Los Angeles does not fall into the sea, then he was only a madman and not a magician of the ancient days (and certainly not Merlin released from the cave). Or perhaps he has forgotten the names, or the dragons no longer remember their own names as they sleep uneasily and dream of destruction and molten gold. It is easier to think that he is merely mad, or that I have been only weaving a fantasy, and that there are no dragons underneath California.