The Neighbors 6: Dragon
One morning, it suddenly appeared and started to eat the world
What a spectacle! The calming and relaxing atmosphere on the beach was interrupted by a dragon eating a building.
On such a Tuesday morning during the fall, the beach wasn’t very populated. Just a few patients from the sanatorium were out walking, some of them with sticks, others free of them, now being stronger people after a couple of weeks in the refreshing surroundings.
The Castle by the Sea, as they like to call the sanatorium, had magic surroundings - the park by the castle was just one of several parks in the area, and the sea, of course, had a beach. Long and wide, equipped with a bench here and there and kindly arranged with all the ice cream kiosks and hot dog stands placed in the adjacent park, maybe to help keeping the beach clean.
Clean it was, definitely, and it was a pleasure to sit on one of the benches, watching the sea or the people - or the dragon.
Over the years, various buildings had found a place to rest right there on the beach. Hotels, mostly, and an occasional private summer house. Probably nothing of all this was built according to the rules, as they basically forbid building on the beach, but maybe the rules were sufficiently flexible to allow for a building being put on the beach in exchange for a favor.
In this case, obviously that favor had not been delivered, or there had been no allowance in the first place. Whatever was the case, this building had never been finished. A brand-new hotel, only missing the last bits, such as windows and paint. It had been like this, a modern ruin, for a few years - until the dragon came.
Children of all ages stopped to have a look when they noticed what was going on. They all enjoyed seeing the dragon take big bites of the hotel, then carefully considering, turning its head with the huge jaws and then, again, another bite.
There is a strange satisfaction in demolition. Maybe it of the same nature as that satisfaction you feel when the last bit of something is being used - the last small piece of butter from the package, so that you can open a new package, or the last of the jam.
More reasonably, we should all hope for everything to last forever, but we don’t. We understand, intuitively, how a tree falling will make room for a new one. And we do enjoy seeing those new trees - and new jars of jam, new hotels, or whatever new appears around us. We thrive on new. And the fall of the old makes the new possible.
The failed building project had been a pain to look at. It shouted out all that was bad and wrong, and also for that reason, it was good to see it go.
Such a dragon doesn’t work alone - several demolition workers were moving around on the ground, pointing, speaking in their walkie-talkies, now and then lifting a hand to stop the dragon for a moment. Like in a circus, when the lion tamer magically makes the wild beast follow his commands - it roars at times, obviously wanting to be free, but still, it behaves like his marionette. And so does this dragon.
Eating a hotel is not done in a moment, so we can probably expect this to happen over some days. Now, when people have noticed what is going on, there are more of them going this way - even though the beach hardly makes up the straight way for anyone, no matter where they are walking from and to. They want to see this.
It is another symbolic sign of the fall. Perhaps this hotel was somebody’s dream that is now fading, and in any case, the cleared ground, when we get that far, will be an open opportunity for something new to appear. Like when the trees drop their nuts, only for small new trees to start their life after a short rest during the winter.
What was once a project for many people to accomplish, the building of something big, has now become a much-appreciated show for the locals and for the patients at the sanatorium. An inspiration for many talks about what possibly can happen next, and for dreams about the future.
This is not an evil dragon - it is the dragon that carries good luck with it. It eats the bad to make room for the good.
That's what I sometimes think when people go into a frenzy about institutions or other established things dying. We need to get rid of the old to make room for the —hopefully better—new. Nobody likes change, I get that. But the old folks at the sanatorium do know best.